Technical Debt

Mark enjoys Facebook parties as much as the next guy who decided to drop out of college, but he’s beginning to feel old and creaky around his employees during them. Everyone spends the entire time being so happy and unburdened and smiling, and Mark doesn’t know how to deal with that. He doesn’t know how to deal with all of them talking about their houses or their love of interpretive dance or the classes he never got to take in college. The Harvard grads are the worst, because then he wants to give lectures about how things were back in his day, and Mark can’t take becoming that guy.

“They really are getting younger every year,” Dustin says with a shake of his head. “Pretty soon they’ll be pushing us around in wheelchairs.” They’re standing at the edge of the party, far away from the drinks so that people won’t crowd into Mark’s personal space and use this opportunity to harass him with questions about changes to company policy or with pet projects they want to get done on Facebook’s time.

“You’re twenty-six,” Mark says. He looks down at his cup of punch and thinks about how sad his life is that he’s not even hoping that it’s spiked.

“Yes, and I will laugh at the rest of you when you are old and feeble,” Dustin announces. He’s at least tipsy. And grinning. And having fun. Mark hates him.

Mark says, “Not if I kill you first.” He drinks some punch. It’s some generic tropical fruit mix that translates into ‘punch’ in Mark’s mind.

Dustin goes quiet for a moment, his eyes focused on something past Mark’s shoulder. Mark doesn’t bother to turn around. Dustin has the attention span of a ADD golden retriever. The only exception is when he’s writing code, and even then, it takes him longer to wire himself in than almost any other programmer Mark knows. Dustin’s face breaks open into a huge smile. “Wardo! Glad you could make it!”

That makes Mark turn around. Sure enough, Eduardo is standing at the door, wearing what Mark thinks must be his “party suit.” It’s a black shirt with a black suit jacket and nice slacks. Never mind that almost everyone else at the party is wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Maybe a polo or a blouse if they were feeling formal about it this morning. Mark is wearing his usual t-shirt, hoodie, cargo shorts and flip-flops combo, but he’s used to feeling under-dressed around Eduardo. Eduardo’s the one who looks like he showed up at the wrong party.

Eduardo sees them and wanders over, squeezing through the throngs of people. “It’s looking like a great party,” he says. He half-hugs Dustin and nods towards Mark.

“I wasn’t really expecting you to come,” Mark says, because What the fuck are you doing here? probably wouldn’t go over so well. They don’t hate each other anymore, but Mark isn’t going to push his luck.

Eduardo shrugs. “You sent the invitation, and I was in town, so I figured I might as well make an appearance.” The expression on his face is carefully blank, but this is Eduardo, so he’s kind of horrible at keeping his emotions from showing, discomfort and annoyance bleeding through.

Technically, it was the Facebook party planning committee who sent out the invitations. Mark figures that Eduardo is using the plural “you” in this particular situation. Dustin doesn’t seem to notice anything weird about this situation at all. He says, “It’s good to have you back amongst the nerd-herd, Wardo, my man. You can explain to the noobs why bagels are superior to donuts as a breakfast food. Or why they should cache their data every once in a while instead of hitting the database every millisecond or so.”

That makes Eduardo crack a smile, something small and not entirely comfortable with itself, but it’s still there. “Sure, yeah. I’ll get right on that,” he says. “What’s the easiest way to get wasted here?”

Dustin mock sniffs, making him look even more like an overgrown ten year old. “You just want us for our free booze.” He clutches a hand to his chest.

That draws out a laugh from Eduardo. “The people aren’t bad either.”

That’s a total lie, Mark knows, because Mark is here, and the two of them are still barely speaking to each other. They’re trying, sort of. Mark is trying, and he thinks Eduardo is trying, but their resentments go so deep it feels like their friendship can’t go anywhere at all, like there’s this huge architectural flaw in their code that they’re trying to hack around when they should be trying to go back and rethink everything, like they need to tear it all down so that they can rebuild it all from scratch. “I think you might need to fight off some interns if you want to make sure they don’t drink all the good stuff,” Mark says, deadpan, because he has no idea what else to say. “And they’re young and scrappy, so don’t be afraid to use your elbows.”

That gets a small, surprising grin from Eduardo. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”

---

About an hour later, half the party has disappeared to another party somewhere -- Sean may have mentioned a bar and some tequila shots -- and Mark is beginning to feel every single one of his twenty-six years. Still, It’s kind of an honor to get to feel this old at a company you founded, Mark thinks. It’s not something everyone gets to feel. He’s been sitting on someone’s desk for the last twenty minutes (someone named Tyler, last name not Winklevoss), still at the edges of things while everyone else dances and drinks and eats. He doesn’t feel left out. He just feels detached.

“Hey.” Eduardo settles on the desk right next to Mark. He’s drunk but not smashed, slightly slurring his words. “You’re looking pretty sober.”

Mark shrugs. “I’m driving later.”

“Where to?” Eduardo’s leaning in, closer than he would if he were sober. He’s looking at Mark with intent eyes. Mark can smell the alcohol on his breath along with the vaguest hints of Eduardo’s aftershave on his skin.

“Home,” Mark says, short and clipped. If they start talking about anything but the most inane things, Mark isn’t sure that whatever they’ve rebuilt will survive their conversation. It feels like a house of cards, and almost any errant gust of wind could knock it over. Mark’s not good at being careful at anything. With code, you want to commit early and often so that you can fix it later. You have an unlimited number of times to fuck it up before you release the final product. Most people don’t work that way.

Eduardo says, “I think I was going to crash at Dustin’s place, but I have no idea where he went.” He rubs his eyes and winces a little, his suit rumpled, and Mark thinks that Eduardo must be feeling his age, too.

