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fuzzy_paintTitle: All Our Errors on Repeat 1/5
Fandom: The Social Network
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Mark/Eduardo
Warnings: Some sexual content.
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Word Count: ~37,000
Summary: After Eduardo signs off on the dilution and walks away from Facebook, Mark gradually realizes that he's stuck in an unstable time loop. Not only does he have to figure out how to stop waking up in his Kirkland dorm room, three years ago, but he has to rebuild Facebook while remembering things that never happened and deal with the fact that Eduardo has known about this all along. Not that it really matters: Eduardo leaves and he leaves and he leaves, every single time.
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 and fanmix byanysomething.
Halfway through an innocuous line of code, Mark pulls his fingers away from the keyboard. He lets them hover half an inch above the keys, curling and releasing. His eyes blur, and he blinks a few times to regain focus.
He’s done this before.
Mark sits back in his chair, hands stagnant on the keyboard. The corner of his mouth shifts down, unbidden, like a tic in his muscle. Then, still frowning, uncertain, he codes some more. Slowly though, picking out the keys with a deliberation he rarely uses, spending more time concentrating on the physicality of what he’s doing instead of the actual mental output. There is something, something he feels he should know, something he can’t quite reach, something –
A weight settles on his shoulder, and Mark jerks away from it, twitching. He turns, ready to scowl at Eduardo for breaking his concentration, for making him lose his train of thought.
It’s not Eduardo.
“Sorry,” Sean says quietly, close and careful like Mark’s going to spook. “You should take a break. You’ve been at it for nearly thirty-six hours.”
“I have to-” Mark frowns, pulling his laptop closer. “I can’t forget.”
“Mark.” Sean squeezes his shoulder. Mark twitches again. “Dustin wired in half an hour ago. He’ll take care of it.”
Mark blinks, easing the burn in his eyes. Dustin. Right. Dustin is capable for all that he acts like he’s not. Dustin understands what Facebook is, how important it is, how absolutely vital it is to keep running. Dustin knows what to do.
His head feels like it’s shrinking, throbbing each time he blinks. Sean’s right. Mark needs to crash. He reaches down and untangles the cords from his laptop, and Sean says his name, like a warning, sounding a lot like Eduardo. Mark feels something tighten and clench in his chest.
Mark glares at him, curling his arms around his computer, and Sean holds his hands up in surrender.
“Hey, as long as you go to bed, you can take it with you. Cuddle with it, I don’t care. Just get some sleep.”
Mark stands, blinks when his vision blurs again, and heads for his bedroom. Sean follows him all the way, hand at his elbow no matter how many times Mark tries to shake it off.
He slides into bed, still holding his computer. His fingers pluck absently at the catch on the side and then Sean’s hands are there, holding it closed.
“Mark. Sleep.”
He wants to argue because what the hell, since when does Sean imitate Eduardo, telling him to sleep and putting him to bed, but Mark closes his eyes, twists into the pillows and under the blankets.
Mark sleeps.
~
He regains consciousness slowly, staring into the dark space in front of his eyes and still feeling vaguely nauseated.
He reaches out, curling his fingers around the corner of his laptop and pulling it to his chest. He doesn’t open it even though the code needs to be checked and there is an idea that could smooth out the majority of the bugs in the Wall’s code and that niggling thought he can’t quite pin down.
He’s exhausted. Mark realizes it like it’s a surprise, like a thirty-odd hour coding tear wouldn’t have clued him in. He doesn’t remember the last time he showered or called Wardo or ate something that wasn’t mostly sugar.
Mark is more than a little dizzy when he stands up, purple and black spots in his vision. The laptop stays on the bed where he left it, and Mark wanders into the living room, bleary eyed and a little confused. Dustin is coding, or he’s supposed to be. He’s not facing his computer, and Mark frowns, about to call him out, but he turns.
Wardo.
Wardo’s here. In California.
He’s wet and pissed, dark eyes glittering at Mark, and he sounds angry about the meeting with Peter Thiel, about Sean being here. It’s watered down because Mark can only think, Wardo came to California.
He doesn’t know why this feels important, but it does, like Mark needs to sit up and pay attention. It feels like the most pivotal data Mark’s seen yet, more important than anything, even Facebook.
Anything that pretends to be more important than Facebook is not to be trusted.
Mark looks at Eduardo again and there’s anger there, he realizes dimly, anger and surprise and excitement and something else that burns in his chest, making it hard to breathe properly.
Mark blinks.
“I’m sorry,” Mark says; the apology catches them both off guard. Eduardo’s eyebrows draw together, his mouth parted. Mark’s own mouth works briefly, trying to figure out where that came from. “I’ve been wired in all day and I don’t think I’m completely back yet.”
Eduardo is quiet, staring at him.
Mark rubs his eyes, wondering what’s going on in his head.
“I need you here for the meeting tomorrow,” Mark says. Eduardo is still frowning. He rubs his face, and when his hands drop, he doesn’t look angry anymore. He just looks tired. There are dark circles under his eyes, and Mark doesn’t remember the last time he saw Eduardo smile.
Eduardo shivers, wraps his arms around himself.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be left behind,” Mark says then. “I want- I need you out here. Don’t tell him I said that.”
Eduardo closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall; Mark thinks, okay.
Okay.
~
Eduardo is gone in the morning.
~
“He’s not here for the company,” Sean says, slouched in his seat, wrist braced at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. “I’m not saying that you should do it, Mark. I’m saying you should think about how much he's worth to Facebook.”
Mark says nothing, staring out the window.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mark sees him glance his way a couple times, but he doesn’t bring it up again. Sean’s learning when to push and when to back off, and Mark appreciates that. That he’s willing to learn. That he – usually – knows not to push too hard when it concerns Eduardo.
“I need to think about this,” Mark says because Sean is here. Sean is in California, and he stays in California and he needs to know that Mark values his opinion, despite the tiny voice – that sounds like Eduardo. Mark does not need Eduardo’s voice in his head – telling him to be wary of Sean.
“Okay,” Sean says. He lets it drop, thankfully, taking a hint when most people wouldn’t, would edge in and demand more answers. Mark likes that about him too.
Mark does think about it. He spends a significant amount of his time thinking about it. He thinks the entire drive back from Peter Thiel’s office, he thinks about it while they’re stuck in traffic and he thinks about it while he’s coding.
Again, not the most productive use of his time, Eduardo demanding his attention when Facebook needs it more, deserves it more because Eduardo’s not even here.
He stands up, untangling himself from his headphones, and leaves the house to clear his head and run errands.
When the bank teller hesitates, the polite smile becoming even more fixed, Mark flushes with embarrassment before he can even say anything. It’s like he already knows what’s happening: a closed account and flashbacks of everything he thought he escaped.
This is when Mark makes the decision.
~
“A million members,” Eduardo says slowly, quietly, almost absently, as he looks out over the office. He drinks more beer in the space that follows.
Mark stares at him and feels only the sting of irritated betrayal, an annoyance he felt even before Eduardo froze the accounts, before he signed the papers without looking at them. Before the chicken, the Phoenix, Facebook. All of it burns in his chest and Mark doesn’t know how to explain it.
Eduardo will be here. He’ll be here, and his shares will be diluted, and maybe then Mark will stop thinking like this, being distracted all the time trying to remember what he thinks he’s forgotten, like his subconscious is writing half-formed code and not telling him, but then Eduardo turns to him, all dark eyes and toothy smile. “Is that when you’re planning on screwing me out of your company?”
“I-“ Mark can only stare, blink. “What?”
Eduardo turns to him, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. He frowns.
“What is it?”
“You just said-“
“I just said I’d be here, Mark.” Eduardo’s eyes narrow. Mark stares at him. “Are you okay? How much have you slept since the other day?”
That’s not what he said at all; he’d said, he’d said-
Mark shakes his head. He said he’d be here.
It’s stress, maybe, a residual sign of remorse or loss or something else entirely. Eduardo didn’t look at the papers closely enough, Wardo, Mark’s best friend and co-founder of Facebook – this is important. Facebook is important – CFO and he didn’t read the fine print.
But Eduardo says, “I’ll be here,” again, and the twisting is replaced by a different sort, and then Mark feels like he’s sleepwalking through the next few months until it’s the night of the million member party, and Mark’s oddly tense, fingers curling around the edges of his laptop. He’s supposed to be coding – he wants to be coding – but he’s just waiting for something, for the crack of plastic and angry words, for dark eyes and the feeling that his chest is splitting in two.
He waits and waits and waits.
It never comes.
~
He’s unsettled, and he’s too on edge, too jittery to wire in properly, and all the sugar in the office won’t help him focus. And maybe that’s how Sean convinces him to go out, with coaxing words and celebratory promises. He’s right too. There’s nothing wrong with a few drinks to celebrate one million members.
The bar is noisy and crowded with Facebook employees and everyone else. A million members. Most of these people are on Facebook. Most of them want to be. In a year, two, most of them will be.
Mark’s going to make that happen. He’s going to connect everyone.
He feels dizzy. The lights are dim. Mark thinks he’s having trouble breathing and his head hurts, but that’s probably just the muggy air in the bar, burning his eyes and sitting heavy in his lungs.
“Hey,” Sean says, hand on Mark’s shoulder. He nods to the other side of the bar. “Look who it is.”
Eduardo is slouched in a booth in the corner, index finger tracing the side of a glass. Mark hasn’t seen him all night. He doesn’t remember Eduardo being at the office, though he knows he was there, saw his signature when the lawyer handed Mark the papers.
