fic: Sky That's Always Blue (mark/eduardo, prompt 52) 1 of 3
Title: Sky That's Always Blue
Recipient: putana
Prompt Number: 52
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Eduardo
Rating/Warnings: PG
Word Count: 15,128
Disclaimer: This fanwork is based on fictional representations of the characters in The Social Network; I make no claims of ownership of the characters or concepts.
Prompt: Eduardo has always had an affinity with the weather - odd things, like always being warm; knowing when it will rain/snow and it even pays off with friends - Mark is never cold when Eduardo is happy (flip-flops in the snow, for example). But it has never been a weird thing. Until the dilution - suddenly the weather is playing up in a major way, unseasonal weather - spring never arriving! - and odd bouts of weather for the people that have upset Eduardo (for example - Peter's house floods; Sean nearly gets hit with lightening five times and it seems to snow over the Facebook offices). Initially Mark doesn't notice, but everyone else does, and initially there is no obvious connection. Until the depositions and Mark just can't help but notice that the weather seems to react to Eduardo's moods. So Mark has to bring spring back :D
Notes: The timeline for the depositions has been entirely made up, because the movie was not specific enough for my purposes here. :3
Chris is being deposed first. Mark's legal team tells him both depositions will start with the least important testimonials and work their way up, gathering evidence. Dustin had made noises about being "unimportant"; Chris had raised his eyebrows and put the dates on his schedule and gone back to ignoring that Eduardo is suing them.
("He's suing you," Dustin says. "Not us."
"He's causing you to be deposed," Mark says stubbornly.
"But he's suing you," Dustin says.)
He's hired an outside firm to represent him. He hadn't wanted to, he'd have preferred to use Facebook's in-house counsel, but Chris had insisted he hire out. He'd pointed out that, since some personal details might get dragged around, Mark might prefer the majority of the details were handled by someone he wouldn't have to continue working with afterwards.
However, Chris and Dustin also have their own lawyers, despite the fact that neither lawsuit involves either of them any more than tangentially and isn't likely to reveal anything personal. The law firms had all insisted on this, saying they wanted to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Chris had told Mark that they were treating this like any corporate suit, where nasty and illegal things might come to light that could harm anyone, instead of handling it like the personal attack it is.
But Mark's lawyers are good; they got the two depositions to overlap for the most part, so Mark has to spend a couple of weeks in New York but at least he only has to go once.
The lawsuits have proceeded this far without any of them; the lawyers have already spent more than a couple hours arguing about the content they'll be allowed to discuss. Mark had told his team that everything was off-limits; they'd responded that, for all practical purposes, nothing was going to be off-limits.
He has no idea what Eduardo and his lawyers are doing. He'd looked up the rival firm and the main lawyer as soon as Sy had told him who Eduardo had hired. They were good: good record, reliable, experienced.
The actual depositions start mid-March, and by the time Mark gets to New York, it will have been almost four years since he was last in the city.
Chris goes first, and he's leaving for New York on the thirteenth. Dustin's supposed to go right after Chris. Mark will start the week after that, but he's going to New York with Dustin, because Dustin swore he needed moral support. Mark could've pointed out that he would have Chris, but Chris has been in a prickly mood. Besides, it will give Mark an opportunity to be around; he's hoping to catch sight of Eduardo before they see each other in the depositions.
Sy has told him, explicitly and repeatedly, to avoid any and all contact with the other side. This applies to the Winklevii, too, of course, but everyone in the room knew it was mainly about Eduardo. Mark had nodded and ignored everything that came after. He's felt Eduardo's interference for too many years with no concrete presence to blame; he's not going to pass up the opportunity to see him now.
---
"You two can room together, if you want," Chris says. "I'll be on my own, thanks."
Mark shrugs, but Dustin looks a little crestfallen.
"I just want to get this over with," Chris says to Dustin, more gently.
"Yeah, I know," Dustin says. He shrugs.
Chris turns back to the front desk and finishes getting their rooms. He puts Dustin and Mark in a suite and himself two floors down from them.
In the suite, Dustin claims which room is his with more vehemence than is necessary, since Mark doesn't have any preference at all. Mark normally leaves all his clothes in his suitcase, taking them out and scattering them as he needs them, but today he unpacks, hanging and folding things away.
"So," Dustin says when Mark is done. He came in about halfway through and sat in the middle of the bed, watching. "We've got dinner with the lawyers tonight."
"Because we won't be seeing enough of them," Mark mutters.
"They're on our side," Dustin says, which has become something of a mantra since Chris first made Mark meet with Sy and his team.
"Not really," Mark says.
---
He can't come into the deposition room with Dustin or Chris. He goes with Dustin his first day, because he plans on waiting in the lobby and seeing Eduardo as everyone comes in. Unfortunately, the lawyers catch him and send him out of the building before Eduardo ever shows up, claiming he has a disruptive intent. His team agrees with them - and yes, our side is definitely bullshit - and Mark gets sent back to the hotel. Since seeing Eduardo was the sole reason he came to New York early, this puts him in a foul mood for the next two days.
Chris gets to leave on a late night flight after one day. Dustin grumbles about the unfairness of it all, and Mark points out that Chris wasn't as instrumental to Facebook's development as Dustin was.
"Shut up, Mark," Dustin says. "That's rude."
He's angry - he's been snappish, because apparently being deposed hasn't been as easy as the lawyers had claimed it would be - but Mark doesn't understand why that upset him. It's true.
"Just-" Dustin sighs. "Shut up."
That seems to be everyone's attitude about what's going on, honestly. Chris had refused to look at Mark once he was done with his one day of questioning, saying a quick goodbye to Dustin and disappearing back to the airport. Mark doesn't understand the reaction; there's nothing new going on here that Dustin and Chris hadn't known about four years ago.
