FIC: pieces from my heart (2/2)
Mark is freaking out.
The shareholders’ meeting had ended at 4:00. Eduardo had left almost immediately after, though he’d stopped long enough to exchange a few quiet words with Chris, let Dustin pull him into an enthusiastic hug, and offer a tentative smile and “see you later” to Mark-who has been in his office ever since, attempting to distract himself with work and failing spectacularly.
It’s nearly 7:30 and Mark needs to leave soon, which is problematic because, while he has more feelings than he knows what to do with, he does not have a single fucking clue what he’s going to do or say when he sits down across the table from Eduardo a scant half-hour from now.
“Hey,” Chris says, coming in the open door. “How’s the hangover?”
“Gone, mostly.” Mark has been religiously drinking water and popping Tylenol all afternoon, as well as stoically sipping the vile-looking liquid concoction one of the interns offered him. While the supposed “miracle hangover cure” has proven to taste even worse than it looks, and raises the question of why the interns are stocking the office fridge with hangover remedies, Mark is admittedly feeling a lot better. “How’s the post-meeting carnage?”
“Not so bad, considering you were incapacitated and Dustin was acting like a preschooler with a sugar high,” Chris says, but he doesn’t even bother trying to mask the affection in his voice when he says Dustin’s name. Mark looks at him in amazement and takes a moment to process this, because apparently certain developments were not, in fact, a figment of his intoxicated imagination.
“Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you really come back?”
Chris stares at him, and for a second Mark thinks he’s going to get evasive again, but then Chris’s face goes sort of, like, soft, and he just shrugs. “I came back because what I wanted was here.”
“He would have moved to New York for you,” Mark says, pretty sure Dustin would have, pretty sure that Dustin would do anything for Chris-in fact, Mark is pretty sure that this has always been true, now that he thinks about it. He’s less sure why it took them so long to get it together, but Mark supposes he is not one to talk.
“I know.” Chris looks Mark in the eye. “The thing is, Mark, when someone loves you so much, they would do absolutely anything you asked-sometimes the best way to love them back is not to ask.”
Mark shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Gets the sense that they are maybe not just talking about Dustin. Thinks about the relief in Eduardo’s eyes when Mark had said, it’s ok if the answer is no. Tries to remember a time when Eduardo refused him anything, and can’t. Forgiveness, maybe, he thinks, but that probably doesn’t count: if the other person stops giving because they have to. Because there’s nothing left.
Chris is still watching him steadily. “In a similar vein, when you’re loved by someone who would never think to ask you for anything, loving them back means you learn to give them what they need anyway.”
“Is this an object lesson?” Mark asks, thinking about what Eduardo might need.
“Call it a suggestion. I do actually want you to be happy.” Chris sighs, but Mark doesn’t miss the sincerity in his tone, or the affection. “You know, in the brief downtime between periods of wanting to kill you.”
“I’m sorry about this morning,” Mark tells him, meaning it.
“Don’t worry about it.” Chris flashes him a grin, getting to his feet and straightening his tie. “Working for you is good exercise for my not-inconsiderable talents. It keeps me on my toes, and that’s-”
“Where are you going?” Mark interrupts, frowning as Chris starts for the door.
“It’s been a long day.” Chris’s tone is tinged with amusement. “I’m going home. To bed, hopefully to Dustin, and hopefully in that order.”
“You realize my brain might never recover from that mental image.” Mark glares at him. “Also, we weren’t done talking.”
“Mark, we both know I’m not the person you need to be talking to.”
“I’ll give you a raise,” Mark tries, but Chris just shakes his head.
“After today, you’d better be doing that anyway. Go meet him, okay? See what happens.”
“I don’t know what to say to him,” Mark protests helplessly.
Chris turns in the doorway and studies Mark, his expression searching.
“Yeah, you do,” he says after a moment, quietly, and closes the door without waiting for a reply.
*
Chris is right, as it turns out. Mark knows what to say, and it only takes about ten minutes for him to begin to say it, after he and Eduardo have been seated and ordered drinks and struggled through some stilted small talk punctuated with long pauses, although Eduardo nearly gets there first.
