Archive of Our Own

If Eduardo has learnt anything from what happened with Facebook, it’s that life is as far from simple as you can get. When you’re growing up all you think about is what you’re going to do when you’re older, what you’re going to have, who you’re going to be. You think about what you might look like and who you might know and every single one of those thoughts starts with ‘when I’m older I’ll...’. But when are you older? When is the time when all those thoughts should be reality instead of speculation? College? You spend your childhood imagining it, planning for it and then when it gets there you expect everything to change and your life to start.

Well perhaps that was Eduardo’s problem. Because his life did start in college and he did begin to be the person he’d always planned. He made some great friends and he got punched by a Final Club and he became a part of something huge that he just knew would complete his transition from ‘when I’m older’ to...well, being older. Eduardo never had the realisation that other people have that perhaps would have softened the blow. He never saw that for most people, plans you make when you are little are almost never fulfilled and that what you saw yourself doing by the time you were 20 is almost never reality.

No, for Eduardo his childhood visions of being a successful businessman became truth before he’d even finished college and there was nothing to teach him that you cannot rely on childhood fantasies coming true. So when it all changed for him, when the rug was snatched from under his feet by his best friend, it hurt. He felt lost and confused and, for the first time in his life, completely without a plan.

And now? Well now Eduardo feels silly that he ever made a plan at all. 

*

Rosalind Hughes-Moskovitz is a beautiful baby. She was born on June 11^th with blonde hair and blue eyes that seemed to smile even before her mouth could. She cried as much as any baby cries but more than made up for it with a ready laugh as soon as she knew how. Rosalind Hughes-Moskovitz is a beautiful baby and Eduardo loved her the second she was born.

It’s hard to believe, Eduardo thinks as he sinks down onto his hotel couch with his laptop, that she’s been in this world a whole year already. He feels a little guilty; living in Singapore makes spending time with his goddaughter difficult and even with plenty of money and pretty flexible work hours, he doesn’t get to visit the Hughes-Moskovitz household as often as he would like.

He sighs and rubs a hand across his face as he waits for his emails to load. Life would be so much easier if his two best friends and their daughter didn’t live half way across the world in a city full of painful memories. Eduardo never liked Palo Alto much but now he hates it. Everything, even the perfectly nice hotel suite he is staying in, screams Sean Parker, .03%, you’re going to get left behind.

--

From: Dustin Moskovitz ([email protected])

To: Eduardo Saverin ([email protected])

Subject: I MISS YOU ALREADYYYYYYY :(((((

Attached: Rosiewithhergoddaddies.jpeg

Hey man, it was soooo good to see u yesterday! U gotta stay for longer next time!!!

We thought u might like a copy of this. Just in case u forget her while ur so far away. Come back soon :(

P.S. Mark asked for a copy the moment u left just fyi 

--- 

Eduardo’s heart twists in affection for Dustin and also a little in regret about how his absence obviously upsets his friends almost as much as it upsets him. He refuses to acknowledge the P.S. as another reason for his heart to feel heavy in his chest and opens the attached photograph.

*

“War-do!” Dustin crows as he pulls Eduardo into the house and hugs him enthusiastically, “Man, you made it!”

Eduardo hugs back. It’s only been a month since he last saw his friends but somehow it feels like much longer. Dustin takes his coat and bag and Eduardo suppresses a smile, making a mental note to ask Chris how long it took him to get Dustin to hang coats on the stand instead of throwing them on the banister.

When he’s ushered into the large living room the first thing he notices is how much the room looks like a unicorn vomited all over the walls. The second thing he notices is Chris grimacing in acknowledgement as he stands to give him a quick hug, “Don’t mention the decorations, I beg you. Talking Dustin out of them turned out to be an impossible task.”

“But it’s her birthday! Her first one ever!” Dustin cries, and he bounds past Eduardo from the hallway into the room and scoops the one year old girl off the floor where she had been playing with some legos. “Guess who’s here, Rosie! Uncle Wardo! Can you say Wardo?”

Eduardo laughs and takes Rosalind from Dustin. “Has she even said daddy yet?” he asks, bopping her on the nose to illicit a high pitched giggle.

“No.” Dustin sighs. “I’d be happy with ‘Mommy’ to be honest. I just want a naaaaaaame!” and he flings an arm over his forehead as he slumps dramatically on the couch and Chris rolls his eyes affectionately. Eduardo feels a twinge of....something at the fond expression on Chris’s face and goes back to smiling warmly at Rosalind as she continues to giggle at his tickling fingers.

“You want a drink, man?” Chris asks.

“Uh, I’d love a coffee, if that’s alright?”

“Sure. Mark?”

And it wasn’t like Eduardo hadn’t known Mark was going to be there, and it wasn’t even that he hadn’t noticed him sitting quietly on the opposite couch, but a little bit of Eduardo’s brain had kind of been hoping that he could spend the day pretending Mark wasn’t even there. Which he is the first to admit is a rather childish attitude but hey, it had been working for all of the minute he’d been there. But now he can’t really get away with it.

Mark shakes his head and Chris leaves the room with a friendly clap to Eduardo’s shoulder as he passes and Eduardo meets Mark’s eyes.

“Mark.” he nods, not unfriendly but stiff and unpracticed. Mark nods back and looks away.

Before today, Eduardo has only seen Mark twice since they both signed the papers that ended the depositions. Both occasions had ended with one of them storming out. Eduardo is sincerely hoping that, for Rosalind’s sake, today will be different. When he catches sight of Dustin’s worried gaze flicking between the two of them, he hopes it for Dustin and Chris’s sake too.

“So you’re one today, huh, querida? One whole year? Why you’re practically a lady!” He bounces her on his hip. “Seriously, Dustin, she’s gotten so big!”

“I know, right?! She’s growing so fast I’m worried she’ll be gone before I know it!”

Eduardo kisses her forehead and places her back on the floor with her legos so he can take the coffee from Chris and sit, rather stiffly, on the couch next to Mark.

“Guys, honest to God, I swear it was only yesterday we were pacing around a hospital waiting room!”

“I know,” sighs Chris and he takes Dustin’s hand. They smile at each other and sometimes Eduardo wonders if he will ever have what they have. “One year old,” Dustin repeats, as if he can’t believe this is his life.

They all sit watching Rosalind for a while as she gets bored of her legos and crawls over to the pile of new toys in the corner of the room. Eduardo is just thinking about going to get his present from the hallway when Mark breaks the silence.

“How was your flight?”

Eduardo turns to stare at Mark, eyes wide. He can’t see but he is pretty sure Chris and Dustin just exchanged nervous looks over on their couch. Mark isn’t looking at Eduardo, instead watching Rosalind determinedly. Eduardo turns to watch her too.

“It was fine, thank you.”

“Good. Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.”

Mark nods as if it was a satisfactory answer and says no more. Eduardo shoots a questioning look at Chris and Dustin but they are studiously not looking in their direction. Eduardo swears he sees a small smile on Chris’s face though and Dustin almost definitely stifles one behind his hand before jumping up suddenly, “Who wants cake?!?!”

All in all, the day goes smoothly. Both Dustin and Chris’s parents arrive a little after three o’clock and they break out the cake again, Dustin singing ‘Happy Birthday’ way too loudly and slightly off key while Chris films the whole thing. Mark, for the most part, stays sitting on the couch smiling fondly down at Rosalind when she crawls over to tug on his jeans and Eduardo finds himself beginning to relax that last little bit. Chris and Dustin don’t seem to be able to stop smiling, all four grandparents are lovely and interesting and Rosalind is happy crawling between them all. And Mark? Well Mark isn’t making Eduardo want to smash something so he counts this as a success.

“You know, darling” sighs Chris’s mother happily, turning to her son, “she really does look more and more like you every time I see her.”

“I know, right?!” grins Dustin from where he’s sprawled on the couch, feeling ill from too much cake and looking over to where Rosalind is now sitting happily on Eduardo’s lap. “She’s going to be the prettiest girl in the world!”

Chris goes pink and Eduardo chuckles to himself at the fact that Dustin’s compliments still manage to make him blush. “Oh hush,” Chris admonishes. “She definitely has your smile.”

“That is genetically impossible,” says Mark from the other end of Eduardo’s couch and maybe it is because he is more relaxed than he’s been in a long time or maybe it is all the cake and brightly coloured decorations making him delirious,  but Eduardo huffs a laugh.

Mark turns to look at him and Eduardo thinks he sees a look of pleasant surprise in Mark’s eyes and he definitely doesn’t miss the corners of Mark’s mouth turning up tentatively.

“I SENSE A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY!” 

“Jesus, Dustin, we’re all in the same room! You do not need to shout!” Chris groans.

“Can’t help it! I’M HAVING CAKE INDUCED EXCITEMENT!”

“Well, a second ago you were having cake induced nausea and that was much more peaceful for the rest of us so do you think you could go back to that?”

“NEVER!” Dustin jumps up, disappearing briefly from the room before returning with what is probably a ridiculously expensive camera. “Okay, it is definitely time Rosie had a picture with her godfathers!”

There is a stunned silence. Nobody moves.

“Together,” Dustin continues, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden tension that has flooded the room.

After a few seconds of heavy silence, Eduardo is just opening his mouth to say something – he isn’t entirely sure what – when he startles. Mark is suddenly sitting right next to him, close enough that their arms touch ever so slightly and their knees bump just once, and Eduardo flinches away on pure instinct, turning to stare wide-eyed at Mark, who looks back with a glare which doesn’t quite manage to hide the flicker of hurt. Not from Eduardo. He used to know him too well.

“Wardoooo,” Dustin admonishes, breaking the audible silence in the room, “Come on man, lean in and smile! Birthdays are happy days!”

And God bless Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo thinks fondly, because just like that the room isn’t tense anymore and the grandparents are cooing over Rosalind’s face, Chris is smiling affectionately at how she sits happily against Eduardo’s chest and Dustin is pulling ridiculous faces from behind the camera  to get Rosalind to laugh and clap her hands excitedly, and Eduardo? Eduardo relaxes and leans back into Mark, his arms wrapped around Rosalind’s waist to stop her from falling as she claps enthusiastically, and he laughs.

He can’t see for himself of course, but there are some things that dilutions and smashed laptops and arguments on rainy nights can’t change, so Eduardo feels, as he grins into the camera, that Mark is smiling too.

*

Eduardo sighs as he looks at the picture. All three of them are grinning, even Mark smiling widely enough to show teeth. If someone were to see this picture and not have a clue who they were, then they would call them happy. Two good friends posing with their goddaughter.

Eduardo doesn’t let himself think about how that could have been true in a different life and closes the photo. The smiles hadn’t lasted long after the picture had been taken. Eduardo had leaned away from Mark the minute Dustin lowered the camera and gotten up under the pretence of handing Rosalind over to Grandma Hughes. He still wasn’t sure if he’d imagined Mark’s quiet sigh but he had seen the sad and verging on exasperated look on Chris’s face.

Eduardo startles from his thoughts when his phone starts to ring shrilly on the arm of the couch and he briefly considers ignoring it when he doesn’t recognise the number. But then again, it really isn’t interrupting anything other than his thoughts and frankly, Eduardo needs those interrupting.

“Hello?” he answers, trying to sound polite and not as tired as he feels.

“Mr. Saverin?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Eduardo Saverin?”

“Yes, that’s me.” Eduardo sits up a little straighter, the serious female voice making him nervous.

“My name is Dr. Lucy Barton, I’m a doctor here at St. Mary’s Hospital.”

Eduardo’s heart sinks.

“There’s really no easy way to say this, Mr. Saverin, but there’s been an accident. Your friends, Christopher Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, were in a car accident earlier this evening. I have since discovered they were on their way back from a dinner and were hit by a drunk driver.”

Eduardo is shaking. He grips the phone hard enough to hurt, “Jesus. Are they – oh God – just tell me.”

“Mr Moskovitz was unresponsive and paramedics pronounced him when we found them and Mr Hughes was unconscious. We rushed him to the ICU but he passed away shortly afterwards. There was nothing we could do.” She pauses. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Saverin.”

There’s this weird feeling that you get when someone tells you something like this. Like you didn’t really hear it and in a second you’re going to hear what was actually said. It’s like when you listen to an album over and over again and you get used to one song being followed by this other song every time, and then one time you hear the first song on the radio or something and when it ends you expect to hear the opening bars of the song that normally follows it, but you don’t. You hear a completely different song start to play, and it is jarring for a second, wrong. You feel, just for a moment, as if you merely heard wrong, and the song you were expecting will start any second now.

That’s what Eduardo feels like. Dustin and Chris aren’t dead. How could that possibly be true? This kind of thing happens to other people, not to Eduardo, not to them. It is the kind of thing that you hear about in the news or in stories. Not in real life. This doesn’t happen in real life.

“Mr. Saverin?”

