fic: that secret that you know, but don't know how to tell (part 3/3)
fic: that secret that you know, but don't know how to tell (part 3/3)
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo, noncon mark/sean
warning: this piece contains triggers for noncon. please, please read with caution. thank you!
notes: written for the tsn_kinkmeme prompt (an excerpt) : "Come on, Sean's every expression just screamed rape!face, and I'm dying to see how Eduardo handles Mark after he's been broken like a wild foal."
title is from bon iver's "blood bank"
Two days of carefully avoiding Eduardo, coding until his eyes burn, and starting every time he hears the phone, and finally his cell rings. He’s in the car, because they actually needed real food and Eduardo’s at a meeting.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Zuckerberg, it’s Anna Weinstein, from the attorney’s office-”
“Yes. Yeah. Um, hi.”
“I’d like to discuss a couple things with you, if you could meet me somewhere.”
Mark can’t read her tone. He’s never been able to read people's voices but she’s even more inscrutable than most.
Ten minutes later, he’s sitting awkwardly at a Starbucks by the grocery store, and Anna walks in.
“Are you sure we should- be here? In public?” Mark says instead of a greeting, and she looks around. The store is mostly empty.
“This will be fine, Mr. Zuckerberg. How are you?”
Mark shrugs slightly, face blank. He fucking hates that question.
“What we need to talk about is the value that your testimony will have in the case against Mr. Parker.”
Mark fidgets nervously and nods.
“Mark...” she sighs. “I’ve discussed your testimony with the other lawyers handling the case, and the fact is, we’re not going to be able to use it.”
Mark doesn’t say anything, but his breath speeds up, just slightly, and he nods again, jerkily.
“We’re trying to construct the most effective, open-and-shut case because convictions only happen when the offender is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt-”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you. That’s what makes this so hard.”
He wants to punch something, but he’s never punched anything before.
“The fact is, the lack of physical evidence as well as your emotional and business ties to the offender don’t result in a solid enough case. Lindsay was sober at the time of the incident, she used a rape kit nearly immediately after, and she has no reason to accuse Mr. Parker-”
“I didn’t even say anything until Lindsay filed her case!”
She looks at him, eyes sympathetic. “That’s another reason, unfortunately. Why would you have waited until a charge was filed against him? Did you want him out of the company, did you think you could cash in off of the case- Mark, these are questions that jurors ask.”
He stands up, shaking, and walks out.
“Mark-” she calls after him, but he doesn’t turn around.
It takes five minutes of sitting silent in the front seat of his car before he can turn the key in the ignition. He tries to sit still, and his hands keep jerking, twitching, it’s so fucking unfair, and he told someone, God, he told someone and in the end no one cared. What was the point?
-----
Eduardo greets him at the door, and he must notice Mark’s white face, his lips pressed tight.
“What’s up?” he asks concernedly, and Mark just walks past him into his bedroom, lies down on his side facing the wall. He hasn’t felt like this in a while, completely impotent, useless, helpless. He hasn’t felt it in exactly three weeks and six days, since Sean patted him on the thigh and told him not to make a big deal out of it.
Eduardo pads up silently to the bed and sits next to him. It creaks under his weight. He smells like detergent and musky cologne.
“Mark.”
Mark heaves in a breath and turns to lie on his back.
“Mark, you’ve been acting weird the last couple days-” he refrains from mentioning the kiss, but Mark’s face goes hot anyway. “Just- did anything happen?”
Mark shoots him a look. What is the right answer to that question? Things happen. Things have happened. There was a level-three earthquake in Pasadena yesterday. That happened.
“Mark,” Eduardo hesitates and looks down. “Did- did he contact you? Have you been seeing him?”
And it’s so exactly the opposite of what’s been happening the last two days that he pounds his fist against the mattress in frustration.
“No. No, Wardo, I haven’t-”
“Okay, okay,” Eduardo says, placatingly.
“I talked to the girl.”
There’s a silence, and then Eduardo says, understanding immediately what Mark means, as usual, “You- you did? What did you say?”
“I mean. I talked to her, and I told her. What happened.”
