All Our Errors on Repeat 2/5

[fuzzy_paint]

Title: All Our Errors On Repeat 2/5
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 becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the thesocialbbang challenge. Master Post


Check out the amazing art and fanmix by anysomething.






His ceiling is completely uninteresting, plain white, slightly textured, and logically, nobody should spend this much time staring at any ceiling, especially one as boring as his. But he does, long after he wakes up, until the sun is just a glint at the top edge of the window. He rolls over, dragging his pillow over his face to block out the stupid algorithm.

He stays like that, face pressed into the mattress, long after Eduardo has already slid his nondescript manila envelope under the crack in the door, like he always does before disappearing off to New York or Singapore, or like last time, Russia.

What the hell's in Russia, beside vodka and fish eggs and snow, Mark doesn't know.

Mark buries himself deeper into his bed when he hears the quick tap-tap-tap on his door frame.

"Go away, Chris," Mark says. "I'm not hungry."

"When's the last time you ate anything?"

Mark lifts the pillow enough to glare at him with one eye. "Sorry, Mom. I'm busy."

Chris throws up his hands. “Whatever, man. This is Eduardo’s shtick, not mine.”

When Chris is gone, it's finally quiet, despite the muffled sound of traffic and noisy co-eds from outside his window. Mark pulls his laptop into his bed and props it open on his stomach. He starts to code. He codes until everything just starts looking the same, until he’s not even really paying attention to what his fingers are doing. Until he pulls himself out of his thoughts and realizes he has no idea what’s happening on his screen.

He still codes, deliberately picking out the keys, until he passes out and wakes up in the bright sunlight.

Mark gets out of bed just so he can smear the lines of Eduardo’s stupid algorithm across the window.



~



Mark watches the people as they pass. He sees them connect briefly by physical contact or their cell phones, immersed in their own little worlds, oblivious to the irritating truth. It's just a pressure building in the front of his skull. He squints against it, like it will do anything to relieve the ache, like anything he can do will relieve the ache.

Facebook barely exists. It’s not what it should be, not when it feels like nothing more than dormant lines of code, idling on his computer or still trapped in his mind.

The lamppost isn't the most stable place to camp out, but it offers the best vantage point for the clean glass doors of Eduardo's pretentious apartment building. It's the same one as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

"Mr. Saverin isn't here," Larry had said. "You'll have to come back later."

Mark knows from experience that Larry doesn't like loiterers.

So he waits outside on the street instead of the lobby. The late afternoon sun cuts sideways up the street, dampening the chill in the air. Mark has both his hands shoved deep in his hoodie pocket, and he's glad he wore jeans; it's been hours.

"Mark," Eduardo says. He steps sideways through the thinning bustle of people. Mark measures the distance between them, all of three feet. It feels like the thousands of miles to Palo Alto.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

"Are you going to call the cops? Like last time," Mark says flatly.

Eduardo sighs. It seems like all he does lately, whenever Mark sees him. He sighs and looks infinitely older than he should, dark circles under his eyes, weariness in every line of his body.

The people around them swell, forcing them closer together. Eduardo's cologne rises over the smells of the city, tar and exhaust and the oppressive rot of everything Mark tells himself he doesn't want any part of.

"I'm not coming back, Mark," Eduardo says.

"You're giving up. Just like that."

"Not. Just like that. You have no idea what I've done." Eduardo looks away. Mark follows the line of his throat as he swallows. In the pause, Eduardo shifts back, away, bumping into a pedestrian. He apologizes, smiling at the woman, and when she's gone he looks over Mark's shoulder. "What I've tried. I can’t come back.”

"Yeah? Not everything."

"I'm sure you have brilliant ideas," Eduardo says. "You always do. How many times are we going to argue about this?" Mark tilts his head, narrows his eyes. Eduardo rolls his. "I get it. Your single-minded focus, wiring in, whatever. I used to like that about you. As pissed off as I'd get, sometimes, I used to-" His face shifts, softness gone from his mouth. "I used to admire it. Almost as much as I hated it."

Mark buries his hand deeper in his hoodie pocket, fingers curling tight into a fist. "You're trying to piss me off," he says. "You should know by now that it won't work."