“Their daughter.” Eduardo’s voice sounds weirdly detached, as if he’s listening to it from a different body. “Their little girl, was she – “

“She wasn’t in the car. She was with a babysitter and has now been taken to social services for the night.”

Eduardo breathes a little easier. But not much.

“Mr. Saverin...Eduardo, it would probably be best if you weren’t alone right now. I’ve said the same to Mr. Zuckerberg – “

“Mark? You’ve spoken to him?”

“Yes, he was their emergency contact and arrived here about fifteen minutes ago. He was the one who told me to call you. He said he couldn’t do it himself.”

“Is he...is he okay?” Eduardo’s voice is beginning to crack.

“I think he would be better if he had someone with him,” the doctor says with a soft voice. “As would you.”

Eduardo closes his eyes and tries to swallow away the burning in his throat. “Yes. Yes, I’ll...I’ll be right there. Thank you.”

He hangs up before she can say anything else.

Eduardo drives to the hospital with such focus that he doesn’t really have time to think. He directs all his concentration at the road and grips the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white. He doesn’t think as he parks and he doesn’t think as he walks quickly through the doors.

The hospital is mostly empty. There is a receptionist looking tired behind a desk on the far side of the lobby and he starts in her direction but is stopped by a quiet voice.

“Wardo.”

Eduardo spins around. Mark is the only other person in the room, standing hunched to the side of the door Eduardo just came through, clearly waiting for him with his hands stuffed into his grey hoodie pockets. His eyes are red rimmed and locked with Eduardo’s, for once not a trace of defiance or coldness or anything at all other than a plea for Eduardo to make this better.

It nearly breaks Eduardo’s heart.

Eduardo doesn’t say a word. Instead he walks over to where Mark is standing and without a single thought, wraps his arms tightly around him. Mark’s arms come instantly around his shoulders and Eduardo can feel him shaking as he presses his face into the space between Eduardo’s neck and shoulder. For the first time since the phone call, Eduardo doesn’t swallow down his tears.

It’s weird how trivial your own problems can look when something like this happens and it’s weird how two people with so much between them can forget, if just for one moment, that they ever stopped being best friends at all.

*

It’s well past midnight by the time they pull into Dustin and Chris’s driveway. The car ride had been absolutely silent and this doesn’t change as Mark lets them in using his key. They stand in the hallway, neither really knowing what to say as they look around at the house which yesterday had been full of laughter. Eduardo can see that the hideous birthday decorations are still up in the living room.

Lucy, the doctor who had called Eduardo, had found them sometime after Eduardo had arrived and explained to them how social services were going to call the house in the morning and that they should be there to get the call. She explained to Eduardo about how unlikely it was that either Chris or Dustin felt a thing but he hadn’t really heard a word of it.

“You wanna take the guest bedroom?” Mark asks quietly.

“They have two don’t they?”

“Only one of them is made up. You take it.”

“Mark.”

“Just go. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Mark disappears into the living room and Eduardo considers following for a second, a bit of him not wanting to be alone with his thoughts just yet. But he doesn’t. He gets into bed without even taking off his jacket and tries not to think of anything until he passes out.

*

It is an absolutely beautiful day and Eduardo wonders if somehow, with all their millions, Chris and Dustin have found a way to pay for excellent weather.

The ceremony itself had been small and intimate but the reception promises to be completely the opposite as Eduardo turns the corner into the large green and sees hundreds of candlelit tables and a huge gazebo covering a dance floor. It is a lovely sight and Eduardo smiles to himself when he sees that the colour scheme is a simple and classy Champagne. It looks like Chris won that battle.

Soon enough the tables are full of guests and everyone is tearful over the first dance. It really is the perfect evening and Eduardo couldn’t be happier for his best friends.

Except that, for Eduardo, it really isn’t a perfect evening at all.

It’s been just under a year since the depositions ended and Eduardo hasn’t seen Mark since. Until now. Both Dustin and Chris had made it clear that they would understand if Eduardo hadn’t wanted to come today but how could Eduardo ever be that person? He wasn’t going to miss out on their wedding just because of some arrogant asshole who stabbed him in the back years ago. He fully intends to go about his evening as if Mark isn’t there and seeing as they didn’t exchange so much as a nod of recognition throughout the ceremony, he hopes that Mark has the same idea.

Except it turns out he doesn’t. The reception is a few hours in and Eduardo is talking to a pretty blonde at his table when he hears someone sit down in the chair to his left.

He freezes when he sees who it is. Mark doesn’t look any different to the last time he saw him. In fact, his white shirt and black tie are probably the same ones he was wearing that last day of the depositions and this makes it even more jarring for Eduardo to see. He almost fears that he’ll find the same blank look in Mark’s eyes.

But he doesn’t. Mark’s eyes are clear and open and if Eduardo didn’t know that Mark fidgets with his hands when he’s nervous, he would think that he were completely at ease.

“Hi,” he says and Eduardo wonders if maybe he hit his head on something earlier without realising.

“Oh hi!” says the blonde girl from Eduardo’s right, “You’re Mark Zuckerberg!”

Mark ignores her.

“Eduardo. How are you?”

Eduardo kind of wants to punch him. How is he? He’s living half way across the world to try and escape the memories of being betrayed while also working hard every day to try and win back his Father’s respect. How is he?

He turns away from Mark and offers his hand to the girl.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Sure!” She smiles coyly and flips her hair over her shoulder before taking his hand and following him to the dance floor.

Eduardo deliberately isn’t watching but he still sees Mark down the rest of his drink, mutter something to Chris and then leave.

*

Eduardo wakes up from a fitful sleep and it takes him a few minutes to really take in where he is and why.

He sighs and looks at the clock beside the bed. 7.05. Might as well get up. He won’t be able to go back to sleep now.

He steps into the shower and turns on the water as hot as it will go and only remembers half way through that he left all his things at the hotel. He’ll have to go and get them later. He changes into yesterday’s suit and towels his hair dry half-heartedly before taking a breath and going downstairs 

Mark is sitting upright on the sofa, fingers flying over a keyboard.

“Is that Dustin’s?” Eduardo asks, voice hoarse from sleep.

Mark startles slightly and stops typing to look round at Eduardo. “No, mine. I couldn’t sleep so I drove over to my place to get it. I got your bag from your hotel, too.”

He gestures towards the suitcase in the corner and goes back to typing. Eduardo wants to thank him, but he can’t quite find the words.

He is spared by the sharp sound of the phone ringing. He almost drops it in his haste to answer and Mark is by his side in an instant, laptop forgotten on the coffee table.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Is this Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Saverin?”

“Mr. Saverin. Mr. Zuckerberg is here too.”

“Good. I’m Hannah from Social Services, I was told one or both of you would be available to pick Rosalind up this morning?”

“Yes! Yes, of course! We’ll be right there!”

“Excellent. You should also know that her parents’ lawyer will be along to visit the both of you at their house later this morning to discuss what happens next.”

Eduardo swallows, “OK. Thank you.”

“No problem. And, um...I’m really sorry, Mr. Saverin.”

Eduardo tries to reply but can’t, so he hangs up.

He turns around and Mark is standing so close they are almost touching. Eduardo steps back.

“We can go-“

“I heard. Let’s go." 

*

No one really wanted to talk to them when they got to social services. It seemed as if no one really knew what to say that wouldn’t sound trite and meaningless, so they just didn’t say anything. Eduardo had tried to ignore the pitying gazes as he signed his name and showed ID and Mark had been averting his gaze too. When Rosalind was brought out into the lobby, Mark had surged forward and hugged her tight to his chest, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair, muttering something Eduardo couldn’t hear. They had driven home in silence again.

Now Eduardo is filling the kettle and trying not to think about what the lawyers are going to say. What did Chris and Dustin want for Rosalind? A foster home maybe? Adoption? Would Mark and Eduardo still be allowed to be part of her life? Mark hadn’t let her out of his arms since they collected her and Eduardo thinks that maybe he isn’t alone in these thoughts.

He sits down on the couch next to Mark and hands him a coffee. Mark shakes his head.

“Mark, you didn’t sleep. You have to drink this.”

It’s painfully reminiscent of college, when Mark would forget to sleep and Eduardo would find him the next day, almost passed out over his computer. He pushes that thought away though, and forces the mug into Mark’s hand.

Rosalind crawls off Mark’s lap while he takes a reluctant sip and makes grabby hands at Eduardo. Eduardo lifts her so she can wrap her tiny arms around his neck and sighs into her hair.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, “the decorations are gone!”

“Yeah,” says Mark, the barest hint of a bitter smirk on his face. “They didn’t help the insomnia.”

Eduardo smiles weakly but sitting in this house just makes everything worse. Just two days ago, Dustin had been bouncing around putting up multicoloured banners around the room for his daughter, who he thought he’d watch grow into a beautiful woman one day, and Chris had been rolling his eyes affectionately from a now empty couch. It isn’t fair. Not one bit. 

When the doorbell rings, Mark is back on his laptop and Eduardo is sitting on the floor with Rosalind. They both leap up abruptly and Mark goes to open the door as Eduardo scoops Rosalind up and follows him into the hallway.

To their surprise, it isn’t just Chris and Dustin’s lawyer at the door but also two other people who, frankly, Eduardo had hoped he wouldn’t have to see again so soon.

Sy and Gretchen do not look happy. In fact, they have the faces of two people whose jobs have just got about ten times harder than they previously had been and Eduardo becomes instantly nervous. He knows they signed a non-disclosure agreement but do they really expect one of them to step away from Rosalind’s life? Are they here to make them decide which one gets to remain godfather or something? Eduardo feels himself readying for a fight already and no one has even said a word. He holds Rosalind just a little bit tighter.

“Mr Saverin, Mr Zuckerberg, my name is Mr Jonas Mellor. May I come in?”

Mark steps to one side to let the three of them in and Eduardo leads them into the dining room attached to the kitchen, putting Rosalind in her highchair with some blocks to play with.

All five of them sit around the table, Mark next to Eduardo and the three lawyers across from them, Jonas in the middle.

“You are Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin?” He asks, drawing a large pile of papers out of his briefcase and setting them on the table.

“Yes.” Eduardo replies at the same time as Mark says, “Obviously.”

Eduardo shoots a glare at Mark but Mark doesn’t seem to notice. He is sitting ramrod straight and his hands are twisting underneath the table. There was once a time when Eduardo would have wanted to still them with his own hands, but now he just looks back at Jonas. 

“OK, good. Now how much do you know about Dustin and Chris’s plans for Rosalind in the unlikely event she were to become an orphan?”

“Nothing.” Eduardo says, leaning forward. Mark just shakes his head in agreement.

“Okay well this definitely makes this harder to say. The thing is,” he sighs and leans forward, “the thing is, they named you as the primary guardians. Both of you. Together.”

There is a second of silence and then Eduardo laughs.

“OK, no, you’re kidding me, right? They would not have named us together. One of us maybe, but together? No way. Are you crazy?”

“Do you really think now would be the time for lawyers to choose to have a sense of humor, Eduardo? Of course they’re not kidding,” Mark snaps, and he looks back at Jonas’s pained expression.

“What do you mean?” He asks brusquely.

“Well, I mean that their will stipulates, quite clearly, and believe me I tried to talk them out of it at the time, that in the unlikely and unfortunate event that Christopher Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz both die, full custody of Rosalind Hughes-Moskovitz is to go to Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg and should she be under five years of age, they are to raise her together until at least then, so as to prevent her life becoming any more difficult.”

“What?” Eduardo’s voice is slightly higher than he would like. “And you think us living together won’t make her life more difficult? I am sorry but Gretchen! Surely you will back me up here!”

“Eduardo, settle down.”

“Settle down? Is no one else at this table hearing this? You want me and Mark to live together?”

“Yes,” sighs Jonas, “Here.”

“Here? In Palo Alto? In their house?” Eduardo raises a hand to run through his hair. “Jesus this cannot be happening.”

“Eduardo,” says Gretchen softly, “Eduardo, I’m sorry, but their wishes supersede any previous agreement we came to as they made their will after the settlement was finalised and they made sure to do this properly so as to avoid it becoming a problem. Sy and I are here with a new version of the settlement for you to sign so that the non-disclosure no longer prevents the two of you from speaking.”

Eduardo feels as if there’s no ground. As if he isn’t supported by anything solid and yet he isn’t falling either. He’s just there, suspended in nothing and he doesn’t know how to start moving again or which emotion to grasp for first.

Mark speaks for the first time. “Okay, so C-Chris and Dustin. They wanted us to be her guardians? Us together? They wanted us to live together?”

“Yes.” Jonas nods, looking relieved that Mark at least, doesn’t sound hysterical.

“Okay.”

“Okay?!” Eduardo rounds on Mark, “Okay?”