Eduardo bends over him, eyes wide. “Mark- I- when? What happened?”
Mark can’t make eye contact but he knows he has to explain. Eduardo will know what to do, and normally Mark hates asking anyone else for help, but it’s Eduardo, so he steadies his voice and goes on.
“I talked to her lawyer. They said they can’t use my testimony because of the lack of physical evidence and- and the emotional ties I have to him, fuck, Wardo-” he closes his eyes and breathes wetly, and in a second Eduardo’s lying down next to him, arm wrapped around Mark’s shoulder, and why does Mark always find himself almost-sobbing into Eduardo? If he were someone else, he’d find some grand mystical sign in it. But he’s him, so he just swallows and lets Eduardo rub a warm hand up and down his back until his breathing slows.
“Hey, hey,” Eduardo is saying. “Hey.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asks quietly, because the last time he asked that question was when he was twelve years old. It feels rusty.
Eduardo sighs.
“Mark. Don’t get mad, alright? Just- have you thought about therapy?”
Mark pushes up and away, and in a second is sitting on the edge of the bed, head spinning.
“That’s your suggestion? Really?”
“Mark, come on.”
“Fuck off, Wardo.”
The breath Eduardo draws in then shakes tenuously.
“I really- Mark, I, uh, I lov- care about you so much. But I’m just- God, Mark, I don’t know what to say to you sometimes and please, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m equipped-” he’s babbling, and all Mark hears is I can’t help you.
------
“My- my friend thinks I should go to a therapist,” he says the next day at Lindsay’s house. She’d readily agreed to meet when Mark called her. He’s still not really sure why he did, why he still wants to talk to her when the lawsuit, for him, is over.
“Eduardo?”
His head jerks up. “How did you-”
“Okay, I might not be the CEO of Facebook, but I do know how to use Google. There’s like 800 Hah-vahd Crimson articles about you guys.”
Mark looks down. “Yeah. Him.”
“Well, how do you feel about it?”
“I don’t want to,” Mark says automatically.
“Why?”
“Therapy is for people who can’t handle their problems. I can handle it.”
“Eduardo doesn’t think you can?”
He looks up at her sharply.
“Wardo doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.”
“Wardo?” She arches an eyebrow at him and he goes red. She grins.
“Whatever.”
“Well, do you think you’re handling it?”
Normally he’d chafe at a question like that, it’s such bullshit, it’s nobody else’s business, and he’s alive right now, does that mean he’s handling it? But Lindsay is genuinely curious, and, maybe it’s sick because it’s only because of what happened to them, but he trusts her.
“I know what you want me to say. I’m secretly a tortured individual, no one knows my inner pain, etcetera, right?”
She laughs, humoring him, and something about the way she stays silent makes him want to keep talking. She’s going to be a really good therapist someday.
“I have dreams. Nightmares, whatever, about- um, yeah,” he admits quietly, unwillingly, and she just stares at him, nods a little.
“I did too,” she says.
“Not now?”
“Not often. Anymore.”
He fidgets with the hem of his shorts. “Um. How?”
“It’s not a one-time solution. I mean, I don’t know why. I started talking about it. I went to therapy. Yes, therapy. Do you hate me now?”
He spares her a brief smile and chews his lip.
“It’s nice. All it is is talking, and only about what you want. You could go in there and talk about Facebook business strategy for an hour.
“Or?”
“Or you can talk about what happened. And it might help. Just to have someone else know about it, you know? Carry the load.”
“You sound like a brochure.”
“Fuck off,” she says, but she’s smiling. Mark’s lips curl upward a little in response. It’s the first time a girl’s ever said that to him jokingly.
“Mark- as a Buddhist, I shouldn’t believe in vengeance, or whatever- shut up, okay, I'm technically non-practicing. But I know that Sean Parker is going to go to prison. And I’m happy about that. And I hate that you can’t be a part of the case, but when I send that fucker to prison I want you to be happy too. Okay? I’m gonna do it for you.”
"You're Buddhist of the year, obviously," he says, not sure how to respond, and she pulls him into a hug, her hair brushing his chin.