Mark shrugs out of Sean’s grasp and starts walking. He raps his knuckles against the table, and when Eduardo doesn’t look up, he slides into the booth across from him.
“I didn’t see you at the office.”
Eduardo traces the rim of his glass, one slow half-ring before his finger slips and dips inside. He pulls it towards him, dragging it across the table. He looks up then, all dark eyes and a small unpleasant smile. It’s not at all like the smile Mark remembers. Mark looks away, down at his hands. There’s ink smeared on his fingertips, but when he looks again, rubs at it, his skin is pale and unblemished.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble of a messy emotional confrontation. I know how much you hate those.” Eduardo empties his glass, grimacing. At Mark’s look, he adds: “Emotions. I know you don’t like emotions.”
“What’s up, Wardo?” Sean asks, sliding into the booth next to Mark. He sets two beers on the table. “I didn’t get you anything, man. Sorry.”
He’s not sorry.
“You made a bad business decision,” Mark says. “You can’t blame me for that. You signed the papers.”
“Do you have to- I suppose you do. You’re Mark Zuckerberg.” Eduardo takes his time drawling out his name, like he’s tasting something unpleasant and taking it in bits will make it easier. “You couldn’t have just talked to me?”
“I did. I told you you’d get left behind, and you left anyway.”
“You took me off the masthead,” Eduardo says, mild. He smiles. “It’s like I’m not a part of Facebook.”
“You nearly ruined it,” Sean says. “You’re not a part of Facebook.”
Eduardo ignores him. He settles back, loose limbed and glassy eyed, and watches Mark. Mark, with his dry mouth, whose heart is stuttering hard in his chest.
Drunk. Eduardo is drunk. It’s not like it’s anything Mark hasn’t seen before, but Eduardo, Eduardo should be angry, and yelling, and breaking Mark’s possessions and not this. Not this. Eduardo doesn’t do flat or emotionally passive. This is.
Mark doesn’t know what this is.
Sean says, “Did you really think you could walk-” Eduardo’s eyes flicker to Sean briefly, then shift back to Mark, half-lidded and almost lazy. “-around in your ridiculous suits–”
“I learned how to code.” Eduardo says, cutting Sean off. “I did. For you. Basics, really, not- Not Facebook or anything like that. I thought if I just understood how Mark Zuckerberg saw the world.” He laughs, bitter. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says to the ceiling.
Mark says, “I don’t want anything from you.”
He thinks Eduardo makes a sound. If he does, he can’t really hear it over the noise in the room, the music that’s universally too loud in every bar, the laughter and endless chatter around them.
“I guess it’s a good thing that all your shit still pisses me off,” Eduardo says, eyes dark, staring at Mark over a table in a bright room, windows and a view of the city behind him. “But it’s too hard, man. I’m losing myself. I can’t do this anymore.”
Mark blinks. He glances up at the dim lights in the bar, gaudy colored glass shades. “Can’t do what?” He asks, pulling his gaze down, but Eduardo slides out of the booth, shrugs on his jacket, and tosses a few crumpled bills on the table.
“Have a nice life, Mark,” he says and walks away, ducking into the crowds. Mark twists in his seat, scowling, but he’s gone. He’s gone, and Mark –
Mark wakes up. The sunlight’s too bright in his eyes and he’s breathing hard through a cold ache in his lungs, like he’s just sprinted through campus in the middle of winter. It feels like his brain is about to leak out of his nose.
Hangovers suck.
It takes a minute for the algorithm on his window to come into focus. Smeared lines, almost illegible, but it’s burned in his brain: creating FaceMash and crashing the servers and Eduardo’s algorithm.
There’s something about ink-stained fingertips, about a table and about Eduardo –
Mark wakes up. He’s not sure why, but the sunlight is still too bright, and, curled in his bed, Mark tries to remember why he’s so hung over, why he decided to drink last night at all. He has so much work to do, so much to catch up on and create, so much he wants done before the next –
Mark sits up, frozen there for one tight second, staring at Eduardo’s algorithm, and then he’s stumbling out of his bed, sock nearly halfway off his foot. He almost trips over it, landing hard in his computer chair.
His computer takes forever to boot up, and when it finally does, Facebook won't load.
Mark stares at the redirected webpage. Then he shakes his head, clearing his thoughts.
Of course it won't load. He hasn't written it yet.
Everything blurs together, an endless loop of coding and the thrill of building something, creating this idea and making it work, of the endless possibility.
~
Mark surfaces an unknown number of hours later. It’s dark in the room, only the glow of his computer screen and the light from the television. Dustin left it on again, some nature show about bugs.
Mark reads over the last few things he’s written absently; there’s so much to do, so much before thefacebook is ready to go live, before it explodes and starts growing exponentially. He’s more than ready for that, more than ready to reshape human communication and put the entire social experience on the internet.
He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, vision blurring, and blinks until the lines of code make sense again. His fingers catch on a Post-It note paper-clipped in his hair. He pulls it out, wincing a little when his hair catches.
In Dustin’s writing: caribbean night @ AEPi if you ever rejoin the living
Oddly, Mark thinks of Niagara Falls.
He’s more exhausted than he realized if he’s making such illogical connections; he looks at the clock on his phone.
He looks again.
It’s Friday. Friday.
Mark doesn’t remember leaving his computer – he doesn’t remember doing anything except code – since the hearing and that was days ago. He’s missed class. He hasn’t slept or showered and he thinks he remembers Wardo mentioning AEPi’s party, but he doesn’t remember seeing him since the hearing either.
Not that it matters, really. Facebook is huge, and Mark- Mark thinks he doesn’t really need Harvard or expensive suits or the exclusivity of final clubs.
He needs server space.
~
He’s walking across campus, feeling slightly disoriented – he’s been coding for hours, days, he doesn’t know – when two very tall guys, twins, step in his path.
“Mark Zuckerberg, right?” One of them says. Mark eyes him, shoulders hunched, fingers clenching in the pocket of his hoodie. “You’re a hard guy to find.”
“We have a proposition for you,” the other says.
Facebook.
“I’m late,” Mark says, fighting the urge to spit cutting words. They look like they went to the gym. “I have to go.”
The twins share a glance. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute,” Mark says, thinking of bike rooms for some reason. “I’m assuming you need me for a website given my recent involvement in crashing Harvard’s servers. I’m busy with my own projects and don’t have time for some ridiculous dating site.”
“How did you-“
“I’m late. My friend Eduardo is expecting me.”
“Hey-” There’s a hand on his shoulder. Mark tenses. He tries to shrug it off. One of them – Tyler? Cameron? a Winklevoss – hands him a card “-here. Take this. If you change your mind, let us know.”
“Sure,” he says, crumpling it in his fist and shoving it in the pocket of his hoodie. “But I won’t change my mind.”
~
Mark finds it hard to breathe when he sees Eduardo, decked out in a ridiculous hat and patterned shirt. His knobby knees are strangely fascinating. He can’t do anything but stare as Eduardo comes over – for a split second, it’s almost like he’s dancing, ridiculously, embarrassingly, but no. No.
His eyes are playing tricks on him. He’s been coding for days. Hours at the very least, and Mark is feverish from the lack of sleep.
Eduardo stops in front of him, clutching a red plastic cup in both hands.
“Wardo,” Mark says, staring at the cup because otherwise he’ll stare at that loop of Niagara Falls. Or at Eduardo’s ridiculous knees. “I have an idea.”
Eduardo says, “Hey, guess what,” cutting Mark off, making his thoughts contract, shrink, and he knows.
He knows.
Eduardo got punched.
Wardo. Punched.
“Actually,” Eduardo says after a moment. “Let’s go outside.”
Mark blinks. He says, “Its twenty degrees out,” but Eduardo’s half-smile catches him off-guard, making his thoughts stop, pause, restart.
It is twenty degrees out, and Mark’s still thinking about Eduardo and the Phoenix that he’s distracted enough to actually notice that it’s fucking cold. He tells Eduardo everything, about putting the entire college experience online, about exclusivity, about splitting the company, seventy-thirty. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable and his and what he wants, like his favorite hoodie, the one Eduardo borrowed after an AEPi party and never gave back.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Mark says when the silence stretches on for too long. Eduardo is curled in on himself, looking drawn, uncomfortable. His arms are crossed over his chest.
“You don’t want to do this,” Mark says flatly. The anger is familiar too; Eduardo never really understood this part of Mark. He never really understood Mark, for all that he tried, pretending he could read the code over Mark’s shoulder, like he knew anything about programming or computers or Mark.
Eduardo doesn’t look at him. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“I’m leaving Harvard,” Eduardo says.
Mark stares.
“I-“ Eduardo says. He picks at his plastic cup. “Something came up.”
“How can you leave Harvard?” Mark says, meaning, you never leave Harvard. Eduardo won't even come to Palo Alto when Mark needs him, which is insane because Mark’s never even been to California.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Eduardo says quietly, then louder: “Something’s come up, and it’s an amazing opportunity, and I need to take it. I need to do this. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”
Mark blinks.
Eduardo is sitting loose-limbed in a booth. He’s in a bar, and his eyes are dark, glittering in the low light, and, talking fast and staring at a point beyond Mark’s shoulder, like he’s looking at something else entirely, he says, “I’ll fund you. I’ll open a bank account in both our names and the money’s yours, okay? It sounds like a great idea, and if anyone can make it work, it’s you, but I can’t. I have to go.”
Pain bites into his temple, sharp and unforgiving, twisting down his spine. It’s familiarly uncomfortable; Eduardo rubs the side of his forehead, eyes closed, like he’s fighting a headache that Mark feels building behind his own skull.
