I Would Take A Whisper (If That's All You Had To Give) - (4/9)
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The house is dark when Mark gets home around midnight. Eduardo put Rosalind to bed nearly four hours ago and he’s been watching through a box of home videos he found under the stairs. He never bothered to turn the living room lights on and the only light in the room comes from the television screen.
He presses pause when he hears Mark appear in the doorway and Chris is frozen on the screen with a longsuffering expression and hands on his hips. Eduardo doesn’t turn to look at Mark and he doesn’t say anything but Mark takes the pause as it was intended and shuffles fully into the room.
He sits next to Eduardo on the couch.
“I found a box of home videos under the stairs. You um, you should see some of them. I mean this one is just, you gotta see this.”
Eduardo presses play and Chris comes back into life, rolling his eyes at the camera.
“Dustin, for the love of God, do you have to film every little thing?”
“But Chriiiiiiiiis, you look so pretty when you’re frustrated and covered in paint!” comes Dustin’s voice from behind the camera and Chris huffs, looking down at the yellow paint splattered on his shirt. “Come on, Chris, this is funny.”
“It is not funny! How is it that you trip and fall on your clumsy ass and I end up covered in paint?”
Eduardo smiles as Dustin sniggers behind the camera and he hears Mark snort beside him.
Dustin puts the camera down on something and he appears in shot.
“Well you know, Christopher, if you want me to be covered in paint too, there are ways you can make that happen.”
“No,” says Chris sternly but there is unmistakeable laughter in his eyes. He never could stay mad at Dustin. “No. No sex for a week. No, a month. No sex ever again.”
Dustin laughs and presses himself up against Chris’s chest, successfully getting yellow paint all over his own shirt and runs a finger through the paint on Chris’s cheek.
“Is that your final decision, Mr Hughes-Moskovitz?”
Chris rolls his eyes, “I want a divorce.” He says but he leans forward and kisses Dustin anyway.
Eduardo pauses it again and the two of them sit in silence for a moment, looking at the smiling faces on the screen.
“We can’t keep living like this, Mark.” says Eduardo eventually, speaking quietly and still not looking at Mark. “We have a baby now. We can’t keep fighting and shouting and tiptoeing around this house like it’s only temporary.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Wardo. I never did.” Mark’s voice is small and somewhat defeated. Eduardo finds that such a tone sounds wrong in Mark’s mouth. “I really do want to fix this, you know. Since the moment you smashed my laptop.”
Eduardo looks at him then. Mark’s face is lit by the television screen and Eduardo can see exhaustion etched there and something else he can’t place. He is staring at his own knees when he speaks again, even quieter than before.
“The day Rosie was born. I - I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Yes you did, Mark. You always mean what you say.”
“Yes. But not that time. I was wrong to say what I said, especially to you. It was mean. I didn’t mean it.”
Eduardo smiles gently at Mark for a moment before looking away again.
*
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...” Dustin runs a hand through his hair as a smiling nurse passes the tiny bundle of blankets to Chris. “Oh my GOD, Chris, look at her!”
His eyes are shining with tears and when Chris tears his eyes away from the little girl in his arms to look at him, his are too.
Mark and Eduardo are standing on the other side of the room, watching them in complete silence, Eduardo grinning from ear to ear at how happy his friends are and even Mark has a fond smile on his face.
“I cannot believe you are our daughter!” coos Chris as he strokes a wispy strand of blonde hair off her forehead. “You wanna hold her?” He whispers to Dustin, and when Dustin nods he places her in his arms as if she were glass.
“What’re you gonna call her?” asks Eduardo, stepping forward to get a better look at her face.
“Rosalind,” Chris answers without looking away from the baby in his husband’s arms, “Rosalind Hughes-Moskovitz, and, uh,” He and Dustin share a look and turn to look at them simultaneously, “And we were wondering if you two would be her godfathers.”
Eduardo’s heart swells suddenly and he feels himself welling up, “Oh my God, you guys, of course I will! Yes! Thank you!” and he surges forward to gather both of them (and Rosalind) into a hug which has both of them laughing.