It's been frustrating for him, too, because Dustin, who claimed going in that he didn't give a shit what the rules were about privacy, he'd tell Mark about what went on, has clammed up. He won't even tell Mark about Eduardo, other than to say that yes, he was there.
Mark is getting tired of it all, and he hasn't even sat through his own yet.
---
When he first sees Eduardo, it's at the deposition for the Winklevii's case. Mark isn't expecting him to be there - he stares a little, and Sy has to touch his elbow to get him going. Eduardo doesn't look at him as they file into the room.
Eduardo's wearing a suit that could be any one of the ones he used to wear. He looks a little older, which Mark decides is only fair, and mostly, he looks tired. When he starts talking, his accent is different, as if he hasn't spoken much English for a while.
The tiredness becomes more deeply ingrained in his face as the day goes on. Eduardo's only deposed for a few hours, and he answers quickly, short and fair. Mark's shoulders relax, because he doesn't see how their depositions could be bad if Eduardo's this civil. He's not like the Winklevii, who whine about entitled bullshit and don't even realize they're doing it.
The questions get more invasive before they let Eduardo go. He's there for a little over three hours, by the time they're done, and by the end they're nitpicking every little detail, digging into Eduardo's past and his family. They ask things like why he went to Harvard, how he felt about privilege, since that was something Mr. Zuckerberg had made clear he didn't like - how did Eduardo feel about being friends with someone who detested where he came from?
Sy, when Mark pulls him back to make him explain, says they're trying to undermine Eduardo's position since nothing he said helped their case.
Eduardo's lawyer handles it, for the most part. Eduardo spends the whole meeting either staring out the windows at the slowly darkening sky - and it throws Mark off at first, the way the room feels like evening or night when it's only ten in the morning - or watching the lawyers intently. He's paying more attention than Mark is.
The weather turns sour as the morning passes, and by the time Eduardo leaves one of the associate lawyers is muttering to a coworker about high-speed winds and how the chance of rain was zero this morning, that's why she hadn't brought an umbrella. Mark looks at the window after Eduardo's gone, trying to see if that's what had interested him so much.
"It's raining," Mark says.
"I'm sorry?"
"It just started raining," Mark says.
The lawyer repeats his question and Mark answers it exactly how it deserves, but he's mostly occupied with the window and the patter of rain and wondering where Eduardo is and what he's doing.
---
That was when the idea took root. It likely never would've come to anything, except Dustin sticks his head in Mark's room that evening - Mark is checking various weather sites, looking at forecasts and learning a little, just a little, about weather patterns, because it never hurts to know - and says, "Hey, I was talking to Chris. Did you know California's been put under a hurricane warning?"
"The entire state?" Mark snorts.
"Yeah," Dustin says earnestly, and Mark blinks at him.
"That's unusual," he says.
"Bad timing, too." Dustin nods. "Chris is pissed."
"Yeah," Mark says. He frowns and pulls up California's weather alongside New York's.
"I told him God was punishing us," Dustin says. "He didn't think that was funny."
Mark says, "Not God."
Dustin pauses, blinking at him. Mark starts reading about weather in earnest.
---
Two days pass, and Mark can't go anywhere without hearing conversations about the fucking weather. He's heard mention of this as New York's monsoon season more than once, and several shitty jokes about the apocalypse, for some reason. Every time, he looks at the splatter of the water on the windows and wonders just how insane he's become.
But he's only seen weather like this once before. It had rained for three weeks after Eduardo left, back in Palo Alto at the beginning. It had sometimes stormed, sometimes drizzled, but it always, always rained. By the time it had finally stopped nearly all the streets had been flooded and the news had started coverage of evacuation procedures.
Mark hadn't paid much attention then, too busy with Facebook and Sean's drugs and Eduardo's absence and Dustin's stony, hurt silences to pay much attention to the weather.
He regrets that, a little - he might have more proof now if he had. Instead he's left with an insane suspicion and the urge to catalogue every weather condition he's ever experienced. There is, at the very least, another week before the depositions will be over; Dustin is starting to waver in his determination to stay to the end of everything.
Outside, the thunder gives one last reluctant grumble as the storm starts to subside. Mark blinks at the window and decides he really has nothing to lose.
---
He writes a program.
The first step was to catalogue the weather. There had been a lot more variation in the weather at Harvard than there had been in Palo Alto, so Mark had decided at least some of that had to be natural, but Palo Alto is a little easier, since its standard weather is almost the same year round; he starts with Palo Alto. So when Mark makes his lists, all Palo Alto weather that wasn't sunny with moderate breezes gets put into a list, where the program will track the date and time of anything unusual, cross-referenced against national and international weather databases to check for patterns and reasonable variation. The Massachusetts weather data is more complicated and so has more variation in what's considered "seasonable"-the program probably won't produce as much conclusive evidence there.
Mark spends most of an evening on it, and ends up with a list of parameters he's pleased with.
Once the list of all suspicious weather in Massachusetts and California from 2002 to 2008, roughly, has been compiled, Mark is going to find a way to compare it against as many of the details of Eduardo's life he can get his hands on. If there's any correlation, Mark will find it.
During the day he sits through more bullshit. Eduardo is melodramatic and distant and dangerous, and the lawyers are by turn pompous and cowardly but always useless. Mark doodles, mostly, trying to keep his mind busy while he watches the glass-windowed wall from the corner of his eye. He draws clouds, mostly, or lightning bolts. Sometimes rainbows, but the cheerful connotation of them usually presents too much irony for him to stomach while Eduardo sits five feet and four years away, acting as if Mark ruined the whole world and this is his comeuppance.
---
The night before Dustin leaves - because Mark acted as moral support and Dustin felt obligated to return the favor, but Mark doesn't give a shit, and would actually prefer Dustin go babysit the site instead of him, and Dustin is finally listening to what he wants - he grabs Mark's laptop from the desk and holds it captive. He says, "Really, I saw you stalking Eduardo. What's up?"