“We can email and call, and it’s just New York. Isn’t this what this is about, anyway? Building an online social network?”
“You have a point,” Mark allows, but he stares at him until Eduardo’s mouth quirks into a semblance of a smile.
“It’s just New York,” he says. “It’s not Singapore.”
~
Mark wires in. He wires in and stays there, ignoring everything that isn’t code or sometimes Dustin and sometimes Chris. He doesn’t see Eduardo until Spring Break, after thefacebook is live and growing faster than everyone but Mark expected.
Mark knew it would be like this. He knew thefacebook would be like this.
New York is Eduardo’s playground and not Mark’s, at all, but it doesn’t really matter. Mark isn’t going there for him. Mark doesn’t even tell Eduardo about it. He just buys a ticket and catches the train, skipping his art history class and wiring in for the whole ride.
He has an email. It’s still sitting in his inbox, read and reread a couple dozen times, and before he knows it, he’s in New York, he’s meeting Sean Parker, alone, and Sean Parker is late. He’s late, and there is a niggling, irritated voice in the back of his head, talking about trout. It sounds like Eduardo.
Mark didn’t know Eduardo liked fish.
Sean Parker shines just as strongly as Mark expected him to, burning rapid and bright, this guy that founded Napster when he was nineteen. Mark’s age.
They leave the restaurant together – Mark’s already decided to drop the ‘the’ because Sean Parker is right, Sean Parker has amazing ideas – and just as Mark turns to head down the street, Sean calls after him.
“Hey, I was looking at your masthead. Who’s Eduardo?”
“My CFO,” Mark says.
Sean frowns. Mark’s alert enough to realize it’s more speculative than confused.
“He’s not here with you?”
Mark hates this feeling, this sinking, shrinking thing happening in his chest. They haven’t talked in weeks. “He couldn’t make it,” he says, ignoring Sean’s raised eyebrows.
~
Mark wonders if Eduardo would have even tried.
~
He has the address, hacked it from the site’s bank account. It’s not far from the restaurant, a ten minute cab ride even with the traffic.
There is a doorman. Eduardo’s apartment building has a doorman. He is short and round with a shiny bald spot that takes up most of his head, and he is frowning severely at Mark. His nametag reads ‘Larry.’
“I’m his best friend,” Mark says again.
“You are not on Mr. Saverin’s approved guest list.”
“We’re business partners. He’s my CFO.”
Larry does not look apologetic. “You’re not on the list, Mr. Zuckerberg. Perhaps if you come back in the morning. Mr. Saverin is more open to receiving visitors then.”
“He is the primary investor in my company. I am here on a business trip. You think he’d be happy that you’re responsible for screwing this up?”
“I’m sorry,” Larry says, not sounding sorry at all. “I have to follow the rules, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
Asshole.
He pulls out his phone, dials the number without looking it up, and waits for Eduardo to answer. He sounds confused, tinny and faraway but that’s all in Mark’s head. He’s been coding. He thinks and sees and hears strange things when he’s been coding for long stretches of time.
“Mark? Now’s not really a good time–”
“I’m downstairs.”
“You’re-”
“In your lobby. Larry won’t let me up. Why am I not on the list?”
“I-”
“You’re sending mixed signals here, Wardo. You’re CFO of my company and I’m not on your list. Why is that?”
“Wait. Just wait. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Eduardo hangs up and Mark lets his hand drop. “He’s coming down,” he tells Larry, but Larry just seems impassive and disinterested, already reabsorbed in his newspaper.
Mark wants to get his computer out and wire in, because coding is the only thing that makes any sense anymore, and seriously, what the hell Eduardo. What the hell.
There are plants in the lobby that Mark doesn’t recognize and marble flooring and a couch that looks like it’s never been used, ostentatious white leather. The elevator dings. Mark turns towards it, watching Wardo walk out, dressed in pressed slacks and a button-down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Mark can’t stop staring at Eduardo’s wrists.
“I’m sorry, Larry,” he says, because Eduardo has to apologize for everything. “This is Mark. He’s a business partner.”
“Not a problem at all, Mr. Saverin,” Larry says, but the way he looks at Mark suggests that it is very much a problem. “Shall I add him to the list?”
“That won’t be an issue,” Eduardo says. “Mark isn’t usually in town. Have a good evening, Larry.”
Eduardo gestures to the elevator. Mark heads towards it and gets in, leaning against the back wall, watching Eduardo press the highest button with a long skinny finger.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Eduardo says when they’ve started upwards.
“Last minute,” Mark says. They’re on the third floor. “I met with Sean Parker.”
“Sean Parker,” Eduardo says slowly.
“He founded Napster.”
“I know who he is,” Eduardo says, and then they don’t talk again until the doors open and Eduardo opens his apartment door.
Whatever Mark was expecting, it wasn’t this. The first thing Mark sees is wall full of windows, looking out over the city, rain sliding down the glass.
“Internship is going well,” Mark says, looking around. The room opens up into the kitchen. The furniture is simple, clean lines and dark colors. There isn’t any clutter except some open folders and their contents on a table in front of a couch.
Eduardo drops his keys in a black bowl on the table by the door. “What internship?”
“The one you came here for.”
Eduardo’s phone rings, but he just stares at Mark, dark eyes and a curious frown.
“Are you going to get that?” Mark asks, gesturing towards Eduardo’s pocket.
“The internship. Jesus,” he says as he pulls out his phone and glances at the screen. “I have to take this. If you want to wire in, the office is –” Eduardo points to a door and then steps through a different one.
~
Mark doesn’t wire in. He stares out the window at lower Manhattan and then settles on the couch, shuffling through the papers on Eduardo’s coffee table. Stock projections, first quarter finances for a handful of companies that Mark doesn’t recognize, a few algorithms that catch Mark’s attention for longer than a few seconds. He loses himself in them, trying to make sense of whatever it is that took Eduardo away from Harvard and away from Facebook. Away from Mark.
None of this makes any sense.
“Hey,” Eduardo says some time later. Mark looks up to watch him go to the fridge and pull out two beers. He takes the caps off and hands one to Mark.
Mark doesn’t take it. He holds out a handful of the papers in front of him. “What is this?”
Eduardo shrugs. He sets the extra down on the table. “Work. What are you doing here, Mark?”
“You’re my CFO.”
Eduardo’s face does something complex. It’s gone before Mark can make sense of it.
“I’m more than just your CFO. Do you need more money?”
“If I said yes?”
“I’d write you a check.”
“I don’t need more money,” Mark says. “It’s not about the money. I need you at Harvard.”
“No, you don’t,” Eduardo says. “Mark. There’s nothing more I can do at Harvard for Facebook right now. I’m not that good with code, word of mouth is doing more for promotion than I ever could, and I’m cultivating connections you can use–“
“For advertisers,” Mark says, flat.
Eduardo shrugs. He takes a drink and turns towards the windows. “If you decide to go that route.”
“Sean thinks we should go to California,” Mark says, waiting for Eduardo to pay attention because Eduardo always pays attention to things involving Mark and Sean Parker.
Mark doesn’t know how he knows that.
But Eduardo says, “I think he’s right. Palo Alto is the place to be in the computer world. You should go.”
~
He thinks about advertising. He thinks about Eduardo and the Phoenix – Eduardo left Harvard long before the Phoenix could take an interest in him. There’s something about a chicken. More and more frequently, Mark thinks about strange things, offhand and in the back of his mind when he’s coding. They’re always there; he can’t shake them, can’t escape them, and can’t write them off like he’s always been able.
He can’t sink into code like he used to.
Eduardo is in New York.
Eduardo texts and emails with perfunctory politeness, meets the very minimum requirements necessary of Mark’s CFO – with the exception of not coming where Mark needs him – does everything right in building the company. He sighs over the phone when Mark makes increasing ridiculous, outrageous demands from him, always puts more money in the account every other week, and Mark is starting to get pissed off.
Facebook is growing, Facebook is huge. Facebook has over one hundred thousand users, and Mark’s CFO is in New York, isn’t talking about monetizing the site, says, send me the numbers, Mark, I’ll look over them, and I think the site needs to grow more. We need to know what it is before we know what we need to do, and, and –
And Mark has done all of this before.
~
“I’ve done this before,” Mark says, staring at his ceiling. He rolls over –
– and falls off the couch.
“Morning sweetheart,” Dustin says. Mark can hear his grin. Dick.
Dustin is eating Cocoa Puffs straight from the box. His hand is covered in chocolate powder, and he wipes it on the couch every other mouthful. When he grins again, there is chocolate smeared on his teeth.
Some things never change.
Grumbling, Mark gets off the floor and goes to his room, shutting the door behind him.
Mark only likes change when he’s instigating it. When it comes from other people, that’s when the problems start. He feels like he’s coding the same lines over and over and over again, a program with no end, no closed brackets or functionality. It’s only changing because –
Eduardo is the difference. Eduardo isn’t conforming to Mark’s expectations: he’s in New York, he doesn’t care about Sean Parker’s involvement in Facebook, he’s polite and impassive whenever Mark calls, he’s not calling Mark first.
Mark’s dialing his number before he’s even to his feet. Wardo doesn’t answer his cellphone, but it’s easy enough to track down his office – his office, what the hell – number.
A man, not Eduardo, answers in a coolly polite tone.
“Ah,” he says, like that explains everything, when he finds out Mark is on the other end. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Zuckerberg, but Mr. Saverin is unavailable.”
“When will he be available?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to release that information to you.”
Mark frowns. He bites on the end of his thumbnail. “Why not?”