Dustin probably went with the others to wherever they went, and it isn’t worth the effort it’ll take to track him down. “You can stay at mine,” Mark says.

Eduardo grins, wide and unguarded. It’s the first time Mark’s seen it since before the dilution. Seeing it feels a little like getting punched in the gut. Eduardo says, “Sure, yeah.” He puts a hand on Mark’s shoulder, not quite pressing down, light, barely there.

Mark checks his watch. It tells him that it’s ten PM, and all he wants to do is go home and get some sleep. “I was actually going to--” He make vague head-tilt towards the door.

“Okay,” Eduardo says. The smile slowly fades from his face.

---

They get back to Mark’s house, and Eduardo follows Mark in, mostly steady on his feet. He doesn’t pretend to be impressed by Mark’s taste, and he doesn’t act like he’s disappointed that Mark hasn’t decided to pimp his house out with five billion gadgets he’d never have time to use anyway.

“It looks like you,” Eduardo says, twisting his head around to take it all in. Mark doesn’t see the point of home ownership, honestly. He likes that he can call up his landlord and get her to fix the sink when it’s leaking and that he doesn’t have to think about California property taxes and that he doesn’t have to add own a house to the ever-growing list of responsibilities he has. This particular house was half-furnished when he first moved in, and it became fully furnished as Mark collected mismatched furniture from Stanford students and moving Facebook employees. There are black Ikea bookshelves, a wooden kitchen table with a huge gash down the center, a brown couch in the living room surrounding in front of the TV, flanked by red and black armchairs. Having matching furniture has always seemed like some sort of adult thing, something that happens when you buy a new house and need something to put inside it. Mark’s been living here since before he made enough money to buy complete sets of nice furniture, and then when he did, it seemed sort of pointless to even bother.

Mark says, “I don’t remember you being the kind of guy who says weird shit while drunk.”

“It does,” Eduardo insists, weirdly earnest. “It looks like you didn’t really give a fuck.”

Mark flinches. He glances at the bare, white walls. He’s never gotten around to decorating them. It had never seemed important. He has pictures of his parents and sisters at his desk at work. He has awkward stack of knickknacks collected from various conferences right next to his monitors. He doesn’t need to keep anything here. “Well, yeah,” he says. He wonders what Eduardo’s apartment looks like. It’s probably perfectly put together, stainless steel and tasteful art pieces, like something out of a stuff-for-rich-people catalog or Douchebag Billionaires Monthly. (And Mark has a subscription so he should know.) With all the travelling and work and whatever that Eduardo does, he probably spends about as much time at his place as Mark does at his own, if not less.

Eduardo’s eyelids are drooping, like he’s about to fall asleep on his feet. Mark says, “There’s a guest room upstairs.”

Eduardo shrugs. “Here works just fine for me.” He grabs one of the bright orange throw pillows and tosses it onto one end of the brown couch.

“Sure,” Mark says. “If you want.” He climbs the stairs to his room. He doesn’t think about Eduardo on his couch and how weird this would be a few years ago. How weird it is that they’re even civil to one another. At Harvard, Eduardo would sleep on the suite’s couch all the time, not bothering to wander back to his own single at the end of the night. They’re not in college anymore. Mark remembers that, most of the time.

---

In the morning, Eduardo wakes up bleary-eyed and sober. It’s a Saturday, so Mark doesn’t have to go into the office, but he wants to take a look into some of the more niggling bugs. He’s already downstairs, in the process of pulling the latest version the main codebase onto his laptop, eating a bagel while he watches the progress of the update, when Eduardo stumbles into the kitchen. His hair is sticking up at odd angles, and there are pillow creases on his cheek. His suit has wrinkles in it. Mark wonders, for the first time, where Eduardo’s luggage must be. He didn’t bring anything with him to Mark’s place.

Mark nudges the bag of bagels over towards Eduardo, who takes it, pulling out a plain bagel. He starts eating it without bothering to toast it or put butter or cream cheese on it or anything like that. Mark, who still feels at least partially from New York, is almost a little offended.

“Morning,” Eduardo says, wiping the crumbs from the corners of his mouth.

“Morning,” Mark says back.

“Thanks for the place to stay,” Eduardo says. There’s something about the way Eduardo always looks first thing in the morning, not quite as immaculate and carefully constructed, that makes him look more real, more human. It makes him look like something that Mark could maybe one day touch.

Mark shrugs. “Sure. Anytime.”

Eduardo gets this strange expression on his face, almost incredulous, like he thinks it’s weird that Mark’s willing to let him sleep on his couch whenever he wants to.

Mark says, “And I’m not saying that to be polite. I haven’t changed that much.” On the screen of his laptop, the update has finished.

Eduardo lets out a little snort. The expression on his face softens. “You’re not quite the same, either,” he says.

Mark looks down at his feet. He’s wearing a t-shirt that he’s had since high school and the same pajama bottoms he’s worn since he was eleven. He’s not nineteen anymore, not constantly high on the thrill of building something new and amazing and beautiful, but he’s still not the sort of guy who spends a lot of time saving starving orphans in Africa either. “I still wear my flip-flops to work.”

Eduardo isn’t who he used to be. Eduardo’s changed, too. He looks happier these days, more relaxed, like he doesn’t feel the weight of his father’s disappointment on his shoulders any longer. He looks like he’s made his peace with it. Eduardo is doing his own things these days out in Singapore. Mark has heard bits and pieces of it through Dustin and Chris, and it almost sounds like Eduardo’s happy. Mark doesn’t know how he feels about that. “You’ve changed enough,” Eduardo says. He straightens his jacket, his collar, and checks his pockets for his phone. “I’ll call myself a cab.”