Eduardo sighs, dragging his hand through his hair. More messy than normal, sticking up in odd angles and when he turns back, Mark's caught by the way he looks at him. I want to hire you, he says. For a website.

"What?" Mark asks, mouth dry, but Eduardo just looks at him blankly.

A memory. It's a memory. If it's a real one, or superimposed, pretending at the truth, he can't tell.

He remembers. He does. Whatever Eduardo thinks, Mark knows what really happened, what’s supposed to happen, Facebook and New York and California. Frozen accounts, dilutions and lawsuits. It’s the details he’s missing, the little moments, some of which didn’t happen the first time around, that act like pop-ups, distracting and irritating, false despite the fact that they feel real.

And Eduardo wonders why Mark doesn’t want advertising.

"I'm tired, Mark. It's been a long day, and I'm going home," Eduardo says eventually. "Don't come back here."

Mark glances up, all the way to Eduardo's top floor apartment. "This is your home," he says, leveling his gaze on him. "I suppose you think it makes your father proud."

Eduardo sighs. He doesn't flinch or look away. He just looks at Mark, a dip at the corner of his mouth.

Mark stares back.

"Hey," Eduardo says, suddenly, softer than Mark's heard in a long time. "I know this is. Messed up. I know it’s hard and that it's going to take some time to get used to it, but, you know, if we're lucky, we'll have a few years before we have to start over. There's so much you can do with that."

"You don't believe that."

"Mark," Eduardo says, but then he sighs, again, and Mark thinks, Why won't you come back at the same time Eduardo tells him to go home.

"I'm not going to get used to it. I'll fix it," he says, just as Eduardo reaches the doors.

"You can't... I guess everyone needs a project," Eduardo says, cool. "Go ahead. Try. I don't really care. It's your life, Mark."



~



Eduardo promptly reneges and there's a message waiting in Mark's inbox the next time he obtains access to a computer.

Mark thinks about deleting the email. He does delete the email.

Mark slouches, low enough that his head rests against the back of his chair. His fingers are idle on his keyboard, wrists flat against the edge of his desk. They're starting to hurt, like his eyes are starting to hurt, staring at his code, stagnant in black and white.

He rubs his eyes, and then his entire face, palms blocking out the light from the window and the glare of his computer screen. Then he undeletes Eduardo's email - i know you aren't going to listen to me - and opens it.

It's a list. It's long but not extensively detailed, lacking the emotional redundancy he's learned to expect from Eduardo. It's short, impersonal, and to the point.

Three through seven don’t really catch Mark’s eye, but his mouth goes dry at nine, eyes blurry with anger. He closes them and hears the crack of plastic, and Eduardo's mouth forming around vicious, spitting words.

He deletes the email, purges his trash and clears his browser history.



~



Late in the afternoon, after Chris has pestered him about lunch, Mark sits in front of the door with his legs crossed, looking at Eduardo’s check. It’s for nineteen hundred dollars; Mark remembers doing the math on the small clean space of his legal paper that hadn’t been taken over by senseless doodles.

Eduardo has a sloppy, cramped signature.

Dustin opens the door and nearly trips over him. He has, in the past. Future. Something. It hurts. Dustin has sharp elbows. And heavy feet.

“I’m meditating,” Mark says sharply. “Go away.”

“Medit- In front of the door.”

“Go away.”

Dustin frowns. “I live here.”

“I don’t care. Go away.”

Dustin doesn’t have the decency to leave; he ignores Mark’s demands, like he always does, crouching so they’re at eye level. He puts a hand on Mark’s shoulder. Mark tries to shrug it off, but Dustin has a good grip.

“Mark, buddy. You feeling okay? I know –”

Mark closes his eyes and rips the check right down the middle.

one

two

three

He crumples the two halves of paper in his fists –

nine.

– his shoulders relax, slowly, and he breathes out, one long slow exhale, ignoring the way Dustin keeps talking. Maybe this time, maybe now, maybe –

twelve

Mark’s eyes open, and then his stomach clenches and –




He sits up in his bed, blinking in the bright sun, and he bolts across the room, hand over his mouth, tripping over the floor.