“I don’t make the rules, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
“Obviously,” Mark says. “Do you know where he is?”
Eduardo’s assistant is silent.
“Then you can tell me. There are very important business matters I need to discuss with my CFO. Do you understand that? Eduardo is an integral component to my company and there are things we need to address.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Mark wonders where Eduardo finds all these people with their cool impassive robot voices. “But Mr. Saverin left very explicit instructions, Mr. Zuckerberg. I will tell him you called when he returns.”
~
Explicit instructions, the hell.
Mark wires in.
He wires in and cracks open all of Eduardo’s electronic activity – bank accounts, emails, Google searches, Facebook usage – Eduardo’s page is dead and seems abandoned. The profile picture hasn’t been updated since Mark created the page for him, his interests are blank, and his relationship status is listed as single, even though Christy can’t–
Jesus. Christy.
Eduardo wasn’t here for Bill Gates. He wasn’t here when the site went live. They never went for drinks with Christy and Alice. They never, in the bathroom.
Where is all of this coming from?
Mark clicks on a different tab at random, uncertain and swallowing thickly, staring at the new information on the screen blankly for several long seconds.
They’re flight reservations.
~
“What's in Singapore?” He’s yelling. Dimly, Mark is aware of this. He is aware that Dustin’s probably turned down the music, that he’s listening through his headphones to Mark shout, that Chris has dimmed the television volume. Mostly, though, like everything else, he doesn’t care. “Why would you go to Singapore?”
Eduardo sounds exhausted, half groggy, like he's just waking up. Mark thinks about what a still half-asleep Wardo looks like, blurry eyes and open, soft smile. He says, syllables mushing together, “Mark, its two am. Why- What’s wrong? D'you need more money again?”
He’s half choking on the words. “Is this a joke to you? Do you think Facebook is a joke? You’re my CFO. Didn’t you think it was important for the CFO of this company to tell me he was going to Singapore? I need you to come back and help me run this company.”
Eduardo yawns. “We’re doing the telecommuting thing, Mark. It shouldn’t matter. Look, I’ll wire more money in the morning.”
“Money. Wardo. This isn’t about the money. This is about you being in Singapore.”
The moment stretches, long and silent except for the vague noises from the television Chris is staring at too hard, and then breaks. Mark’s shoulders slump even more; he could just curl in on himself.
Eduardo’s voice isn’t soft. It’s carefully neutral. “Mark, it’s a business trip. I’ll be back in New York in a week.”
He turns his back on the door, on Chris and Dustin who are trying too hard to seem busy. “I don’t need you in New York. I need you in Harvard. In California this summer. Wardo–”
Mark pauses, swallowing. Eduardo never comes to California. He only comes when it’s raining.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, quiet. “Why won’t your assistant give me your information?”
“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” Eduardo says. “Mark, I’ll call you when it’s not so early, okay?”
“Eduardo-”
Eduardo hangs up. Mark stands there, holding his phone to his ear, fingers tight enough to hurt his knuckles.
He throws it. His vision blurs and then freezes for one long moment, the phone suspended in the air, a dark black smear and –
Mark wakes up. He rolls over to get out of the sunlight, far too bright. He mashes his face against his pillow and then shifts it over his head, holding it there with his arm.
His head hurts.
Eduardo is such a dick. Such a –
Mark sits up, ignoring the ensuing dizziness and staring at the blurred lines of Eduardo’s algorithm, faded in the sun.
He’s out of bed, out the door, and hurrying across campus in his flip-flops, angry, pissed, who the fuck does that asshole think he is, leaving the company like that, leaving Mark like that, high and dry, no thought or care for Facebook, for Mark.
The snow is cold. He’s not wearing anything more than a t-shirt and sweatpants and his flip-flops. Fuck you flip-flops, Eduardo says, yells, but Mark only hears the crack of his laptop snapping into pieces.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t fucking care.
Mark turns the corner just in time to see Eduardo ducking into a cab, and everything blurs, spins, like a sharp stab to his gut. Mark closes his eyes –
Mark sits up, in his bed, and blinks in the bright sunlight, barely making out Eduardo’s algorithm.
He’s in Kirkland. He’s lying in his bed in Kirkland instead of standing across the street from Eduardo’s dorm, watching a cab pull away. Mark stares at the algorithm for a long time, waiting. He’s wrong. He has to be wrong; there’s no way –
He’s done this before.
The world blurs again, Mark closes his eyes again and rides it out.
~
He wakes up in Kirkland to bright sunlight and blurred marker lines.
~
Lying on his back until the sunlight no longer shines quite as brightly through the window, he holds his phone and can’t think of anything to say. Mark’s waiting for the world to spin, to shift and change and erase all that was before.
To reset, reboot, start over.
He doesn’t know what this is, doesn’t even really know where to start, so he waits. He waits, and it doesn’t come. Hours slip away, a progress bar filling up, but it never reaches the end. Finally, his fingers slip over his keypad.
what the hells in singapore
Then he rolls on his side, towards the wall, away from the doors and the outside world that is the same, the same, the same, and he waits. He waits, and that feels the same too.
His head hurts.
~
Mark just stares at the ceiling, ignoring the pounding on the door. If Dustin forgot his keys again, he’ll just have to find Chris to let him in. Wherever Chris is.
He hears his name, muffled through the door.
He knows that voice.
Mark pauses with his hand on the doorknob, listening to the pounding and Eduardo saying his name again, louder this time, more frantic.
He’s being stupid. Mark hates stupidity. He opens the door and Eduardo’s on the other side, holding his phone, knuckles white around it. His skin is flushed pink, eyes bright. He’s buttoned his shirt wrong.
Mark stares at him, face blank, and thinks, you asshole.
“You remember Singapore,” Eduardo says.
“Wow. Your observation facilities are really quite astounding. No wonder the Phoenix wants you.”
Jesus. Eduardo got punched.
Mark’s mouth tightens, but he tries not to let it show.
Eduardo puts his hands on his face, covering his eyes, elbows splayed out to the side at wonky angles. “You remember,” he says. “You remember.”
“Yes. We’ve established that. Can we move on now?”
“Facebook,” Eduardo says, eying Mark suspiciously. “You remember Facebook.”
“Of course I remember it. I invented it.”
Eduardo pushes past him, steps further into the room, and then all the way into Mark’s suite. “You remember,” he says, sitting down heavily in Mark’s computer chair. Mark twitches forward, fingers reaching.
“You broke my laptop. At the offices.” He pushes the chair away from the desk, stepping between Eduardo and his computer. “You broke it.”
“That’s what you’re focusing on. Of all things. That.” Eduardo shakes his head, rolling his eyes. “Guess I should’ve already known how you prioritize.”
“You seem to like breaking my things,” Mark says. “I’m just taking precautionary measures.”
Staring at him, Eduardo says slowly, “You don’t remember everything.”
“You do?”
Eduardo says nothing for a long moment. His mouth is pressed together in a tight line.
Mark crosses his arms, leaning against his desk. “This is- what is going on?”
Eduardo gestures, like he’s trying to conjure the words. “I- This is how it goes, okay. Sometimes, you’ll go to sleep and then you’ll wake up and you’ll be here. Now. Here and now. Look, it just keeps happening. Even when I think I’m out of it- The longest I’ve made it is a few years.”
Mark nods. It’s ludicrous really. Alternate universe. Time travel. Virtual reality. It’s insane. All of this is just absolutely insane, like one of Dustin’s crappy movies with horrible special effects and shoddy logic that only works in places like Dustin’s brain.
Things like this don’t happen in real life. Things like this don’t happen in Mark’s life.
Except-
“How do we fix it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s it. ‘I don’t know.’”
Eduardo shrugs, like he doesn’t really care, and Mark– Mark’s pissed.
“You’re just going to sit there and let this keep happening.”
“No,” Eduardo says, pushing to his feet. The chair rolls into the corner of Mark’s bed. “I’m going to write you a check and then I’m catching a cab to the airport.”
“You’re leaving.”
“Glad you caught on,” Eduardo says, making some gesture with his fingers that Mark can’t interpret. He ignores it. “Yeah, Mark. I’m leaving.”
“You’re an asshole,” Mark says.
“I don’t get it. Every time we do this, you cut me out of the company, you take me off the masthead, but when I leave it all to you, which is exactly what you want me to do, you get pissed. Make up your mind, Mark. What do you want?”
“You’ve asked that before,” Mark realizes, remembering the too warm press of Sean’s shoulder against his, the dim light in the bar. Eduardo stares at him now like he did then, flat and level.
“Several times. You never seem to want to answer me,” Eduardo says. “Mark, what do you want?”
“I want a lot of things,” Mark says.
“Right.” Eduardo says. “And you expect me to just lay back and let you cut me out of your company? That’s, uh. That’s great. You know what? Use that genius brain of yours and figure it out yourself. I’d just get in the way, right? And anyway, I’m done playing a game where only you know the rules.”
“I hardly think this is the time to run away.”
Eduardo shrugs. “So we’re living the same thing over and over and over again. Deal with it. Find something to occupy your time. Get a project. I don’t care. It’s your life, Mark. I’ll open up a bank account today. And you can, you can do whatever you want with it. I don’t care. Build the Facebook of your dreams, buy a small island, get yourself a girlfriend, I don’t care.”
“Hey, Mark,” Eduardo says, pausing at the door. His smile is sharp and his eyes are dark. “If you need more money, Facebook me, alright?”
Part Two
Fandom: The Social Network
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Mark/Eduardo
Warnings: Some sexual content.