“Yes, Eduardo, okay.” Mark turns to look at Eduardo for the first time since they sat down and Eduardo sees anger, but also – and this time it is unmistakeable – hurt. “I’m sorry that living with me is quite so distressing, but this isn’t about you. It’s about Rosalind and she needs a stable home with both her guardians here with her. It’s also about our friends who are gone and what they wanted for their daughter, whether or not we agree with them on how sensible an idea it actually was.”

Eduardo’s jaw clenches and he holds eye contact with Mark for a few seconds before he stands abruptly. “Can I have a minute?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. He wrenches open the glass back door in the kitchen and leans against the outside wall where they won’t be able to see him from inside.

His breathing is heavy. Live with Mark? Impossible. It’s been approximately three years since the depositions and in those three years he has seen Mark only three times. None of them have gone well. What were Chris and Dustin thinking?! Were they worried about offending one of them if they only chose one? What was wrong with leaving Rosalind to the grandparents? Surely anything would have been better than Mark and Eduardo together. Raising a baby. In the same house.

Jesus, until she was five. Four years! Eduardo let out a rather hysterical laugh. Of all the ridiculous ideas in the world.

But there’s what Eduardo doesn’t understand. Neither Chris nor Dustin is stupid. In fact, they are very much the contrary so how did they reach the decision, knowing as they did that Eduardo and Mark should not be left in the same place for four minutes – let alone four years – that they would be able to move in together and raise a baby without one of them throwing a punch. Most likely him.

Eduardo bangs his head against the wall and breathes. Palo Alto, Facebook, Mark. Is he really ready to let any of them be a part of his life again? The answer is unequivocally no, but Mark’s right (and oh how he hates to admit it). With his only real friends now gone, Rosalind is the most important person in his life and he doesn’t want to leave her. Not now and not ever. That’s not what friends or godfathers do.

Eduardo rolls his shoulders and exhales slowly through his nose, then he turns around and walks back inside.

Sy and Gretchen are talking quietly together, bent over various papers, and Jonas is sat between them nodding at whatever they’re saying. Mark is still sitting in his chair but has taken Rosalind out of her highchair and is stroking her hair softly as she sniffles against his chest and Eduardo feels a pang of guilt as he realises his sudden and angry departure must have upset her.

The lawyers fall silent as Eduardo sits back down.

“Sorry. I was just...overwhelmed.”

“That’s perfectly understandable, Eduardo. Sy and Gretchen have fully informed me of what you two have been through, as did Chris and Dustin when we first made this will and believe me, I fully understand why you may find this difficult to digest. But Mr Zuckerberg is right. Your friends chose the two of you and of course it would therefore be best if you tried to follow their wishes. However, if you find it impossible to make this work, then of course it would be perfectly within your right and even perhaps for the best, to work out a new arrangement. Until then however, we must urge you to give this a chance.”

Eduardo just nods dumbly.

“Good,” Jonas smiles encouragingly. “A social worker will pay you three unannounced visits over the next two months to assess your progress, and she will decide whether their decision is the right one for Rosalind. If you have not worked out a way to live together by then, we will meet again to discuss new arrangements.”

Eduardo just nods again, not trusting himself to speak anymore.

“Thank you,” Mark says quietly, and Eduardo can’t even find it in himself to feel shocked.

There are a few more explanations and legalities to smooth over and then they are being passed paper after paper to sign. Eduardo signs them all without a word and when they finally all stand to leave he shakes all their hands as if on autopilot.

When they get to the door, Jonas turns around and says, “There is one more thing, and I’m giving you these as a messenger, not as your lawyer.” He pulls two envelopes from the outside pocket of his briefcase and hands one to each of them. “Chris and Dustin wrote these letters when they wrote their will. It’s something I encouraged them to do after I heard about their plan to name the both of you. Of course, they thought you’d never actually have to read them and I don’t know what they say but...they wrote them so that if they were to die and you were left with Rosalind...well, maybe they will leave some clue as to why, I don’t know. 

Neither of them says anything as Jonas smiles sadly at them and leaves. Eduardo grips the envelope in his hand. Wardo it says in Chris’s neat handwriting.

He is surprised out of his stupor when Gretchen, at the last minute, pulls him into a brief but firm hug. “I’m sorry, Eduardo.” She says sincerely and, for once, Eduardo really appreciates the sentiment.

And then they’re gone.

Eduardo drifts into the living room and sinks down onto the couch, staring at the envelope in his hands.

“Are you going to read it?” asks Mark once he’s set Rosalind down on the floor and sat down on the other end of the couch.

Eduardo shakes his head, “I...no. No I – not yet.”

Mark nods but doesn’t say anything. Eduardo doesn’t look at him but he feels Mark’s gaze fixed on the side of his face. It doesn’t help. He stands quickly. 

“Eduardo – “

“I don’t want to listen to this right now, Mark.”

“Shocking,” he hears Mark mutter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eduardo asks, rounding on Mark, temper flaring.

Mark stands, “You know what, Eduardo? If you don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, then I’m not going to tell you.”

“What are you? My mother?”

“Well seeing as you’re acting like a whiny little kid right now – “

Eduardo laughs mirthlessly, “And you wonder why I can’t stand to be in the same city as you, let alone the same house. You know what Mark? When you become the authority on how you’re supposed to act when your best friends die and leave you to raise their kid in a city that you hate with a guy who it physically hurts to be around, then you can judge me on how I’m acting, you self-important - ” He stops himself before he swears in front of Rosalind. He doesn’t want to fuck this up in the first hour.

Mark, to Eduardo’s astonishment, is looking at Eduardo as though he had physically slapped him. Shock and anger mixing with undeniable hurt, all three emotions momentarily too pronounced to hide behind his usual mask of cold indifference. Eduardo almost feels triumphant.

And as if this day couldn’t get any worse, Rosalind bursts into tears. Eduardo wonders why it doesn’t just start raining already to complete the picture.

Mark still hasn’t moved and he seems to be trying very hard not to say what is clearly on his mind but Eduardo doesn’t have the time to argue with Mark right now. He kneels down and scoops Rosalind into his arms.

“Hey, hey there, querida. Hey there, ssshhh, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’m sorry. Hey, I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know what he’s apologising for. Raising his voice maybe, or the fact that she has to live with them and not the fantastic parents she was supposed to have. Whatever he’s apologising for, it doesn’t work.

“Mark,” he demands over the top of her head, “Mark, do you know if she might be hungry?”

Mark’s face is back to impassive as he shrugs, “I don’t know. Does she need changing?”

Eduardo sniffs and is relieved when he can shake his head. “No. Can you go and see if you can find some food? I don’t know when the last time she ate was.”

Mark nods and hurries from the room and it’s a testament to how much he cares about Rosalind that he doesn’t argue or even make a face. Eduardo never thought about how Mark would be as a father but he finds he’s surprised by how affectionate he can be. He tries to ignore the slightly bitter feeling that that leaves in his chest because it really doesn’t make any sense.

Eduardo gets up, Rosalind balanced on his hip and starts to bounce her gently up and down, whispering nonsense into her ear to try and sooth her. When Mark returns, they sit on the couch and Mark tries to get her interested in the spoonful of mushed up carrots he has to offer.

It doesn’t work. Eduardo’s head is starting to hurt from the noise.

“Maybe she’s tired?” suggests Mark, and the two of them head upstairs to try and settle her in her crib.

She just cries even harder.

Eduardo picks her up again and settles her until her head is on his shoulder and her arms are around his neck. He starts to sway slowly and hum quietly while stroking her hair, like he remembers Chris doing once when she was just born.

Slowly, her cries begin to peter out and she is just left hiccoughing sporadically and sniffling into his shirt. Eduardo sighs in relief and looks up at Mark. He looks exhausted and it reminds Eduardo that he hasn’t slept for over 24 hours.

“You should get some sleep,” he whispers so as not to startle Rosalind, who seems to be on the edge of sleep herself. “I need to start contacting everyone in Singapore and you should take this opportunity while she’s asleep.”

Mark looks for a second like he wants to argue, whether as a follow on from earlier or in response to the suggestion Eduardo doesn’t know, but he thinks better of it and just nods stiffly.

Eduardo lowers the sleeping child into her crib and smiles down at her but the moment he straightens up –

They both groan as she wakes and starts crying again, making insistent grabby hands in Eduardo’s direction.

Mark marches forward and lifts Rosalind out of the crib and uses the same swaying motion to silence her as Eduardo had.

“Go and make your calls. I’ll stay here with her.”

“What? No, Mark, you don’t have to do that. You really do need to get some sleep.”

“Eduardo. I’m used to not getting any sleep; I can make it the rest of the day. You need to sort things out in Singapore. Go. It’s fine.”

He isn’t even looking at Eduardo and he starts to hum tunelessly into Rosalind’s ear, successfully putting an end to their discussion.

“Thank you,” Eduardo says, wincing internally at how formal he sounds but Mark doesn’t even acknowledge he’s heard him, so he leaves them alone and braces himself for the series of difficult calls he is going to have to make.

*

The next two days pass in a weird sort of blur. Not the kind of blur that people use to describe time moving quickly just...a blur. Eduardo spends his time trying to sort out getting anything he needs desperately shipped out to Palo Alto from Singapore and making the necessary calls to transfer his work here. He knows he needs to start thinking about an office space here in California but his time is also tied up with organising the funeral and taking care of a miserable infant who seems unable to sleep through the night, all the while trying not to cry whenever he stumbles across a piece of Dustin or Chris (which is often seeing as it is their...was their house) and also trying not to let the awkwardness with Mark get in the way.

The two of them have hardly spoken two words to each other since Mark rocked Rosalind to sleep on Tuesday. Mark has been in an out of the Facebook offices dealing with replacements and PR and it is taking its toll, though Eduardo can see he is trying to hide it. He is rarely home for dinner and when he is home they take it in turns playing with and taking care of Rosalind, exchanging only the necessary small talk and nodding to each other if they pass in the hallway.

It is so wrong that Eduardo wants to scream but he also wants to keep not talking to Mark for as long as possible because he doesn’t know what he would say. This isn’t what his life should be and this weird sort of limbo they seem to be living in while they wait for the funeral seems to be making everything ten times worse.

Except Eduardo is scared that if he takes that first step into something more, if he leaves the awful bubble they are suspended in, they will just fall into something worse. He can’t bear the thought that the eggshells they are walking on could turn to glass if he isn’t careful.

When Eduardo wakes up on Friday he is relieved that he will go to bed at the end of the day with the funeral behind him. He isn’t surprised when he finds Mark already up and dressed in a dark hoodie zipped up over a wrinkled white shirt. He waits for the familiar pang of anger when he recognises the outfit from the depositions but it doesn’t come. It turns out some things are enough to occupy all your emotions and the upcoming funeral of your two best friends is one of them.

Mark offers him a coffee wordlessly as he steps into the kitchen and Eduardo nods his head in thanks. Rosalind is dressed in yellow and lifts her arms to greet Eduardo, who lifts her out of her highchair with a rather forced smile.

“Why this outfit?” Eduardo asks quietly, mostly to fill the silence.

Mark just shrugs, “I didn’t think she looked right in black.”

Eduardo swallows the newly forming lump in his throat and closes his eyes against the sudden swell of gratitude he feels for Mark at that moment because he hears what he’d left unspoken. No little girl should have to wear black for her parents.

The funeral is a rather small affair and the closest family members and friends come back to the house with Mark and Eduardo afterwards for a small buffet dinner and drinks. Mark spends the day sitting quietly on the couch, only talking stiltedly to those who try to speak to him and periodically leaning down to pick Rosalind up as she crawls by.

Eduardo, for the most part, tries to talk to everyone, aware of the fact that they must have questions regarding the accident and Rosalind. It is hard work, explaining over and over again about that night at the hospital and seeing the badly suppressed looks of shock when he explains how he and Mark would be looking after Rosalind together. What happened with Facebook is no secret, after all.

Eduardo sighs to himself. When he’d woken up this morning he had half hoped that someone, either Chris or Dustin’s parents maybe, would have volunteered to take Rosalind. It isn’t that he doesn’t want Rosalind in his life, or even that he dreads taking care of her every day, but there is still a large part of Eduardo that believes she will be better off without them as parents. God, they can hardly even talk to each other. Rosalind deserves better than that.

And so, Eduardo hopes, does he.

But now he sees that isn’t going to happen and he knows that when today is over they are going to have to actually start trying to do this and not hide behind the excuse of planning funerals and putting out fires at work.

He wishes he had someone to talk to about this. His mother would be sympathetic but she is the other side of the country and his father, well, Eduardo doesn’t want to find out what he would say. So he hasn’t spoken to either of them.

He had colleagues back in Singapore that he had been friendly with but he had always kept his distance from making any of them more than work mates. He finds himself regretting that now. Although it makes moving away a lot easier.