When they turn to look at Mark, he just nods and smiles, stepping forward to clap Dustin on the back awkwardly.
“Can I hold her?” Mark asks, just as Dustin is passing her over the Eduardo.
“In a minute, Mark, I just got her!” Eduardo snaps and Mark glares at him.
“Well don’t get angry about it, we all know how you like to break things when you’re angry.”
“Mark.” Chris says in a warning tone.
Eduardo snorts, “Yeah because I’m the one who can’t be trusted here. I’m surprised you guys are trusting Mark with anything that could get hurt, let alone a baby. I’ve never noticed him give any thought to someone else’s feelings before.”
“Yeah, well maybe I will now that there’s someone who actually matters.” Mark snaps.
Nobody speaks. Dustin’s eyes are wide and sad and Chris is looking at Mark with the kind of disappointment that will make Rosalind beg for forgiveness when she’s older.
Mark is glaring at Eduardo and Eduardo can’t tell if that’s regret he sees in his eyes or just really cold fury. In either case he bends down, kisses Rosalind on the forehead, passes her gently over to Chris and leaves.
*
“I miss them, Mark,” Eduardo says into the silence and he is surprised to hear the tears in his voice. “They were the only real friends I had in the world. I keep absent-mindedly calling Chris to ask for advice or texting Dustin about something stupid someone said at work and I don’t - I don’t know what to do. It’s like it’s not real. It’s like they’ll be back any minute.”
He blinks against the stinging in his eyes.
“They won’t be,” Mark says and Eduardo huffs a laugh through his tears.
“Mark - ”
“Wardo.” He can feel Mark turn to look at him, “They won’t be back. It’s just us. And Rosie.” Eduardo nods. “I miss them too.” Mark continues “Believe it or not, I didn’t have any other friends either. Not ever. Except for you. And you don’t count.”
Eduardo snorts. “No, of course I don’t. You wanted to get rid of me.”
“No,” Mark says slowly as if talking to a small child, “You don’t count because you were different to them in my head, Eduardo. More.”
Eduardo shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling and he feels Mark look back at the screen again. They are quiet for a few more minutes before Mark says, “They loved each other.”
“Yeah,” Eduardo agrees with a sigh.
Very gently, so gently it’s as if he hopes Eduardo won’t notice, Mark rests his head on Eduardo’s shoulder. “I miss them.” He whispers into the darkness and Eduardo finds he doesn’t have the heart to shrug him off.
“Me too,” he replies eventually and he feels Mark relax slightly against him and then,
“I miss you,” Mark says, even quieter than before.
Eduardo feels himself stop breathing for just a second. He wants to cry, he wants to scream that it isn’t fair for Mark to do this to him, he wants to say me too and no and about a thousand other things but he can’t say any of them. He wants to leave but he’s tired of running away; he wants to stay but he’s scared to let Mark back in. He wants to shrug Mark off and he wants Mark to stay there forever and in the end all he can do is whisper “Okay,” and hope that at least some of all that gets across.
*
“Box.”
Rosalind says nothing.
“Come on, Rosie, box.”
She stares at Eduardo blankly. He sighs.
“Oh come on! If you can sit in the box, you can say box. Now repeat after me. BOX.”
“You shipping her off somewhere?” Mark’s voice startles Eduardo and he turns around. He didn’t even hear him get back from work, “Because if you are, I could get behind it; I’d love a full night’s sleep one day soon. Make sure you remember to punch holes in the lid or something.”
Eduardo pretends to gasp. “You hear that Rosie? Mark wants to get rid of you!” He lifts her out of the box. “Can you say ‘irresponsible’?”
Mark snorts and looks around at all the boxes littering the living room. “So what’s all this?”
“Well, you know how we talked about...about moving on?”
Mark nods.
“Well I thought it was about time we stopped living in this house as if it isn’t ours. We have to live here for at least another four years and we should start making it our house.”
Mark considers him for a second. “Can we get rid of that creepy as hell picture of the shark?” he asks, pointing at the wall.
“Most definitely.” Eduardo smiles.