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Word Count: ~37,000
Summary: After Eduardo signs off on the dilution and walks away from Facebook, Mark gradually realizes that he's stuck in an unstable time loop. Not only does he have to figure out how to stop waking up in his Kirkland dorm room, three years ago, but he has to rebuild Facebook while remembering things that never happened and deal with the fact that Eduardo has known about this all along. Not that it really matters: Eduardo leaves and he leaves and he leaves, every single time.
A/N: Special thanks to
becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the thesocialbbang challenge. Master PostCheck out the amazing art and fanmix by
anysomething. Halfway through an innocuous line of code, Mark pulls his fingers away from the keyboard. He lets them hover half an inch above the keys, curling and releasing. His eyes blur, and he blinks a few times to regain focus.
He’s done this before.
Mark sits back in his chair, hands stagnant on the keyboard. The corner of his mouth shifts down, unbidden, like a tic in his muscle. Then, still frowning, uncertain, he codes some more. Slowly though, picking out the keys with a deliberation he rarely uses, spending more time concentrating on the physicality of what he’s doing instead of the actual mental output. There is something, something he feels he should know, something he can’t quite reach, something –
A weight settles on his shoulder, and Mark jerks away from it, twitching. He turns, ready to scowl at Eduardo for breaking his concentration, for making him lose his train of thought.
It’s not Eduardo.
“Sorry,” Sean says quietly, close and careful like Mark’s going to spook. “You should take a break. You’ve been at it for nearly thirty-six hours.”
“I have to-” Mark frowns, pulling his laptop closer. “I can’t forget.”
“Mark.” Sean squeezes his shoulder. Mark twitches again. “Dustin wired in half an hour ago. He’ll take care of it.”
Mark blinks, easing the burn in his eyes. Dustin. Right. Dustin is capable for all that he acts like he’s not. Dustin understands what Facebook is, how important it is, how absolutely vital it is to keep running. Dustin knows what to do.
His head feels like it’s shrinking, throbbing each time he blinks. Sean’s right. Mark needs to crash. He reaches down and untangles the cords from his laptop, and Sean says his name, like a warning, sounding a lot like Eduardo. Mark feels something tighten and clench in his chest.
Mark glares at him, curling his arms around his computer, and Sean holds his hands up in surrender.
“Hey, as long as you go to bed, you can take it with you. Cuddle with it, I don’t care. Just get some sleep.”
Mark stands, blinks when his vision blurs again, and heads for his bedroom. Sean follows him all the way, hand at his elbow no matter how many times Mark tries to shake it off.
He slides into bed, still holding his computer. His fingers pluck absently at the catch on the side and then Sean’s hands are there, holding it closed.
“Mark. Sleep.”
He wants to argue because what the hell, since when does Sean imitate Eduardo, telling him to sleep and putting him to bed, but Mark closes his eyes, twists into the pillows and under the blankets.
Mark sleeps.
~
He regains consciousness slowly, staring into the dark space in front of his eyes and still feeling vaguely nauseated.
He reaches out, curling his fingers around the corner of his laptop and pulling it to his chest. He doesn’t open it even though the code needs to be checked and there is an idea that could smooth out the majority of the bugs in the Wall’s code and that niggling thought he can’t quite pin down.
He’s exhausted. Mark realizes it like it’s a surprise, like a thirty-odd hour coding tear wouldn’t have clued him in. He doesn’t remember the last time he showered or called Wardo or ate something that wasn’t mostly sugar.
Mark is more than a little dizzy when he stands up, purple and black spots in his vision. The laptop stays on the bed where he left it, and Mark wanders into the living room, bleary eyed and a little confused. Dustin is coding, or he’s supposed to be. He’s not facing his computer, and Mark frowns, about to call him out, but he turns.
Wardo.
Wardo’s here. In California.
He’s wet and pissed, dark eyes glittering at Mark, and he sounds angry about the meeting with Peter Thiel, about Sean being here. It’s watered down because Mark can only think, Wardo came to California.
He doesn’t know why this feels important, but it does, like Mark needs to sit up and pay attention. It feels like the most pivotal data Mark’s seen yet, more important than anything, even Facebook.
Anything that pretends to be more important than Facebook is not to be trusted.
Mark looks at Eduardo again and there’s anger there, he realizes dimly, anger and surprise and excitement and something else that burns in his chest, making it hard to breathe properly.
Mark blinks.
“I’m sorry,” Mark says; the apology catches them both off guard. Eduardo’s eyebrows draw together, his mouth parted. Mark’s own mouth works briefly, trying to figure out where that came from. “I’ve been wired in all day and I don’t think I’m completely back yet.”
Eduardo is quiet, staring at him.
Mark rubs his eyes, wondering what’s going on in his head.
“I need you here for the meeting tomorrow,” Mark says. Eduardo is still frowning. He rubs his face, and when his hands drop, he doesn’t look angry anymore. He just looks tired. There are dark circles under his eyes, and Mark doesn’t remember the last time he saw Eduardo smile.
Eduardo shivers, wraps his arms around himself.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be left behind,” Mark says then. “I want- I need you out here. Don’t tell him I said that.”
Eduardo closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall; Mark thinks, okay.
Okay.
~
Eduardo is gone in the morning.
~
“He’s not here for the company,” Sean says, slouched in his seat, wrist braced at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. “I’m not saying that you should do it, Mark. I’m saying you should think about how much he's worth to Facebook.”
Mark says nothing, staring out the window.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mark sees him glance his way a couple times, but he doesn’t bring it up again. Sean’s learning when to push and when to back off, and Mark appreciates that. That he’s willing to learn. That he – usually – knows not to push too hard when it concerns Eduardo.
“I need to think about this,” Mark says because Sean is here. Sean is in California, and he stays in California and he needs to know that Mark values his opinion, despite the tiny voice – that sounds like Eduardo. Mark does not need Eduardo’s voice in his head – telling him to be wary of Sean.
“Okay,” Sean says. He lets it drop, thankfully, taking a hint when most people wouldn’t, would edge in and demand more answers. Mark likes that about him too.
Mark does think about it. He spends a significant amount of his time thinking about it. He thinks the entire drive back from Peter Thiel’s office, he thinks about it while they’re stuck in traffic and he thinks about it while he’s coding.
Again, not the most productive use of his time, Eduardo demanding his attention when Facebook needs it more, deserves it more because Eduardo’s not even here.
He stands up, untangling himself from his headphones, and leaves the house to clear his head and run errands.
When the bank teller hesitates, the polite smile becoming even more fixed, Mark flushes with embarrassment before he can even say anything. It’s like he already knows what’s happening: a closed account and flashbacks of everything he thought he escaped.
This is when Mark makes the decision.
~
“A million members,” Eduardo says slowly, quietly, almost absently, as he looks out over the office. He drinks more beer in the space that follows.
Mark stares at him and feels only the sting of irritated betrayal, an annoyance he felt even before Eduardo froze the accounts, before he signed the papers without looking at them. Before the chicken, the Phoenix, Facebook. All of it burns in his chest and Mark doesn’t know how to explain it.
Eduardo will be here. He’ll be here, and his shares will be diluted, and maybe then Mark will stop thinking like this, being distracted all the time trying to remember what he thinks he’s forgotten, like his subconscious is writing half-formed code and not telling him, but then Eduardo turns to him, all dark eyes and toothy smile. “Is that when you’re planning on screwing me out of your company?”
“I-“ Mark can only stare, blink. “What?”
Eduardo turns to him, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. He frowns.
“What is it?”
“You just said-“
“I just said I’d be here, Mark.” Eduardo’s eyes narrow. Mark stares at him. “Are you okay? How much have you slept since the other day?”
That’s not what he said at all; he’d said, he’d said-
Mark shakes his head. He said he’d be here.
It’s stress, maybe, a residual sign of remorse or loss or something else entirely. Eduardo didn’t look at the papers closely enough, Wardo, Mark’s best friend and co-founder of Facebook – this is important. Facebook is important – CFO and he didn’t read the fine print.
But Eduardo says, “I’ll be here,” again, and the twisting is replaced by a different sort, and then Mark feels like he’s sleepwalking through the next few months until it’s the night of the million member party, and Mark’s oddly tense, fingers curling around the edges of his laptop. He’s supposed to be coding – he wants to be coding – but he’s just waiting for something, for the crack of plastic and angry words, for dark eyes and the feeling that his chest is splitting in two.
He waits and waits and waits.
It never comes.
~
He’s unsettled, and he’s too on edge, too jittery to wire in properly, and all the sugar in the office won’t help him focus. And maybe that’s how Sean convinces him to go out, with coaxing words and celebratory promises. He’s right too. There’s nothing wrong with a few drinks to celebrate one million members.
The bar is noisy and crowded with Facebook employees and everyone else. A million members. Most of these people are on Facebook. Most of them want to be. In a year, two, most of them will be.
Mark’s going to make that happen. He’s going to connect everyone.
He feels dizzy. The lights are dim. Mark thinks he’s having trouble breathing and his head hurts, but that’s probably just the muggy air in the bar, burning his eyes and sitting heavy in his lungs.
“Hey,” Sean says, hand on Mark’s shoulder. He nods to the other side of the bar. “Look who it is.”
Eduardo is slouched in a booth in the corner, index finger tracing the side of a glass. Mark hasn’t seen him all night. He doesn’t remember Eduardo being at the office, though he knows he was there, saw his signature when the lawyer handed Mark the papers.
Mark shrugs out of Sean’s grasp and starts walking. He raps his knuckles against the table, and when Eduardo doesn’t look up, he slides into the booth across from him.