His eyes drift towards Mark on the other side of the room, sitting quietly on the couch, eyes downcast and hands shoved into his pockets. He looks so small sitting there and Eduardo knows that he isn’t the only one who doesn’t know who to turn to now that Chris and Dustin are gone.

He sets down his glass on the little table by his hand and silently walks across the room, averting his gaze from the snivelling aunts and miserable friends who might want to talk to him. His mother would reprimand him for neglecting his hosting duties but he finds himself unable to care.

When he reaches the couch he sits down in silence, close enough that he can feel Mark’s body heat down his left side but not close enough that their arms touch. They don’t say anything but Mark leans in, just for the briefest of moments, and their shoulders bump gently. Thank you.

Neither of them move or say a word for the rest of the evening. People start to leave soon after Eduardo stopped circulating and eventually the two of them are left alone in the house with Rosalind sleeping curled up against Mark’s legs on the couch.

The room is growing dark as neither of them bothers to get up to turn the lights on and the only sound is that of Rosalind’s gentle snuffling as she sleeps. Eventually Eduardo breaks the silence.

“Have you read your letter?”

A pause.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

Mark sighs and strokes a strand of blonde hair from Rosalind’s forehead.

“We’re really going to have to do this, aren’t we,” says Eduardo quietly. It isn’t a question.

Mark doesn’t say anything but Eduardo nearly jumps when he feels Mark’s fingers gently brush his hand, which is resting between them. Eduardo sucks in a quiet breath but it is audible enough that Mark looks up at him. When Eduardo looks back, Mark takes his hand completely in his own and tries to link their fingers.

Eduardo thinks he is trying to be reassuring and also probably seeking some comfort for himself, but the contact sends a jolt through Eduardo and he stands abruptly, “Goodnight, Mark.” he mutters quickly and leaves for bed before either of them can say anything else.

*

He feels bad about it when he wakes up the next day. He rolls over with a sigh and wonders whether he’d been wrong to brush off Mark’s attempts to...to what? What does Mark even want? Sometimes Eduardo catches Mark looking at him with an expression that he cannot place and it feels as though he is waiting for Eduardo to make the first move. As if he wants some sign that an attempt at reconciliation would be welcome.

But Mark had never cared whether his desires were welcome before. Surely if he wanted Eduardo’s friendship back he would have said something, done something, hell, maybe even apologised. He can’t want it that badly.

Except...except there is a little part of Eduardo, a very tiny part that gets beaten down and silenced by all the years of failing to impress his father (and his best friend) that remembers the look on Mark’s face when Eduardo left the deposition room for the last time; every flicker of hurt Mark’s let slip through his impassive facade when Eduardo has brushed him off; every nervous twitch of his hands before trying to approach Eduardo and it tells him, or it tries to, that maybe Mark has been miserable these last few years too.

(Sometimes, when it is too silent and Eduardo is half way between sleeping and waking, this little part of him also remembers, I want – I want – I need you out here.)

Eduardo gets up when he hears the sound of Rosalind crying downstairs and gets dressed quickly into jeans and a fading shirt. There are some days when even he can’t be bothered with a suit.

Mark is on his laptop at the breakfast bar and Rosalind is crying in her highchair. Eduardo rolls his eyes and lifts her out.

“Has she had breakfast?” he asks.

“No food.” Mark says without even looking up or breaking his typing.

“And you didn’t think to go and get some?”

Mark shrugs, “A glitch came up with the new chat, I couldn’t leave it.”

“Mark, this is a child! You can’t just – “

“I was up with her all night, Eduardo, forgive me if I’m too tired for a trip to the supermarket right now.”

Eduardo closes his eyes and exhales. “Fine.” He says through a clenched jaw. “I’ll go. And I’m taking Rosie with me.”

He wheels around and strides out of the kitchen, ignoring Mark as he adds obnoxiously, “Good. And get Red Bull.”

Like hell will he get Red Bull. 

*

By the time he arrives at the store, Eduardo is feeling a little less angry. He didn’t hear Rosalind crying in the night once and this must mean Mark had her all night. He feels a little bad, once again, for leaving so abruptly for bed.

He pushes the cart up and down the aisles one handed as he holds Rosalind balanced on his hip with the other.

“What do you think, Rosie?” He asks as he meanders down the drinks aisle, “Shall we get him the Red Bull?”

“No.” She says and Eduardo laughs.

“Are you saying that because it is one of the only words you know? Or because you are mad at him too?”

“No.”

“Okay, it is definitely time you learn some new words already.” He grins and he chucks two cases of Red Bull into the cart before he can change his mind.

He spends the next few aisles of shopping trying to get Rosalind to say various words but ‘no’, ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ still seem to be all she is willing to say.

“Oh come on, querida, you can say fish. Fish. Fish.”

Rosalind just laughs.

“Babies, huh?” laughs a female voice behind him. Eduardo turns around.

The woman is leaning against her own cart, watching them curiously. She looks about the same age as Eduardo, with blue eyes and dark hair and a very pretty face.

“She yours?”

“No. Well yes, she is now, but, uh, it’s complicated.” He mentally kicks himself for not just saying yes. This is a random stranger in the supermarket for heaven’s sake!

“Sounds it.” The woman smiles, stepping forward and holding out a hand, “Rachel.” She says and Eduardo transfers Rosalind to his other hip so he can shake the proffered hand.

“Eduardo.” He replies, with a smile that actually feels genuine. Being out of the house is doing him a world of good, “and this is Rosalind. But you can call her Rosie.”

“Hi, Rosie! Pleased to meet you!” Rachel grins and shakes Rosalind’s tiny hand.

“Hi!” says Rosalind and both Eduardo and Rachel laugh.

“Well isn’t she just the cutest!” Rachel coos and Eduardo smiles proudly, “how old is she?”

“She just turned one the other day.”

“One year old! Well aren’t you just all grown up?”

Rosalind giggles as Rachel tickles her lightly under the chin. When she pulls her hand away she tucks her hair behind her ear prettily and Eduardo finds himself following the movement.

“What was it you called her? Care-ee-da?”

“Querida. It’s Portuguese. I’m originally from Brazil.” Eduardo smiles. He always likes talking about Brazil.

“Oh!” Rachel looks pleased, “I thought you must be from somewhere exotic, they don’t make men this handsome in America.”

Eduardo feels himself go pink as she smiles coyly up at him through her eyelashes. He smiles back, “You always chat up men in the supermarket?”

“Only the really hot ones with criminally adorable babies.” she grins back and Eduardo laughs. He’d forgotten what it was like to talk to someone who had no idea who he was or what had happened but wanted to talk to him anyway. It was nice.

“Look, um, you don’t have a wife or anything do you? I mean maybe I should have asked before I hit on you, I mean you have a baby and everything but you said it was complicated and I – “

“I don’t have a wife,” Eduardo smiles. “Or anything.” He adds and her nervous expression breaks into a small smile as she pulls a card from her handbag.

“OK, then here’s my card. I’d really like to hear about this complicated story sometime. Maybe over a drink?”

Eduardo takes the offered card and nods, slightly taken aback, “Sure.” He says, smiling, “I’ll, um...sure.”

Rachel bites her lip and smiles and then with a small wave at the both of them she goes back to her cart and disappears from the aisle.

Eduardo just stands there for a minute and then turns to look at Rosalind.

“I’ve been wrong about this before, Rosie so I need your opinion: do you think she’s the type to set fire to well-intended but apparently unwanted gifts?”

Rosalind just reaches up and tugs on Eduardo’s hair, “Fish!” she says happily and Eduardo laughs.

*

When Eduardo gets back to the house and staggers through the door with several bags and a baby balanced precariously in his arms he shouts, “Mark? You think you could help?”

Mark comes shuffling out of the kitchen and reluctantly takes some bags from Eduardo.

“Thank you. Hey, Rosie, you wanna tell Mark the new word you learnt today?”

Mark leads them back to the kitchen to set the bags down on the counter and then turns to look at them.

“She said a new word?” He looks almost excited.

“Yeah.” Eduardo beams proudly at her as he sets his own bags down, “Rosie, say fish.”

“Fish!”

Mark makes an impressed noise and takes Rosalind from Eduardo to hug her, “Fish?”

“Fish.” She repeats and Mark smiles.

“I tried to get her to say ‘croissant’ but she wouldn’t go for it.” Says Eduardo as he starts to unpack the bags. Mark looks at him and for the first time in...Eduardo can’t even remember how long, there is shared laughter in their eyes as they look at each other. 

“Here.” Eduardo says, fishing out the cases of Red Bull and putting them on the counter, “I wasn’t going to but Rosie here pulled my arm.”

Mark smiles slowly and nods. “Thanks.” He gestures to the bags, “Finish unpacking. I’ll feed Rosie.” And he places Rosalind in her highchair and starts trying to keep mushed plums from staining her clothes.

By the time Eduardo has finished unpacking the shopping and sorting out some of the kitchen cupboards, Mark has retreated into the living room with Rosalind and his laptop. Eduardo goes to grab his own laptop (which is in the living room with them) and is planning to retreat upstairs but when Mark sees him he says, 

“Don’t go up to your room.”

Eduardo hesitates so Mark continues, “I set up a spreadsheet. We’re going to need a timetable about when each of us can go to work and when we have to be here. Also we can organise events in advance to make sure one of us will always be available to take care of Rosie. I assume you won’t be working from home forever.”

Home. That scares Eduardo a little.

Mark is looking up at him expectantly and a little bit hopefully and Eduardo realises that actually, Mark is trying to make things easier. So he sits down next to Mark on the couch and they start to organise a schedule.

It’s easier than Eduardo expected, negotiating with Mark. Mark has his scheduled meetings for the month sent to him from his assistant and, seeing as Eduardo is more or less starting again in a different country, he is able to mould his plans around Mark’s existing ones. For most days, they decide that once Eduardo has an office he can have until lunch to work away from home whereas Mark, who is more likely to have to stay later, can have the afternoons at the facebook offices.

“On one condition.” Says Eduardo firmly, “Unless there is an emergency, you get home before Rosie’s bedtime. Preferably for dinner.”

To Eduardo’s surprise, Mark smiles at him. “Deal.” He says and makes the last adjustment to the document.

It’s at times like these, when Mark sends him a smile where he was expecting a frown, when Eduardo can’t quite understand what happened to them. Mark was once the person he felt the most at home with, the most himself. He used to be able to talk to him and understand him and he had been pretty sure the feeling of ease had been mutual.

Sometimes he tries to pinpoint the moment everything tilted on its axis, the actual straw that broke the camel’s back. Words spiral around his head like a tornado (I need the algorithm, I got punched by the Phoenix, you’re CFO, sure I do, you’re trying to end the party at 11, I had to get your attention) but this time it’s not one he can understand. He can’t find what it was. When did everything stop being Mark and Wardo and start being Mark. And Eduardo.

Mark’s hands still on the keyboard.

“Do you remember - ”

“Yes, Mark.”

Eduardo doesn’t need to wait for him to finish the sentence.

*

“Mark, seriously? You haven’t studied at all?”

Eduardo is sitting on Mark’s bed with econ books scattered around him, pen in his mouth.

Mark turns around from where he sits at his desk, “Wardo, you know I never bother studying unless you are here to force me.”

“Fine.” Eduardo gets up and leans over Mark, opening up a spreadsheet on Mark’s laptop. “Put in the times you can’t do and I’ll put in mine and we can organise some times when we can study together. And I will make you actually do something.”

Mark looks briefly like he is about to argue but Eduardo crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows sternly and Mark rolls his eyes half-heartedly and starts to put in his class times.

They spend a good portion of the evening filling out their schedule and negotiating locations where they can meet in some of their lunch breaks. Eduardo never thought he could have fun setting up a revision timetable but when they start drinking beer and playing increasingly violent games of rock, paper, scissors for whose room to study in, Eduardo finds himself feeling very glad he has Mark as a study partner this year.

When they’ve finished Eduardo flops back onto Mark’s bed with his books and Mark stays facing his computer, bringing whatever code he’d been working on back up.

“Hey, you know I won’t really end up doing much studying at all, right? By myself I have no motivation to even start and with you, you’ll just end up distracting me.”

“No I won’t, Mark, because I really will be studying. Some of us can’t just pass on skill alone, you know, I probably won’t even talk to you.”

Mark shrugs, “Doesn’t matter. You’ll distract me just by being there.”

Eduardo laughs and flips open a new page of his notebook. “Bullshit. Once you’re focused on something, I don’t distract you even when I try.”

“Sure you do. I’m just good at hiding it.”

And Eduardo can’t see Mark’s face, he is typing away furiously at his laptop again signalling the end of the conversation, but Eduardo is sure that Mark’s ears aren’t normally quite that pink.

*

The silence between them was almost tangible now that Mark’s hands were unmoving on the keyboard. Eduardo doesn’t have to look at Mark to know that they are remembering the same thing.