“So much physical contact, with girls,” he grumbles, in a way he never would have been comfortable enough to before he met Lindsay.
“Just girls? Not Wardo?” She wiggles her eyebrows, pulling back.
“Weird, that you can go from Miss Buddhist Zen to a twelve year old in thirty seconds,” Mark says sarcastically, only a little flushed this time, and she mock-punches him.
“I’ll email you, okay?” He nods, and turns back at the end of her sidewalk.
“Good luck,” he calls, and as he says it he realizes how long it’s been since he said that too. She smiles from the doorstep and goes inside.
-----
When he walks back into the house, Dustin rams into him and gives him a hug. “Dude! Dude! Yes!” he chants, incomprehensibly, and Mark flinches away.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Eduardo comes up from behind Dustin with a bottle of champagne, grinning.
“Peter Thiel just called. How does an investment of half a million dollars sound?”
“You’re kidding,” Mark says slowly, and Dustin grabs the champagne out of Eduardo’s hand and takes a swig.
Eduardo just smiles.
“I’m not kidding. We have to go in later today and sign a couple papers, but, Mark, it’s a done deal.”
“I didn’t even know you had set up a meeting-” Mark says incredulously.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been- I mean, it hasn’t been such a big deal. Just a couple meetings.” He goes red, and Mark yanks the bottle out of Dustin’s hand, keeping his eyes on Eduardo’s.
“Dude, it’s like noon. Stop drinking.”
Dustin waves him off and walks into the kitchen.
“Half a million dollars? Half a million dollars.”
Eduardo nods, and breathes out in shock when Mark reaches out and puts his arms around him.
He gets with the program fast enough, hugs him hard and then lets him go when Dustin comes back in with plastic cups.
“I don’t care what you guys say, we’re having some champagne. Offices, Mark! And interns! More interns! Can we hire a hot girl for once? Please?”
“Dustin, I’m not letting you get anywhere near our interns,” Eduardo says, laughing, and Mark feels his throat constrict. He goes red, and God, they’re staring at him, Eduardo and Dustin, because he’s choking on his own breath and he dimly remembers God, it’s gonna be great to have a couple new interns around here, you know, a couple Stanford girls, right, Mark?, a conspiratorial wink, a hand curled around his shoulder. He swallows desperately and tries to stop coughing, but he’s wheezing in and out by now.
“You okay, Mark?” Dustin says, and Eduardo turns to him and whispers something and he leaves the room, sending a quick anxious look over his shoulder.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, then, somehow, and Eduardo’s face is in front of him, warm and present and close.
“Hey. You’re okay. It’s okay.” He rubs a hand flat over Mark’s chest, still thumping up and down in a frantic parody of breathing.
“We’ll go in, we’ll sign the papers, it’s gonna be okay, yeah?”
Mark nods.
“I think I could go,” he says, each word unwilling. “To- to therapy. Or whatever. Maybe.”
Eduardo unexpectedly cups Mark’s jaw in his hand.
“Okay,” he says softly. “That’s - yeah.”
Mark closes his eyes and breathes.
-----
They start moving in the next day.
“I need a new desk,” Dustin says, hands on his hips, as he surveys the mess in front of them. The building’s amazing, but they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, and it looks like a tornado hit it.
“You need a desk, period,” Eduardo says firmly. “That’s a card table.”
“So, where do I go? Where does one buy desks? I’ve never bought a desk. Like, Bed Bath and Beyond?”
“I think we need to hire a decorator.”
“Ooh, can we do a spaceship theme?”
“Please stop being five.”
“Wardo-” Mark calls, staggering under a desk chair, and Eduardo runs to steady him. Eric comes in dragging three huge plastic bags of mousepads and various other office supplies, and Qian comes behind him wheeling two chairs.
“Are we supposed to just set them anywhere?” he asks, pushing his glasses up with one finger, and Eric looks up questioningly.
Eduardo sighs.
“We really do need a decorator.”
Mark’s pushing the chair behind the desk in his glass-walled office.
“This is amazing,” Eduardo says, laughing. “It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Mark shrugs, and sits on the edge of the desk.