"I am not stalking Eduardo," Mark says.
"You have more info about his life before age three than anyone except his mother should have," Dustin says. "That's stalking."
"Fuck off," Mark says.
"I'm not giving you back the laptop," Dustin says.
Which is a lie. Dustin would. Mark can wait him out - he has before. But he could use some help, honestly, and there's no reason to lie to Dustin.
"I'm investigating his past to see whether my theory is correct," Mark says.
Dustin tilts his head. "What theory?"
Mark says, "Have you noticed the weird weather?"
"I know you have," Dustin says. "I thought maybe you were picking up Eduardo's meteorology hobby in an effort to feel close to him, or maybe you thought you could establish new common ground."
Mark frowns. "What?"
Dustin shakes his head. "Never mind. What about the weather?"
"It matches Eduardo's moods," Mark says.
Dustin blinks at him for several long moments. Mark watches his laptop, still held tight against Dustin's stomach, just in case an opportunity for reclamation presents itself.
"So," Dustin says, "you think Eduardo's moods control the weather?"
"I think Eduardo controls the weather," Mark says.
"That," Dustin says, after another pregnant pause, "is incredibly cool." And then he demands to see what Mark has.
Dustin is the sort of person to do utterly insane things to support his friends, even if he doesn't agree with them. But he doesn't seem to doubt Mark. Mark doesn't know why he ever underestimates Dustin's willingness to believe the weird and fantastical - or his willingness to help his friends, which this very well may be. Either way, though, Mark doesn't care; and Dustin helps him with the research even once he's back in California.
---
It's never raining in the mornings. It's overcast almost every day, but it never rains before nine a.m. The Weather Channel, which Mark has started tuning to every morning as soon as he gets up, talks about the "weather block" that's settled over the city, and other parts of the country like California. The hurricane that's brewing right off the coast, the one that has the whole state on high alert, is just sitting there, inactive and menacing.
It's almost humorous, listening to the so-called scientists try to explain what the fuck is going on. Mark finds their utter failure comforting.
The first rain will start to fall early morning, and by lunch there's usually a steady, pathetic drip. Some of the lawyers have started eating lunch in the building, in various offices and spare rooms, because everyone is so tired of going outside. The rain either continues that way for the rest of the day or worsens slowly throughout the afternoon.
It's always in accordance with Eduardo's moods and the pace of the depositions. A lot of people would probably tell Mark he's imagining it, or claim that everyone's mood gets worse as the weather worsens, but Mark doesn't believe in coincidence to this extent. Without conclusive data from the program, he can't prove anything, but he doubts the idea less and less as the days pass. Dustin's still researching Eduardo's past, because Mark isn't allowed access to a computer during the day, and he takes longer than Mark would.
Mark, tired of waiting, decides he'll have to go directly to the source.
---
The lawyers put a concerted effort into keeping Mark and Eduardo away from each other, aided no doubt by Eduardo's tendency to disappear whenever he's feeling too uncomfortable. However, four days before the depositions are scheduled to end, Mark catches Eduardo in the bathroom.
It takes a little bit of maneuvering, which Mark will never admit he did. He ducks out to use the restroom and makes sure Eduardo's lawyer, that awful, manipulative woman, sees him come back out. Then he heads down the hall, ducking around the corner where the water cooler is. A couple of minutes later he checks back and sees that the lawyers are all clustered together around the center of the conference table, heads bent together. It looks as if they're all plotting something; which would be entirely plausible, in fact, but Mark doesn't really care whether they are or not. The important thing is that Eduardo is not in the room with them, and since he didn't pass by Mark, he must be in the bathroom.
Mark ducks back inside.
Eduardo is washing his hands at the sink, and he looks up and stares at Mark in the mirror.
"Eduardo," Mark says.
Eduardo doesn't answer, just looks back down at his hands and finishes rinsing them.
"Or am I really supposed to call you 'Mr. Saverin?'" Mark says.
Eduardo doesn't react. He shakes the water off his hands and steps over to the towel dispenser, pulling one out and drying his hands meticulously.
"Your lawyer's a bitch," Mark says.
Eduardo throws the towel away and steps toward the door. Mark stays right in front of it. They stand there, staring at each other, until finally Eduardo raises his eyebrows a little and says, quietly, "Mark." He sounds composed and distant and too polite, considering the circumstances.
Mark sneers. "That's the most eloquent thing you have to say? You've had four years to think of something. And your parting words were so affecting."
"Your name versus several spur-of-the-moment, immature insults?" Eduardo says. "I think I've come out on top, here."
Then he reaches out, takes Mark's elbow, and steers him aside just enough to open the door and slide out of the bathroom.
Mark follows Eduardo back into the conference room, feeling powerlessly, helplessly angry: at Eduardo, at the lawyers, at the lawsuits, at Eduardo. Eduardo takes a seat, back straight, and takes a few slow drinks from a glass of water.
Outside the windows, lightning cracks the sky open and rain slams down. Mark meets Eduardo's blank gaze and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, triumphant and fascinating and impossible, that he was right.
---
Dustin calls repeatedly, over and over, until Mark finally picks up that night. He says he has found all information there is to be had on Eduardo - and his family - between the ages of four and eleven; Mark, while he doesn't exactly believe Dustin, doesn't have time to do more than a cursory check for himself. He at least doesn't appear to have missed anything too important.
"You're welcome," Dustin says. "For breaking every privacy law out there and spending my last four waking days coming to your aid."
"Yes, thank you," Mark says, annoyed. The email with Dustin's data comes through; Mark starts plugging it in.
"So how's it going there?" Dustin asks. "Chris keeps asking me if you've had a mental breakdown yet."