“Wardo, I - ”

“You shouldn’t call me that.”

It’s out of Eduardo’s mouth before he can even think about it. But what is there to think about? Wardo. It sounds so different on Mark’s tongue. It always did. When Chris and Dustin say it – said it. Said it – it was just Eduardo without the Ed. Just them missing off a syllable to make it more convenient because of how often they said his name. When they said it, it was nice, but it still sounded like Eduardo.

But from Mark’s lips it’s different. A whole new name fashioned at a time when Eduardo meant enough to Mark for him to fashion one. Mark used to call him Wardo and it didn’t sound like Eduardo it sounded like something only a best friend would call him. Something affectionate and familiar.

When Mark says Wardo, Eduardo feels like he’s someone to Mark. But he’s not. Mark made that clear (It won’t be like you’re not a part of Facebook, you’re not a part of Facebook) so what business does he have saying it now?

It’s not right. It hurts.

Mark’s face closes off in a way that Eduardo is all too familiar with and he nods jerkily as he looks back at the computer screen.

“I guess we’re done here anyway.” Says Mark after a moment and Eduardo, determined not to start feeling guilty (you signed the papers) leaves with his own laptop under his arm.

It only occurs to him as he is going to bed that evening that he never even asked if Mark solved the problem with chat.

*

The week that follows passes by pretty awkwardly but in comparison to how it started, it’s actually not that bad.

Eduardo spends the mornings hunting for office space nearby and Mark leaves for the facebook offices almost immediately after Eduardo gets back around midday.

Rosalind learns four more words. Eduardo starts refusing to give her things until she masters ‘please’ and she starts saying ‘up’ when wanting to be carried. Mark manages to get her to say ‘dog’ and ‘yes’ but fails, much to his disappointment, to teach her ‘laptop’.

Mark and Eduardo only really see each other for dinner which, despite the awkward way their planning session ended, Mark has followed through on getting home for. Eduardo cooks most days, spending the time when he isn’t working finding new recipes to try out and even though meal times only really bring stilted small talk between the two of them, they are not too awkward what with one or other of them chatting cheerfully to Rosalind while they feed her.

They take it in turns being the one to get up each night.

It’s weird, Eduardo thinks, how quickly they are starting to settle in to fitting their lives around Rosalind but not around each other. Eduardo misses Singapore and he misses his friends and he is so tired from getting up in the night to sooth a crying baby but it’s Mark he starts thinking most about.

In the years after the depositions, Eduardo made a point of not thinking about Mark until he genuinely didn’t anymore. I mean, things would remind him every now and then and when he got drunk he’d sometimes dwell on what could have been but on the whole, he lived his life with relative contentment. Not happiness. But contentment.

But now Mark’s there, every day just there, looking exactly the same as he always did and doing exactly the same things. Except he isn’t exactly the same. Not quite. Eduardo isn’t blind. He sees all the times Mark looks at him like he can’t believe he’s there or like he’s trying to work up enough courage for something and he sees all the times Mark fidgets with his hands and takes a breath like he wants to say something and it isn’t by accident that Eduardo says something inane or leaves the room before he actually can. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it or what he’s afraid Mark will say but something in Eduardo, the same part of him that smashed Mark’s laptop, looks at Mark and just sees point zero three percent.

When the doorbell rings on Saturday night Mark is sitting along the couch with his computer on his lap and Eduardo is sitting on the floor with Rosalind on his knee watching some strange cartoon that makes her laugh happily.

They share a confused look for a moment as if to ask whether either of them were expecting company, before Mark slides off the couch to answer the door and Eduardo shuts off the TV.

When Mark returns to the room and sits back down he is followed by a smartly dressed, relatively short woman with dark hair and a cheerful smile.

“Ah, and this must be Mr. Saverin,” she leans forward with a smile to shake his hand, “I’m Charlotte, I’m the social worker on this case!”

“Oh, of course!” Eduardo says, smiling his most charming smile, “Please, call me Eduardo.”

He gestures to the armchair that sits at a right angle to the couch Mark is sitting on and asks if she wants a drink.

“No, I’m fine, thank you. I’m just here for a quick chat really. Please, do sit down.”

He sits.

“So this must be Rosalind.” She says as Rosalind crawls over to her legs.

“Up!” the child demands and reaches up to Charlotte, who laughs and lifts her up delightedly to sit on her lap.

“Why, she’s very friendly! She’s not wary of strangers at all!”

“I know,” Eduardo smiles, “She gets that from Dustin.”

Charlotte smiles sadly, “You must miss them.”

Mark snorts incredulously and mutters something that Eduardo doesn’t quite hear but he shoots Mark a glare anyway and nudges him hard in the ribs.

“Be nice.” He growls under his breath and Mark just frowns petulantly.

“No, it’s alright.” Sighs Charlotte, “I guess it was a stupid thing for me to say. Look, basically I just wanted to get to know you guys a bit. I know the story of course, I think everyone knows the story. It’s been all over the news, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Eduardo was aware. Mark had had a tough time dealing with the PR of this whole affair, especially as he had to hire a new PR guy to deal with it and Eduardo has been recognised a couple of times this week.

“Mark, let’s start with you. I know what you do for a living of course. How do you see that fitting around raising a child? Facebook must be a pretty full time job.”

Mark shrugs. “Yes. It is. But I can work from home if I have to and laptops are portable so it isn’t really an issue.” He sounds bored.

“And you, Eduardo? You’ve had to move your whole life around!”

“Yeah,” Eduardo nods, “I’m currently trying to find office space but my work is pretty flexible too. Most of my work is consulting with potential clients and dealing with my various investments. I can also work from home and change my hours around fairly easily if I have to. 

Charlotte nods. “This little girl sure is lucky to have you two then. Most cases I deal with there are all kinds of arguments about who has to stay at home and when.”

“Lucky?” Mark asks with an edge to his voice, “Her parents died before she could even know them and you say she is lucky that we have flexible work hours?”

“Mark.” Eduardo sighs warningly but he can’t help agree with him, just a little.

Charlotte looks taken aback and a little out of her depth.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, I know this is a terrible time for you and I know everything anyone says about it must sound trite and meaningless, so I’m not going to say that I’m sorry for your loss or that I wish this hadn’t happened but I will try and make you see the positives here. This little girl could have been left to an orphanage or to random parents she didn’t even know and instead, Mr Hughes and Mr Moskovitz were able to leave her to two people she was already close to and who are fortunate enough in life to offer her a good home. Not many orphans are left to two billionaires, you know.”

Mark doesn’t say anything and Eduardo smiles gratefully at her. She has a point.

“Okay, well today I just wanted to make sure everything was alright and that you had managed to fit your lives around her satisfactorily. I’ll be making two more visits over the next month or so just to make sure she is OK and that this is the best possible life for her. Do either of you have any questions about anything? I know that neither of you have any experience in child care before now so it’s OK if you need to ask me anything.”

They both shake their heads. She sighs and nods, looking down at Rosie and bouncing her gently on her knee,

“What about you, Rosie? Any questions?”

“Hi.” She says cheerfully and Charlotte smiles.

“Okay, well then before I go I just have one more thing I need to discuss with the two of you. Of course, I am familiar with your past but I have to ask as part of my job.” She smiles apologetically, “Are you engaged in any sort of sexual relationship with each other?”

Eduardo almost chokes.

“What? No!” he sputters. Mark just continues to glare.

“Okay good. You should both know that it is my job to ensure that this little girl goes through as little turmoil as possible and sex just makes everything ten times more complicated. If you decide you want to pursue a relationship –”

“Honestly, we will not –”

“Please, Eduardo, I’m not saying that you will, but you need to be aware that you either need to keep this platonic,” she waves a hand between the two of them, “or get married. It sounds drastic but this child does not need more instability in her life. Okay?"

Eduardo nods weakly. She stands to leave and Mark leans over to take Rosalind from her, a little too forcefully for it to be entirely polite. It’s clear to everyone in the room, probably even Rosalind, that Mark does not like this woman one bit.

She picks up her bag but before she can walk towards the door, Eduardo suddenly remembers,

“Wait, what are the rules on us dating?”

Mark turns to look at him so fast that he almost bangs heads with the small child in his arms and his eyes are wide.

“I mean other people.” Eduardo adds quickly. “Not each other. What are the rules on us dating other people? I mean, I met this girl in the supermarket the other day and I was thinking about calling her. Is that against the rules too?”

Mark is staring at Eduardo with such focus that it unnerves him slightly. He refuses to look at him and keeps his eyes on Charlotte.

“Well,” she says, “there are no rules about anything really, Eduardo. Just advice on what is best for Rosalind. There is nothing to say that you can’t pursue a relationship with this girl just as long as you do not make her an important part of Rosalind’s life until you are sure of the relationship’s longevity.”

Eduardo nods, “Okay. Thank you.”

“His last girlfriend set fire to his room,” Mark says suddenly, voice clipped and eyes still on Eduardo.

Eduardo sighs exasperatedly at him, “Mark that was not my last girlfriend. That was one of my girlfriends when I was in college.”

Mark shrugs, “Still, doesn’t look like you have great taste in women.”

“Yeah, in college, where I didn’t have a great taste in best friends either.” Eduardo snaps and Mark’s eyes narrow.

Charlotte’s eyes are wide and she looks between them as they glare at each other, Eduardo’s hands clenched into fists and Mark’s jaw tense.

“Gentlemen,” she sighs, “you really need to think about whether you can get it together enough to be the parents she deserves because as much as I know you love her, if you continue like this, I don’t know if you’re what’s best.”

She leaves them then, showing herself out and closing the door quietly behind her.

There is a moment where they’re both silent, Eduardo taking deep breaths to calm down.

“Don’t call her.” Mark says quietly and this time, it sounds like a request not an order.

Eduardo sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “And why not, Mark? How could it possibly matter to you?”

“Just...look I know you don’t want this, Eduardo but we are here, with a child. Neither of us really knows what we’re doing and...and we need each other, War – Eduardo. Please. Don’t call her.”

Eduardo thinks of about fifty different responses he could give, ranging from fuck you, what right do you have to ask anything of me?  to I didn’t even know that ‘please’ was in your vocabulary. But he doesn’t find himself saying any of them. What he actually says is,

“Okay.”

*

When Mark comes downstairs on Monday morning, Eduardo is sitting on the living room floor with pieces of paper spread out around him, Rosalind staring at the TV where an excessively colourful cartoon is playing.

“Was she up much last night?” Mark asks as he bends down to kiss her on the forehead.

“Yeah. I gave up trying to get her back to sleep about an hour ago.”

Mark nods in what Eduardo assumes is meant to be a sympathetic way and then gestures to all the paper on the floor.

“What’s this?”

“Potential office spaces. I’ve been to see all of them, I’ve just got to make a decision. You can go into work this morning if you like, I have nowhere to be but here.”

Mark shakes his head and twists his hands, “No, I um...I could help you if you like. Help you decide.”

Eduardo looks taken aback for a minute.

“You want to help?”

Mark shrugs, “I don’t have much going on at work and I know the area better than you.” He seems to consider for a moment before adding, “Plus if I let you choose all by yourself you will just end up going for the one with the prettiest view or something.”

Eduardo laughs and Mark looks pleased.

“Yeah, okay then.” Eduardo says, clearing a space next to him on the floor. “Impress me with your local knowledge.”

Mark looks vaguely surprised but there is a smile on his face as he sits down next to Eduardo and starts looking through all the options.

Sometimes Eduardo forgets how much Mark used to make him laugh. Mark has something dry and scathing to say about pretty much every single office but Eduardo finds, as he always used to find, that when his acerbic wit isn’t directed at him it makes him laugh in a way that no one else used to really understand. They always were kind of odd like that. Telling jokes that only the two of them found funny.

They find themselves arguing good-naturedly over an old period place which Eduardo thinks is perfect but Mark thinks is ‘too pretentious’. Eduardo doesn’t hesitate to point out the hypocrisy in that assessment and Mark calls him an asshole, which leads to Eduardo shoving him playfully in the shoulder and Mark flipping him off.

Rosalind turns around then and says with a frown “no” before turning back to the TV and this only makes Eduardo laugh harder and Mark smile wide enough for his dimples to show.

Eventually, after a few more debates and quite a few cups of coffee, Eduardo settles on a small office a couple of blocks away from the Facebook offices, Mark putting forward the argument that it would be useful if they ever needed to transfer Rosalind between the two.

Eduardo gathers all of the papers back up and stands up to put them on the coffee table.

“Thanks, Mark. I appreciate your help today.”

Mark stands too and stretches, “No problem. If you like I’ll help you choose an assistant too. You should definitely get one and I can always ask Isobel to give me some names.”

“Mark, thank you, but I am perfectly capable of doing my job without your help, you know.”