“How are you?” Eduardo asks quietly, and Mark shrugs again, looking up at him.
“You can be excited. It’s okay.” He steps closer, in between Mark’s legs, and Mark reaches up and kisses him, once, briefly, close-mouthed and soft.
Eduardo pulls away, but he’s smiling, huge, and it’s the first time in a long while Mark’s seen him smile like that.
“I feel good,” Mark says, taking a deep breath. “I feel good.”
------------------
Mark goes to therapy. He still doesn’t love it- it's awkward, and maybe he ends up outlining Facebook's overseas strategy in exhausting detail a couple times- but it’s not as terrible as he imagined. Lindsay emails him reports of the case, day by day, as well as a couple of her psychology essays, which he always makes incisive, bitchy comments on that she, for some reason, seems to appreciate. Eduardo plans, and gets stressed, and he keeps setting up bigger and bigger meetings, and at parties and events people recognize him and not Mark. Not that Eduardo cares, but he grins big like the businessman he is, nods politely, and slips a discreet hand onto Mark’s lower back.
---
Two months later, they hit a million members, and Eduardo kisses him under the fake fireworks bursting in technicolor on the office wall. Dustin does a victory dance consisting of a bunch of karate chops and marching in place, while Chris snorts into his Beck’s. People stand up and cheer, and Mark grins into Eduardo’s mouth.
Eduardo pulls back and smiles, wordless, eyes crinkling.
“A million members,” Mark says, still grinning, and Eduardo slings an arm around his shoulder and tugs him close.
“I fucking love you, you know that?” he says, and Mark laughs because he does know that. He thinks Eduardo might know that Mark loves him too, overprotective Jewish-motherness and all, but if not, it’s okay. He’ll tell him eventually.
It’s not going to be okay, or better, or perfect, not for a while. Mark might have nightmares. They might fight- no, they will fight - a lot. Facebook might get sued, Sean might get acquitted or let out early or released on bail, they might get sick or hurt or bored or annoyed with each other.
But maybe that’s the upside of being smart enough to see the bigger picture. It will be better. Eventually. And when Eduardo kisses the side of his head messily and laughs, Mark has faith.
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo, noncon mark/sean
warning: this piece contains triggers for noncon. please, please read with caution. thank you!
notes: written for the tsn_kinkmeme prompt (an excerpt) : "Come on, Sean's every expression just screamed rape!face, and I'm dying to see how Eduardo handles Mark after he's been broken like a wild foal."
title is from bon iver's "blood bank"
Two days of carefully avoiding Eduardo, coding until his eyes burn, and starting every time he hears the phone, and finally his cell rings. He’s in the car, because they actually needed real food and Eduardo’s at a meeting.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Zuckerberg, it’s Anna Weinstein, from the attorney’s office-”
“Yes. Yeah. Um, hi.”
“I’d like to discuss a couple things with you, if you could meet me somewhere.”
Mark can’t read her tone. He’s never been able to read people's voices but she’s even more inscrutable than most.
Ten minutes later, he’s sitting awkwardly at a Starbucks by the grocery store, and Anna walks in.
“Are you sure we should- be here? In public?” Mark says instead of a greeting, and she looks around. The store is mostly empty.
“This will be fine, Mr. Zuckerberg. How are you?”
Mark shrugs slightly, face blank. He fucking hates that question.
“What we need to talk about is the value that your testimony will have in the case against Mr. Parker.”
Mark fidgets nervously and nods.
“Mark...” she sighs. “I’ve discussed your testimony with the other lawyers handling the case, and the fact is, we’re not going to be able to use it.”
Mark doesn’t say anything, but his breath speeds up, just slightly, and he nods again, jerkily.
“We’re trying to construct the most effective, open-and-shut case because convictions only happen when the offender is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt-”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you. That’s what makes this so hard.”
He wants to punch something, but he’s never punched anything before.
“The fact is, the lack of physical evidence as well as your emotional and business ties to the offender don’t result in a solid enough case. Lindsay was sober at the time of the incident, she used a rape kit nearly immediately after, and she has no reason to accuse Mr. Parker-”
“I didn’t even say anything until Lindsay filed her case!”