“Mark,” he begins, just as Mark is saying “Wardo,” and they both stop and look at each other.
“You first,” Eduardo says after a beat, which Mark supposes is fair, all things considered.
“I’m sorry,” he says, although the words feel tired and too small, but they get him started and after that the rest comes tumbling out. “I’m sorry for the dilution, I handled it all wrong and I hurt you and I know that, but I-it’s not just that. I’m sorry about Sean, and California, I’m sorry I didn’t show up at the airport and I never paid enough attention and I never said-Wardo, I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
In the silence that follows, Mark realizes he is expecting a lot of things.
He expects Eduardo to be angry, or sad, or both. He expects Eduardo to say things that are honest but hurt terribly to hear. He expects to be forgiven-maybe, he’s not so sure if that will happen, and he is not at all sure what it would mean if it did. Some part of him expects Eduardo to say that it’s great that Mark is sorry and all, it’s good to (finally) hear the words, but it’s not enough because nothing ever really will be, and this is all beyond repair.
He does not expect Eduardo to say what he actually says, which is this:
“I’m sorry, too.”
Mark blinks.
“I did a lot of things wrong, too,” Eduardo reminds him, leaning forward ever so slightly to look in Mark’s eyes. “I lost my temper, and I did the worst thing to you that I could think of doing, instead of trying to work things out. I wouldn’t hear you when we disagreed, I wasn’t in your corner when I should have been, and I…” He hesitates, gets this look in his eyes, and Mark knows what’s coming: “I wasn’t there. You needed me, and I wasn’t there.”
It’s too much to take in, let alone process. Mark shakes his head, trying to clear it, but the stinging at the back of his throat and the tightness in his chest are making it sort of hard to concentrate.
I still need you, he thinks, but he can’t say that, god only knows how Eduardo would react to that.
“I tried to-” he begins, but the words get stuck.
“You tried to tell me. I know.” Eduardo sighs. “I thought you were full of shit. I thought-”
“You thought I was using you,” Mark says, because even though he’s known this for a long time, it’s still not any easier to hear the words and it’s at least slightly less awful just to say them himself.
“Can you see how I might have gotten that impression?” Mark nods, and Eduardo bites his lip. “I didn’t want to give in about California because it felt like that was all I ever did. I would give and give and give, and you never-I thought if I moved out here, it would just be- I tried to tell you things, too, Mark. A lot of things.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark says again, remembering the video, wondering what Eduardo might have been trying to tell him-might have told him, even, if he’d been listening.
“You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“You were a kid, Mark, we both were. We both thought we knew everything.” Eduardo runs his fingers lightly through his hair and despite the gravity of the moment Mark is struck again, hard, by how beautiful he is. It feels like a weird thing to think about a man, but there’s really no other word for Eduardo-more now, even, than before.
“I forgive you,” Eduardo says, and Mark abruptly snaps back to the present-because this time, he thinks, he is going to listen. “Okay?”
Mark wants it to be okay. He wants it so much-for it to be okay, and for Eduardo to forgive him, and for them to begin to move on and maybe even figure out how to be Mark and Eduardo again. He wants those words to be true maybe more than he has ever wanted anything in his life, but he thinks about Chris and giving and needs, and he looks at Eduardo and knows he has to make sure that these are the things Eduardo wants, too. He has to ask the thing he doesn’t want to ask, because if Eduardo is going to forgive Mark, it has to be on his own terms.
“Is it?” Mark says, and Eduardo’s head jerks up in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it really okay?” Mark watches his face carefully. “Are you sure?”
Eduardo looks like he’s not quite certain what to do with the question. “Why are you asking?”
“Because,” says Mark, wishing he had half Chris’s skill with putting words together, “you shouldn’t forgive me because that’s what you think I want. It should be-if you’re going to do it, it should be because it’s what you want.”
This, apparently, is the right thing to say.
Mark can tell because Eduardo smiles at him for the first time since the meeting, really smiles, and it kind of takes his breath away.