So they spend the evening taking down pictures they don’t like, packing away Chris’s suits and Dustin’s dinosaur t-shirts and collecting up any other personal items that they can keep in the attic.
It’s fun in a way that Eduardo didn’t expect. He expected it to be hard putting Chris and Dustin’s life into a few cardboard boxes but actually it just ends up giving them some more good memories of the two of them. Eduardo asks Mark at one point if he wants to bring any of his stuff over from his own house but Mark just shrugs and says he sold it over a week ago.
“What?” asks Eduardo, surprised.
Mark just shrugs. “I was hardly ever there, anyway.”
Mark gets home even earlier the next day and they continue then as well, properly making up the second guest room into a more permanent looking bedroom for Mark and reorganising the kitchen cupboards in a way that better suits them (well, more just Eduardo really. Eduardo has yet to see Mark cook anything more complicated than toast).
By about 6:30 they are standing in the living room looking rather proud of themselves and Eduardo suddenly reaches for his laptop.
“What are you doing?” asks Mark.
“I think I know what we need for the mantelpiece,” Eduardo answers, pulling up his emails and opening that last one Dustin had sent him.
He sends the document to the printer in the downstairs office (now Mark’s home office) and comes back with one of the large frames that had been around the house with one of the various holiday photos of Chris and Dustin. He sets it in the middle of the mantelpiece where it is clearly visible from the whole of the living room and steps back to stand next to Mark.
It’s the picture from the night before any of this happened, the one that Dustin had made them take: just the two of them sitting with their arms pressed together, smiling so wide it looked like they didn’t have a single problem in all the world, and Rosalind clapping happily in between them.
Mark looks up at Eduardo. “Come to dinner with me.”
“Mark - ”
“I already asked Isobel, she said she’d take Rosie tonight and I booked us a table at that new restaurant a couple of blocks away. You said you wanted to try it, remember? On Rosie’s birthday you said you saw it on your way to their house and wanted to see if it was any good. So let’s go. Tonight, 7:30. I’ll drive.”
Mark wasn’t really asking, his chin was raised slightly defiantly and his hands were shoved into his pockets, and Eduardo found he didn’t really want to say no anyway.
“Sure,” he says with a little shrug that says ‘why not?’ and Mark nods, satisfied, and leaves the room.
Eduardo turns, slightly bemused, to look at Rosalind who is chewing on a plastic lion. “Did you hear that, Rosie? Mark Zuckerberg just asked me to dinner. Did he hit his head this morning or something?”
Rosie looks up at him, “Please,” she says and points at the TV. Eduardo just rolls his eyes and settles down with her for an episode of The Wiggles.
He doesn’t enjoy The Wiggles, he absolutely swears.
When 7:30 rolls around and Eduardo opens the door to Mark’s assistant Isobel, he smiles widely at her and holds out a hand.
“Hi, I haven’t met you yet, I’m Eduardo.”
She takes his hand and grins back. “I know, you’re famous where I work, remember? I’m Isobel. You can call me Issy though. Mark’s the only one in the world who calls me Isobel.” She rolls her eyes and Eduardo laughs and invites her in.
“I’m so grateful to you for doing this. I hope Mark didn’t order you to or anything; if he did then please feel free to tell him to fuck off next time.”
Isobel laughs delightedly and Eduardo likes her already.
“It’s okay. I’m not scared of him. He’s all bark and no bite most of the time!”
Eduardo smiles and doesn’t mention that actually he has firsthand experience with just how much bite Mark can have.
“I hope you’re not undermining my authority, Eduardo,” he hears from behind him and when he turns around he almost does a double take.
Mark is standing at the foot of the stairs and he is not wearing a hoodie or shorts or even his damn flip-flops. Instead he is wearing a light blue button-down shirt that isn’t wrinkled and dirty, actual shoes that don’t make a sound when he walks and dark jeans that actually seem to fit him.
Eduardo lets out an involuntary laugh. “Wow, Mark! I didn’t think I’d see the day you dressed up without coercion!”
Mark blushes and mutters, “Shut up.”