Mark pauses. "By his standards, yes, probably."
"Hey, it's not crazy if it turns out to be true," Dustin says.
"Do you believe me?" Mark asks quietly. It's a moment of weakness, and a stupid question, since it doesn't affect things either way if Dustin doesn't.
"You know, yeah," Dustin says. "I mean, it's weird and crazy and impossible, but if anyone were hiding an ability to control the weather, it'd be Eduardo, right?"
"Or Chris," Mark says.
Dustin snorts. "Exactly. I don't believe you; I believe it, because basically, either Eduardo controls the weather or there is some vast meteorological conspiracy theory centered on him. Super powers don't sound so crazy when compared to the alternative explanations."
"I don't think it's a super power," Mark says.
"He controls the weather," Dustin says.
"He may not know he's doing it," Mark says.
"Believe me," Dustin says. "He knows."
"What do you mean?" Mark asks, frowning.
"There's no way he couldn't," Dustin explains. "I mean, come on. He gets angry and it snows; eventually a person's gonna pick up that they're causing it."
"Has he really made it snow?" Mark asks curiously.
"That was just an example," Dustin says. "But you get my point."
"Yeah," Mark says. He's quiet for a while, and Dustin starts making those absent-minded humming noises that he always does. Usually it pisses Mark off to no end. "Hey," he says. "Thanks."
"Yep," Dustin says lightly. "Gonna go now, dude, bye."
---
The deposition is almost over. Sy reminds Mark of this every morning, like he's hoping that telling him there's an end in sight will make Mark behave more appropriately. There's no reason it would, and Mark tunes out everything Sy says.
Mark is running out of time; he needs to talk to Eduardo again.
It will be more difficult to catch Eduardo a second time. Mark got to Sy's offices early, so they've got at least an hour before he would normally expect to meet Mark on the way to Eduardo's firm's building.
"I want to talk to Eduardo," Mark says.
Sy looks up. His assistant ducks her head and leaves the room quietly. One of the reasons Chris had recommended this firm is their discretion. "What do you mean?" Sy asks.
"I want to talk to him," Mark says. "Today, before they start asking more questions."
Sy opens his mouth.
"Alone," Mark adds.
"Well, Mark," Sy says. "I'm not going to say I don't understand the temptation, but you have to remember he's suing you. Anything you say to him could undermine our side."
"I'm not going to argue with him," Mark says. "But I am going to talk to him. If you won't help me, I'll catch him in the bathroom again, or figure out where he's staying." He already knows where Eduardo's staying, of course. He checked before he let Sy's firm book him a hotel.
"In the bathroom again," Sy mutters. "It goes against multiple agreements if we let you two talk to each other alone."
Mark stares at him.
"I suppose it wouldn't technically be anyone's fault if you were to meet each other in the conference room while his counsel and I are making arrangements in the hall," Sy says.
Mark nods.
---
Eduardo looks surprised when he walks into the conference room and sees Mark. He looks even more surprised when, after twisting around, he sees none of the lawyers have come in with him.
Mark revises his opinion of Sy to 'slightly above worthless' and says, before Eduardo can bolt, "They'll be in here soon, anyway. You can survive me for a couple of minutes, can't you?"
Eduardo looks at him, mouth firming, and then walks carefully around to his normal seat at the table.
"The bathroom was immature," Mark says.
Eduardo raises his eyebrows, meeting Mark's eyes - probably inadvertently, judging by the way he looks away immediately after. "I'm surprised you're admitting that," he says.
"I didn't know how to start talking to you," Mark says.
Nodding, Eduardo says, "I understand how it could be difficult."
Eduardo is a passive-aggressive bitch. Mark breathes out through his nose and says, "So what do you think of the weather we've been having?"
Face blank, Eduardo says, "I'm in agreement with everyone else, I imagine. It sucks."
"You should see California," Mark says.
"I haven't kept up with California's weather," Eduardo says vaguely. He starts thumbing through papers.
He's evading the question. Mark narrows his eyes. "You should. People say it's really interesting. And you always liked weather. Maybe even had an affinity for it."
Eduardo meets his eyes again and says, "I have better things to do."
"Clearly," Mark snorts before he can stop himself.
What little tension had eased from Eduardo's face returns full-strength. Mark swears to himself, but before he can try again the lawyers bustle into the room.
Gretchen is in full bitch mode, glowering between Eduardo and Mark, and from the way she eyes Sy, she clearly suspects they've been set up.
"I hope you haven't been discussing the suit at all," she says to Mark and Eduardo. "You know that could breach contract."
"We were talking about the weather," Mark says.
"Sy," Gretchen says, "your client seems to be unaware of the repercussions of contract breaches."
"Are they worse than half a billion dollars?" Mark asks. "Because if so, they're not really repercussions, are they?"
Everyone in the room seems to shift uncomfortably. Eduardo stares at Mark across the table, and the droplets of rain start to fall outside. Mark stares back at Eduardo, and then glances very deliberately at the window.
The meeting gets worse from there. Gretchen is worse when she's actually pissed, which Mark would've have thought possible, but there it is. She's a much better lawyer than Sy - maybe not in total, but in this case, for Eduardo, she is, and Mark thinks it's only fair to judge lawyers by their cases and right now, Sy has not been all too impressive. He spends most of the day protesting borderline-rude comments Gretchen and Eduardo make and verbally retreating from every question they try to ask Mark.
In short, he's losing.
Then he brings up the chicken. Mark reaches over to touch his arm but Sy waves him off. Eduardo looks incredulous, and Sy gets what he deserves, because Mark doesn't blame them for bringing up cheating in response to animal abuse at all - it's only playing on Sy's level, after all.
Still, Mark decides he rather enjoys having the moral high ground for once - Eduardo's face when he parrots "Oops," back at him is priceless.