“Mark,” he says, and there’s a new warmth to his tone, almost a gentleness, “why do you think it took me so long to come back?”
“Tell me.” There are limits, Mark thinks, to how much insight can be expected of him in one night.
“I knew that if I saw you, I wouldn’t-well, I had to be sure, first. That I wanted to forgive you.”
“It took you five years to figure that out?” The words are out of his mouth before Mark can stop them, and he’s sort of horrified, but Eduardo just stares at him for a second and then throws his head back and laughs, out loud, which is maybe the best thing ever.
“There were other things,” he tells Mark, when he stops laughing. “It wasn’t just-look, I’m here now. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mark agrees, because Eduardo is here, talking to Mark again and beginning to smile and laugh like he used to, like Mark hasn’t seem him do in so long, and truthfully that makes everything else seem sort of peripheral, anyway.
*
They talk, after that. They talk and talk, and they finish their drinks and the food comes and they eat and then they talk some more, and drink some more. They talk about Facebook, which feels less like some ruined, ugly thing between them now and more like something they have together. Eduardo tells Mark about his work, the tech startups he’s invested in and the ones he’s considering, and Mark is impressed because Eduardo has seriously done his homework; so much so that he knows a lot of things Mark doesn’t.
They drink some more and the talking gets easier, turns personal. They ask about each other’s families, talk about hobbies (Mark has recently gotten back into fencing, which Eduardo thinks is fantastic; Eduardo has taken up running, which Mark thinks is horrifying). They talk about Chris and Dustin, and Mark tells Eduardo why Chris moved back to California, which makes him smile like maybe he knows something Mark doesn’t, but Mark doesn’t get a chance to ask because, “Do I want to know what you were doing last night that you showed up drunk this morning?” Eduardo asks-and, well.
There is that.
Mark makes up some bullshit about a birthday party because he’s not quite ready, yet, to go there.
Eduardo doesn’t push him. He starts talking about something else, beginning to tell a story, and Mark really, really wants to listen but it’s getting progressively more difficult, because he keeps staring at Eduardo’s mouth. When Eduardo pauses for a breath, he sips his wine and then licks his lips entirely too slowly, and Mark watches him do it and thinks about kissing him, about what it would be like.
He suspects it would be really good.
He seriously can’t stop staring at Eduardo’s lips.
The alcohol is not helping, probably.
It’s after midnight when they both look up and realize they’re the only ones left in the restaurant, which technically closed ten minutes ago. Eduardo calls his car service, Mark leaves a stupidly large tip for their waiter by way of apology and they walk out together, stand on the curb and wait for the car to get there. Eduardo asks if Mark is okay to drive, all knit brows and concern, and Mark rolls his eyes but really the fussing makes him feel sort of blurry and warm, because it is so familiar and god he’s missed Eduardo.
“Come over tomorrow,” Mark says, not daring to let himself think about it. “In the morning, before you leave. I’ll make breakfast.”
Eduardo smiles at him, tired but real, and it’s like being wrapped up in some warm, quiet place Mark never wants to leave. “You don’t cook.”
“I cook sometimes,” protests Mark, who doesn’t, at all, ever. He’s watched Chris make pancakes on a fairly regular basis, though, in the mornings after their newly-reinstated Saturday night video game marathons. And, okay, it looks like fucking alchemy, but Mark’s pretty sure it can’t actually be all that difficult.
Even Dustin can manage scrambled eggs, for fuck’s sake.
“Mark, I’ve seen you render cereal inedible. You don’t even eat breakfast.”
“I’ll make an exception.”
“You also don’t make exceptions.”
“Well, I’m making one now. For you,” Mark adds, forcing himself to meet Eduardo’s eyes when he says it. “Things change, Wardo, okay?”
“Yeah, I’m getting that.” Eduardo watches him thoughtfully for a minute, then nods like he’s made up his mind about something. “Okay. I’ll come over, but I’m making breakfast. Deal?”
“Deal,” Mark agrees, suddenly stupidly happy.