She looks at him, eyes sympathetic. “That’s another reason, unfortunately. Why would you have waited until a charge was filed against him? Did you want him out of the company, did you think you could cash in off of the case- Mark, these are questions that jurors ask.”
He stands up, shaking, and walks out.
“Mark-” she calls after him, but he doesn’t turn around.
It takes five minutes of sitting silent in the front seat of his car before he can turn the key in the ignition. He tries to sit still, and his hands keep jerking, twitching, it’s so fucking unfair, and he told someone, God, he told someone and in the end no one cared. What was the point?
-----
Eduardo greets him at the door, and he must notice Mark’s white face, his lips pressed tight.
“What’s up?” he asks concernedly, and Mark just walks past him into his bedroom, lies down on his side facing the wall. He hasn’t felt like this in a while, completely impotent, useless, helpless. He hasn’t felt it in exactly three weeks and six days, since Sean patted him on the thigh and told him not to make a big deal out of it.
Eduardo pads up silently to the bed and sits next to him. It creaks under his weight. He smells like detergent and musky cologne.
“Mark.”
Mark heaves in a breath and turns to lie on his back.
“Mark, you’ve been acting weird the last couple days-” he refrains from mentioning the kiss, but Mark’s face goes hot anyway. “Just- did anything happen?”
Mark shoots him a look. What is the right answer to that question? Things happen. Things have happened. There was a level-three earthquake in Pasadena yesterday. That happened.
“Mark,” Eduardo hesitates and looks down. “Did- did he contact you? Have you been seeing him?”
And it’s so exactly the opposite of what’s been happening the last two days that he pounds his fist against the mattress in frustration.
“No. No, Wardo, I haven’t-”
“Okay, okay,” Eduardo says, placatingly.
“I talked to the girl.”
There’s a silence, and then Eduardo says, understanding immediately what Mark means, as usual, “You- you did? What did you say?”
“I mean. I talked to her, and I told her. What happened.”
Eduardo bends over him, eyes wide. “Mark- I- when? What happened?”
Mark can’t make eye contact but he knows he has to explain. Eduardo will know what to do, and normally Mark hates asking anyone else for help, but it’s Eduardo, so he steadies his voice and goes on.
“I talked to her lawyer. They said they can’t use my testimony because of the lack of physical evidence and- and the emotional ties I have to him, fuck, Wardo-” he closes his eyes and breathes wetly, and in a second Eduardo’s lying down next to him, arm wrapped around Mark’s shoulder, and why does Mark always find himself almost-sobbing into Eduardo? If he were someone else, he’d find some grand mystical sign in it. But he’s him, so he just swallows and lets Eduardo rub a warm hand up and down his back until his breathing slows.
“Hey, hey,” Eduardo is saying. “Hey.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asks quietly, because the last time he asked that question was when he was twelve years old. It feels rusty.
Eduardo sighs.
“Mark. Don’t get mad, alright? Just- have you thought about therapy?”
Mark pushes up and away, and in a second is sitting on the edge of the bed, head spinning.
“That’s your suggestion? Really?”
“Mark, come on.”
“Fuck off, Wardo.”
The breath Eduardo draws in then shakes tenuously.
“I really- Mark, I, uh, I lov- care about you so much. But I’m just- God, Mark, I don’t know what to say to you sometimes and please, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m equipped-” he’s babbling, and all Mark hears is I can’t help you.
------
“My- my friend thinks I should go to a therapist,” he says the next day at Lindsay’s house. She’d readily agreed to meet when Mark called her. He’s still not really sure why he did, why he still wants to talk to her when the lawsuit, for him, is over.
“Eduardo?”
His head jerks up. “How did you-”
“Okay, I might not be the CEO of Facebook, but I do know how to use Google. There’s like 800 Hah-vahd Crimson articles about you guys.”
Mark looks down. “Yeah. Him.”
“Well, how do you feel about it?”
“I don’t want to,” Mark says automatically.
“Why?”
“Therapy is for people who can’t handle their problems. I can handle it.”
“Eduardo doesn’t think you can?”