“I didn’t see you at the office.”
Eduardo traces the rim of his glass, one slow half-ring before his finger slips and dips inside. He pulls it towards him, dragging it across the table. He looks up then, all dark eyes and a small unpleasant smile. It’s not at all like the smile Mark remembers. Mark looks away, down at his hands. There’s ink smeared on his fingertips, but when he looks again, rubs at it, his skin is pale and unblemished.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble of a messy emotional confrontation. I know how much you hate those.” Eduardo empties his glass, grimacing. At Mark’s look, he adds: “Emotions. I know you don’t like emotions.”
“What’s up, Wardo?” Sean asks, sliding into the booth next to Mark. He sets two beers on the table. “I didn’t get you anything, man. Sorry.”
He’s not sorry.
“You made a bad business decision,” Mark says. “You can’t blame me for that. You signed the papers.”
“Do you have to- I suppose you do. You’re Mark Zuckerberg.” Eduardo takes his time drawling out his name, like he’s tasting something unpleasant and taking it in bits will make it easier. “You couldn’t have just talked to me?”
“I did. I told you you’d get left behind, and you left anyway.”
“You took me off the masthead,” Eduardo says, mild. He smiles. “It’s like I’m not a part of Facebook.”
“You nearly ruined it,” Sean says. “You’re not a part of Facebook.”
Eduardo ignores him. He settles back, loose limbed and glassy eyed, and watches Mark. Mark, with his dry mouth, whose heart is stuttering hard in his chest.
Drunk. Eduardo is drunk. It’s not like it’s anything Mark hasn’t seen before, but Eduardo, Eduardo should be angry, and yelling, and breaking Mark’s possessions and not this. Not this. Eduardo doesn’t do flat or emotionally passive. This is.
Mark doesn’t know what this is.
Sean says, “Did you really think you could walk-” Eduardo’s eyes flicker to Sean briefly, then shift back to Mark, half-lidded and almost lazy. “-around in your ridiculous suits–”
“I learned how to code.” Eduardo says, cutting Sean off. “I did. For you. Basics, really, not- Not Facebook or anything like that. I thought if I just understood how Mark Zuckerberg saw the world.” He laughs, bitter. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says to the ceiling.
Mark says, “I don’t want anything from you.”
He thinks Eduardo makes a sound. If he does, he can’t really hear it over the noise in the room, the music that’s universally too loud in every bar, the laughter and endless chatter around them.
“I guess it’s a good thing that all your shit still pisses me off,” Eduardo says, eyes dark, staring at Mark over a table in a bright room, windows and a view of the city behind him. “But it’s too hard, man. I’m losing myself. I can’t do this anymore.”
Mark blinks. He glances up at the dim lights in the bar, gaudy colored glass shades. “Can’t do what?” He asks, pulling his gaze down, but Eduardo slides out of the booth, shrugs on his jacket, and tosses a few crumpled bills on the table.
“Have a nice life, Mark,” he says and walks away, ducking into the crowds. Mark twists in his seat, scowling, but he’s gone. He’s gone, and Mark –
Mark wakes up. The sunlight’s too bright in his eyes and he’s breathing hard through a cold ache in his lungs, like he’s just sprinted through campus in the middle of winter. It feels like his brain is about to leak out of his nose.
Hangovers suck.
It takes a minute for the algorithm on his window to come into focus. Smeared lines, almost illegible, but it’s burned in his brain: creating FaceMash and crashing the servers and Eduardo’s algorithm.
There’s something about ink-stained fingertips, about a table and about Eduardo –
Mark wakes up. He’s not sure why, but the sunlight is still too bright, and, curled in his bed, Mark tries to remember why he’s so hung over, why he decided to drink last night at all. He has so much work to do, so much to catch up on and create, so much he wants done before the next –
Mark sits up, frozen there for one tight second, staring at Eduardo’s algorithm, and then he’s stumbling out of his bed, sock nearly halfway off his foot. He almost trips over it, landing hard in his computer chair.
His computer takes forever to boot up, and when it finally does, Facebook won't load.
Mark stares at the redirected webpage. Then he shakes his head, clearing his thoughts.
Of course it won't load. He hasn't written it yet.
Everything blurs together, an endless loop of coding and the thrill of building something, creating this idea and making it work, of the endless possibility.
~
Mark surfaces an unknown number of hours later. It’s dark in the room, only the glow of his computer screen and the light from the television. Dustin left it on again, some nature show about bugs.
Mark reads over the last few things he’s written absently; there’s so much to do, so much before thefacebook is ready to go live, before it explodes and starts growing exponentially. He’s more than ready for that, more than ready to reshape human communication and put the entire social experience on the internet.
He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, vision blurring, and blinks until the lines of code make sense again. His fingers catch on a Post-It note paper-clipped in his hair. He pulls it out, wincing a little when his hair catches.
In Dustin’s writing: caribbean night @ AEPi if you ever rejoin the living
Oddly, Mark thinks of Niagara Falls.
He’s more exhausted than he realized if he’s making such illogical connections; he looks at the clock on his phone.
He looks again.
It’s Friday. Friday.
Mark doesn’t remember leaving his computer – he doesn’t remember doing anything except code – since the hearing and that was days ago. He’s missed class. He hasn’t slept or showered and he thinks he remembers Wardo mentioning AEPi’s party, but he doesn’t remember seeing him since the hearing either.
Not that it matters, really. Facebook is huge, and Mark- Mark thinks he doesn’t really need Harvard or expensive suits or the exclusivity of final clubs.
He needs server space.
~
He’s walking across campus, feeling slightly disoriented – he’s been coding for hours, days, he doesn’t know – when two very tall guys, twins, step in his path.
“Mark Zuckerberg, right?” One of them says. Mark eyes him, shoulders hunched, fingers clenching in the pocket of his hoodie. “You’re a hard guy to find.”
“We have a proposition for you,” the other says.
Facebook.
“I’m late,” Mark says, fighting the urge to spit cutting words. They look like they went to the gym. “I have to go.”
The twins share a glance. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute,” Mark says, thinking of bike rooms for some reason. “I’m assuming you need me for a website given my recent involvement in crashing Harvard’s servers. I’m busy with my own projects and don’t have time for some ridiculous dating site.”
“How did you-“
“I’m late. My friend Eduardo is expecting me.”
“Hey-” There’s a hand on his shoulder. Mark tenses. He tries to shrug it off. One of them – Tyler? Cameron? a Winklevoss – hands him a card “-here. Take this. If you change your mind, let us know.”
“Sure,” he says, crumpling it in his fist and shoving it in the pocket of his hoodie. “But I won’t change my mind.”
~
Mark finds it hard to breathe when he sees Eduardo, decked out in a ridiculous hat and patterned shirt. His knobby knees are strangely fascinating. He can’t do anything but stare as Eduardo comes over – for a split second, it’s almost like he’s dancing, ridiculously, embarrassingly, but no. No.
His eyes are playing tricks on him. He’s been coding for days. Hours at the very least, and Mark is feverish from the lack of sleep.
Eduardo stops in front of him, clutching a red plastic cup in both hands.
“Wardo,” Mark says, staring at the cup because otherwise he’ll stare at that loop of Niagara Falls. Or at Eduardo’s ridiculous knees. “I have an idea.”
Eduardo says, “Hey, guess what,” cutting Mark off, making his thoughts contract, shrink, and he knows.
He knows.
Eduardo got punched.
Wardo. Punched.
“Actually,” Eduardo says after a moment. “Let’s go outside.”
Mark blinks. He says, “Its twenty degrees out,” but Eduardo’s half-smile catches him off-guard, making his thoughts stop, pause, restart.
It is twenty degrees out, and Mark’s still thinking about Eduardo and the Phoenix that he’s distracted enough to actually notice that it’s fucking cold. He tells Eduardo everything, about putting the entire college experience online, about exclusivity, about splitting the company, seventy-thirty. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable and his and what he wants, like his favorite hoodie, the one Eduardo borrowed after an AEPi party and never gave back.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Mark says when the silence stretches on for too long. Eduardo is curled in on himself, looking drawn, uncomfortable. His arms are crossed over his chest.
“You don’t want to do this,” Mark says flatly. The anger is familiar too; Eduardo never really understood this part of Mark. He never really understood Mark, for all that he tried, pretending he could read the code over Mark’s shoulder, like he knew anything about programming or computers or Mark.
Eduardo doesn’t look at him. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“I’m leaving Harvard,” Eduardo says.
Mark stares.
“I-“ Eduardo says. He picks at his plastic cup. “Something came up.”
“How can you leave Harvard?” Mark says, meaning, you never leave Harvard. Eduardo won't even come to Palo Alto when Mark needs him, which is insane because Mark’s never even been to California.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Eduardo says quietly, then louder: “Something’s come up, and it’s an amazing opportunity, and I need to take it. I need to do this. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”
Mark blinks.
Eduardo is sitting loose-limbed in a booth. He’s in a bar, and his eyes are dark, glittering in the low light, and, talking fast and staring at a point beyond Mark’s shoulder, like he’s looking at something else entirely, he says, “I’ll fund you. I’ll open a bank account in both our names and the money’s yours, okay? It sounds like a great idea, and if anyone can make it work, it’s you, but I can’t. I have to go.”
Pain bites into his temple, sharp and unforgiving, twisting down his spine. It’s familiarly uncomfortable; Eduardo rubs the side of his forehead, eyes closed, like he’s fighting a headache that Mark feels building behind his own skull.