*
The next morning, Mark gets up early enough to shower before Eduardo is supposed to show up. He remembers to brush his teeth, towels some of the water from his damp curls so they don’t dry in the way that makes Chris roll his eyes in despair when Mark walks into the office, and actually looks at the t-shirt he chooses before he pulling it over his head. (Plain blue. Mark’s mom claims this brings out his eyes, which is apparently a good thing.)
Mark considers trying to set up the kitchen, but he can’t guess at what sorts of things Eduardo might need to cook whatever breakfast he’s planning, so Mark contents himself with reviewing the cupboards, reminding himself where he keeps the various things he never uses. His housekeeper came yesterday, so the rest of the house is pretty much spotless; even his bedroom doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear after the Jameson episode.
Not that Eduardo is going to be seeing his bedroom any time soon.
Or, like, ever.
(Mark puts away the stack of deposition transcripts and DVDs, just in case.)
Eduardo shows up a little after nine, and he still looks tired and pretty seriously jet-lagged, but he also looks happy to see Mark.
He’s carrying a couple of bags of groceries from the market up the street, which Mark has to admit was good foresight on Eduardo’s part, because on closer inspection it turns out that the only non-expired edible item in Mark’s refrigerator is a package of American cheese slices (which apparently have such a long shelf life because they are mostly chemicals).
“Things change, hm?” says Eduardo, grinning, but he says it like maybe it’s not such a bad thing if some things are still the same.
Eduardo won’t let him help because food in the preparation stages tends to preemptively catch on fire when it sees Mark coming, so Mark sits on a stool at the island and watches while Eduardo pours eggs and green peppers and mushrooms and shredded cheese (real cheese) into skillets, then slices fresh fruit while the omelettes cook. He also makes fresh-squeezed orange juice, because apparently Eduardo is a person who squeezes the juice from oranges and drinks it, which is so unnecessary. Mark tells him so, and Eduardo just laughs and pours him a glass and tells him to shut up and try it, and Mark takes a sip and has to admit that it is really, really good.
As is the rest of breakfast, which takes them a long time to eat because they talk so much.
“I wasn’t drunk because of a birthday party,” Mark says abruptly, and Eduardo sets his glass down, gives Mark a careful look and says, “I kind of figured.”
Mark tells him the truth then, although he skims quickly through the part about the transcripts and the tapes because Eduardo looks so sad when Mark talks about that, and he leaves out the love thing entirely because that is maybe not a conversation they should have when they’re still just learning to be around each other again, and particularly not when Eduardo has to get on a plane and fly back to Singapore in two hours.
Eduardo listens, and he doesn’t say much while Mark is talking, but when Mark finishes Eduardo reaches across the table and touches his arm, very gently, then pulls back and says, “I was freaking out, too.”
“Are you still?”
“No.”
“What are you, then?” Mark wants to know, which is honestly the closest he can bring himself to asking how do you feel about all of this?
“Late,” Eduardo says, glancing at his watch. “I’m going to miss my flight if I don’t get out of here in the next five minutes.”
So miss it, Mark thinks, just stay, but that is also probably not a conversation they need to be having right now.
He walks Eduardo to the door and they stand there really awkwardly for a couple of seconds because a handshake would be stupid but a hug might be too much, and Mark is not exactly big on hugging, anyway, although right now he thinks it would be best to avoid the hug for an entirely different reason, which is that he’s not sure he can be that close to Eduardo without kissing him.
He is still not sure how he feels about that.
So they don’t shake hands and they don’t hug, but they do agree to talk soon. Eduardo gives Mark his business card with a cell phone number and his address in Singapore scrawled on the back, and then he goes, although he does turn to smile and wave one more time before he gets in the car and disappears behind tinted glass.
Mark feels out of sorts after he’s gone, restless and sort of unsettled. He drives to the office even though it’s a Saturday, hoping to lose himself in code, but he can’t seem to focus or get anything done. Instead, he finds himself sitting in his office, replaying their goodbye over and over again in his head. It feels like a badly-placed ellipsis between them, he thinks. An open parenthesis. Too much left unsaid, uncertain, unknown.