He looks up at her sharply.
“Wardo doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.”
“Wardo?” She arches an eyebrow at him and he goes red. She grins.
“Whatever.”
“Well, do you think you’re handling it?”
Normally he’d chafe at a question like that, it’s such bullshit, it’s nobody else’s business, and he’s alive right now, does that mean he’s handling it? But Lindsay is genuinely curious, and, maybe it’s sick because it’s only because of what happened to them, but he trusts her.
“I know what you want me to say. I’m secretly a tortured individual, no one knows my inner pain, etcetera, right?”
She laughs, humoring him, and something about the way she stays silent makes him want to keep talking. She’s going to be a really good therapist someday.
“I have dreams. Nightmares, whatever, about- um, yeah,” he admits quietly, unwillingly, and she just stares at him, nods a little.
“I did too,” she says.
“Not now?”
“Not often. Anymore.”
He fidgets with the hem of his shorts. “Um. How?”
“It’s not a one-time solution. I mean, I don’t know why. I started talking about it. I went to therapy. Yes, therapy. Do you hate me now?”
He spares her a brief smile and chews his lip.
“It’s nice. All it is is talking, and only about what you want. You could go in there and talk about Facebook business strategy for an hour.
“Or?”
“Or you can talk about what happened. And it might help. Just to have someone else know about it, you know? Carry the load.”
“You sound like a brochure.”
“Fuck off,” she says, but she’s smiling. Mark’s lips curl upward a little in response. It’s the first time a girl’s ever said that to him jokingly.
“Mark- as a Buddhist, I shouldn’t believe in vengeance, or whatever- shut up, okay, I'm technically non-practicing. But I know that Sean Parker is going to go to prison. And I’m happy about that. And I hate that you can’t be a part of the case, but when I send that fucker to prison I want you to be happy too. Okay? I’m gonna do it for you.”
"You're Buddhist of the year, obviously," he says, not sure how to respond, and she pulls him into a hug, her hair brushing his chin.
“So much physical contact, with girls,” he grumbles, in a way he never would have been comfortable enough to before he met Lindsay.
“Just girls? Not Wardo?” She wiggles her eyebrows, pulling back.
“Weird, that you can go from Miss Buddhist Zen to a twelve year old in thirty seconds,” Mark says sarcastically, only a little flushed this time, and she mock-punches him.
“I’ll email you, okay?” He nods, and turns back at the end of her sidewalk.
“Good luck,” he calls, and as he says it he realizes how long it’s been since he said that too. She smiles from the doorstep and goes inside.
-----
When he walks back into the house, Dustin rams into him and gives him a hug. “Dude! Dude! Yes!” he chants, incomprehensibly, and Mark flinches away.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Eduardo comes up from behind Dustin with a bottle of champagne, grinning.
“Peter Thiel just called. How does an investment of half a million dollars sound?”
“You’re kidding,” Mark says slowly, and Dustin grabs the champagne out of Eduardo’s hand and takes a swig.
Eduardo just smiles.
“I’m not kidding. We have to go in later today and sign a couple papers, but, Mark, it’s a done deal.”
“I didn’t even know you had set up a meeting-” Mark says incredulously.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been- I mean, it hasn’t been such a big deal. Just a couple meetings.” He goes red, and Mark yanks the bottle out of Dustin’s hand, keeping his eyes on Eduardo’s.
“Dude, it’s like noon. Stop drinking.”
Dustin waves him off and walks into the kitchen.
“Half a million dollars? Half a million dollars.”
Eduardo nods, and breathes out in shock when Mark reaches out and puts his arms around him.
He gets with the program fast enough, hugs him hard and then lets him go when Dustin comes back in with plastic cups.
“I don’t care what you guys say, we’re having some champagne. Offices, Mark! And interns! More interns! Can we hire a hot girl for once? Please?”
“Dustin, I’m not letting you get anywhere near our interns,” Eduardo says, laughing, and Mark feels his throat constrict. He goes red, and God, they’re staring at him, Eduardo and Dustin, because he’s choking on his own breath and he dimly remembers God, it’s gonna be great to have a couple new interns around here, you know, a couple Stanford girls, right, Mark?, a conspiratorial wink, a hand curled around his shoulder. He swallows desperately and tries to stop coughing, but he’s wheezing in and out by now.