---

The next time Mark sees Eduardo, they’re at Dustin’s house, celebrating Dustin’s engagement to a girl he met seven weeks ago while on vacation in the Bahamas.

Mark’s not sure if it’s the sex or the exposure to sunlight (always a concern among computer nerds) that’s completely addled Dustin’s brains. Still, despite Mark’s reservations about this whole marriage thing, he goes to the engagement party anyway. Dustin’s his friend, after all. He should be allowed to fuck up his life however he pleases. The party is sedate, just a few snacks on the tables, soft music in the background, plenty of people standing around discussing stock options and 401k plans. There’s a distinct lack of red plastic cups.

As CEO of Facebook, Mark has attended plenty of events like this, but this is the first time Dustin has ever hosted anything like it. Dustin likes parties where everyone shows up drunk, where they play Halo for three hours straight, where the person with the lowest kill count after one match has to buy the pizza. Usually they don’t get noise complaints. Usually. Afterwards, Dustin’s apartment looks like a pig sty until the cleaning service comes by and someone finally scrubs the tomato sauce off the tile floors. Tonight, Mark wonders if he’s gotten lost and accidentally fallen into the Twilight Zone. If Microsoft decides to license Windows under the GPL, he’ll know for sure.

Mark has decided to stick to his corner of the room right next to a bunch of Facebook devs and sysadmins. He spends most of the night trying to get a better sense for how their Hadoop/Hive clusters are holding up and whether or not they’ll want to hire more people to work on developing that stack full time. Facebook is a big company these days, a massive engineering undertaking, and while Mark can try to watch over all of it, he can’t know what it’s like in the trenches day after day.

Eduardo’s managed to attract his own cluster of people, mostly made up of Allison’s friends from the VC firm where she works. Eduardo’s in charming mode, Mark can tell. Mark’s seen him work the same thing on friends’ parents and kindly old professors. It seems like less of an act these days, especially after seeing Sean try to charm people. It seems less like an entirely new personality that Eduardo’s putting on, and more like a carefully constructed shell that only lets people see the good reactions and not any of the bad.

When they’ve finished half of the fruit platter (seriously, fruit platter), Chris gets up to make a toast. “To Dustin,” he says, raising his wine glass in the air, “the best wingman a guy could ever hope for. May the two of you live long and prosper.” That draws laughs from the entire audience. A few of them even do the Vulcan salute.

One of Allison’s friends gets up to do something similar, making a joke about a disastrous party and an ex-boyfriend that only half of the room understands.

Somehow Eduardo ends up standing next to Mark for this entire display of, well, whatever the hell these toasts are supposed to be. Almost like they’re friends, like they have their own inside jokes too. The party starts to disperse after Allison’s friend finishes talking, a slow trickle of people collecting their things and heading out the door. Eduardo turns to Mark and says, “Well, I never would have thought I’d see the day.” It’s been pretty clear that Eduardo doesn’t hold Dustin’s choice to stick by Mark against him. His voice holds old affection and a new warmth, like he really is happy for Dustin. Mark is having more trouble being happy for Dustin, because he’s still having trouble accepting the fact that he knows so many people getting married. When they start popping out kids, he might need to go drown himself in the Pacific.

“Dustin made a giant penis statue out of pizza boxes and duct tape right after we first moved out to Palo Alto. It probably would have stayed up the entire time if Justin hadn’t fallen on it a few weeks later.” After Mark says it, he realizes that maybe he shouldn’t have. There’s this time period they don’t even mention in their conversations, everything between the creation of Facebook and the depositions. It’s a no-man’s land that Mark’s just stepped on.

Eduardo just laughs like he doesn’t notice. “I wish I could have seen it,” he says, sounding like he’s trying to imagine it.

Mark doesn’t know what to say to that. You could have, if you’d been there, lingers like a bad aftertaste in his mouth, but Mark is past needing to hurt Eduardo anymore. He doesn’t need the reminder that Eduardo can be brought low like everyone else.

Eduardo says, “Can I crash on your couch again?”

Mark says, “Yeah, sure.”

---

It’s less awkward this time. Eduardo isn’t drunk and waxing philosophical about Mark’s interior decorating skills, and Mark isn’t feeling self-conscious about the state of his walls. Eduardo has clearly claimed the orange throw pillow and the brown couch as his own. Mark doesn’t even need to pretend to be a good host this time around. He can just stand there and nod as Eduardo sets up for the night. Eduardo steals the ratty old blanket from one of the armchairs and dumps his bags (carried with him this time around) next to the coffee table.

“Hey, thanks,” Eduardo says, and in the dim light, his eyes look huge and dark, a little terrifying. Mark realizes all of a sudden that Eduardo is standing a little too close, crowded into Mark’s personal space. But not touching. They don’t touch these days, not that they ever did much of that before.

Mark shrugs, looks at the wall past Eduardo’s shoulder. “No problem.”

---

They fall into a pattern after that. Eduardo stays at Mark’s while he’s in town, though he’s rarely around for more than one night at a time. He likes the couch and claims the coffee table, and Mark will wake up some mornings to find Eduardo still sleeping, face covered up by the blanket to keep the sun away, his feet sticking out over the arms. They don’t eat together much -- Eduardo has business dinners and he’s not much of a breakfast person -- but one night, Mark orders takeout from his favorite Chinese restaurant, and they eat dinner in front of Mark’s TV, watching Star Wars: A New Hope because Eduardo’s somehow made it through all twenty-eight years of his life without seeing it once.

“Well,” Eduardo says. “Dustin’s jokes about the Evil Empire make a lot more sense now.” He doesn’t sound like he enjoyed it. Or that he understood it.

Mark says, “And you haven’t even seen the Ewoks yet.”