He thinks maybe he should have said something, though he can’t honestly imagine how he would have begun that conversation. Hey, Wardo? Were you in love with me back then? More to the point, now that we’ve been friends again for five minutes, do you think you still could be?
Mark thinks not.
He stares at the phone number on the back of the card for a while before he gets his own phone out, and types a quick text message.
To: Eduardo Saverin
From: Mark Zuckerberg
have a safe flight.
The reply is almost immediate.
To: Eduardo Saverin
From: Mark Zuckerberg
:)
Mark should have just kissed him, probably.
*
There are a lot of text messages back and forth over the next few days.
E-mails, too.
Even Facebook messages-because now, finally, after five years, they are Facebook friends again.
Mark has a pathological hatred of talking on the phone, but Eduardo calls one night just as Mark’s getting into bed (it’s noon on the other side of the world), and it turns out there are worse ways to end the day than listening to Eduardo bitch about how it’s been raining for three days straight and he’s still jet-lagged after a week.
Mark seriously cannot stop smiling.
The Facebook staff is uniformly curious about the source of his good mood. “About half of them think it has something to do with Eduardo,” Jess tells Mark, a little guiltily.
“What about the other half?”
“They think you’re on drugs.”
Chris keeps giving him knowing looks and Dustin will not leave him alone for ten seconds at a time.
To: Mark Zuckerberg
From: Dustin Moskovitz
Subject: just get on a plane already.
even google thinks you’re an idiot.
To: Dustin Moskovitz
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Subject: you’re fired.
see subject.
To: Mark Zuckerberg
From: Chris Hughes
Subject: HR just called.
I’ve been asked to inform you that this is the eighth time you’ve fired Dustin in two months and unless you intend to stick to it for more than three hours this time, they would really prefer to skip the paperwork.
To: Chris Hughes
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Subject: fine.
tell your boyfriend to keep his unsolicited opinions to himself.
To: Mark Zuckerberg
From: Chris Hughes
Subject: I suppose I could gag him.
Prior experience suggests he might enjoy that, actually.
To: Chris Hughes
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Subject: i need brain bleach.
now you’re both fired.
Mark and Eduardo talk a lot, which Mark decides is fine because they are making up for five years of not talking. The phone calls happen, more nights than not. They talk about their days, mostly, and work, and sometimes other things, but Mark is mostly preoccupied with the things they don’t talk about, like love.
Mark has never been in love and the longest of his few-and-far- between relationships lasted a grand total of two months, so he doesn’t exactly have a vast and varied frame of reference for any of this, but he thinks that if he were going to be in love with anyone, it would probably be Eduardo, because Eduardo was (and is becoming, again) the most important person in his life once, and Mark has never really felt like that about anyone else.
Dustin and Chris are his best friends. Like family, really.
He loves them, of course.
His parents and his sisters, too.
Eduardo is different, though, in a way that makes Mark’s stomach twist and his heart do weird things and then there is the fucking smiling, which he still cannot seem to stop doing. He’s different in the way that makes five-minute phone calls seem impossibly short and two-hour calls not long enough. He’s different in that he always seems to understand what Mark is trying to say, despite the fact that Mark is not and has never been good with words (though Eduardo tells him he’s better at that, now). He’s different in the way that puts Mark somewhere between calm and happy and right when he hangs up the phone or gets an e-mail or re-reads a text message from Eduardo for the hundredth time.
Eduardo is things to Mark that no one else has ever been, maybe ever will be.
It feels like it’s happening really fast and also like it’s taken a ridiculously long time.
*
There’s the sex thing, too, which is more confusing.
“Dustin,” Mark says one afternoon, about a week after he did not actually fire either Dustin or Chris. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Dustin says, without looking up. He’s constructing a complicated-looking Lego spaceship, which he’s been working on at his desk intermittently for about a week. Mark is not bothered by this. He’s seen enough results to remain fairly certain that Dustin actually works, sometimes, though he never seems to witness it happening.
“It’s about sex.”
“Go for it.” Dustin shrugs, unfazed. “Is it a technical question, though? Because in that case, you should probably ask Chris. He’s been sucking dick a lot longer than I have.”