“You okay, Mark?” Dustin says, and Eduardo turns to him and whispers something and he leaves the room, sending a quick anxious look over his shoulder.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, then, somehow, and Eduardo’s face is in front of him, warm and present and close.
“Hey. You’re okay. It’s okay.” He rubs a hand flat over Mark’s chest, still thumping up and down in a frantic parody of breathing.
“We’ll go in, we’ll sign the papers, it’s gonna be okay, yeah?”
Mark nods.
“I think I could go,” he says, each word unwilling. “To- to therapy. Or whatever. Maybe.”
Eduardo unexpectedly cups Mark’s jaw in his hand.
“Okay,” he says softly. “That’s - yeah.”
Mark closes his eyes and breathes.
-----
They start moving in the next day.
“I need a new desk,” Dustin says, hands on his hips, as he surveys the mess in front of them. The building’s amazing, but they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, and it looks like a tornado hit it.
“You need a desk, period,” Eduardo says firmly. “That’s a card table.”
“So, where do I go? Where does one buy desks? I’ve never bought a desk. Like, Bed Bath and Beyond?”
“I think we need to hire a decorator.”
“Ooh, can we do a spaceship theme?”
“Please stop being five.”
“Wardo-” Mark calls, staggering under a desk chair, and Eduardo runs to steady him. Eric comes in dragging three huge plastic bags of mousepads and various other office supplies, and Qian comes behind him wheeling two chairs.
“Are we supposed to just set them anywhere?” he asks, pushing his glasses up with one finger, and Eric looks up questioningly.
Eduardo sighs.
“We really do need a decorator.”
Mark’s pushing the chair behind the desk in his glass-walled office.
“This is amazing,” Eduardo says, laughing. “It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Mark shrugs, and sits on the edge of the desk.
“How are you?” Eduardo asks quietly, and Mark shrugs again, looking up at him.
“You can be excited. It’s okay.” He steps closer, in between Mark’s legs, and Mark reaches up and kisses him, once, briefly, close-mouthed and soft.
Eduardo pulls away, but he’s smiling, huge, and it’s the first time in a long while Mark’s seen him smile like that.
“I feel good,” Mark says, taking a deep breath. “I feel good.”
------------------
Mark goes to therapy. He still doesn’t love it- it's awkward, and maybe he ends up outlining Facebook's overseas strategy in exhausting detail a couple times- but it’s not as terrible as he imagined. Lindsay emails him reports of the case, day by day, as well as a couple of her psychology essays, which he always makes incisive, bitchy comments on that she, for some reason, seems to appreciate. Eduardo plans, and gets stressed, and he keeps setting up bigger and bigger meetings, and at parties and events people recognize him and not Mark. Not that Eduardo cares, but he grins big like the businessman he is, nods politely, and slips a discreet hand onto Mark’s lower back.
---
Two months later, they hit a million members, and Eduardo kisses him under the fake fireworks bursting in technicolor on the office wall. Dustin does a victory dance consisting of a bunch of karate chops and marching in place, while Chris snorts into his Beck’s. People stand up and cheer, and Mark grins into Eduardo’s mouth.
Eduardo pulls back and smiles, wordless, eyes crinkling.
“A million members,” Mark says, still grinning, and Eduardo slings an arm around his shoulder and tugs him close.
“I fucking love you, you know that?” he says, and Mark laughs because he does know that. He thinks Eduardo might know that Mark loves him too, overprotective Jewish-motherness and all, but if not, it’s okay. He’ll tell him eventually.
It’s not going to be okay, or better, or perfect, not for a while. Mark might have nightmares. They might fight- no, they will fight - a lot. Facebook might get sued, Sean might get acquitted or let out early or released on bail, they might get sick or hurt or bored or annoyed with each other.
But maybe that’s the upside of being smart enough to see the bigger picture. It will be better. Eventually. And when Eduardo kisses the side of his head messily and laughs, Mark has faith.