---
Continued
Recipient: putana
Prompt Number: 52
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Eduardo
Rating/Warnings: PG
Word Count: 15,128
Disclaimer: This fanwork is based on fictional representations of the characters in The Social Network; I make no claims of ownership of the characters or concepts.
Prompt: Eduardo has always had an affinity with the weather - odd things, like always being warm; knowing when it will rain/snow and it even pays off with friends - Mark is never cold when Eduardo is happy (flip-flops in the snow, for example). But it has never been a weird thing. Until the dilution - suddenly the weather is playing up in a major way, unseasonal weather - spring never arriving! - and odd bouts of weather for the people that have upset Eduardo (for example - Peter's house floods; Sean nearly gets hit with lightening five times and it seems to snow over the Facebook offices). Initially Mark doesn't notice, but everyone else does, and initially there is no obvious connection. Until the depositions and Mark just can't help but notice that the weather seems to react to Eduardo's moods. So Mark has to bring spring back :D
Notes: The timeline for the depositions has been entirely made up, because the movie was not specific enough for my purposes here. :3
Chris is being deposed first. Mark's legal team tells him both depositions will start with the least important testimonials and work their way up, gathering evidence. Dustin had made noises about being "unimportant"; Chris had raised his eyebrows and put the dates on his schedule and gone back to ignoring that Eduardo is suing them.
("He's suing you," Dustin says. "Not us."
"He's causing you to be deposed," Mark says stubbornly.
"But he's suing you," Dustin says.)
He's hired an outside firm to represent him. He hadn't wanted to, he'd have preferred to use Facebook's in-house counsel, but Chris had insisted he hire out. He'd pointed out that, since some personal details might get dragged around, Mark might prefer the majority of the details were handled by someone he wouldn't have to continue working with afterwards.
However, Chris and Dustin also have their own lawyers, despite the fact that neither lawsuit involves either of them any more than tangentially and isn't likely to reveal anything personal. The law firms had all insisted on this, saying they wanted to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Chris had told Mark that they were treating this like any corporate suit, where nasty and illegal things might come to light that could harm anyone, instead of handling it like the personal attack it is.
But Mark's lawyers are good; they got the two depositions to overlap for the most part, so Mark has to spend a couple of weeks in New York but at least he only has to go once.
The lawsuits have proceeded this far without any of them; the lawyers have already spent more than a couple hours arguing about the content they'll be allowed to discuss. Mark had told his team that everything was off-limits; they'd responded that, for all practical purposes, nothing was going to be off-limits.
He has no idea what Eduardo and his lawyers are doing. He'd looked up the rival firm and the main lawyer as soon as Sy had told him who Eduardo had hired. They were good: good record, reliable, experienced.
The actual depositions start mid-March, and by the time Mark gets to New York, it will have been almost four years since he was last in the city.
Chris goes first, and he's leaving for New York on the thirteenth. Dustin's supposed to go right after Chris. Mark will start the week after that, but he's going to New York with Dustin, because Dustin swore he needed moral support. Mark could've pointed out that he would have Chris, but Chris has been in a prickly mood. Besides, it will give Mark an opportunity to be around; he's hoping to catch sight of Eduardo before they see each other in the depositions.
Sy has told him, explicitly and repeatedly, to avoid any and all contact with the other side. This applies to the Winklevii, too, of course, but everyone in the room knew it was mainly about Eduardo. Mark had nodded and ignored everything that came after. He's felt Eduardo's interference for too many years with no concrete presence to blame; he's not going to pass up the opportunity to see him now.
---
"You two can room together, if you want," Chris says. "I'll be on my own, thanks."
Mark shrugs, but Dustin looks a little crestfallen.
"I just want to get this over with," Chris says to Dustin, more gently.
"Yeah, I know," Dustin says. He shrugs.
Chris turns back to the front desk and finishes getting their rooms. He puts Dustin and Mark in a suite and himself two floors down from them.
In the suite, Dustin claims which room is his with more vehemence than is necessary, since Mark doesn't have any preference at all. Mark normally leaves all his clothes in his suitcase, taking them out and scattering them as he needs them, but today he unpacks, hanging and folding things away.
"So," Dustin says when Mark is done. He came in about halfway through and sat in the middle of the bed, watching. "We've got dinner with the lawyers tonight."
"Because we won't be seeing enough of them," Mark mutters.
"They're on our side," Dustin says, which has become something of a mantra since Chris first made Mark meet with Sy and his team.
"Not really," Mark says.
---
He can't come into the deposition room with Dustin or Chris. He goes with Dustin his first day, because he plans on waiting in the lobby and seeing Eduardo as everyone comes in. Unfortunately, the lawyers catch him and send him out of the building before Eduardo ever shows up, claiming he has a disruptive intent. His team agrees with them - and yes, our side is definitely bullshit - and Mark gets sent back to the hotel. Since seeing Eduardo was the sole reason he came to New York early, this puts him in a foul mood for the next two days.
Chris gets to leave on a late night flight after one day. Dustin grumbles about the unfairness of it all, and Mark points out that Chris wasn't as instrumental to Facebook's development as Dustin was.
"Shut up, Mark," Dustin says. "That's rude."
He's angry - he's been snappish, because apparently being deposed hasn't been as easy as the lawyers had claimed it would be - but Mark doesn't understand why that upset him. It's true.
"Just-" Dustin sighs. "Shut up."
That seems to be everyone's attitude about what's going on, honestly. Chris had refused to look at Mark once he was done with his one day of questioning, saying a quick goodbye to Dustin and disappearing back to the airport. Mark doesn't understand the reaction; there's nothing new going on here that Dustin and Chris hadn't known about four years ago.