He doesn’t mean it to sound so harsh, in fact he had intended it as a fairly light-hearted comment but clearly something in him (probably the part of him that remembers it probably was a diversity thing and don’t worry if you don’t make it any further) wants Mark to know that he is good at his job.

Mark’s eyes go from open and happy to closed off in an instant. “I know that, Eduardo.”

“Good.”

Mark suddenly sighs frustratedly and surges forward, grabbing Eduardo’s arm and pulling him out of the living room. He closes the door behind them so that Rosalind cannot hear them and drags Eduardo into the kitchen. Only then does he let go of Eduardo’s arm with enough force that Eduardo, in his momentarily stunned state, stumbles back to the other side of the room.

“Why won’t you let me try to fix this, Wardo?”

And there it is: the three thousand pound marlin in the room that they’ve been dancing around for the past two weeks. It’s finally out there and Eduardo suddenly feels as if no time has passed between now and that last day of the depositions, the anger and the hurt feeling as fresh as the day he stormed across the room shouting Mark’s name.

Eduardo snorts, “There shouldn’t be anything to fix, Mark.”

“But there is,” replies Mark, instantly. “And I’m trying. So let me.”

“Let you? Mark, I’m not fucking stopping you.”

“Yes you are, Wardo!”

“Stop calling me that.”

“See!” Mark is almost shouting and Eduardo feels a hint of satisfaction that he cares enough to raise his voice for once. “Eduardo, I’ve been trying to fix this ever since the wedding and you won’t listen! Just like with Facebook!”

“WHAT?”

“I’ve been practising my apology ever since the depositions, fuck, ever since it happened really. I wrote and rewrote my speech in my head and then when I saw you at the wedding, you wouldn’t listen to me! You just walked away without even giving me a chance!” 

“Maybe because I didn’t want to speak to you, Mark! How was I supposed to know you weren’t just going to - ”

“BECAUSE YOU DON’T EVER LISTEN!”

Eduardo clenches his fists and grits his teeth, glaring at Mark, who is glaring right back with unmistakable fury in his eyes.

“What did you mean when you said, ‘just like with Facebook’?”

Mark huffs out an incredulous laugh, “Jesus, Eduardo, I meant exactly that! You’re doing it again right now! I just told you that I have a whole apology in my head and you didn’t hear me. You only heard the bit you didn’t want to hear! Just like when I told you I needed you and you only heard that you’d get left behind.”

“Yes! Because you were leaving me behind!”

“NO! I told you I was SCARED of you getting left behind and that I NEEDED you NOT to be! I told you over and over to come with me, come live with me, come BE with me where I NEEDED you and you DIDN’T. LISTEN!”

Eduardo wants to smash something. He wants to smash something so much that he has to clench his fists hard enough to engrave fingernail grooves into his palms.

“You’re saying it was my fault?! Getting stabbed in the back was my own fault?!”

“Well actually, Eduardo, I would be apologising if you cared enough about anything other than your fucking high horse, to listen to me.”

And he turns on his heels and marches down the hall, grabbing his keys from the table and slamming the door behind him as he leaves.

Eduardo rams his hands into his pockets to keep from smashing a plate.

*

The house is dark when Mark gets home around midnight. Eduardo put Rosalind to bed nearly four hours ago and he’s been watching through a box of home videos he found under the stairs. He never bothered to turn the living room lights on and the only light in the room comes from the television screen. 

He presses pause when he hears Mark appear in the doorway and Chris is frozen on the screen with a longsuffering expression and hands on his hips. Eduardo doesn’t turn to look at Mark and he doesn’t say anything but Mark takes the pause as it was intended and shuffles fully into the room.

He sits next to Eduardo on the couch.

“I found a box of home videos under the stairs. You um, you should see some of them. I mean this one is just, you gotta see this.”

Eduardo presses play and Chris comes back into life, rolling his eyes at the camera.

“Dustin, for the love of God, do you have to film every little thing?”

“But Chriiiiiiiiis, you look so pretty when you’re frustrated and covered in paint!” comes Dustin’s voice from behind the camera and Chris huffs, looking down at the yellow paint splattered on his shirt. “Come on, Chris, this is funny.”

“It is not funny! How is it that you trip and fall on your clumsy ass and I end up covered in paint?”

Eduardo smiles as Dustin sniggers behind the camera and he hears Mark snort beside him.

Dustin puts the camera down on something and he appears in shot.

“Well you know, Christopher, if you want me to be covered in paint too, there are ways you can make that happen.”

“No,” says Chris sternly but there is unmistakeable laughter in his eyes. He never could stay mad at Dustin. “No. No sex for a week. No, a month. No sex ever again.”

Dustin laughs and presses himself up against Chris’s chest, successfully getting yellow paint all over his own shirt and runs a finger through the paint on Chris’s cheek.

“Is that your final decision, Mr Hughes-Moskovitz?”

Chris rolls his eyes, “I want a divorce.” He says but he leans forward and kisses Dustin anyway.

Eduardo pauses it again and the two of them sit in silence for a moment, looking at the smiling faces on the screen.

“We can’t keep living like this, Mark.” says Eduardo eventually, speaking quietly and still not looking at Mark. “We have a baby now. We can’t keep fighting and shouting and tiptoeing around this house like it’s only temporary.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Wardo. I never did.” Mark’s voice is small and somewhat defeated. Eduardo finds that such a tone sounds wrong in Mark’s mouth. “I really do want to fix this, you know. Since the moment you smashed my laptop.”

Eduardo looks at him then. Mark’s face is lit by the television screen and Eduardo can see exhaustion etched there and something else he can’t place. He is staring at his own knees when he speaks again, even quieter than before.

“The day Rosie was born. I – I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Yes you did, Mark. You always mean what you say.”

“Yes. But not that time. I was wrong to say what I said, especially to you. It was mean. I didn’t mean it.”

Eduardo smiles gently at Mark for a moment before looking away again.

*

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...” Dustin runs a hand through his hair as a smiling nurse passes the tiny bundle of blankets to Chris. “Oh my GOD, Chris, look at her!”

His eyes are shining with tears and when Chris tears his eyes away from the little girl in his arms to look at him, his are too.

Mark and Eduardo are standing on the other side of the room, watching them in complete silence, Eduardo grinning from ear to ear at how happy his friends are and even Mark has a fond smile on his face.

“I cannot believe you are our daughter!” coos Chris as he strokes a wispy strand of blonde hair off her forehead. “You wanna hold her?” He whispers to Dustin, and when Dustin nods he places her in his arms as if she were glass.

“What’re you gonna call her?” asks Eduardo, stepping forward to get a better look at her face.

“Rosalind,” Chris answers without looking away from the baby in his husband’s arms, “Rosalind Hughes-Moskovitz, and, uh,” He and Dustin share a look and turn to look at them simultaneously, “And we were wondering if you two would be her godfathers.”

Eduardo’s heart swells suddenly and he feels himself welling up, “Oh my God, you guys, of course I will! Yes! Thank you!” and he surges forward to gather both of them (and Rosalind) into a hug which has both of them laughing.

When they turn to look at Mark, he just nods and smiles, stepping forward to clap Dustin on the back awkwardly.

“Can I hold her?” Mark asks, just as Dustin is passing her over the Eduardo.

“In a minute, Mark, I just got her!” Eduardo snaps and Mark glares at him.

“Well don’t get angry about it, we all know how you like to break things when you’re angry.”

“Mark.” Chris says in a warning tone.

Eduardo snorts, “Yeah because I’m the one who can’t be trusted here. I’m surprised you guys are trusting Mark with anything that could get hurt, let alone a baby. I’ve never noticed him give any thought to someone else’s feelings before.”

“Yeah, well maybe I will now that there’s someone who actually matters.” Mark snaps.

Nobody speaks. Dustin’s eyes are wide and sad and Chris is looking at Mark with the kind of disappointment that will make Rosalind beg for forgiveness when she’s older.

Mark is glaring at Eduardo and Eduardo can’t tell if that’s regret he sees in his eyes or just really cold fury. In either case he bends down, kisses Rosalind on the forehead, passes her gently over to Chris and leaves.

*

“I miss them, Mark,” Eduardo says into the silence and he is surprised to hear the tears in his voice. “They were the only real friends I had in the world. I keep absent-mindedly calling Chris to ask for advice or texting Dustin about something stupid someone said at work and I don’t – I don’t know what to do. It’s like it’s not real. It’s like they’ll be back any minute.” 

He blinks against the stinging in his eyes.

“They won’t be,” Mark says and Eduardo huffs a laugh through his tears.

“Mark - ”

“Wardo.” He can feel Mark turn to look at him, “They won’t be back. It’s just us. And Rosie.” Eduardo nods. “I miss them too.” Mark continues “Believe it or not, I didn’t have any other friends either. Not ever. Except for you. And you don’t count.”

Eduardo snorts. “No, of course I don’t. You wanted to get rid of me.”

“No,” Mark says slowly as if talking to a small child, “You don’t count because you were different to them in my head, Eduardo. More.”

Eduardo shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling and he feels Mark look back at the screen again. They are quiet for a few more minutes before Mark says, “They loved each other.”

“Yeah,” Eduardo agrees with a sigh.

Very gently, so gently it’s as if he hopes Eduardo won’t notice, Mark rests his head on Eduardo’s shoulder. “I miss them.” He whispers into the darkness and Eduardo finds he doesn’t have the heart to shrug him off.

“Me too,” he replies eventually and he feels Mark relax slightly against him and then,

“I miss you,” Mark says, even quieter than before.

Eduardo feels himself stop breathing for just a second. He wants to cry, he wants to scream that it isn’t fair for Mark to do this to him, he wants to say me too and no and about a thousand other things but he can’t say any of them. He wants to leave but he’s tired of running away; he wants to stay but he’s scared to let Mark back in. He wants to shrug Mark off and he wants Mark to stay there forever and in the end all he can do is whisper “Okay,” and hope that at least some of all that gets across.

*

“Box.”

Rosalind says nothing.

“Come on, Rosie, box.”

She stares at Eduardo blankly. He sighs.

“Oh come on! If you can sit in the box, you can say box. Now repeat after me. BOX.”

“You shipping her off somewhere?” Mark’s voice startles Eduardo and he turns around. He didn’t even hear him get back from work, “Because if you are, I could get behind it; I’d love a full night’s sleep one day soon. Make sure you remember to punch holes in the lid or something.”

Eduardo pretends to gasp. “You hear that Rosie? Mark wants to get rid of you!” He lifts her out of the box. “Can you say ‘irresponsible’?”

Mark snorts and looks around at all the boxes littering the living room. “So what’s all this?”

“Well, you know how we talked about...about moving on?”

Mark nods.

“Well I thought it was about time we stopped living in this house as if it isn’t ours. We have to live here for at least another four years and we should start making it our house.”

Mark considers him for a second. “Can we get rid of that creepy as hell picture of the shark?” he asks, pointing at the wall.

“Most definitely.” Eduardo smiles.

So they spend the evening taking down pictures they don’t like, packing away Chris’s suits and Dustin’s dinosaur t-shirts and collecting up any other personal items that they can keep in the attic.

It’s fun in a way that Eduardo didn’t expect. He expected it to be hard putting Chris and Dustin’s life into a few cardboard boxes but actually it just ends up giving them some more good memories of the two of them. Eduardo asks Mark at one point if he wants to bring any of his stuff over from his own house but Mark just shrugs and says he sold it over a week ago.

“What?” asks Eduardo, surprised.

Mark just shrugs. “I was hardly ever there, anyway.”

Mark gets home even earlier the next day and they continue then as well, properly making up the second guest room into a more permanent looking bedroom for Mark and reorganising the kitchen cupboards in a way that better suits them (well, more just Eduardo really. Eduardo has yet to see Mark cook anything more complicated than toast).

By about 6:30 they are standing in the living room looking rather proud of themselves and Eduardo suddenly reaches for his laptop.

“What are you doing?” asks Mark.

“I think I know what we need for the mantelpiece,” Eduardo answers, pulling up his emails and opening that last one Dustin had sent him.

He sends the document to the printer in the downstairs office (now Mark’s home office) and comes back with one of the large frames that had been around the house with one of the various holiday photos of Chris and Dustin. He sets it in the middle of the mantelpiece where it is clearly visible from the whole of the living room and steps back to stand next to Mark.

It’s the picture from the night before any of this happened, the one that Dustin had made them take: just the two of them sitting with their arms pressed together, smiling so wide it looked like they didn’t have a single problem in all the world, and Rosalind clapping happily in between them.

Mark looks up at Eduardo. “Come to dinner with me.”

“Mark - ”

“I already asked Isobel, she said she’d take Rosie tonight and I booked us a table at that new restaurant a couple of blocks away. You said you wanted to try it, remember? On Rosie’s birthday you said you saw it on your way to their house and wanted to see if it was any good. So let’s go. Tonight, 7:30. I’ll drive.”