Isobel whistles. “Seriously, Mark, he’s right! Why, I even think you’ve brushed your hair! Someone’s definitely making an effort, tonight!”
Mark glares in her direction. “I can fire you any time, you know.”
Eduardo scoffs. “Don’t worry, if he does then you can come work for me. I need an assistant and I’ll be a much nicer boss.”
“Yeah?” Isobel grins, “Well I’m definitely tempted. I bet you never stay at work until midnight.”
“Okay, that’s it, we’re leaving now,” Mark says, frowning at the both of them and grabbing his keys. “You coming, Eduardo?”
Eduardo rolls his eyes in Isobel’s direction and she giggles again.
“You boys have fun and don’t worry about Rosie. We’ll be fine.”
“Thank you,” says Eduardo sincerely but Mark makes an impatient noise so he waves in farewell and closes the front door behind him.
Eduardo is surprised how easily he falls back into pace with Mark. When they’re sitting opposite each other in a nice restaurant, eating really good food, Eduardo cannot help but have a good time and for the first time, forget that anything is awkward. Mark asks questions about his work and about Singapore and Eduardo asks questions about Facebook that he actually finds himself wanting to know. Mark starts to fall back into his old habit of dropping insults about random passersby or even Eduardo into the conversation and Eduardo finds himself laughing and responding just like he used to. For once the banter doesn’t feel personal, it just feels familiar. Even nice.
When they step into the parking lot at the end of the night and head towards Mark’s car, Eduardo asks Mark what this was all about. He hasn’t seen Mark this relaxed in years.
Mark stops by the car and turns around to face Eduardo. He looks up at him steadily, considering something for a second. Then he says,
“Wardo, I’m sorry, okay?” The whole parking lot seems to ring with the words. “I know that I hurt you and I regret that. What I did...it was a dick move and if I could do it differently, I would.”
“Differently?” Eduardo asks, not angrily but with a slight edge to his voice, “So you’d still do it? Just in a less asshole way?”
Mark sighs, “Wardo, you didn’t come with me.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Mark.”
“No,” Mark says, loudly, “No, if you want me to fix this then you have to listen to me. Wardo, all I wanted was for you to be there with me. For it to be our thing. Not Sean’s. I wanted Sean because he was good for the company at that point in time. I wanted you because you were you and in my head it was ours and you were my best friend. I wanted you to care about it as much as I did but you didn’t listen to me about the ads, you didn’t listen when I told you I wanted you there and needed you there and then you froze the account.”
Eduardo opens his mouth to respond but Mark just carries on, determined.
“I diluted your shares because you jeopardised the company and I thought that that meant you didn’t care about it and, by extension, didn’t care about me. It hurt. I wanted to hurt you back and I wanted to protect myself and I wanted to protect Facebook. It was the right thing to do for the company. It wasn’t the right thing to do for me or for you and if I could do it again then I would talk to you first. Make you listen. Then maybe I would have known that you did care and that I wasn’t alone.”
He takes a deep breath and then says simply, “I’m sorry for what I did. I miss you. I want you back.”
The air around them feels thick and heavy with all the words Eduardo struggles to take in.
I’m sorry
He’s wanted to hear Mark say those words for years,
I miss you
Eduardo never let himself think about whether he missed Mark in fear that the answer would be yesyesyes,
I want you back
I want you back
I want you back.
Eduardo sits down on the hood of the car with his hands braced either side of him. Mark sits down next to him, waiting.
“It was never about Facebook for me, Mark,” Eduardo says, quietly.
“So I was right to cut you out,” Mark says and Eduardo sighs.
“I never thought I’d say this Mark, but in a way you probably were. I wasn’t right for the company. Not then. You’re an idiot though if you thought I didn’t care about you.” Mark looks at him and Eduardo looks back. “Mark, Facebook was, and is, brilliant but for me, it was always about helping you. That’s all. Facebook was your thing and you were mine. When Sean came along I thought that I was no longer wanted, like all I had been was money to you and I got so angry. When I froze the account I think I just...Jesus, I dunno, I just wanted you to still want me anyway so that I knew you valued more than just my bank account.” Eduardo sighs and looks down. “But I guess you didn’t in the end.” He shrugs.