It's been frustrating for him, too, because Dustin, who claimed going in that he didn't give a shit what the rules were about privacy, he'd tell Mark about what went on, has clammed up. He won't even tell Mark about Eduardo, other than to say that yes, he was there.
Mark is getting tired of it all, and he hasn't even sat through his own yet.
---
When he first sees Eduardo, it's at the deposition for the Winklevii's case. Mark isn't expecting him to be there - he stares a little, and Sy has to touch his elbow to get him going. Eduardo doesn't look at him as they file into the room.
Eduardo's wearing a suit that could be any one of the ones he used to wear. He looks a little older, which Mark decides is only fair, and mostly, he looks tired. When he starts talking, his accent is different, as if he hasn't spoken much English for a while.
The tiredness becomes more deeply ingrained in his face as the day goes on. Eduardo's only deposed for a few hours, and he answers quickly, short and fair. Mark's shoulders relax, because he doesn't see how their depositions could be bad if Eduardo's this civil. He's not like the Winklevii, who whine about entitled bullshit and don't even realize they're doing it.
The questions get more invasive before they let Eduardo go. He's there for a little over three hours, by the time they're done, and by the end they're nitpicking every little detail, digging into Eduardo's past and his family. They ask things like why he went to Harvard, how he felt about privilege, since that was something Mr. Zuckerberg had made clear he didn't like - how did Eduardo feel about being friends with someone who detested where he came from?
Sy, when Mark pulls him back to make him explain, says they're trying to undermine Eduardo's position since nothing he said helped their case.
Eduardo's lawyer handles it, for the most part. Eduardo spends the whole meeting either staring out the windows at the slowly darkening sky - and it throws Mark off at first, the way the room feels like evening or night when it's only ten in the morning - or watching the lawyers intently. He's paying more attention than Mark is.
The weather turns sour as the morning passes, and by the time Eduardo leaves one of the associate lawyers is muttering to a coworker about high-speed winds and how the chance of rain was zero this morning, that's why she hadn't brought an umbrella. Mark looks at the window after Eduardo's gone, trying to see if that's what had interested him so much.
"It's raining," Mark says.
"I'm sorry?"
"It just started raining," Mark says.
The lawyer repeats his question and Mark answers it exactly how it deserves, but he's mostly occupied with the window and the patter of rain and wondering where Eduardo is and what he's doing.
---
That was when the idea took root. It likely never would've come to anything, except Dustin sticks his head in Mark's room that evening - Mark is checking various weather sites, looking at forecasts and learning a little, just a little, about weather patterns, because it never hurts to know - and says, "Hey, I was talking to Chris. Did you know California's been put under a hurricane warning?"
"The entire state?" Mark snorts.
"Yeah," Dustin says earnestly, and Mark blinks at him.
"That's unusual," he says.
"Bad timing, too." Dustin nods. "Chris is pissed."
"Yeah," Mark says. He frowns and pulls up California's weather alongside New York's.
"I told him God was punishing us," Dustin says. "He didn't think that was funny."
Mark says, "Not God."
Dustin pauses, blinking at him. Mark starts reading about weather in earnest.
---
Two days pass, and Mark can't go anywhere without hearing conversations about the fucking weather. He's heard mention of this as New York's monsoon season more than once, and several shitty jokes about the apocalypse, for some reason. Every time, he looks at the splatter of the water on the windows and wonders just how insane he's become.
But he's only seen weather like this once before. It had rained for three weeks after Eduardo left, back in Palo Alto at the beginning. It had sometimes stormed, sometimes drizzled, but it always, always rained. By the time it had finally stopped nearly all the streets had been flooded and the news had started coverage of evacuation procedures.
Mark hadn't paid much attention then, too busy with Facebook and Sean's drugs and Eduardo's absence and Dustin's stony, hurt silences to pay much attention to the weather.
He regrets that, a little - he might have more proof now if he had. Instead he's left with an insane suspicion and the urge to catalogue every weather condition he's ever experienced. There is, at the very least, another week before the depositions will be over; Dustin is starting to waver in his determination to stay to the end of everything.
Outside, the thunder gives one last reluctant grumble as the storm starts to subside. Mark blinks at the window and decides he really has nothing to lose.
---
He writes a program.
The first step was to catalogue the weather. There had been a lot more variation in the weather at Harvard than there had been in Palo Alto, so Mark had decided at least some of that had to be natural, but Palo Alto is a little easier, since its standard weather is almost the same year round; he starts with Palo Alto. So when Mark makes his lists, all Palo Alto weather that wasn't sunny with moderate breezes gets put into a list, where the program will track the date and time of anything unusual, cross-referenced against national and international weather databases to check for patterns and reasonable variation. The Massachusetts weather data is more complicated and so has more variation in what's considered "seasonable"-the program probably won't produce as much conclusive evidence there.
Mark spends most of an evening on it, and ends up with a list of parameters he's pleased with.
Once the list of all suspicious weather in Massachusetts and California from 2002 to 2008, roughly, has been compiled, Mark is going to find a way to compare it against as many of the details of Eduardo's life he can get his hands on. If there's any correlation, Mark will find it.
During the day he sits through more bullshit. Eduardo is melodramatic and distant and dangerous, and the lawyers are by turn pompous and cowardly but always useless. Mark doodles, mostly, trying to keep his mind busy while he watches the glass-windowed wall from the corner of his eye. He draws clouds, mostly, or lightning bolts. Sometimes rainbows, but the cheerful connotation of them usually presents too much irony for him to stomach while Eduardo sits five feet and four years away, acting as if Mark ruined the whole world and this is his comeuppance.
---
The night before Dustin leaves - because Mark acted as moral support and Dustin felt obligated to return the favor, but Mark doesn't give a shit, and would actually prefer Dustin go babysit the site instead of him, and Dustin is finally listening to what he wants - he grabs Mark's laptop from the desk and holds it captive. He says, "Really, I saw you stalking Eduardo. What's up?"