~



When moving doesn’t threaten to bring back the dry heaving, Mark pushes away from the toilet and goes back to his room. He rubs his eyes, squinting against the sunlight, and goes to the window. He rubs his hand along the glass, smearing the lines of Eduardo’s algorithm until they’re just black smudges. His fingers are stained, but he doesn’t wipe them clean before he boots up his computer.

He starts to code, kid’s stuff really, waiting for that moment when everything except the monochromatic representation of a trichromatic existence, blue and white and silver, starts blending away into a static blur outside his focus. For all the good it does. Mark’s thoughts slide away, even as his fingers continue typing, and he thinks about Prometheus and his eagle, about Sisyphus and his boulder, about all the Google searches he’s done and followed up on. About Eduardo’s list.

About nine, mostly.

The knock on his door is unexpected. But not unwelcome. Mark shuts his laptop and turns off his monitor, like it will help him stop thinking about that obsessive blinking cursor.

But when he gets to the door, he stands in front of it, resting his forehead against it. He's tired, and his head hurts, and he just wants to code.

The knocking gets more insistent. Mark opens the door.

"Wardo," he says, still gripping the doorknob. His heart is doing half-aborted flips: a preclude to the anger he feels building, just by looking at him.

"What did you do?" Eduardo asks, mildly, like he's only curious and not upset. "I know it wasn't something I did."

“You look like shit,” Mark says. There are dark circles under Eduardo’s eyes. They're still capable of glittering at Mark, but they’re flat now. Annoyed.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” Eduardo says, a downward twist to his mouth. He holds out the manila envelope, the pin clasps folded back haphazardly to hold the flap down.

Mark doesn’t take it. “Running away again?”

"Sure," Eduardo says, pushing the edge of the envelope against Mark's chest.

“And you wonder why I cut you out of the company,” he says, stuffing his hand in the pocket of his hoodie. Eduardo pauses, probably startled, and Mark adds, words tasting bitter, “You’re a shitty CFO. You don’t understand what Facebook is and you don’t know how to make it work. You would’ve ruined it.”

“You don’t know anything about what I’ve done for Facebook,” Eduardo says, low, calm.

"Stole it from me," Mark says. "Number nine?" Mark’s fingers twist in the pocket of his hoodie. “How come I never noticed how much of an asshole you are?”

"It’s not a competition," Eduardo says. "Or maybe you’d want it to be. I’m sure you’d win. Can’t have the Phoenix but you can have this. Fits you better than me, anyway."

Mark takes the envelope, stabbing himself with the edge of the pin clasp when he tries to pull it loose.

"Nineteen thousand," Mark says, holding the check up to the light.

"You could do the math," Eduardo says, coolly, "if you want."

"Maybe I should. Since money is so important to you."

“That’s not-“ Eduardo says. He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. It sticks out in odd angles, and Mark’s mouth goes dry. Eduardo’s not looking at him, but Mark remembers a time when he did, when his hair was like that, stupid and logistically impossible, and his eyes were so, so dark.

His eyes are dark like that now, but Eduardo just huffs, tugging on his stupid suit.

Mark says, "Why else would you go to New York?"

"I don't know, Mark. Maybe to get away from you."

"That's childish."

"Sure," Eduardo says. "Look, Mark, I've got a plane to catch. Just take the money and try not to do anything stupid this time, alright?”

“The less I have to do this, the better,” he says under his breath as he turns away.

Mark glares at him, but Eduardo’s already heading down the hall.

"Hey Eduardo," Mark says. Eduardo doesn’t turn around right away; Mark blinks and sees the long tan lines of his back, sees him look over his shoulder, eyes dark, smile lazy and inviting, hears him say, Come get some sun, Mark.

Mark closes his eyes, shakes his head to clear it away. None of that is real. None of it makes sense.

"Not much of a challenge when you already know what's going to happen, is it?" Eduardo looks caught, eyes wide, so Mark continues, words spilling out of his mouth like code should be coming out of his fingers. "Why don’t you try investing in something, like, I don’t know, tuna fish?"

"Right," Eduardo says dismissively, turning away. "Because there’s such a market in tuna fish."

"Wardo," Mark says, sharp, when Eduardo’s several feet down the hall. He waits until Eduardo looks at him.

Then he rips the check in half.



~



The next manila envelope - or maybe the same. Maybe Eduardo has a stock of them in his dorm - has ASSHOLE written in black sharpie on the front.

Mark holds it in his hands, still shaking, and he thinks about doing it again, just to piss Eduardo off.



~



“What’s so great about New York anyway?”

“You got me, man,” Sean says. “California is where it’s at. You seriously need to consider going out there.”

“I will,” Mark says.

Waiting at a stoplight, watching the late night traffic, Mark realizes they’re a few blocks from Eduardo’s apartment. Mark asks, “If you were reliving the same thing over and over, what would you do?”

Sean blinks at him, or blinks through the bright lights from streetlamps and headlights, blinks through the haze of appletinis – they always order appletinis, even when Christy isn’t there.

Mark hates New York.

“Like Groundhog Day?”

“Yes,” Mark says. “Exactly like that.”

Sean looks at him and says, “A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but –”

Mark frowns. "Is this the Victoria Secret thing?"

It’s weird, this story, when Mark’s not straining to hear over the heavy beat and flashing lights.

"I- you know it?"

"Yeah, you-" Mark says. "Yeah. I understand the parallel. Facebook will be huge. It always is."

"Of course it’s going to be huge, Mark. Facebook is the shape of the future."

It's true, the one solid thing that feels like an anchor to reality. But it's strange, standing on a New York street corner he won't remember in the morning, knowing all these things about thefac- Facebook, about what it’s going to be, bigger than he ever imagined, than he ever could. But he’ll still wake up, in the past, and realize that it’s not even born yet.

It should be better, being able to implement the wall right away, restructure the entire tagging system right from the beginning, to show the world Facebook’s true potential all at once.

"I don’t know how to go back," he says.

"You don’t go back. The past is, nobody cares about the past. They all say they do but that's all bullshit. It’s the future, It’s ours for the taking. This is our time, and you get to have a say in it. You get to build it."



~



This is the thing about building the future:

It’s really hard to do when Mark can’t even reach it.



~



“Have you seen this?” Chris asks, sticking a magazine in front of Mark’s face.

Mark blinks, rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, and takes it from Chris. It’s open to an article. Mark doesn’t actually read any of it at first.

It’s about Eduardo – Mark hasn’t physically seen him in months - and there’s a picture. Several, actually. He’s smiling in a few of them, serious in the rest, and when Mark flips to the front cover where there’s another picture of Wardo, his mouth goes dry.

Mark remembers a version of that smile.

That smile belongs to a Palo Alto where they sit across from each other at the kitchen table, Eduardo’s legs stretched out underneath the table, knee pressed against Mark’s.

He flips back and starts reading the article – Eduardo Saverin: Rising Star? - shoving the image out of his head, holding his leg very still so it’ll stop twitching.

“Wardo’s not a financial genius,” Mark says flatly.

“Mark,” Chris says, clearly exasperated, that long suffering tone. “He’s made millions of dollars since he went to New York.”

Mark turns back to his computer, ignoring Chris’s sigh. It’s hardly financial genius when he’s already done all of this before.

He doesn’t code.

He googles.

“It’s not really about the money,” one interview quotes. “It’s about the numbers. I know I’m just a young kid in an old man’s game, but I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

Mark’s mouth twists. He reaches for his Red Bull and knocks a shuffle of paper, Eduardo’s stupid envelope included, off the desk, and Mark watches it fall, mesmerized. His entire chest seizes up, remembering the fixed look on the teller’s face the day of the angel investment.

Eduardo’s been investing in bizarre, off-beat markets that shouldn’t be worth that much money in the first place, not electronics, or websites, or any of the current big players.

Mark says, “What the hell,” and on the couch, right in his field of vision, Dustin and Chris share a look. Mark scowls at them, and then switches to a different tab.

“He made money on tuna fish,” Mark says to himself, a little helpless. He can’t be the CFO Facebook needs, but he can make ridiculous amounts of money on canned fish.

“Hey man,” Dustin says in Mark’s ear, making him jump. “Maybe you should take a break.”

“I don’t need a break,” Mark says, shifting away.

“Yeah, maybe if you were coding, I’d believe that, but you’re like. Internet stalking Eduardo. It’s a little creepy.”

“Go away, Dustin.”

“What happened anyway?” Chris says, leaning against Mark’s doorframe. “He won’t talk about it.”

“You’re talking to him?” Mark says sharply, looking up from his computer in time to see them share another look. “Stop it. Stop looking at each other like that.”

“This is my face,” Dustin says, pointing at it. “I’m not looking at anybody like anything with it.”

“I’d want you to stop looking at me too,” Chris says.

Dustin elbows him. “You’re not helping.” To Mark, he says, “I will duct tape your computer shut. It’s for your own good.”

“Get out,” Mark says.

“Mark-“

“Get out.”

“Whatever,” Dustin says, holding his hands up and backing out of the room. Chris lingers in the doorway, but Mark stares him down until he sighs and leaves too.

When they’ve gone back to the couch, Mark cracks his fingers and then settles them on his keyboard. There’s a headache blooming in his temple; he drinks more Mountain Dew, wondering when he last brushed his teeth.

And then, three days later, he hacks into Eduardo’s bank accounts, picking apart the code and looking for patterns in the numbers, moving things around, just to see if Eduardo will notice, if he’s even paying attention to all this money he’s making off fish or if he’s actually telling the truth.



~



Turns out, Eduardo? Not really paying attention.

All those other people? Yeah. Totally paying attention.

Honestly, it’s not like Mark planned to get Eduardo formally accused of embezzlement and money laundering and tax evasion.

Oops.



~



Mark doesn’t go into the courtroom. He sits on a bench outside the door, typing on his laptop, until they take a recess.

Eduardo is wearing one of his stupid suits, all neat and orderly lines like code, and Mark doesn’t even try to fight the curve of his mouth. It gets bigger when Eduardo turns to him, when his eyes narrow and he jerks away from his lawyers’ hold on his arm.

“You did this. You did this.”

He doesn’t remember seeing Eduardo this angry in a long time. Even over the deposition table, when his voice shook and then broke and there was nothing but a legal pad and Mark’s pen to shield him from it, no way to ignore it, Eduardo still looked at him with blank eyes.

Mark shrugs, still grinning. “You told me to get a new project.”

“You– I meant, Jesus, Mark, I meant learn Japanese or- or crash Google. That wasn’t an invitation to fuck with my life, asshole.”

Mark shrugs again. “I had to get your attention.”

Eduardo’s face smoothes out, anger flickering and then disappearing completely. His lawyers are at his side, trying to coax him away, but Eduardo just shakes them off.

“Yeah? How’s that going for you?”

“About like I planned.”

“Good for you,” Eduardo says, dark eyes and teeth. Mark feels like he’s been hit in the chest. “Well guess what, asshole. You’ve just lost it.”



~



Mark wakes up, choking because his throat is too tight. The sunlight is too bright, as it always is.

Mark rolls away from it. He gets up, and doubles over, fighting the vertigo.

When it’s passed, Mark runs his finger across the window, smearing a line through Eduardo’s algorithm. He stands there, staring out, watching as students walk past, at the snow and the sunlight, too bright, ignoring Chris when he asks about lunch and Dustin when he tromps in, loud and well past sunset.

“Hey,” he says, nodding in Mark’s direction, and then he faceplants on the couch, groaning.

Mark watches him for a long moment, shifting and grumbling into the cushions. Absently, he touches the keys of his computer; his thoughts pause, lingering the way his fingers do. Then he steps away. He takes another step back, and then another, and very slowly, very distinctly, says, “I’m not going to–”




Gasping, Mark rolls over and curls into a ball, tighter to stop the spasms in his stomach, the knot in his throat.

He stays like that until the envelope slides under his door just like last time, and the time before, and Mark counts out the seconds, until four minutes have passed and he knows Eduardo’s getting into the cab he called before he came.

Hours pass before his body starts to relax.

He sits in front of the door again, ignoring Dustin when he gets home, waving him off when Dustin tries to get him to talk.

“Eduardo,” he says. “He left Harvard.”

Dustin backs away surprisingly quickly, mumbling, “Sorry man, that sucks,” and disappearing into his room.

Mark stares after him for a moment, thinking what, but the check draws his attention – it’s always the same, the same number, same amount, the same signature. He thinks about tearing it up again, just to make Eduardo go through all the steps again, to say, hey, you can’t ignore me like this, you can’t keep walking away from Facebook like this.

Mark crumples it in his hand and drops it on the ground.

one

two

three-




Is it getting worse?

Mark can’t tell.




“Hey,” Chris says, and Mark looks up to see him leaning in the doorway. “Lunch?”

Without much hesitation, Mark untangles himself from his computers and shoves his feet in his flip-flops. If Chris seems startled, he doesn’t show it, but Mark’s too surprised by himself to really notice anyway.

He’s tired. Mark’s tired and Eduardo’s in New York, or Bali, or Yemen. There’s no pattern to his destinations, except it’s always New York first, and then anywhere else in the world. All that seems to matter is that it’s far away from Harvard and Mark and Facebook.

After lunch, he goes to class and leaves halfway through, without a note to prompt him into it. He goes back to his dorm and sits on the couch, watching mindless television shows until Dustin comes back.

“Drinks?” Mark says before Dustin can toe his shoe off all the way. “It’s late enough to go out. Maybe earlier than normal, but this way we’ll miss the crowds.”

Dustin blinks, still holding his keys in his hand. He shuts the door behind him, but slips his foot back into his shoe.

“I’ll call Chris,” he says slowly, watching Mark.

Mark nods. He gets his jacket.

Out in the yard, on the way to their usual haunt – or at least, the one Mark’s the most familiar with – Dustin breaks the silence. “There’s an AEPi party this weekend,” he says, glancing at Mark like he’s been doing since they left the dorm, out of the corner of his eye, somewhat suspicious.

“Caribbean night,” Mark says.

“How’d you know?”

Mark shrugs.

On Friday night, Mark surprises all three of them by shutting down his computer and tagging along.

He drinks punch spiked with pineapple juice and coconut rum, and he grins a little at the world in general, at Dustin’s laser focus on a group of girls huddled by the food, at Chris’s lazy exasperation at being his wingman again. A change of scenery is a change of scenery, despite the appalling blandness of AEPi parties after clubbing with Sean Parker.

He could do that next, look up Sean and see if –

“It’s weird,” Chris says, appearing on his left. “Without Wardo here.”

Mark drinks more punch, too sweet, and shrugs.

“Doesn’t matter.” Chris frowns. Mark doesn’t like the way Chris looks at him. He says, “I don’t want to talk about him. Let’s. Enjoy the night. Mismatched thematic elements, cheap alcohol and Jewish nerds everywhere you look. What’s not to enjoy.”

“…right.”

Mark picks at the lip of his cup, ignoring Chris’s expression. When he opens his mouth, Mark just walks away.

“I’m leaving,” he says when he reaches the other side of the room.

Dustin blinks. “Mark it’s barely ten. You’re not going to turn into a pumpkin, I promise.”

“What? No. I can’t stay here watching that loop of Niagara Falls when it clearly has nothing to do with the Caribbean, and for that matter, neither do Hawaiian shirts. I’ll go insane.”

“More so than usual?”

“Shut up.”

It’s twenty degrees out, and when he gets a flash of Eduardo, arms curled around himself, shaking. Mark closes his eyes and lets it fade away.

When he opens them, it’s not Eduardo he sees, but the Winklevoss twins, walking towards him. Mark scowls and shoves his fingers deeper in his pockets.

Then he starts to think.



~



They give him a sandwich. Mark still doesn’t know what to do with it, stick it in his pocket or in his bag, hold onto it like an idiot.

“You want to talk to me about a website,” Mark says, looking at the photos on the wall. He remembers being impressed by all of this once upon a time.

Really? The fucking bike room.

“How did you know?” One of the twins says. Mark never figured out how to tell them apart.

“It’s only a few days since FaceMash. It obviously got your attention.” Mark shrugs, wishing they’d keep up. “Point A, point B. What is it? A dating site?”

“I- yeah.”

“No.”

They stare at him. “No?”

“Excuse –”

“Dating sites are a dime a dozen, exclusivity aside. They don't have the half-life. It'll last for a few months, half a year tops. Then people will move on. Get bored. Find something new. Go to fucking Singapore.”

Twin A says, obstinate, “We think it will work.”

“You’re wrong.”

The twins look at each other. Divya frowns. “Are you always this forthcoming?”

Mark shrugs. “Pretty much. I don’t see the point in platitudes and euphemisms. Look. I’m not saying this to point out Harvard Connect’s flaws needlessly. You’re just thinking too small. You’re limiting yourself to one aspect of human interaction. I have a better idea. I can guarantee if I get the startup cash, your money, we'll have a million members in less than a year.”

“A million members,” Divya says. “You're that sure of yourself.”

Mark feels his mouth curl up at the corner. A smile. “I'm that sure of Facebook.”



~



“Is he allowed to look at people like that,” Mark says, eyeing Larry. He has his arms crossed. He’s glaring, like Mark’s personally demolishing his pristine lobby.

“You need to go,” Eduardo says. “I will call the cops this time.”

“Not yet. I figured you’d just ignore me if I called or emailed.” Mark pauses. “And I couldn’t Facebook you like you told me to. You don’t even have a profile.”

Mark holds out Eduardo’s manila envelope. “I used some of it to buy a ticket but the rest is all there.”

Eduardo takes it, frowning when he looks inside. “This is the money for Facebook,” he says.

“Do you want to count it?”

“Mark. If you don’t use the money, we just start all over again,” Eduardo says slowly, like he’s talking to a difficult child. “I don’t know about you, but it’s not really an experience I look forward to.”

“I’m working with the Winklevii,” Mark says.

“The Winkle- The Winklevosses?”

“That’s what I said. Ergo, I don’t need your money.”

“That’s- You know what? That’s great. Good for you. I hope that works out for you. Guess it'll help you avoid the lawsuits. Both mine and theirs.” Eduardo smiles, an edge of teeth. “Unless you cut them out, I guess.”

“Sure,” Mark says, then he waits a beat.

And another.

“Have a great life, Mark,” Eduardo says. “I’m sure you’ll do awesome things.”

“Again with the sarcasm. It doesn’t really suit you.”

“It suits me fine. You just never paid enough attention.”

“Sure I did,” Mark says. “To the important things.”

Eduardo’s mouth opens, just a little. His eyes are dark, shadowed despite the bright light in the lobby. He looks away. Mark sees the deposition table, sees Eduardo dripping water all over the carpet of the Palo Alto house.

Eduardo puts his hand to his forehead, rubbing his temples. “Same old Mark,” he says, but it sounds funny, syllables stretched out. Mark blinks, feels the tugging from behind his ribcage, like he’s being pulled in several directions, drawn and quartered.

Eduardo makes a noise, sharp and short. Pained, wounded. Mark reaches without thinking, latching onto, onto-

There’s skin and fabric; his hand palm feels like it’s burning, blistering up and Mark feels it, feels the slide like he’s coming apart, bit by bit, and he feels Eduardo’s fingers on his arm, tight and painful, clutching, clawing into the muscle and –




It’s the sunlight. He rolls over and chokes on nothing, throat tightening and stomach turning. It takes nearly thirty seconds for it to settle, and then he’s stumbling across the room and through the door, down the hall and down the stairs. He trips on the last three steps, throwing his hands out to catch himself, closes his eyes for the impact and –




The world spins, and Mark rolls over, landing on his knees, sharp pain lancing up to his hips. His hands are scraped raw by the carpet. He looks up at Eduardo’s algorithm, black lines faded and smeared, and drops his head. He’s –




His legs are tangled in his sheets, like chains, like he’s tied down, drowning in the linen. He can’t breathe; it’s choking him –




God, the sunlight, too bright, always too bright, and Mark pulls a pillow over his head. It’s not enough, the light just cuts right through it; he can’t get away, he can’t toss his blankets away, and he stumbles out of the room. His legs are shaking, knees weak. There isn’t much time, he knows that, somehow, knows that he has to, he has to –




Mark rolls out of bed and stumbles towards the door. He trips and stubs his toe on his desk, and the pain clears his vision, lets his lungs work, stops everything from spinning.

He’s out the door and down the hall, taking the steps two at a time, nearly tripping. He catches the railing, pausing too long, his vision blurs, but he shoves the door open, hitting someone.

He doesn’t apologize, running as best he can in flip flops.

It’s twenty degrees out, but the cold jolts his mind alert, awake enough to fight the familiar tug on his chest, and he thinks no, no no no, don’t, don’t as he slips in his shoes, feet wet and numb from the snow.

Eduardo’s dorm is too far away, but somehow Mark makes it. He tumbles up the stairs, knee scraping against the step, but then he’s up; he’s up and moving because, because, because.

Mark pounds on Eduardo’s door, emotion wrapping tightly around his lungs, his esophagus. It’s hard to breathe. There’s a reason he’d rather not have to deal with them.

He shoves in, right into Eduardo’s space.

“Stop it,” he snarls, gripping Eduardo’s pretentious, asshole shirt. ”Stop going, stop-“

Eduardo tries to pry Mark’s fingers loose. Mark shakes him, Eduardo shoves him and their legs tangle and then they’re tumbling, hitting the floor. It hurts, knocks the wind right out of him, but he doesn’t let go of Eduardo’s shirt, doesn’t get off him, fighting when Eduardo shoves him off.

“It’s not me. It’s not me, you asshole. It does this sometimes, it-“ Eduardo’s pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, sounding sick. “It does this. It’s not me.”

Mark reaches out and wraps his hand around Eduardo’s wrist. He doesn’t flinch or react at all. Eduardo just stays like that, lying on his back on his shitty carpet – ancient, full of tradition – and not getting ready to flee to some distant corner of the world. Mark lets his heart slow down, his breathing evens out and his stomach settles. His feet are cold and his sweatpants wet, dripping melted snow all over Eduardo’s carpet.

There’s a sharp corner digging into his neck; it’s an envelope. Mark pushes it away.

Eduardo starts laughing.

“Why are you laughing,” Mark says, scowling, but Eduardo just laughs harder, curling inward on himself. Mark tightens his grip. “It’s not funny.”

“No,” Eduardo says, wheezing, weak. “No, it’s really not.”

Mark tugs on his wrist, brings his arm down, watching the side of his face until Eduardo relaxes and goes still. “You should stay,” he says.

Eduardo is quiet, and Mark thinks-

“No.”

“Why not?”

Eduardo turns his head away, but Mark doesn’t care. He stares at the nape of his neck instead, at the back of his hair. It’s a mess, but free of product, and confused about why, Mark wonders if it’s soft.

It is soft and Mark doesn’t know how he knows that.

“I can’t, Mark.”

The knot in Mark’s chest slips tighter as his vision blurs around the edges.

“Stay,” he says.

“I-“ Eduardo says, thickly, “Mark-“

He hears Eduardo sigh, and then his arm goes slack in Mark’s grip, but Mark doesn’t let go.

The carpet is rough against the side of his face, and the turn of his neck is starting to hurt, almost as awkward as his grip on Eduardo's wrist, holding it down to the floor, like reverse arm wrestling, just so Mark can verify that Eduardo is really there.

"You're staying," Mark says, again.

Eduardo twists his wrist against Mark’s thumb, breaking free. He brings his hand up to his forehead, and then it slides down to cover his eyes.

"Eduardo," Mark says, curling his fingers around his elbow. “Wardo.”

Eduardo jerks away; he sits up and rubs his face.

It’s easier. When Wardo’s not looking. “I want- I want– I need you to stay,” Mark says, face burning, sweat prickling across his forehead.

“Okay," he says, muffled by his hands and caged by the curved bow of his spine. "Jesus, Mark. Okay."


Part Three