Mark shifts a little so that he is facing Eduardo more fully. “I never wanted you to feel like that. I...I didn’t choose you because of your money, Wardo.”
Eduardo looks up at Mark and his face is so earnest and so...open that Eduardo can’t help but smile at him. “I know,” he says, and Mark smiles back.
“Look,” Mark says after a moment, “We were young. We both made mistakes and I’m willing to acknowledge that mine was the worst one but I don’t want to have ruined everything forever, Wardo. I don’t think I could live with that.”
In his eyes there’s a please that’s left unspoken and Eduardo leans in slightly so that their shoulders nudge together gently.
“You really won’t stop calling me ‘Wardo’, will you?” he says with a smile.
“Won’t and can’t,” Mark replies, and Eduardo knows that not everything is fixed just like that, that that’s not how it works, but somehow, those three words? They sound like a promise.
After they get home and thank Isobel profusely for babysitting, they tiptoe into Rosalind’s room to check that she’s asleep and it isn’t until they are standing side by side by her crib, Eduardo whispering ‘thank you for dinner’ and Mark smiling up at him just enough to let his dimples show, that it happens.
Eduardo bids a hasty goodnight and shuts himself in his room as fast as he can without making Mark suspicious, lying awake long into the night, staring at the ceiling.
Because standing there in the dim light of Rosalind’s room with Mark smiling up at him so genuinely, Eduardo had suddenly, for the first time in his life, inexplicably, undeniably, desperately wanted to kiss him.
This is new. And it’s definitely not good.
*
When Eduardo wakes up the next morning it isn’t to the high-pitched wails of the one year old in the room next door and it isn’t to the fast beat of his own heart as he panics over last night’s...oddity; it’s to his bedroom door banging open and a rather frantic looking Mark Zuckerberg bursting through it.
“Facebook’s about to crash, I gotta go in,” he says, without preamble.
Eduardo groans and gets out of bed with a stretch, “Oh, no no no, you have Rosie this morning so that I can interview for a new assistant.”
“Oh come on, Eduardo, I can’t just - ”
“Mark! Take her with you if you must, but I have five interviews this morning and we agreed on this days ago. I can’t take her this morning.”
Eduardo yawns and pulls off his t-shirt and peers into his wardrobe, signalling to Mark that there’s no further argument to be had and expecting him to storm out the room in a huff or say something obnoxious to try and get his way.
But that’s not what happens at all. Mark makes a sort of strangled sound and Eduardo looks over his shoulder to check he’s not literally choking with rage but finds that Mark doesn’t actually look angry at all anymore. He is staring, frozen and wide-eyed, at Eduardo’s chest and Eduardo suddenly feels incredibly self-conscious. He coughs and raises a confused eyebrow at Mark, who seems to have inexplicably forgotten all about Facebook entirely, which is no mean feat and, when he sees Eduardo watching him, goes incredibly pink and starts backing out of the room.
“Okay, fine, I’ll just take her with me then,” he breathes and then he is gone from the room.
Eduardo just stands staring at the closed door for a minute, completely baffled.
Did Mark just agree with him that quickly? Was he blushing?
Eduardo shakes his head as if to clear it. Sometimes he wonders what the hell his life has become.
*
It’s not that none of the interviewees are interesting, in fact Eduardo thinks that the third one is just right for the job, but he finds himself unable to give any of them his full attention. He nods and smiles when he has to, asks the appropriate questions and laughs in all the right places but it feels as though his body is on autopilot while his brain circles endlessly around that same thought: kissing Mark.
Why did he want to kiss Mark last night? Was it a one off or does he still want to kiss Mark? Would he have wanted to kiss Mark back in college if he’d thought about it? What would it be like to kiss Mark? What would Mark do if Eduardo shoved him up against the wall and -
Eduardo feels himself go red and the thought and takes a sip of water in the hope that his last potential assistant of the morning doesn’t notice. Jesus, Eduardo, get it together! he thinks as he tries to focus on what John (or is it Josh?) is saying about his last job.