They start talking more. Eduardo will write long emails telling Mark about the new startup he’s looking at, and Mark will write bitchy one line messages on Eduardo’s private wall about the stupid shit people do around the office. (For instance, people apparently don’t realize that toasters can get pretty hot and that paper is flammable and that these two things don’t mix very well.) They won’t talk about all the stuff that’s been stacked up all around them, the dilution, the lawsuit, Harvard, everything in between.

Mark learns how Eduardo likes his coffee in the morning (black, three sugars), learns how Eduardo sleeps on couches (with his mouth open and an arm dangling over the side). Mark learns how to recognize Portuguese when it’s spoken out loud and learns what sort of socks Eduardo wears and learns the new ways they fit around each other now that Mark doesn’t need Eduardo’s money and Eduardo doesn’t need… whatever he got out of his friendship with Mark in college. His pet project, maybe. His investment opportunity.

This whole thing they have is the closest thing Mark has ever had to an adult relationship. It’s almost kind of nice.

---

“I still don’t get it,” Eduardo says. “Why the hell do you guys love this movie so much?”

They’ve gotten takeout again, this time from a place that a friend of a friend of Eduardo’s recommended. Mark buys the food, so he gets to pick the movie. Eduardo grumbles about this a bit, but he understands the rules of the bro code and gives in eventually.

Apparently, Eduardo hates The Empire Strikes Back, too. Mark still feels compelled to trick him into watching Return of the Jedi one day, because he is, at his heart, a completionist, and only watching two-thirds of a trilogy doesn’t count as complete. To be honest, Mark has never had to explain Star Wars to anyone before. It’s been one of those things every mildly nerdy kid sees in their lifetime, but maybe the rules are different in Brazil. Or Florida. Wherever.

What matters is that Eduardo doesn’t get it.

“You need to see it at the right time in your life, I guess,” Mark says. Pop culture exposure is all about the timing, Mark’s learned. When he was in middle school, his favorite book in the whole world was Ender’s Game. He had a dogeared copy of it that he re-read every year until the edges of the paperback were frayed and some of the pages were in danger of falling out. He tried reading it again last year, and his love for the book had felt like a distorted echo. He could see the emotional manipulation, the stupid dialogue, the plot contrivances. It had been like figuring out that all of the original Star Trek sets were made out of cardboard, everything rendered fake and obvious to his adult eyes.

“What time would that be?” Eduardo asks, sipping on his beer as he winces at the screen.

Mark says, “When you’re too young to know any better.” You need to be young enough to believe in spaceships and laser swords and princesses and knights who can move things with their mind. You have to believe in those things so deeply that you can’t even consider that they might not be, on some level, real. Then again, Star Wars isn’t the only thing like that. There are plenty of other things you can only believe in when you’re too young to know any better.

---

The first boy Mark ever kissed was his roommate junior year in high school, Adam. They’d been close friends before they roomed together, and rooming together only made it worse. Mark had liked it, living in each other’s pockets day-in, day-out, and Adam had always felt easy to be around in ways that most people didn’t. They’d talk about the latest posts on Slashdot and about which of the teachers had the worst fake-hair, and they’d do stupid boy-stuff like try to score booze and weed from James, the resident supplier of illegal substances.

The first time they’d ever kissed, they were sitting on Mark’s bed, arguing about something stupid on Mark’s computer, about whether or not it was more appropriate to use perl or bash for manipulating text files. Adam had leaned over Mark’s shoulder, pointed at something on Mark’s screen. Mark had turned his head to the side, and Adam had looked at him, and then Mark had leaned closer, and then they were kissing. Adam’s lips had been chapped, and he had been trying to grow a beard, so his stubble scratched Mark’s face. Mark hadn’t been in love with Adam, but it had worked right up until the time they both left for college. They’d gone their separate ways after that. They’re still Facebook friends. Adam’s status says that he’s dating a nice Indian guy who lives with him in Boston.

Mark doesn’t think about that moment very much, that first time he’d kissed Adam, but he does get a weird sense of déjà vu when Eduardo says, “You’ve got to see this.” He shoves the laptop in Mark’s face when Mark sits down on the couch next to him. Mark reads the page it’s open to, the homepage for some new iPad app that Eduardo must be funding.

“Okay,” Mark says. Eduardo leans in over Mark’s arm to point at the screen, the fabric of his nice shirt brushing up against Mark’s hoodie. Mark glances at Eduardo out of the corner of his eye, cataloging the brightness of Eduardo’s smile, the eager movements of his hands, the energy humming beneath his skin.

Eduardo gives the boring, press-release explanation of what the product is and what it does.

Mark doesn’t say, Remember when I showed Facebook to you the first time? Do you remember what it was like to watch it go live and to know that we had made it, that it was ours? He sits there until Eduardo finishes his spiel. “Okay,” Mark says again.

He stares at the screen so that he doesn’t have to look at Eduardo’s face.

---

Mark spends the entirety of October getting through lawsuits and reviewing proposed additions to the Facebook app API. He listens to arguments about how he owes someone else a piece of Facebook despite the fact that they’re just some freeloading jackass that he may have known once in his life. He listens to arguments about potential security and and privacy concerns, because no matter what they do, someone is going to be upset about something. It’s all so tedious that he actually notices that he sees Eduardo more often than usual.

“You’ve been here three times over the past four weeks,” Mark says when Eduardo shows up once again on his doorstep. It’s sort of disorienting, when Eduardo’s around so much. Sometimes, Mark looks at Eduardo and all he can see is Harvard and Cambridge and Massachusetts, all the things Mark left behind years and years ago.

Eduardo says, “That’s what happens when you open up a new office in Palo Alto. I think I might be able to fund my next vacation with the frequent flier miles I’m accumulating.”

“Oh,” Mark says. He steps aside to let Eduardo and his luggage in. “I didn’t know you were having trouble funding your vacations.”

That startles a laugh out of Eduardo. “I’m going to be in town all week,” he says. “Do you mind if I stay here?” He looks at Mark like he’s expecting Mark to say no, like Mark is going to kick Eduardo out of his house at any second.

“Yeah, sure. You can stay,” Mark says. He blinks, thinks for a moment. “You know I wasn’t lying about there being a guest room, right?”

Eduardo walks past Mark, dragging his luggage behind him. His expression is impossible to read. “No, I think the couch and I need some more time alone together.”

“That’s fine as long as you don’t try to feed the couch some bits of some other couch. I hear the furniture-rights groups are not into that sort of thing,” Mark says, deadpan.

Confusion crosses Eduardo’s face for a moment. Then he shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “That’s going to follow me around for the rest of my life, isn’t it?”

“I probably won’t mention it at your funeral, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Eduardo says, “You’re such an asshole,” but there’s more affection in his voice than bitterness. This is the easiest it’s been between them since before Sean, before Palo Alto. It’s a moment that belongs sometime else, and Mark feels all too aware of how easy it would be to tear it all apart. Eduardo leans closer, like maybe he wants to bump shoulders or maybe he wants to make fun of the guest lecturer’s slides or maybe he wants to steal some of Mark’s pens, like maybe he’s remembering all of it, too. At the last moment, he catches himself and pulls away. “I think I can find the couch by now,” he says, leaving Mark at the doorway, watching him.

It almost feels like a step backwards, and Mark doesn’t understand that at all.

---

When Mark gets up the next morning, Eduardo is already awake, cooking eggs in Mark’s small kitchen and humming to himself. He’s dressed in a nice shirt and nice black pants, like he’s going into the office even though it’s Sunday. Mark had forgotten that about Eduardo, the way he would always try to look his best even if no one was expecting him to put in the effort.

“Morning,” Mark mumbles as he walks by.

Eduardo says, “Your refrigerator looks like someone actually cooks here. I’m impressed.”

“I do that sometimes,” Mark says. A while ago, Mark’s doctor had insisted that Mark take up hobbies that didn’t involve a computer after Mark kept complaining about wrist pain. Mark’s PA had threatened to cut off his supply of ibuprofen, citing liver failure and damage to Mark’s stomach lining. Mark had said that he was perfectly capable of visiting a CVS himself if he really wanted to get more, but he decided he was getting bored of take out and pizza all the time anyway. Mark doesn’t cook for anyone but himself, though. The topic never came up, those past few times Eduardo’s been around.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m stealing your eggs,” Eduardo says. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, exposing the lean lines of his forearms.

A stack of press releases, the ratty old blanket, and a pair Eduardo’s socks are sitting on the couch right now. The coffee table has Eduardo’s laptop, some legal forms, and a mug half-filled with some sort of brown liquid that doesn’t deserve to be called coffee any longer. It’s like Eduardo’s been expanding to fill the available space. “I think I’ll survive,” Mark says.

---

Later that night, Eduardo sits in front of the TV, eyes glued to CNBC or Bloomberg like it’s vitally important to know that Proctor and Gamble’s stock has dropped five points over the course of a day. Mark watches the show with him, even though he starts tuning out every third word the anchor is saying. He has to nudge a pair of Eduardo’s sunglasses to the side so that he can put his feet on the coffee table.

He finds himself watching Eduardo. There’s something about the reflected glow of television, something about his intent, absorbed expression, that makes a feeling settle in Mark’s chest, low and painful.

Mark has wanted things before. Mark has wanted to build Facebook, and Mark has wanted to get into one of the final clubs, and Mark has wanted to fuck Erica Albright. This doesn’t feel anything like wanting those things. Wanting those things had felt like a fire lit up, a burning need to remake the world in his own image. This feeling is cold and kind of lumpy, heavy, taking up all this space inside of him.

Contrary to popular belief, Mark is not a complete idiot when it comes to human relationships. He may have apologized, and they may almost be friends again, and Eduardo might be living on his couch when he could afford the hotel for the week if he wanted to, but even Mark can tell that this is a lost cause.

“I’m going to cook dinner tomorrow,” Mark says, “if you’re going to be around.”

Eduardo drags his eyes away from the screen long enough to gape at Mark like Mark’s just announced that he’s decided to take up alpaca farming. Mark doesn’t know why he said it either. It sounds stupid to his own ears. Eduardo seems to decide that Mark isn’t playing some sort of elaborate prank on him. He laughs. “Okay,” he says, “this I’ve got to see.”

Mark licks the inside of his teeth. It still takes a little like the onion he had on his pizza. At Harvard, Eduardo had tried to make Christy a home-cooked meal to show her how sensitive he was or some bullshit like that, and he’d spent the whole day freaking out, panicking over the phone to his mother and begging Dustin to run to the nearest Whole Foods for rare, high quality herbs. Mark had spent most of that day smirking into his Mountain Dew and offering unhelpful advice as Eduardo had scrambled around the Kirkland kitchen. Turnabout is fair play, Mark supposes.

---

Mark isn’t a great cook. He doesn’t really have the patience to make anything that has more than five basic steps and he doesn’t stock more than three perishable ingredients at the same time. That does limit his options somewhat, but Mark has never been picky about his food. He cooks to feed himself, not to impress anyone else.

That night, Eduardo gets back to the house later than Mark. He steps into the kitchen as Mark finishes chopping the vegetables, blinking in disbelief at Mark’s neatly organized bowls of onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers. He’s not doing anything fancy, just making some tomato sauce and some pasta. He just likes to make sure everything is in its place before he even touches the stove, sort of like how he needs to have a solid design for his code before he even puts his hands on the keyboard.

“I wasn’t mentally prepared for this,” Eduardo says. “Mark Zuckerberg preparing his own food. Who knew this day would ever come?” He leans against one of the unused counter-tops, all long limbs and easy, unpracticed grace.

Mark says, “Go set the fucking table,” as he runs the cutting board underneath the tap and wipes it dry with a dish towel.

It startles him when Eduardo put a hand on his shoulder, fingers warm through the fabric of Mark’s t-shirt. “You’ve changed more than you think you have,” Eduardo says.

And that makes no fucking sense, so Mark turns around to look at him. Eduardo is close, close enough that Mark can see the flecks in Eduardo’s irises, close enough that they’re breathing the same air, and then Eduardo leans in even closer, brushing their lips together. It’s a light, delicate touch, like Eduardo isn’t sure how to make it real either. Mark’s mind kernel panics, hits some sort of fatal error and can’t recover from it. His whole body freezes up. He stands there, stiff, as Eduardo presses a firm hand against the back of his neck. Mark’s skin prickles where Eduardo is touching him.

Eduardo pulls back, his eyes searching. Mark says, “Wardo--”

That makes Eduardo smile for some reason, this huge smile that spreads across his face and makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “You haven’t called me that for years,” he says, a strange thread of nostalgia curling through his words.

Mark lets go of the sleeve he hadn’t realized he’d grabbed a handful of. “Oh,” Mark says. He hadn’t been keeping track of anything like that, what he’s been calling Eduardo while they’re around each other. It had always been their nickname for him, their crew of Harvard douchebags with too much time and money and ambition. It hadn’t occurred to Mark that maybe no one else ever called him that. “I should finish cooking dinner,” Mark says, and the corners of his mouth turn upwards, lopsided, of their own accord.

“Okay,” Eduardo says. He pulls away, starts reaching for the plates. “I’ll go set the table.”

Mark goes back to his vegetables.

---

Dinner is-- well, dinner is weird. The closest Mark has ever come to cooking for someone else is helping his mom make chocolate chip cookies for school events and hamentashen for Purim. Those times barely even count, because he had just been part of some sort of bizarro cookie assembly line. His mom did all of the difficult stuff.

Mark’s not used to caring about what anyone else thinks about the food he makes. He’s perfectly happy to eat mess hall food and leftover pizza and pretty much anything that will keep his stomach from rumbling while he’s wired in, but he knows that a lot of other people don’t feel the same way.

Eduardo isn’t complaining, though. He’s eating the food like he doesn’t notice that it’s sort of bland and tasteless, and he keeps looking up at Mark like he’s still trying to figure Mark out. Mark spends most of his time trying to figure out what the fuck just happened in the kitchen. Besides the obvious. They don’t talk at all, because they’re busy eating, and because Mark is staring at his food instead of looking at Eduardo. Mark wonders what Eduardo’s mouth must taste like now, wonders if Eduardo will let Mark pull shirt out of his pants, let Mark press his hands against the bare, smooth skin of Eduardo’s back.

It occurs to Mark halfway through the dinner that they are having a date, if it is even possible to have dates in a shared kitchen with food Mark bought last week and on a pink tablecloth that probably used to be maroon at some point during its lifetime. Mark is bad at dates in the same way he is bad at giving a shit about other people. He’s got too much on his mind to keep track of birthdays (the reminders he added to Facebook have made dealing with his sisters a lot easier), and he can’t be bothered to figure out where the best restaurants are in town, and he hates having to figure out which presents would actually suit one specific person’s tastes. Maybe he should just be glad that Eduardo hasn’t dumped him already.

Eduardo says, “This is better than I was expecting, considering the number of times I’ve seen you eat tuna fish straight out of a can.”

“I’m flattered,” Mark says. Eduardo is still staring at him, and Mark feels that cold, aching lump of whatever in his chest again. He wants to touch the lines of Eduardo’s cheekbones, feel the soft hair at the base of Eduardo’s neck. He wants to--

It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t feel any less impossible now.

“I think we had thirty whole minutes where you weren’t a complete asshole,” Eduardo says. “I think that might be a record.” His voice is affectionate, teasing, but Mark still turns away, starts stacking dishes to carry over to the dishwasher. Eduardo’s right about Mark after all, though Mark doesn’t think Eduardo fully understands how right he is. He never did in the past.

Mark doesn’t respond. He carries the stack of dishes to the sink, pulls open the dishwasher, and starts loading it, all without meeting Eduardo’s eyes. He’s good at focusing on one thing at a time. There’s this list his PA gave him, of all the important people he needs to talk to at the next conference he’s speaking at, and he could start going over that in his head so that he doesn’t have to think about Eduardo at all, and the fact that Eduardo’s here, and--

“Mark, wait--” Eduardo says. He sounds concerned.

Mark says, “I wouldn’t have done anything differently,” just so that he can make Eduardo understand. They’ve been tip-toeing around this bullshit for months, all of it building up until it just needs to fucking explode, and Mark has been so fucking careful. He’s sick of it.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eduardo asks. Mark makes himself look at him, because he’s never been too afraid to stare Eduardo down before, and he’s not going to start now. Eduardo’s forehead is creased with confusion. Mark wants to shove Eduardo against the nearest wall and stick his tongue down Eduardo’s throat. He doesn’t.

“Everything. Facebook. I wouldn’t have done anything differently,” Mark says. “It was shitty for you, and I’m sorry about that, but if I had to go back and do it all again, I wouldn’t change anything.”

Eduardo gets this look on his face, like Mark’s just run over his dog, like maybe he’s actually seeing Mark for once, instead of the guy he’s made up in his head and mentally overlaid on top of Mark. This expression isn’t quite as bad as the one Eduardo was wearing during the Millionth Member Party, the day of the dilution, but that isn’t saying much. Mark thought he was past needing to hurt Eduardo, but apparently he’s not. “Okay,” Eduardo says, his features going flat, unreadable. “Whatever. I guess I was being generous with my estimates.” He walks out of the dining room towards the living room and the couch, probably to camp there for the rest of the night and then ignore Mark for the rest of his stay.

Mark watches Eduardo’s back as he leaves.

---

Mark’s a light sleeper, which is really fucking inconvenient when living in a college dorm or in the same house as a bunch of programmers who can’t all be asleep at the same time in case the servers go down overnight.

Which is probably why he jerks awake when Eduardo throws open his bedroom door and stomps inside. Mark spends a few seconds blinking at him, eyes adjusting to the bright light coming in from the hallway. And then he spends a few seconds being glad that he doesn’t have any computers with arm’s reach. Eduardo looks like he might be ready to smash things. “You fucking asshole,” Eduardo says, like this is new information to Mark in any way. “You chickenshit little dickhead. I can’t believe I let you manipulate me like that.” And then there’s a hand grabbing a fistful of Mark’s shirt, dragging him forwards, mashing their mouths together. There’s no hesitation, no restraint this time. Mark grabs onto Eduardo’s shoulder to keep himself steady as Eduardo’s tongue slides into his mouth.

If Mark wanted to, he could shove Eduardo away, could end this right now. Mark doesn’t want to. He’s too tired to be responsible about this. Eduardo makes this amazing half-choked sound when Mark pulls him onto the bed and rolls on top of him so that he’s straddling Eduardo’s legs. “You didn’t understand,” Mark says when he manages to drag his lips away from Eduardo’s. “I’m not a good person.” He undoes the buttons of Eduardo’s shirt. There are too many of them, but it’s worth it to uncover the bare, tan skin of Eduardo’s chest.

Eduardo snorts and says, “Yeah, I kind of figured that out when you diluted my shares and kicked me out the company.” His hands are the hem of Mark’s t-shirt, yanking at it ineffectually. Mark helps him out by pulling it over his head. Mark undoes the buttons of Eduardo’s fly -- more fucking buttons -- knuckles rubbing against the Eduardo’s erection through the fabric. Eduardo’s hips jerk under the pressure, his mouth going slack. Mark wants to tear Eduardo apart and put him back together again. He settles for kissing Eduardo instead. Eduardo whimpers a little when Mark digs his teeth into his lower lip.

Mark pulls back to take it all in. Eduardo is beautiful like this, with his body painted half-gold from the light spilling in from the hallway, with his chest rising and falling with every sucked-in breath, with his eyes glassy with lust. Mark hooks his fingers around the waistband of Eduardo’s boxers and eases it down so Eduardo’s cock can spring free.

“Fuck, Mark,” Eduardo says. “Stop being such a prick tease.”

Mark rolls his eyes and says, “Fine.” He wraps a hand around Eduardo’s dick and squeezes tight, watching as Eduardo hisses through his teeth. Mark jerks Eduardo off with steady, even strokes that leave Eduardo moaning and spitting out death threats. The sounds he’s making sink into Mark’s gut, and it’s dangerous, because Mark know how easy it would be to want this all the time, constantly, now that he’s had it once.

Eduardo comes when Mark bites into his left nipple, his hips bucking underneath Mark’s hands, spilling all over his stomach and Mark’s fingers. He takes a few moments to catch his breath, but then squirming out from underneath Mark, and he’s shoving Mark back towards the headboard. He kisses Mark again, sliding a hand into Mark’s pajama bottoms, into Mark’s boxers. His fingers are on Mark’s cock, and Mark can’t even make a noise. He’s breathing too hard, his heart thumping heavy against his chest. Eduardo takes his time, winding Mark up with slow, easy tugs, and Mark can’t even fucking think.

Eduardo leans in even closer, so that his lips are pressed against Mark’s ear, and he says, “If I’d known that this was all it took to get your attention, then maybe things would have turned out differently.”

Mark comes, shuddering through his release. “Fuck,” he says. There’s a sticky spot inside his boxers, and there’s comes dripping down his thighs. He feels disgusting, but also lighter somehow, like that heaviness inside him has loosened. He feels like maybe they could make this work somehow, like maybe it isn’t as entirely hopeless as Mark thinks it is.

Eduardo’s smiling at him again. It’s the same smile he used to wear after acing Econ finals and after moments when Dustin would run around shouting out their latest membership numbers, and Mark doesn’t need to be a genius to know that it means that Eduardo’s really, truly happy.

---

The next morning, Mark blows Eduardo until Eduardo is cursing Mark’s mother in Portuguese. Eduardo returns the favor, except he decides to up the ante by sliding a finger up Mark’s ass. Mark comes so hard he can’t see straight for a few seconds afterwards, and he tells Eduardo that he’s a giant fucking cheater. Eduardo just smirks at him.

They go to work. Mark heads into the Facebook offices, and Eduardo heads off to do whatever he does while he’s in town. Mark’s day is made up of meetings, both boring and not-boring. Mostly boring. Then he comes home and cooks some chili, which he eats in front of a computer because something comes up in Australia that needs his attention immediately, and he forgets that maybe Eduardo might want to eat some too. It isn’t actually worth worrying about, because Eduardo gets home late smelling like a bar, like alcohol and too many people, his tie loose and his eyes bright. They have sex again. That night, Mark tucks his head underneath Eduardo’s chin, one of his hands curled around Eduardo’s hip. The next morning, they wake up and they do it all over again.

Their lives go back to vaguely approximating normal. Half of Eduardo’s stuff migrates into Mark’s bedroom. Mark doesn’t say anything about it, but he does get the vague, uncomfortable sensation that this might be what it’s like to be married.

On Thursday, Dustin sends Mark an e-mail with the subject line It looks like somone’s getting laid!!!. The text of the e-mail reads:

#!/bin/ssh #The Unix Guru's View of Sex unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep

In retaliation, Mark ssh’s into Dustin’s machine and types :(){:|:&};: into his shell. He manages to keep a straight face until he hears Dustin cursing at his desk.

“It’s totally Wardo, isn’t it?” Dustin says while Mark is trying to eat lunch and type at the same time. He fiddles with one of the binder clips that Mark keeps at his desk, but never really uses. This isn’t the first time that Dustin has started up a completely inconsequential conversation while Mark is trying to eat lunch and answer e-mail, but it is the first time that the topic of conversation is Mark’s love life.

“Yeah,” Mark says around a mouthful of fried rice. It’s not actually a secret that he and Eduardo are fucking. Mark just hasn’t been telling anyone about it.

“Ha! I knew it!” Dustin says, pumping his fist in the air. “You were being a all chipper and glowy and stuff. It was freaking some of the PMs out.”

Mark says, “And I even told one of them that I could replace him with a fifth grader, too.” Mark’s smiling as he says it, though. It feels weird.

Dustin waves a finger in Mark’s face. “You are fooling no one, my friend.” He grins, bright and cheerful. “I’m happy for you guys. Don’t fuck it up again, all right?”

That brings Mark up short. He has no idea how to stop himself from doing that. He has no idea what Eduardo even wants out of whatever this is. Maybe Eduardo just wants a chance to fuck Mark over literally. Maybe Eduardo just wants to get laid, and Mark is convenient. Maybe Mark is already in the process of demolishing their sort-of-maybe relationship, and he just doesn’t know it. Dustin’s figured all of this bullshit out. Dustin is getting married next month, and it doesn’t look like he’s freaked out and ruined everything with Allison just yet. “I --” Mark starts, because he’s never going to be desperate enough to ask Dustin for his input on Mark’s relationships.

Dustin says, “Just finish growing the fuck up, Mark, and you’ll be fine. You’re almost there as it is.” He steals Mark’s egg roll before Mark can tell him that he doesn’t take advice on maturity from people who still play with Legos and Lincoln Logs. Dustin continues, “And don’t you dare fork bomb my computer again.”

Mark shrugs. “Just think of it as payback for the time you turned my terminal colors white on pink.”

“That was for your own good, man. You should know better than to leave your computer unlocked,” Dustin says. He makes himself scarce, vanishing along with Mark’s egg roll.

---

“So,” Eduardo says when he gets home on Friday. “I’m not going back to Singapore.” He tosses a briefcase onto one of the kitchen chairs, runs a hand through his hair, and starts loosening his cuffs.

Mark looks up at him from where he’s been trying to clean out a garlic press. He hates cleaning it almost as much as he hates mincing garlic, so it’s kind of a lose-lose situation right there. “Okay,” he says.

“The Singapore office can take care of itself at this point, and the Palo Alto office is just getting started, which means that I should be around to watch over it,” Eduardo says. He looks at Mark like Mark is supposed to say something right now, like Mark knows anything about the setup of Eduardo’s company. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels. “Oh, c’mon, Mark. Do I need to look for someplace to live or not?”

Mark has lived with other people before, but he’s never lived with another person in a romantic sense. This is unknown territory for him. “No,” he says. “You don’t have to look for a place to live.” He doesn’t understand why his palms are sweating. It’s stupid to get worked up over this.

Eduardo kisses him, his fingers tangling in Mark’s curls, his lips soft and almost sweet. “You know what this means, right?” he asks.

Mark nods, because he can’t quite speak yet. The garlic press has been abandoned to the sink. Mark feels like he’s on the edge of something, like he’s about to dump untested code onto production servers. This thing between him and Eduardo is still new, still fragile. But Mark’s not quite afraid. Maybe at one point in his life, he would have been, but Mark isn’t that person anymore. Maybe Eduardo’s right. Maybe he does see Mark for who he is. Maybe Eduardo is at a point in his life where he can accept Mark, assholery and all. Maybe it isn’t too late for Mark to feel like this anymore. Maybe this is the two of them rewritten, rebuilt into structures that can accommodate each other. Maybe this is what Dustin means about growing up, about being willing to take a chance when it’s given to you instead of waiting until it all falls apart instead. Mark swallows around the lump in his throat. “Does this mean you’ll move all your shit off the couch?” he asks.

Eduardo shakes his head, but he’s smiling again, and Mark wants to keep him smiling, which is both amazing and terrifying all at once. “If you want that stuff gone, you’re going to have to move it yourself.”

Mark says, “That’s bullshit,” but he kind of likes the idea of Eduardo’s stuff permanently moved into his space, lodged so deep that Mark will have to clean it up himself.

“Deal with it,” Eduardo says, and he doesn’t stop smiling.

---

A few weeks later, Mark discovers that all of the furniture in his living room now matches.

All that black leather is kind of unsettling, to be honest, but the seats are really comfortable to sit on and nap on, so Mark figures he shouldn’t be complaining. He finds a note stuck to the kitchen refrigerator:

I do give a shit, okay?
-E

Mark shrugs, because he was never invested in any of that second-hand furniture anyway. If Eduardo cares, then Mark isn’t willing to start an argument over it.

But he does toss the ugly orange throw pillow (discovered in one of the closets Mark almost never uses) onto the main couch.

He doesn’t want to start feeling too old, after all.

FIN.