Mark wasn’t really asking, his chin was raised slightly defiantly and his hands were shoved into his pockets, and Eduardo found he didn’t really want to say no anyway.

“Sure,” he says with a little shrug that says ‘why not?’ and Mark nods, satisfied, and leaves the room.

Eduardo turns, slightly bemused, to look at Rosalind who is chewing on a plastic lion. “Did you hear that, Rosie? Mark Zuckerberg just asked me to dinner. Did he hit his head this morning or something?”

Rosie looks up at him, “Please,” she says and points at the TV. Eduardo just rolls his eyes and settles down with her for an episode of The Wiggles.

He doesn’t enjoy The Wiggles, he absolutely swears.

When 7:30 rolls around and Eduardo opens the door to Mark’s assistant Isobel, he smiles widely at her and holds out a hand.

Hi, I haven’t met you yet, I’m Eduardo.”

She takes his hand and grins back. “I know, you’re famous where I work, remember? I’m Isobel. You can call me Issy though. Mark’s the only one in the world who calls me Isobel.” She rolls her eyes and Eduardo laughs and invites her in.

“I’m so grateful to you for doing this. I hope Mark didn’t order you to or anything; if he did then please feel free to tell him to fuck off next time.”

Isobel laughs delightedly and Eduardo likes her already.

“It’s okay. I’m not scared of him. He’s all bark and no bite most of the time!”

Eduardo smiles and doesn’t mention that actually he has firsthand experience with just how much bite Mark can have.

“I hope you’re not undermining my authority, Eduardo,” he hears from behind him and when he turns around he almost does a double take.

Mark is standing at the foot of the stairs and he is not wearing a hoodie or shorts or even his damn flip-flops. Instead he is wearing a light blue button-down shirt that isn’t wrinkled and dirty, actual shoes that don’t make a sound when he walks and dark jeans that actually seem to fit him.

Eduardo lets out an involuntary laugh. “Wow, Mark! I didn’t think I’d see the day you dressed up without coercion!”

Mark blushes and mutters, “Shut up.”

Isobel whistles. “Seriously, Mark, he’s right! Why, I even think you’ve brushed your hair! Someone’s definitely making an effort, tonight!”

Mark glares in her direction. “I can fire you any time, you know.”

Eduardo scoffs. “Don’t worry, if he does then you can come work for me. I need an assistant and I’ll be a much nicer boss.”

“Yeah?” Isobel grins, “Well I’m definitely tempted. I bet you never stay at work until midnight.”

“Okay, that’s it, we’re leaving now,” Mark says, frowning at the both of them and grabbing his keys. “You coming, Eduardo?”

Eduardo rolls his eyes in Isobel’s direction and she giggles again.

“You boys have fun and don’t worry about Rosie. We’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” says Eduardo sincerely but Mark makes an impatient noise so he waves in farewell and closes the front door behind him.

Eduardo is surprised how easily he falls back into pace with Mark. When they’re sitting opposite each other in a nice restaurant, eating really good food, Eduardo cannot help but have a good time and for the first time, forget that anything is awkward. Mark asks questions about his work and about Singapore and Eduardo asks questions about Facebook that he actually finds himself wanting to know. Mark starts to fall back into his old habit of dropping insults about random passersby or even Eduardo into the conversation and Eduardo finds himself laughing and responding just like he used to. For once the banter doesn’t feel personal, it just feels familiar. Even nice.

When they step into the parking lot at the end of the night and head towards Mark’s car, Eduardo asks Mark what this was all about. He hasn’t seen Mark this relaxed in years.

Mark stops by the car and turns around to face Eduardo. He looks up at him steadily, considering something for a second. Then he says,

“Wardo, I’m sorry, okay?” The whole parking lot seems to ring with the words. “I know that I hurt you and I regret that. What I did...it was a dick move and if I could do it differently, I would.”

“Differently?” Eduardo asks, not angrily but with a slight edge to his voice, “So you’d still do it? Just in a less asshole way?”

Mark sighs, “Wardo, you didn’t come with me.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Mark.”

“No,” Mark says, loudly, “No, if you want me to fix this then you have to listen to me. Wardo, all I wanted was for you to be there with me. For it to be our thing. Not Sean’s. I wanted Sean because he was good for the company at that point in time. I wanted you because you were you and in my head it was ours and you were my best friend. I wanted you to care about it as much as I did but you didn’t listen to me about the ads, you didn’t listen when I told you I wanted you there and needed you there and then you froze the account.”

Eduardo opens his mouth to respond but Mark just carries on, determined.

“I diluted your shares because you jeopardised the company and I thought that that meant you didn’t care about it and, by extension, didn’t care about me. It hurt. I wanted to hurt you back and I wanted to protect myself and I wanted to protect Facebook. It was the right thing to do for the company. It wasn’t the right thing to do for me or for you and if I could do it again then I would talk to you first. Make you listen. Then maybe I would have known that you did care and that I wasn’t alone.”

He takes a deep breath and then says simply, “I’m sorry for what I did. I miss you. I want you back.”

The air around them feels thick and heavy with all the words Eduardo struggles to take in.

I’m sorry

He’s wanted to hear Mark say those words for years,

I miss you

Eduardo never let himself think about whether he missed Mark in fear that the answer would be yesyesyes,

I want you back

I want you back

I want you back.

Eduardo sits down on the hood of the car with his hands braced either side of him. Mark sits down next to him, waiting.

“It was never about Facebook for me, Mark,” Eduardo says, quietly.

“So I was right to cut you out,” Mark says and Eduardo sighs.

“I never thought I’d say this Mark, but in a way you probably were. I wasn’t right for the company. Not then. You’re an idiot though if you thought I didn’t care about you.” Mark looks at him and Eduardo looks back. “Mark, Facebook was, and is, brilliant but for me, it was always about helping you. That’s all. Facebook was your thing and you were mine. When Sean came along I thought that I was no longer wanted, like all I had been was money to you and I got so angry. When I froze the account I think I just...Jesus, I dunno, I just wanted you to still want me anyway so that I knew you valued more than just my bank account.” Eduardo sighs and looks down. “But I guess you didn’t in the end.” He shrugs.

Mark shifts a little so that he is facing Eduardo more fully. “I never wanted you to feel like that. I...I didn’t choose you because of your money, Wardo.”

Eduardo looks up at Mark and his face is so earnest and so...open that Eduardo can’t help but smile at him. “I know,” he says, and Mark smiles back.

“Look,” Mark says after a moment, “We were young. We both made mistakes and I’m willing to acknowledge that mine was the worst one but I don’t want to have ruined everything forever, Wardo. I don’t think I could live with that.”

In his eyes there’s a please that’s left unspoken and Eduardo leans in slightly so that their shoulders nudge together gently.

“You really won’t stop calling me ‘Wardo’, will you?” he says with a smile.

“Won’t and can’t,” Mark replies, and Eduardo knows that not everything is fixed just like that, that that’s not how it works, but somehow, those three words? They sound like a promise.

After they get home and thank Isobel profusely for babysitting, they tiptoe into Rosalind’s room to check that she’s asleep and it isn’t until they are standing side by side by her crib, Eduardo whispering ‘thank you for dinner’ and Mark smiling up at him just enough to let his dimples show, that it happens.

Eduardo bids a hasty goodnight and shuts himself in his room as fast as he can without making Mark suspicious, lying awake long into the night, staring at the ceiling.

Because standing there in the dim light of Rosalind’s room with Mark smiling up at him so genuinely, Eduardo had suddenly, for the first time in his life, inexplicably, undeniably, desperately wanted to kiss him.

This is new. And it’s definitely not good.

*

When Eduardo wakes up the next morning it isn’t to the high-pitched wails of the one year old in the room next door and it isn’t to the fast beat of his own heart as he panics over last night’s...oddity; it’s to his bedroom door banging open and a rather frantic looking Mark Zuckerberg bursting through it.

“Facebook’s about to crash, I gotta go in,” he says, without preamble.

Eduardo groans and gets out of bed with a stretch, “Oh, no no no, you have Rosie this morning so that I can interview for a new assistant.”

“Oh come on, Eduardo, I can’t just - ”

“Mark! Take her with you if you must, but I have five interviews this morning and we agreed on this days ago. I can’t take her this morning.”

Eduardo yawns and pulls off his t-shirt and peers into his wardrobe, signalling to Mark that there’s no further argument to be had and expecting him to storm out the room in a huff or say something obnoxious to try and get his way.

But that’s not what happens at all. Mark makes a sort of strangled sound and Eduardo looks over his shoulder to check he’s not literally choking with rage but finds that Mark doesn’t actually look angry at all anymore. He is staring, frozen and wide-eyed, at Eduardo’s chest and Eduardo suddenly feels incredibly self-conscious. He coughs and raises a confused eyebrow at Mark, who seems to have inexplicably forgotten all about Facebook entirely, which is no mean feat and, when he sees Eduardo watching him, goes incredibly pink and starts backing out of the room.

“Okay, fine, I’ll just take her with me then,” he breathes and then he is gone from the room.

Eduardo just stands staring at the closed door for a minute, completely baffled.

Did Mark just agree with him that quickly? Was he blushing?

Eduardo shakes his head as if to clear it. Sometimes he wonders what the hell his life has become.

*

It’s not that none of the interviewees are interesting, in fact Eduardo thinks that the third one is just right for the job, but he finds himself unable to give any of them his full attention. He nods and smiles when he has to, asks the appropriate questions and laughs in all the right places but it feels as though his body is on autopilot while his brain circles endlessly around that same thought: kissing Mark.

Why did he want to kiss Mark last night? Was it a one off or does he still want to kiss Mark? Would he have wanted to kiss Mark back in college if he’d thought about it? What would it be like to kiss Mark? What would Mark do if Eduardo shoved him up against the wall and –

Eduardo feels himself go red and the thought and takes a sip of water in the hope that his last potential assistant of the morning doesn’t notice. Jesus, Eduardo, get it together! he thinks as he tries to focus on what John (or is it Josh?) is saying about his last job.

But the thought is still there in the back of his mind. It’s there as he shakes Jason’s hand (Jake? Joe? Whatever.) and it’s there as he starts to gather up his things and lock up the office. It’s even still there as he pulls into the parking lot outside Facebook and he takes a moment to gather himself before he goes inside.

Okay, he’ll just go and get Rosalind and make small talk with Mark and it’ll all be back to normal. Right? I mean, it’s Mark. Mark who sometimes forgets to shower for a week and wears ratty old hoodies from when he was eighteen and wears a look of contempt in his eyes at least 60% of the time. Mark who used to be his best friend and who he sued for 600 million dollars. He can’t actually want to kiss Mark. It’s just been a weird couple of weeks.

He gets out of the car, rolls his shoulders and strides towards the door, focusing his nervousness on the fact that he hasn’t been inside the Facebook offices since...well his last visit certainly wasn’t fantastic and Eduardo really hopes that there aren’t many people left from the early days. He really doesn’t want to deal with that right now.

Unfortunately, Eduardo Saverin is famous enough that it doesn’t matter that the majority of these people have never seen him before in his life, they all stop working the minute he steps into the room. You don’t notice how loud typing is until a whole room stops doing it all at once.

Eduardo looks down, trying to walk past all the desks without drawing any more attention to himself and trying not to hear the whispers of oh my god, is that...Eduardo Saverin?, didn’t he sue Mark a few years ago?, everyone hold onto your laptops, oh my god no one told me how hot he was, seriously guys that’s EDUARDO SAVERIN.

Eduardo is incredibly relieved when he gets to Isobel’s desk outside Mark’s door.

“Eduardo!” She says happily, clearly surprised but hiding it well. 

“Hi, Issy. I assume since everyone was able to tear themselves away from coding for my entrance that Facebook is safe again?” 

Isobel grins. “Yep, alive and well! Mark’s still a bit distracted, I warn you now. He gets incredibly wound up on days like this.”

“Don’t I know it.” Eduardo laughs and Isobel smiles and waves towards Mark’s door.

“You can go in. I don’t think you’ll get much conversation out of him though.”

“I’m just here for Rosie, really. Thank you.” He nods and opens the door, nod bothering to knock.

Knocking would have been useless anyway; Mark is wired in and typing furiously at his laptop, not even noticing Eduardo step into the room and shut the door. Rosalind is sitting on the floor by his feet, playing with a stuffed chicken, which Eduardo takes a second to wonder why she even owns.

“Mark,” he says, not really expecting any response. “Mark!” he repeats, this time touching Mark gently on his shoulder. Mark startles slightly but smiles when he sees Eduardo, before seemingly checking himself and schooling his face into blank confusion.

“Wardo, what are you doing here?”

“Have you eaten yet, Mark?” Eduardo asks, ignoring Mark’s question.

Mark looks back at his laptop and continues typing. “I don’t have time for lunch.”

“Mark,” Eduardo says, sternly.