“We can email and call, and it’s just New York. Isn’t this what this is about, anyway? Building an online social network?”
“You have a point,” Mark allows, but he stares at him until Eduardo’s mouth quirks into a semblance of a smile.
“It’s just New York,” he says. “It’s not Singapore.”
~
Mark wires in. He wires in and stays there, ignoring everything that isn’t code or sometimes Dustin and sometimes Chris. He doesn’t see Eduardo until Spring Break, after thefacebook is live and growing faster than everyone but Mark expected.
Mark knew it would be like this. He knew thefacebook would be like this.
New York is Eduardo’s playground and not Mark’s, at all, but it doesn’t really matter. Mark isn’t going there for him. Mark doesn’t even tell Eduardo about it. He just buys a ticket and catches the train, skipping his art history class and wiring in for the whole ride.
He has an email. It’s still sitting in his inbox, read and reread a couple dozen times, and before he knows it, he’s in New York, he’s meeting Sean Parker, alone, and Sean Parker is late. He’s late, and there is a niggling, irritated voice in the back of his head, talking about trout. It sounds like Eduardo.
Mark didn’t know Eduardo liked fish.
Sean Parker shines just as strongly as Mark expected him to, burning rapid and bright, this guy that founded Napster when he was nineteen. Mark’s age.
They leave the restaurant together – Mark’s already decided to drop the ‘the’ because Sean Parker is right, Sean Parker has amazing ideas – and just as Mark turns to head down the street, Sean calls after him.
“Hey, I was looking at your masthead. Who’s Eduardo?”
“My CFO,” Mark says.
Sean frowns. Mark’s alert enough to realize it’s more speculative than confused.
“He’s not here with you?”
Mark hates this feeling, this sinking, shrinking thing happening in his chest. They haven’t talked in weeks. “He couldn’t make it,” he says, ignoring Sean’s raised eyebrows.
~
Mark wonders if Eduardo would have even tried.
~
He has the address, hacked it from the site’s bank account. It’s not far from the restaurant, a ten minute cab ride even with the traffic.
There is a doorman. Eduardo’s apartment building has a doorman. He is short and round with a shiny bald spot that takes up most of his head, and he is frowning severely at Mark. His nametag reads ‘Larry.’
“I’m his best friend,” Mark says again.
“You are not on Mr. Saverin’s approved guest list.”
“We’re business partners. He’s my CFO.”
Larry does not look apologetic. “You’re not on the list, Mr. Zuckerberg. Perhaps if you come back in the morning. Mr. Saverin is more open to receiving visitors then.”
“He is the primary investor in my company. I am here on a business trip. You think he’d be happy that you’re responsible for screwing this up?”
“I’m sorry,” Larry says, not sounding sorry at all. “I have to follow the rules, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
Asshole.
He pulls out his phone, dials the number without looking it up, and waits for Eduardo to answer. He sounds confused, tinny and faraway but that’s all in Mark’s head. He’s been coding. He thinks and sees and hears strange things when he’s been coding for long stretches of time.
“Mark? Now’s not really a good time–”
“I’m downstairs.”
“You’re-”
“In your lobby. Larry won’t let me up. Why am I not on the list?”
“I-”
“You’re sending mixed signals here, Wardo. You’re CFO of my company and I’m not on your list. Why is that?”
“Wait. Just wait. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Eduardo hangs up and Mark lets his hand drop. “He’s coming down,” he tells Larry, but Larry just seems impassive and disinterested, already reabsorbed in his newspaper.
Mark wants to get his computer out and wire in, because coding is the only thing that makes any sense anymore, and seriously, what the hell Eduardo. What the hell.
There are plants in the lobby that Mark doesn’t recognize and marble flooring and a couch that looks like it’s never been used, ostentatious white leather. The elevator dings. Mark turns towards it, watching Wardo walk out, dressed in pressed slacks and a button-down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Mark can’t stop staring at Eduardo’s wrists.
“I’m sorry, Larry,” he says, because Eduardo has to apologize for everything. “This is Mark. He’s a business partner.”
“Not a problem at all, Mr. Saverin,” Larry says, but the way he looks at Mark suggests that it is very much a problem. “Shall I add him to the list?”
“That won’t be an issue,” Eduardo says. “Mark isn’t usually in town. Have a good evening, Larry.”
Eduardo gestures to the elevator. Mark heads towards it and gets in, leaning against the back wall, watching Eduardo press the highest button with a long skinny finger.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Eduardo says when they’ve started upwards.
“Last minute,” Mark says. They’re on the third floor. “I met with Sean Parker.”
“Sean Parker,” Eduardo says slowly.
“He founded Napster.”
“I know who he is,” Eduardo says, and then they don’t talk again until the doors open and Eduardo opens his apartment door.
Whatever Mark was expecting, it wasn’t this. The first thing Mark sees is wall full of windows, looking out over the city, rain sliding down the glass.
“Internship is going well,” Mark says, looking around. The room opens up into the kitchen. The furniture is simple, clean lines and dark colors. There isn’t any clutter except some open folders and their contents on a table in front of a couch.
Eduardo drops his keys in a black bowl on the table by the door. “What internship?”
“The one you came here for.”
Eduardo’s phone rings, but he just stares at Mark, dark eyes and a curious frown.
“Are you going to get that?” Mark asks, gesturing towards Eduardo’s pocket.
“The internship. Jesus,” he says as he pulls out his phone and glances at the screen. “I have to take this. If you want to wire in, the office is –” Eduardo points to a door and then steps through a different one.
~
Mark doesn’t wire in. He stares out the window at lower Manhattan and then settles on the couch, shuffling through the papers on Eduardo’s coffee table. Stock projections, first quarter finances for a handful of companies that Mark doesn’t recognize, a few algorithms that catch Mark’s attention for longer than a few seconds. He loses himself in them, trying to make sense of whatever it is that took Eduardo away from Harvard and away from Facebook. Away from Mark.
None of this makes any sense.
“Hey,” Eduardo says some time later. Mark looks up to watch him go to the fridge and pull out two beers. He takes the caps off and hands one to Mark.
Mark doesn’t take it. He holds out a handful of the papers in front of him. “What is this?”
Eduardo shrugs. He sets the extra down on the table. “Work. What are you doing here, Mark?”
“You’re my CFO.”
Eduardo’s face does something complex. It’s gone before Mark can make sense of it.
“I’m more than just your CFO. Do you need more money?”
“If I said yes?”
“I’d write you a check.”
“I don’t need more money,” Mark says. “It’s not about the money. I need you at Harvard.”
“No, you don’t,” Eduardo says. “Mark. There’s nothing more I can do at Harvard for Facebook right now. I’m not that good with code, word of mouth is doing more for promotion than I ever could, and I’m cultivating connections you can use–“
“For advertisers,” Mark says, flat.
Eduardo shrugs. He takes a drink and turns towards the windows. “If you decide to go that route.”
“Sean thinks we should go to California,” Mark says, waiting for Eduardo to pay attention because Eduardo always pays attention to things involving Mark and Sean Parker.
Mark doesn’t know how he knows that.
But Eduardo says, “I think he’s right. Palo Alto is the place to be in the computer world. You should go.”
~
He thinks about advertising. He thinks about Eduardo and the Phoenix – Eduardo left Harvard long before the Phoenix could take an interest in him. There’s something about a chicken. More and more frequently, Mark thinks about strange things, offhand and in the back of his mind when he’s coding. They’re always there; he can’t shake them, can’t escape them, and can’t write them off like he’s always been able.
He can’t sink into code like he used to.
Eduardo is in New York.
Eduardo texts and emails with perfunctory politeness, meets the very minimum requirements necessary of Mark’s CFO – with the exception of not coming where Mark needs him – does everything right in building the company. He sighs over the phone when Mark makes increasing ridiculous, outrageous demands from him, always puts more money in the account every other week, and Mark is starting to get pissed off.
Facebook is growing, Facebook is huge. Facebook has over one hundred thousand users, and Mark’s CFO is in New York, isn’t talking about monetizing the site, says, send me the numbers, Mark, I’ll look over them, and I think the site needs to grow more. We need to know what it is before we know what we need to do, and, and –
And Mark has done all of this before.
~
“I’ve done this before,” Mark says, staring at his ceiling. He rolls over –
– and falls off the couch.
“Morning sweetheart,” Dustin says. Mark can hear his grin. Dick.
Dustin is eating Cocoa Puffs straight from the box. His hand is covered in chocolate powder, and he wipes it on the couch every other mouthful. When he grins again, there is chocolate smeared on his teeth.
Some things never change.
Grumbling, Mark gets off the floor and goes to his room, shutting the door behind him.
Mark only likes change when he’s instigating it. When it comes from other people, that’s when the problems start. He feels like he’s coding the same lines over and over and over again, a program with no end, no closed brackets or functionality. It’s only changing because –
Eduardo is the difference. Eduardo isn’t conforming to Mark’s expectations: he’s in New York, he doesn’t care about Sean Parker’s involvement in Facebook, he’s polite and impassive whenever Mark calls, he’s not calling Mark first.
Mark’s dialing his number before he’s even to his feet. Wardo doesn’t answer his cellphone, but it’s easy enough to track down his office – his office, what the hell – number.
A man, not Eduardo, answers in a coolly polite tone.
“Ah,” he says, like that explains everything, when he finds out Mark is on the other end. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Zuckerberg, but Mr. Saverin is unavailable.”
“When will he be available?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to release that information to you.”
Mark frowns. He bites on the end of his thumbnail. “Why not?”