“Jesus,” says Mark, regretting everything.
“It’s not technical?”
“No,” Mark says vehemently, trying very hard not to picture things, mostly failing, and feeling the color spread up his throat and into his cheeks. “Christ, Dustin.”
“Sorry.” Dustin grins at him. “I’ll make a note to be less candid in the future.”
“I’d settle for less graphic,” Mark says darkly.
“Fair enough. What’s up?”
“Were there-I mean, did you-” Mark can’t find the right words, can feel himself turning a brighter shade of red, hates everything. “Had you ever-with other guys? Before Chris?”
“A couple of times, yeah.”
“When?” Mark is incredulous, as this is the first he’s hearing about it
“Right after we moved out here.” Dustin catches Mark’s expression and laughs, open and easy. “Would you quit looking at me like that? I didn’t tell you about most of the girls I hooked up with back then, either.”
Mark frowns, considering this. “So you’re what-bisexual?”
“I guess.” Dustin looks thoughtful. “I don’t really worry about it, though. I realize that’s probably not the most politically correct thing, but you love who you love, right? I love Chris, and-I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter to me what you call it.”
“Chris is not a sexual orientation,” Mark says stubbornly, though he can see Dustin’s point.
“Maybe not, but he totally should be.”
“This is unhelpful,” Mark decides, and leaves before Dustin has a chance to continue with that train of thought.
He tries Chris next, thinking it can’t possibly be worse.
“How do you know you’re gay?” Mark asks, perched on the edge of Chris’s desk, thankful when Chris doesn’t bat an eyelash.
“The same way I know the earth is round, grass is green, and the sky is blue?” Chris shrugs, doesn’t even bother to look away from his computer screen.
“The sky is colorless,” Mark says pointlessly, which earns him a sideways glare.
“You know what I meant. Why the interest, as if I didn’t already know?”
“I’m thinking about taking a few days and flying to Singapore.”
“Mark Zuckerberg.” Chris pulls back from his desk, swivels his chair to smile at Mark, who promptly averts his eyes and turns red all over again. “Are you planning a sweeping romantic gesture?”
“I just-I want to be sure that when I get there, I’ll be able to do what I think I want to do.” Mark stares intently at the floor. “I think I should have kissed him.”
“I concur, but showing up on his doorstep halfway around the world will make a much better story ten years from now, so don’t sweat it too much.” Chris studies Mark, his expression a combination of knowing and amusement. “Think about when he was here, Mark. Did you want to kiss him then?”
Mark thinks about dinner: the easy glow of Eduardo’s smile in the low light of the restaurant, the way his head fell back when he laughed, the slight flush of color in his cheeks from the alcohol. The way he’d licked the wine from his lips so slowly it almost seemed deliberate, making Mark think about what it would be like to kiss him, what those lips would taste like, what they would look like doing other things-
When he looks up, Chris is grinning like the cat that got the cream, which is-not a metaphor Mark wants to explore too carefully. “You wanted to do more than kiss him, I take it.”
“Fuck off,” Mark suggests.
Chris just shrugs, still smiling. “Welcome to the dark side.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Dustin inquires, appearing over Mark’s shoulder.
“I hate you,” Mark tells him, because, really.
*
He sends Eduardo a text message later that afternoon.
To: Eduardo Saverin
From: Mark Zuckerberg
it’s inconvenient that you live on the other side of the world.
The reply comes a few minutes later, although it is the middle of the night in Singapore. Mark is sitting in his office clicking through flight information, not really decided yet, just looking, when his phone buzzes softly.
To: Mark Zuckerberg
From: Eduardo Saverin
I miss you, too.
He stares at the message for a long time.
Mark is not the type to hesitate, really. He makes the interns plaster those “Move Fast and Break Things” signs all over the place for a reason. Mark tends to jump in with both feet and figure the rest out once he’s in it. He’s learned to swim in a lot of deep ends, and he’s really not the sort of person who waits around for signs, but if he were?
This is probably the closest he’ll ever get.
Mark chooses a flight, and books it.
Arranges for a hotel room, just in case.
He calls Jess and instructs her to cancel his Thursday and Friday meetings, then opens his e-mail client.
To: Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Subject: i’ll be back on monday.
try not to crash the servers or start any wars while i’m gone.
To: Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz
From: Chris Hughes
Subject: Have a safe trip.
Say hi to Wardo for me.
To: Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes
From: Dustin Moskovitz
Subject: FUCKING FINALLY
LET’S GO GET THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF US BY LOVE!!!!
*
Mark visited Singapore several times a couple of years ago, when Facebook’s Asia offices were getting up and running.
He’s never admitted it to anyone (and probably never will), but he used to watch the runway lights rushing up to meet the plane as it landed, then squeeze his eyes shut, concentrating as hard as he possibly could, and think: Wardo, I’m here.
Which was stupid, because Eduardo hadn’t been speaking to him then, and would probably have continued refusing to speak to him even if Mark had suddenly developed actual psychic abilities.
Mark never really stopped hoping, though.
He’s as nervous now as he’s ever been, and this time when the plane touches down with a gentle bump, Mark finds he can’t really think much of anything. He’s too busy clenching his teeth to stop his stomach from climbing out through his throat, because this feels a whole lot crazier on the ground in Singapore than it did back in Palo Alto. The reality, Mark thinks, is that he’s just flown halfway around the world based on a few hours in Eduardo’s company, on the very slight chance that something that was true five years ago might somehow still be true.
It’s not much more than a guess, really.
An insane, wild hope.
Mark likes logic and facts and evidence, preferably in overwhelming quantities. This is not a thing that he does, this taking chances thing, except that apparently it is, because he suddenly finds himself sitting in the back of a car on a busy street in downtown Singapore, staring up at the very, very tall, ultra-modern building in which Eduardo lives.
There’s a concierge.
Of course there is.
Mark gives him his name, and listens to the long silence on the other end of the line when the concierge calls to tell Eduardo that he’s extremely sorry to disturb him so late, but there’s a Mr. Zuckerberg here to see him.
Eduardo lives on the sixty-seventh floor, which means a very long elevator ride, during which Mark changes his mind about all of this at least thirty times in rapid succession, but it’s really a little late for that now.
Then he’s standing at Eduardo’s door, which opens just as Mark is lifting his hand to knock, and there’s Eduardo in jeans and a t-shirt, which is crazy because that never happens, although it vaguely registers with Mark that it definitely should happen a lot more often, because Eduardo in jeans and a t-shirt is really, really sexy. He keeps blinking and his hair is everywhere and he very clearly just rolled out of bed and pulled on the first thing he could find.
He’s looking at Mark like he doesn’t quite believe he’s real.
“Hi,” Mark says.
“Hi,” Eduardo says a little incredulously, stepping to the side so Mark can come inside, pushing the door closed behind him. “What are you-”
Mark steps close to him then. Says, "Wardo," very softly, and Eduardo shuts up. Mark reaches out and strokes his cheek with two very tentative fingers, cups it gently, and Eduardo doesn’t move, but he doesn’t pull away either, which Mark decides to count as a good thing. He’s less sure what to do with the fact that Eduardo is honest-to-god shaking under his touch.
“Wardo,” Mark says again, softer still.
Lets the hand cupping Eduardo’s cheek slide to the back of his neck.
Tugs him in, so gently.
When he finally kisses Eduardo, it’s like nothing Mark expects and everything he wants, all at once. It feels new and weird and startling and strange, but it also feels really, really right, like maybe this is somewhere they’ve always been headed.
Like something in Mark has always been trying to find its way here, right here, to this.
It only lasts a few seconds, but when Mark pulls back, everything about Eduardo’s face has changed. It’s like he’s lighting up from the inside as a slow smile finds its way to his lips, still trembling just the slightest bit. His eyes are soft and so bright, and when Mark looks into them he sees the thing he somehow, somehow missed all those years ago, for all that time. The thing he understands, now, is love.
“Mark,” Eduardo says, and it’s like coming home.