“Eduardo, I’m fine. I’ll eat when I’m hungry.”

Eduardo sighs. “Fine. I’m done at the office so I’m gonna take Rosie home, okay?”

Mark nods distractedly and Eduardo rolls his eyes. He crouches down so that he is just below Mark’s level and pulls Rosalind up onto his crouched knee. “Okay, querida, you wanna say bye to Mark?”

“Bye,” she says obediently and Mark stops typing briefly to lean down and kiss her forehead.

When he pulls away from her face there’s a second when Mark seems to be acting on autopilot and he leans, not away, but towards Eduardo instead and for one crazy second, Eduardo thinks he is going to kiss him goodbye too. But Mark seems to come to his senses in time, or maybe Eduardo is just seeing things after his revelation of last night, and just like that he’s leaning away, back straight and eyes back on the computer screen. 

Eduardo stands up, rather shakily and settles Rosalind on his hip. Before he leaves, he puts a tuna sandwich and a packet of red vines on Mark’s desk and he is pretty sure he sees Mark smile before he turns around.

“Oh my god,” Eduardo says to Rosie as he starts the car and pulls out of the Facebook parking lot, “Oh my god, Rosie, what do I do?”

“No,” she responds from the children’s car seat behind him.

“Rosie that is not an answer! Jesus, how did this even happen?” He groans. “Rosie am I going mad? Am I an actual crazy person?”

“No,” she says again.

“That would feel a lot more reassuring if you knew what I was saying but I appreciate that.” He rests his head on the steering wheel as he stops at some traffic lights, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I want to kiss Mark, Rosie. Why do I want to kiss Mark?”

She giggles.

“This is not funny! Jesus, what does this mean? Do I just want to kiss him because he’s attractive...oh my God I can’t believe I just called Mark attractive...or do I want to kiss him because I...because I like him?”

He turns to look at Rosie and she just blinks back.

“Nothing from you? Really? You have no input?”

“No.”

“Oh, you are useless.” He sighs and spends the rest of the drive in silence.

He tries so hard to think back to every interaction he ever had with Mark back in Harvard. Had he just not been paying attention to his own feelings? Eduardo had always thought himself pretty in tune with himself, perfectly sure of his own emotions, but now? Now he can’t help second guess every single second he’s ever spent with Mark.

He’d loved Mark back in Harvard, that much he already knew but....love love? It can’t have been. He had girlfriends in college, girlfriends he was attracted to and Mark, Mark was always just his best friend. He’d never once thought about how he’d feel, how he’d taste, how he’d look spread, pale against Eduardo’s sheets...

Eduardo slams his foot on the brakes guiltily before he runs a red light, darting a quick look to Rosalind to make sure she hadn’t, somehow, just seen what he’d been imagining.

Shit, he thinks and runs a tired a hand across his face.

Whether they are totally new or just newly found, Eduardo has some feelings for Mark which he really, really does not want.

Eduardo tries to do some work after lunch but finds himself totally unable to concentrate. He stares at the same email for at least an hour before he realises that all he’d been thinking about was Are you okay?, I’m here for you, I tried to stop you, that looks really good, I’m the guy that wants to help... over and over again, round and round his head until he can’t even stay sitting down anymore.

He wants to call Chris. He wants to call Chris more than anything in the world and he nearly throws his phone at the wall when he remembers that he can’t. Had they known? Had they known that Eduardo had had feelings for Mark before Eduardo even knew himself? Should he have realised? If Mark had turned around in his chair that day, after let’s get a drink and celebrate!, and kissed Eduardo, would Eduardo have kissed back? Would he have wanted that?

Yes, whispers a small voice in the back of his head. It sounds like Chris’s voice.

*

By the time the clock on the oven reads 11:30, Eduardo has calmed down. So he wants to kiss Mark, he can deal with that, he can ignore it. And maybe he wants, just a little bit, to pin him up against the kitchen counter and feel the smooth skin under his fucking Gap hoodie and lick a hot line up the pale column of his neck but he can lock that down, accept that it’s just a fantasy, not going to happen, unattainable.

Mark is Mark. He is rude and distant and single-minded and Eduardo does not need him in a position of power again. He broke his heart once already and that was before Eduardo even knew he had it. He won’t give it to him again. He won’t fall in love with Mark Zuckerberg.

He downs the rest of the coffee in his mug and sighs. He’d bet all his money on the fact that Mark will forget to come home at all if he doesn’t go and get him so he lifts Rosalind as gently as possible out of her crib and manages to get her safely into her car seat without waking her.

By the time they get back home it is past midnight and Mark is almost asleep on his feet. Eduardo sits him down at the kitchen table and puts a few slices of cold pizza in front of him and instructs him to eat while he puts Rosalind back to bed. It had taken surprisingly little manhandling to get Mark away from the office and Eduardo suspects it was partly the promise of food.

When Eduardo joins him at the table, Mark is a little bit more awake and almost done with the pizza.

“Jesus, Mark, this is why you need to be home for dinner. Have you eaten anything since lunch?”

Mark rolls his eyes, “No, Mom.” 

Eduardo chuckles. Mark always did act like a whiny child when he was tired.

“Right, you need to go to bed. And have a shower first or your employees will avoid you even more than normal tomorrow.”

Mark doesn’t answer him, just chews his last bite of pizza thoughtfully. The corners of his mouth twitch up as he swallows, “Just like Harvard,” he says, almost fondly, and Eduardo grins across at him.

Mark considers him for a moment, his head tilted slightly to one side. “Is it really this easy?” he asks, eyes hopeful but wary.

Eduardo snorts, “Easy? Mark, neither of us has slept through the night for over two weeks and we hardly have a clue what we’re doing and - ”

“No, I mean you. Us. After everything, I mean...I never thought you’d smile at me again.” Mark shrugs and his face is impassive but his eyes, as they always do if you know how to read them, give him away.

“Nor did I,” admits Eduardo, “But then I never thought you cared enough to apologise either.” Mark looks down and Eduardo adds, “I also never thought I’d lose my two best friends and be stuck with you, in Palo Alto of all places.”

The mood change is instantaneous and Eduardo wishes he could take it back the minute he sees Mark’s face close off. He’d meant it as a joke, as banter, but perhaps it hit a little close to home.

“Mark, I was kidding, I - ”

“It’s fine.” Mark shrugs and smiles tightly. “I’m gonna go to bed. Night Wardo.”

Eduardo sighs and puts Mark’s plate in the dishwasher.

*

Something that Eduardo finds in the week and a half that follows is that having feelings for Mark doesn’t actually get in the way all that much. He begins to conclude that he really must have just been totally oblivious back in college because it is odd otherwise how quickly the feeling goes from being new and scary to just...there. It seems like it has just always been something about Eduardo, always present, always waiting and Eduardo feels like an idiot for not noticing it sooner.

It’s also weird how little Eduardo panics about it. I mean here he is, a grown man in his twenties with very confusing feelings towards his ex-best friend who he has a child with, living in the same house as said object of his desire and with absolutely no hope of ever being more than a friend, and even that is tentative right now.

And yet even as his brain refuses to decide on what he’d actually want their relationship to be if they could be more than friends, he finds himself perfectly able to just...be. It’s like he’s already accepted that Mark isn’t something he can have; like he accepted a long time ago that he can think about sucking Mark’s bottom lip between his own every time he pouts and he can think about rubbing a thumb over the frown lines on his forehead when he worries but he cannot do.

It’s not even something that commands much of his attention on the whole. It’s hard to worry over such things when there’s a demanding one year old to be taken care of and a job that keeps him pretty busy. There’s also the fact that, confusing feelings aside, Mark was first and foremost his best friend who he lost and now has back, and Eduardo is happy enough learning how to be Mark’s friend again. It’s surprisingly easy and sometimes, when they are bickering over the remote or when Eduardo is trying to coax Mark away from his laptop, Eduardo forgets that any time has passed at all between now and I need the algorithm.

He spends most of his evenings trying to get up the courage to read the letter from Chris and Dustin. He never quite succeeds.

Eduardo comes downstairs on Monday morning to find Mark on the living room floor playing with Rosalind, very half-heartedly and yawning loudly. Eduardo checks his watch and, realising he doesn’t have to leave for a while, sits down next to him on the floor, back against the couch.

Mark stops helping her slot blocks in their corresponding shapes and leans into Eduardo’s side heavily, “I’m so tired, Wardo.” he whines, making Eduardo bite his lip to keep from laughing. “She didn’t sleep at all, all night. I literally got no sleep.”

“Really? I didn’t hear her once!”

“Well no, because I stayed up with her all night.” he says impatiently. “What if she’s ill?”

Eduardo leans forward and feels Rosalind’s forehead, “No, she’s fine, temperature normal. You know if they’re crying for no reason like that you’re supposed to leave them. Otherwise they never become independent.”

Mark turns and looks at Eduardo as if he’d suggested having her put down. “But look at her! I can’t just leave her crying!”

Eduardo can’t help the bubble of laughter that escapes and he pokes Mark in the side gently, “Aw look at the great Mark Zuckerberg! A big old softie just like everyone else. Wait until the press hears you’re not an emotionless robot after all!”

“I’m not a robot.” Mark snaps as he hits Eduardo’s hand away.

“Hey, I know you’re not, Mark. I always knew.”

Mark sighs heavily and rests his head on Eduardo’s shoulder. “You never really knew, Wardo. Not properly.” He yawns widely.

“What does that mean?” asks Eduardo, twisting his head to try and look down at Mark.

“You were so good at reading me. Except for one thing. Which is ironic because it would have solved all our problems if you’d known.”

“What are you talking about? Mark?”

But Mark was fast asleep.

Eduardo twists himself round slightly, careful not to wake Mark and fits one arm under his knees and curls the other around his back. He lifts him slowly, partly so as not to wake him and partly because he is heavier than he looks and lowers him onto the couch behind them. He fits a cushion under his head so he doesn’t wake later with a stiff neck and covers him with the blanket folded on the back of the couch, even though it is probably unnecessary in this summer weather.

He shushes Rosalind with a finger to his lips and carries her out of the living room.

When he gets to the kitchen he makes a quick call to Isobel, writes ‘don’t go into work, told Isobel not to expect you. Rosie’s at work with me. Go back to sleep :)’ on a post-it and then leaves for work.

Eduardo stays at work all day, trying not to let Rosalind nap too much in case she has another sleepless night and smiling to himself every time his assistant, Ruth, cooed over something Rosalind was doing over on the leather couch.

“Oh she really is the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen, sir. How come she’s not with Mr Zuckerberg today?”

“Ruth, seriously, calling me ‘sir’ makes me feel like my father so please stop that. And she was supposed to be with him, but he was up all night with her so I thought I should let him get some sleep.”

Ruth lets out what sounds suspiciously like a squeal, “Oh my god, Mr Saverin, that’s so cute!”

“It’s Eduardo and what?”

She shrugs. “Just you two. You’re cute. She’s cute. Your whole family is cute.”

Eduardo stares at her. “Ruth, you know who Mark Zuckerberg is, right?”

“Of course I do,” she snorts.

“Right. And you still thought cute was the way to go? I think you may be the first person in the universe to call Mark Zuckerberg cute. You better hope I don’t tell him or he’ll hack into your Facebook faster than you can say ‘adorable’.”

He ignores the little voice inside of him that says he was kinda cute this morning though. It sounds suspiciously like Dustin.

She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t calling him cute I was calling you guys together cute. I don’t know what he looks like, I have no idea whether he is cute or not.”

Eduardo shoots her a strange look and shakes his head to himself. Women find the strangest things sweet.

*

Mark doesn’t wake up until Eduardo is nearly done making pasta that evening. He comes hurrying into the kitchen rubbing his eyes and Eduardo has to work quite hard not to think cutecutecute because that just seems too weird.

“What time is it? Shit, did I miss work?”

“It’s 6:30 and relax, I called Issy and told her you weren’t coming in today. She rescheduled a couple of meetings for you.”

Mark blinks, confused, “What about Rosie?”

“I took her to work with me. She was a big hit with Ruth. I dropped her off at Issy’s afterwards so we might actually get a full night’s sleep for once!”

Mark looks at Eduardo with an unreadable expression for a few moments before he says, “Thank you,” and sits down heavily at the kitchen table.

“I’m starving.” he says, yawning. Eduardo laughs. “What?”

“Nothing.” Eduardo smiles, shaking his head and turning to dish the pasta onto plates. “Just something someone said at work.”

“Ruth?” Mark narrows his eyes at Eduardo as he puts the plates on the table and sits down opposite Mark.

“Yeah.”

“Is Ruth pretty?” Mark asks, spearing some pasta on the end of his fork.

“Excuse me?” asks Eduardo, perplexed.

Mark shrugs. “I was just wondering. Is she hot?”

“I dunno she’s...fine. What the hell, