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There's a knock on Mark's front door, and it's the middle of the night. His phone is quietly charging on the bedside table, no texts or emails to illuminate and ring out in accompany of the knocking. His phone is as silent as the gated community outside, like it always is at 3AM on Tuesday when Mark is pulling himself onto the bed, but not yet ready to crawl under the covers, pillow creases making lines on his cheek as he lies heavily down.
Tonight was quiet and routine, hours on the computer between bare basic cooking. Nothing unusual, except for the knock at the door.
Mark doesn't know who it could be.
Only a few people have access to the code to get this close to Mark these days, and the number of people is easy to mentally catalog. His newest assistant drew the line in the sand long ago; no late night visits, ever, because if it's really an emergency, there's 911 and the fire department.
It couldn't be Dustin, who is busy.
Unless Dustin has done something terrible, crashed his new company so badly that it won't just be Valleywag gossiping about it, but prominent news,cofounder of Facebook crashes and burns without Zuckerberg -
Mark gets up, finally, sliding his bare feet through the carpet, ignoring the thrum of urgency that thought inspires in his chest. He walks with his knuckles brushing against the wall, like he used to do home alone as a kid.
Mark knows it can't be Chris, who is happily engaged on the East coast. That's the list, no Sean and no Eduardo.
The door is pounded upon.
Mark stops with one foot on the first floor and the other on the stairs still. He looks between the door and Beast, who is lying in front of the door, head on his paws, cute, but no help if there's someone who means harm on the other-side of the door. Beast looks at Mark as he steps down from the stairs and tucks his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. It's a minute look, and Beast wiggles his body forward, still belly to the ground as he makes a soft sound at the door. Mark and Beast wait. There isn't another knock, but a voice calls to Mark through the door. It's a husky voice, well-known voice, though in Mark's memory they were both younger, but equally as worn out.
"Come on, Zuckerberg. I know you're there." Derek doesn't say that he can hear and smell Mark, but he doesn't need to.
Mark opens the door because he half can't believe Derek is beyond it. Mark holds the wood tight to his shoulder, wedging himself between door and frame so Derek will have to move Mark to get in. Behind him, Mark can hear Beast getting up, his dog tags clacking against each other as he ambles to Mark's side. Beast presses his face into the back of Mark's knee, shoving at him and whimpering.
"Hale," Mark says as he reaches back with his free hand and tangles his fingers in Beast's fur. Beast harrumphs but stops whining and shoving, sits behind Mark's feet like the guard dog he isn't.
And Derek and Mark assess each other, Derek taking in Mark's ratty sweats and unshaven face, tired eyes and, probably Mark thinks, the exhaustion and lines around his eyes. Mark watches Derek watch him, inspects the hollowness of Derek's cheeks superstitiously, and wonders if it's the light or Derek. He skips over the blood and dirt on Derek's shirt and watches Derek's clenched fists, before slowly, hesitantly, they make eye contact again.
"It's been a while," Derek says, and Mark nods.
The last time they'd been this close Derek and Laura had thrown Mark out of their apartment in NYC. They had forced him to go home to Palo Alto, telling him that he had to be an adult and CEO of his company, instead of playing at reclusive genius. Derek had been a lit-major at the time, and had made sure to rib Mark for his behavior. Mark thinks the last thing Derek said to him, besides "goodbye," was that only poets with addictions to opiates acted as sullenly as Mark was.
Mark had gotten on a plane home, and had always expected they'd come to visit. They'd promised to. But that was years ago. He stopped expecting them around the same time interns started to surpass him.
"That's not Laura," Mark says, with a nod to the girl standing on his front lawn, digging holes in the grass. He doesn't care, enjoys it even on the level where he is still that anti-social teenager who can't believe he lives in a gated community with lawn standards. But Mark says, "She's ruining my lawn," just to watch Derek react. Derek doesn't say anything about Mark's contradicting smile, but he does almost grins himself. It's subtle. And reassures Mark enough to let go of his grip on the door and push it open, almost inviting.
"That's Cora, my younger sister."
All the self-conscious rigidity that Mark let drop comes back, bringing his back into a painful bowed fashion. "I thought she was dead."
"I did too."
Gold eyes flash from the girl on the lawn, and Mark can't see it, not in the dark, but he's sure the same frown he remembers from 2005 is being mirrored by that girl. He doesn't hear when Derek asks him, soft voiced but near commanding, that Mark open the door. Mark just moves out of the way, watches Cora's movements as she takes the long way around him. She almost sneers at him, almost bares her teeth as she moves past, rushing the few steps that they're in forced proximity.
Mark keeps a hold on Beast and drops his eyes to his fingers tangled in Beast's fur. Beast stands up and nudges his whole body against Mark's legs, making Mark sway. Mark thinks, how strange, how big Beast has gotten, and draws his fingers through Beast's fur. He scratches behind Beast's ears. Beast whines and Mark smiles ever so slightly.
He's trying not to think about Laura. But when Derek steps into the house and moves into Mark's space so he can touch Mark, put his hands on Mark's shoulders and direct him back out of the way so he can close the door behind him, Mark can't help that, "Laura's dead," comes out of his mouth. It isn't a question.
Derek says yes anyway.
There isn't much in Mark's fridge, but he offers anything that isn't rotten up to Derek and Cora.
Cora, who has held her arms tight around her ribs the whole time, uncurls and shakes out the tension in her limbs, and heads for the fridge. Derek makes a sound, like he wants to reprimand or scold Cora, maybe for lack of manners, but it's Mark's house and if whatever heavy thing lying between the siblings won't stop Derek from acting like a parent, Mark will remind him that politeness is unnecessary. Mark waves at the cabinets and tells Cora to have whatever she finds. He doesn't think she could make off with the espresso machine so, there's nothing he would miss.
Cora eats while Derek and Mark stand awkwardly near each other near the archway back out to the front door.
"What happened to the camaro? I would've thought you would -" The word "inherit" sticks to the roof of Mark's mouth. "Have gotten it. If something happened to Laura."
Derek smiles then, it's sad, but not the kind of sad Mark remembers. It's different. Mark thinks it looks like a more adult hurt than what dragged Derek down at time. Making Derek too angry to deal with Mark's own fury. Those time when Mark had thought he'd be tossed through a window, had courted it even, because at least then it was a reliable game of antagonism and response.
Mark tells them that there are spare bedrooms. One on the first floor, near the kitchen with it's own bathroom. Derek tells Cora she can have that one while Mark is saying there is another the second floor. It draws quiet, hands slipping into his hoodie pocket again, and he just watches Derek, and how he is trying to imitate Laura. It's a poor replication, but he is pretty sure Cora doesn't know. She just nods, cracking the cap on a second water bottle from Mark's fridge.
Mark watches for a while, losing track of time in picking apart Derek's movements, trying to find the kid from New York in this bulkier frame. But after awhile he recognizes he's in the way. Learning body language was a process for Mark, a skill everyone at the charity drives and events he was expected to attend appeared to have. He'd learned to people watch and assess for more than just signs of weakness.
He's still only right less than half the time, but even he can tell by the way Derek is whispering to Cora so only they can hear, nearly silent in Mark's quiet house. So Mark leaves, without a word because he still can't be bothered with lingering good nights.
Beast is outside the kitchen, whimpering again with his belly on the floor. When he sees Mark, though, he gives a soft bark, inches forward on his belly and then rolls over. He grins, tongue lolling out of his mouth and his legs splayed as he waits for Mark's attention.
Mark kneels down. "Hey, buddy," he says, reach out and rubbing Beast's upturned belly. Beast barks again, wiggling under the attention, before rolling over.
"Let's go to bed," Mark says to his dog, leading the way upstairs.
They both clamber onto the bed, Beast taking up a human-sized amount at the foot of the bed where his legs reach over the sides of the mattress. Mark doesn't let him sleep on the bed often, there's not enough space, but planted face-first back in the bed, Mark is happy for the company. He can hear Beast breathing, huffing pants as he watches the door until he falls asleep.
Like before Derek interrupted Mark's world, Mark wonders if it's worth the effort to get under the covers. His feet are cold and so are his hands, but the latter he can pull into the sleeves of his hoodie. Or tuck into the pocket and fall asleep on top of them. It means waking with aching hands, but he feels drained, more than he did when he first crawled, exhausted to bed.
Mark is trying to tuck his cold feet under Beast in the early hours of the morning, edging down the mattress, while Beast woofs at him, too tired to move but clearly not wanting Mark's feet near him. Suddenly the bed dips and then shakes with the weight of another body joining them.
Derek's hands are bigger than they were back when they shared a bed in NYC, but Mark still knows them, and only tenses slightly when they curl around his hips and pull him back against Derek's radiator warm body.
"Is the blood on your shirt yours?" Mark asks in the quiet. He's been wanting to ask, but in the dark without Derek watching him the words don't stick in his throat.
"Yes. But it's old blood. I ran out of clean shirts."
Derek speaks at a murmur, warm breath against Mark's neck making Mark shiver.
Mark doesn't ask another question, and yet Derek says, "I'll tell you everything in the morning," without being prompted.
They lie together in the dark, painfully different than they used to sleep together. The touching is platonic in a way Mark knows he can't change. Derek's hands roam, but not with intent to warm Mark's skin or to make him feel comforted. His hands move in search of a better place to rest through the night. There's a lovelessness to the way Derek's knees press to Mark's legs, and how his body curves away from Mark's chest instead of being cupped together.
In New York they shared body heat when the water boiler finally gave out in the building. They'd fight with their bodies and their mouths sometimes, when Mark would come home from the depositions dragging his fingers through his hair, eyes bright and clawing at the tie that had choked him all day long. Sometimes Derek would come home eager for a fight and to be fucked hard because he had seen a girl that looked like Kate in the holes and bars and crowds he immersed himself in when Mark and Laura weren't around.
They could be soft too, like they are tonight, pressing one another into the mattress with the heat and heft of their bodies. Mark had tried to make flower shape bruises on Derek's skin with his lips, and had welcomed the same in return.
But that's not this. And it's not the new muscles on Derek's body, the scars on them both, or the gray hairs Mark is starting to see in the mirror from the stress and loneliness mixed up together. It's a sea of experiences that they had apart. Mark shudders under Derek, tucking his feet against Derek's bare feet as the sunrises.
They rest until night. The rest makes Mark restless.