But the thought is still there in the back of his mind. It’s there as he shakes Jason’s hand (Jake? Joe? Whatever.) and it’s there as he starts to gather up his things and lock up the office. It’s even still there as he pulls into the parking lot outside Facebook and he takes a moment to gather himself before he goes inside.
Okay, he’ll just go and get Rosalind and make small talk with Mark and it’ll all be back to normal. Right? I mean, it’s Mark. Mark who sometimes forgets to shower for a week and wears ratty old hoodies from when he was eighteen and wears a look of contempt in his eyes at least 60% of the time. Mark who used to be his best friend and who he sued for 600 million dollars. He can’t actually want to kiss Mark. It’s just been a weird couple of weeks.
He gets out of the car, rolls his shoulders and strides towards the door, focusing his nervousness on the fact that he hasn’t been inside the Facebook offices since...well his last visit certainly wasn’t fantastic and Eduardo really hopes that there aren’t many people left from the early days. He really doesn’t want to deal with that right now.
Unfortunately, Eduardo Saverin is famous enough that it doesn’t matter that the majority of these people have never seen him before in his life, they all stop working the minute he steps into the room. You don’t notice how loud typing is until a whole room stops doing it all at once.
Eduardo looks down, trying to walk past all the desks without drawing any more attention to himself and trying not to hear the whispers of oh my god, is that...Eduardo Saverin?, didn’t he sue Mark a few years ago?, everyone hold onto your laptops, oh my god no one told me how hot he was, seriously guys that’s EDUARDO SAVERIN.
Eduardo is incredibly relieved when he gets to Isobel’s desk outside Mark’s door.
“Eduardo!” She says happily, clearly surprised but hiding it well.
“Hi, Issy. I assume since everyone was able to tear themselves away from coding for my entrance that Facebook is safe again?”
Isobel grins. “Yep, alive and well! Mark’s still a bit distracted, I warn you now. He gets incredibly wound up on days like this.”
“Don’t I know it.” Eduardo laughs and Isobel smiles and waves towards Mark’s door.
“You can go in. I don’t think you’ll get much conversation out of him though.”
“I’m just here for Rosie, really. Thank you.” He nods and opens the door, nod bothering to knock.
Knocking would have been useless anyway; Mark is wired in and typing furiously at his laptop, not even noticing Eduardo step into the room and shut the door. Rosalind is sitting on the floor by his feet, playing with a stuffed chicken, which Eduardo takes a second to wonder why she even owns.
“Mark,” he says, not really expecting any response. “Mark!” he repeats, this time touching Mark gently on his shoulder. Mark startles slightly but smiles when he sees Eduardo, before seemingly checking himself and schooling his face into blank confusion.
“Wardo, what are you doing here?”
“Have you eaten yet, Mark?” Eduardo asks, ignoring Mark’s question.
Mark looks back at his laptop and continues typing. “I don’t have time for lunch.”
“Mark,” Eduardo says, sternly.
“Eduardo, I’m fine. I’ll eat when I’m hungry.”
Eduardo sighs. “Fine. I’m done at the office so I’m gonna take Rosie home, okay?”
Mark nods distractedly and Eduardo rolls his eyes. He crouches down so that he is just below Mark’s level and pulls Rosalind up onto his crouched knee. “Okay, querida, you wanna say bye to Mark?”
“Bye,” she says obediently and Mark stops typing briefly to lean down and kiss her forehead.
When he pulls away from her face there’s a second when Mark seems to be acting on autopilot and he leans, not away, but towards Eduardo instead and for one crazy second, Eduardo thinks he is going to kiss him goodbye too. But Mark seems to come to his senses in time, or maybe Eduardo is just seeing things after his revelation of last night, and just like that he’s leaning away, back straight and eyes back on the computer screen.
Eduardo stands up, rather shakily and settles Rosalind on his hip. Before he leaves, he puts a tuna sandwich and a packet of red vines on Mark’s desk and he is pretty sure he sees Mark smile before he turns around.
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