"I am not stalking Eduardo," Mark says.
"You have more info about his life before age three than anyone except his mother should have," Dustin says. "That's stalking."
"Fuck off," Mark says.
"I'm not giving you back the laptop," Dustin says.
Which is a lie. Dustin would. Mark can wait him out - he has before. But he could use some help, honestly, and there's no reason to lie to Dustin.
"I'm investigating his past to see whether my theory is correct," Mark says.
Dustin tilts his head. "What theory?"
Mark says, "Have you noticed the weird weather?"
"I know you have," Dustin says. "I thought maybe you were picking up Eduardo's meteorology hobby in an effort to feel close to him, or maybe you thought you could establish new common ground."
Mark frowns. "What?"
Dustin shakes his head. "Never mind. What about the weather?"
"It matches Eduardo's moods," Mark says.
Dustin blinks at him for several long moments. Mark watches his laptop, still held tight against Dustin's stomach, just in case an opportunity for reclamation presents itself.
"So," Dustin says, "you think Eduardo's moods control the weather?"
"I think Eduardo controls the weather," Mark says.
"That," Dustin says, after another pregnant pause, "is incredibly cool." And then he demands to see what Mark has.
Dustin is the sort of person to do utterly insane things to support his friends, even if he doesn't agree with them. But he doesn't seem to doubt Mark. Mark doesn't know why he ever underestimates Dustin's willingness to believe the weird and fantastical - or his willingness to help his friends, which this very well may be. Either way, though, Mark doesn't care; and Dustin helps him with the research even once he's back in California.
---
It's never raining in the mornings. It's overcast almost every day, but it never rains before nine a.m. The Weather Channel, which Mark has started tuning to every morning as soon as he gets up, talks about the "weather block" that's settled over the city, and other parts of the country like California. The hurricane that's brewing right off the coast, the one that has the whole state on high alert, is just sitting there, inactive and menacing.
It's almost humorous, listening to the so-called scientists try to explain what the fuck is going on. Mark finds their utter failure comforting.
The first rain will start to fall early morning, and by lunch there's usually a steady, pathetic drip. Some of the lawyers have started eating lunch in the building, in various offices and spare rooms, because everyone is so tired of going outside. The rain either continues that way for the rest of the day or worsens slowly throughout the afternoon.
It's always in accordance with Eduardo's moods and the pace of the depositions. A lot of people would probably tell Mark he's imagining it, or claim that everyone's mood gets worse as the weather worsens, but Mark doesn't believe in coincidence to this extent. Without conclusive data from the program, he can't prove anything, but he doubts the idea less and less as the days pass. Dustin's still researching Eduardo's past, because Mark isn't allowed access to a computer during the day, and he takes longer than Mark would.
Mark, tired of waiting, decides he'll have to go directly to the source.
---
The lawyers put a concerted effort into keeping Mark and Eduardo away from each other, aided no doubt by Eduardo's tendency to disappear whenever he's feeling too uncomfortable. However, four days before the depositions are scheduled to end, Mark catches Eduardo in the bathroom.
It takes a little bit of maneuvering, which Mark will never admit he did. He ducks out to use the restroom and makes sure Eduardo's lawyer, that awful, manipulative woman, sees him come back out. Then he heads down the hall, ducking around the corner where the water cooler is. A couple of minutes later he checks back and sees that the lawyers are all clustered together around the center of the conference table, heads bent together. It looks as if they're all plotting something; which would be entirely plausible, in fact, but Mark doesn't really care whether they are or not. The important thing is that Eduardo is not in the room with them, and since he didn't pass by Mark, he must be in the bathroom.
Mark ducks back inside.
Eduardo is washing his hands at the sink, and he looks up and stares at Mark in the mirror.
"Eduardo," Mark says.
Eduardo doesn't answer, just looks back down at his hands and finishes rinsing them.
"Or am I really supposed to call you 'Mr. Saverin?'" Mark says.
Eduardo doesn't react. He shakes the water off his hands and steps over to the towel dispenser, pulling one out and drying his hands meticulously.
"Your lawyer's a bitch," Mark says.
Eduardo throws the towel away and steps toward the door. Mark stays right in front of it. They stand there, staring at each other, until finally Eduardo raises his eyebrows a little and says, quietly, "Mark." He sounds composed and distant and too polite, considering the circumstances.
Mark sneers. "That's the most eloquent thing you have to say? You've had four years to think of something. And your parting words were so affecting."
"Your name versus several spur-of-the-moment, immature insults?" Eduardo says. "I think I've come out on top, here."
Then he reaches out, takes Mark's elbow, and steers him aside just enough to open the door and slide out of the bathroom.
Mark follows Eduardo back into the conference room, feeling powerlessly, helplessly angry: at Eduardo, at the lawyers, at the lawsuits, at Eduardo. Eduardo takes a seat, back straight, and takes a few slow drinks from a glass of water.
Outside the windows, lightning cracks the sky open and rain slams down. Mark meets Eduardo's blank gaze and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, triumphant and fascinating and impossible, that he was right.
---
Dustin calls repeatedly, over and over, until Mark finally picks up that night. He says he has found all information there is to be had on Eduardo - and his family - between the ages of four and eleven; Mark, while he doesn't exactly believe Dustin, doesn't have time to do more than a cursory check for himself. He at least doesn't appear to have missed anything too important.
"You're welcome," Dustin says. "For breaking every privacy law out there and spending my last four waking days coming to your aid."
"Yes, thank you," Mark says, annoyed. The email with Dustin's data comes through; Mark starts plugging it in.
"So how's it going there?" Dustin asks. "Chris keeps asking me if you've had a mental breakdown yet."