“I don’t make the rules, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
“Obviously,” Mark says. “Do you know where he is?”
Eduardo’s assistant is silent.
“Then you can tell me. There are very important business matters I need to discuss with my CFO. Do you understand that? Eduardo is an integral component to my company and there are things we need to address.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Mark wonders where Eduardo finds all these people with their cool impassive robot voices. “But Mr. Saverin left very explicit instructions, Mr. Zuckerberg. I will tell him you called when he returns.”
~
Explicit instructions, the hell.
Mark wires in.
He wires in and cracks open all of Eduardo’s electronic activity – bank accounts, emails, Google searches, Facebook usage – Eduardo’s page is dead and seems abandoned. The profile picture hasn’t been updated since Mark created the page for him, his interests are blank, and his relationship status is listed as single, even though Christy can’t–
Jesus. Christy.
Eduardo wasn’t here for Bill Gates. He wasn’t here when the site went live. They never went for drinks with Christy and Alice. They never, in the bathroom.
Where is all of this coming from?
Mark clicks on a different tab at random, uncertain and swallowing thickly, staring at the new information on the screen blankly for several long seconds.
They’re flight reservations.
~
“What's in Singapore?” He’s yelling. Dimly, Mark is aware of this. He is aware that Dustin’s probably turned down the music, that he’s listening through his headphones to Mark shout, that Chris has dimmed the television volume. Mostly, though, like everything else, he doesn’t care. “Why would you go to Singapore?”
Eduardo sounds exhausted, half groggy, like he's just waking up. Mark thinks about what a still half-asleep Wardo looks like, blurry eyes and open, soft smile. He says, syllables mushing together, “Mark, its two am. Why- What’s wrong? D'you need more money again?”
He’s half choking on the words. “Is this a joke to you? Do you think Facebook is a joke? You’re my CFO. Didn’t you think it was important for the CFO of this company to tell me he was going to Singapore? I need you to come back and help me run this company.”
Eduardo yawns. “We’re doing the telecommuting thing, Mark. It shouldn’t matter. Look, I’ll wire more money in the morning.”
“Money. Wardo. This isn’t about the money. This is about you being in Singapore.”
The moment stretches, long and silent except for the vague noises from the television Chris is staring at too hard, and then breaks. Mark’s shoulders slump even more; he could just curl in on himself.
Eduardo’s voice isn’t soft. It’s carefully neutral. “Mark, it’s a business trip. I’ll be back in New York in a week.”
He turns his back on the door, on Chris and Dustin who are trying too hard to seem busy. “I don’t need you in New York. I need you in Harvard. In California this summer. Wardo–”
Mark pauses, swallowing. Eduardo never comes to California. He only comes when it’s raining.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, quiet. “Why won’t your assistant give me your information?”
“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” Eduardo says. “Mark, I’ll call you when it’s not so early, okay?”
“Eduardo-”
Eduardo hangs up. Mark stands there, holding his phone to his ear, fingers tight enough to hurt his knuckles.
He throws it. His vision blurs and then freezes for one long moment, the phone suspended in the air, a dark black smear and –
Mark wakes up. He rolls over to get out of the sunlight, far too bright. He mashes his face against his pillow and then shifts it over his head, holding it there with his arm.
His head hurts.
Eduardo is such a dick. Such a –
Mark sits up, ignoring the ensuing dizziness and staring at the blurred lines of Eduardo’s algorithm, faded in the sun.
He’s out of bed, out the door, and hurrying across campus in his flip-flops, angry, pissed, who the fuck does that asshole think he is, leaving the company like that, leaving Mark like that, high and dry, no thought or care for Facebook, for Mark.
The snow is cold. He’s not wearing anything more than a t-shirt and sweatpants and his flip-flops. Fuck you flip-flops, Eduardo says, yells, but Mark only hears the crack of his laptop snapping into pieces.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t fucking care.
Mark turns the corner just in time to see Eduardo ducking into a cab, and everything blurs, spins, like a sharp stab to his gut. Mark closes his eyes –
Mark sits up, in his bed, and blinks in the bright sunlight, barely making out Eduardo’s algorithm.
He’s in Kirkland. He’s lying in his bed in Kirkland instead of standing across the street from Eduardo’s dorm, watching a cab pull away. Mark stares at the algorithm for a long time, waiting. He’s wrong. He has to be wrong; there’s no way –
He’s done this before.
The world blurs again, Mark closes his eyes again and rides it out.
~
He wakes up in Kirkland to bright sunlight and blurred marker lines.
~
Lying on his back until the sunlight no longer shines quite as brightly through the window, he holds his phone and can’t think of anything to say. Mark’s waiting for the world to spin, to shift and change and erase all that was before.
To reset, reboot, start over.
He doesn’t know what this is, doesn’t even really know where to start, so he waits. He waits, and it doesn’t come. Hours slip away, a progress bar filling up, but it never reaches the end. Finally, his fingers slip over his keypad.
what the hells in singapore
Then he rolls on his side, towards the wall, away from the doors and the outside world that is the same, the same, the same, and he waits. He waits, and that feels the same too.
His head hurts.
~
Mark just stares at the ceiling, ignoring the pounding on the door. If Dustin forgot his keys again, he’ll just have to find Chris to let him in. Wherever Chris is.
He hears his name, muffled through the door.
He knows that voice.
Mark pauses with his hand on the doorknob, listening to the pounding and Eduardo saying his name again, louder this time, more frantic.
He’s being stupid. Mark hates stupidity. He opens the door and Eduardo’s on the other side, holding his phone, knuckles white around it. His skin is flushed pink, eyes bright. He’s buttoned his shirt wrong.
Mark stares at him, face blank, and thinks, you asshole.
“You remember Singapore,” Eduardo says.
“Wow. Your observation facilities are really quite astounding. No wonder the Phoenix wants you.”
Jesus. Eduardo got punched.
Mark’s mouth tightens, but he tries not to let it show.
Eduardo puts his hands on his face, covering his eyes, elbows splayed out to the side at wonky angles. “You remember,” he says. “You remember.”
“Yes. We’ve established that. Can we move on now?”
“Facebook,” Eduardo says, eying Mark suspiciously. “You remember Facebook.”
“Of course I remember it. I invented it.”
Eduardo pushes past him, steps further into the room, and then all the way into Mark’s suite. “You remember,” he says, sitting down heavily in Mark’s computer chair. Mark twitches forward, fingers reaching.
“You broke my laptop. At the offices.” He pushes the chair away from the desk, stepping between Eduardo and his computer. “You broke it.”
“That’s what you’re focusing on. Of all things. That.” Eduardo shakes his head, rolling his eyes. “Guess I should’ve already known how you prioritize.”
“You seem to like breaking my things,” Mark says. “I’m just taking precautionary measures.”
Staring at him, Eduardo says slowly, “You don’t remember everything.”
“You do?”
Eduardo says nothing for a long moment. His mouth is pressed together in a tight line.
Mark crosses his arms, leaning against his desk. “This is- what is going on?”
Eduardo gestures, like he’s trying to conjure the words. “I- This is how it goes, okay. Sometimes, you’ll go to sleep and then you’ll wake up and you’ll be here. Now. Here and now. Look, it just keeps happening. Even when I think I’m out of it- The longest I’ve made it is a few years.”
Mark nods. It’s ludicrous really. Alternate universe. Time travel. Virtual reality. It’s insane. All of this is just absolutely insane, like one of Dustin’s crappy movies with horrible special effects and shoddy logic that only works in places like Dustin’s brain.
Things like this don’t happen in real life. Things like this don’t happen in Mark’s life.
Except-
“How do we fix it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s it. ‘I don’t know.’”
Eduardo shrugs, like he doesn’t really care, and Mark– Mark’s pissed.
“You’re just going to sit there and let this keep happening.”
“No,” Eduardo says, pushing to his feet. The chair rolls into the corner of Mark’s bed. “I’m going to write you a check and then I’m catching a cab to the airport.”
“You’re leaving.”
“Glad you caught on,” Eduardo says, making some gesture with his fingers that Mark can’t interpret. He ignores it. “Yeah, Mark. I’m leaving.”
“You’re an asshole,” Mark says.
“I don’t get it. Every time we do this, you cut me out of the company, you take me off the masthead, but when I leave it all to you, which is exactly what you want me to do, you get pissed. Make up your mind, Mark. What do you want?”
“You’ve asked that before,” Mark realizes, remembering the too warm press of Sean’s shoulder against his, the dim light in the bar. Eduardo stares at him now like he did then, flat and level.
“Several times. You never seem to want to answer me,” Eduardo says. “Mark, what do you want?”
“I want a lot of things,” Mark says.
“Right.” Eduardo says. “And you expect me to just lay back and let you cut me out of your company? That’s, uh. That’s great. You know what? Use that genius brain of yours and figure it out yourself. I’d just get in the way, right? And anyway, I’m done playing a game where only you know the rules.”
“I hardly think this is the time to run away.”
Eduardo shrugs. “So we’re living the same thing over and over and over again. Deal with it. Find something to occupy your time. Get a project. I don’t care. It’s your life, Mark. I’ll open up a bank account today. And you can, you can do whatever you want with it. I don’t care. Build the Facebook of your dreams, buy a small island, get yourself a girlfriend, I don’t care.”
“Hey, Mark,” Eduardo says, pausing at the door. His smile is sharp and his eyes are dark. “If you need more money, Facebook me, alright?”
Part Two
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Date: 2011-09-08 08:23 am (UTC)On to the next part.
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Date: 2011-09-09 01:05 am (UTC)Thank you for commenting!