Mark pauses. "By his standards, yes, probably."
"Hey, it's not crazy if it turns out to be true," Dustin says.
"Do you believe me?" Mark asks quietly. It's a moment of weakness, and a stupid question, since it doesn't affect things either way if Dustin doesn't.
"You know, yeah," Dustin says. "I mean, it's weird and crazy and impossible, but if anyone were hiding an ability to control the weather, it'd be Eduardo, right?"
"Or Chris," Mark says.
Dustin snorts. "Exactly. I don't believe you; I believe it, because basically, either Eduardo controls the weather or there is some vast meteorological conspiracy theory centered on him. Super powers don't sound so crazy when compared to the alternative explanations."
"I don't think it's a super power," Mark says.
"He controls the weather," Dustin says.
"He may not know he's doing it," Mark says.
"Believe me," Dustin says. "He knows."
"What do you mean?" Mark asks, frowning.
"There's no way he couldn't," Dustin explains. "I mean, come on. He gets angry and it snows; eventually a person's gonna pick up that they're causing it."
"Has he really made it snow?" Mark asks curiously.
"That was just an example," Dustin says. "But you get my point."
"Yeah," Mark says. He's quiet for a while, and Dustin starts making those absent-minded humming noises that he always does. Usually it pisses Mark off to no end. "Hey," he says. "Thanks."
"Yep," Dustin says lightly. "Gonna go now, dude, bye."
---
The deposition is almost over. Sy reminds Mark of this every morning, like he's hoping that telling him there's an end in sight will make Mark behave more appropriately. There's no reason it would, and Mark tunes out everything Sy says.
Mark is running out of time; he needs to talk to Eduardo again.
It will be more difficult to catch Eduardo a second time. Mark got to Sy's offices early, so they've got at least an hour before he would normally expect to meet Mark on the way to Eduardo's firm's building.
"I want to talk to Eduardo," Mark says.
Sy looks up. His assistant ducks her head and leaves the room quietly. One of the reasons Chris had recommended this firm is their discretion. "What do you mean?" Sy asks.
"I want to talk to him," Mark says. "Today, before they start asking more questions."
Sy opens his mouth.
"Alone," Mark adds.
"Well, Mark," Sy says. "I'm not going to say I don't understand the temptation, but you have to remember he's suing you. Anything you say to him could undermine our side."
"I'm not going to argue with him," Mark says. "But I am going to talk to him. If you won't help me, I'll catch him in the bathroom again, or figure out where he's staying." He already knows where Eduardo's staying, of course. He checked before he let Sy's firm book him a hotel.
"In the bathroom again," Sy mutters. "It goes against multiple agreements if we let you two talk to each other alone."
Mark stares at him.
"I suppose it wouldn't technically be anyone's fault if you were to meet each other in the conference room while his counsel and I are making arrangements in the hall," Sy says.
Mark nods.
---
Eduardo looks surprised when he walks into the conference room and sees Mark. He looks even more surprised when, after twisting around, he sees none of the lawyers have come in with him.
Mark revises his opinion of Sy to 'slightly above worthless' and says, before Eduardo can bolt, "They'll be in here soon, anyway. You can survive me for a couple of minutes, can't you?"
Eduardo looks at him, mouth firming, and then walks carefully around to his normal seat at the table.
"The bathroom was immature," Mark says.
Eduardo raises his eyebrows, meeting Mark's eyes - probably inadvertently, judging by the way he looks away immediately after. "I'm surprised you're admitting that," he says.
"I didn't know how to start talking to you," Mark says.
Nodding, Eduardo says, "I understand how it could be difficult."
Eduardo is a passive-aggressive bitch. Mark breathes out through his nose and says, "So what do you think of the weather we've been having?"
Face blank, Eduardo says, "I'm in agreement with everyone else, I imagine. It sucks."
"You should see California," Mark says.
"I haven't kept up with California's weather," Eduardo says vaguely. He starts thumbing through papers.
He's evading the question. Mark narrows his eyes. "You should. People say it's really interesting. And you always liked weather. Maybe even had an affinity for it."
Eduardo meets his eyes again and says, "I have better things to do."
"Clearly," Mark snorts before he can stop himself.
What little tension had eased from Eduardo's face returns full-strength. Mark swears to himself, but before he can try again the lawyers bustle into the room.
Gretchen is in full bitch mode, glowering between Eduardo and Mark, and from the way she eyes Sy, she clearly suspects they've been set up.
"I hope you haven't been discussing the suit at all," she says to Mark and Eduardo. "You know that could breach contract."
"We were talking about the weather," Mark says.
"Sy," Gretchen says, "your client seems to be unaware of the repercussions of contract breaches."
"Are they worse than half a billion dollars?" Mark asks. "Because if so, they're not really repercussions, are they?"
Everyone in the room seems to shift uncomfortably. Eduardo stares at Mark across the table, and the droplets of rain start to fall outside. Mark stares back at Eduardo, and then glances very deliberately at the window.
The meeting gets worse from there. Gretchen is worse when she's actually pissed, which Mark would've have thought possible, but there it is. She's a much better lawyer than Sy - maybe not in total, but in this case, for Eduardo, she is, and Mark thinks it's only fair to judge lawyers by their cases and right now, Sy has not been all too impressive. He spends most of the day protesting borderline-rude comments Gretchen and Eduardo make and verbally retreating from every question they try to ask Mark.
In short, he's losing.
Then he brings up the chicken. Mark reaches over to touch his arm but Sy waves him off. Eduardo looks incredulous, and Sy gets what he deserves, because Mark doesn't blame them for bringing up cheating in response to animal abuse at all - it's only playing on Sy's level, after all.
Still, Mark decides he rather enjoys having the moral high ground for once - Eduardo's face when he parrots "Oops," back at him is priceless.
---
Continued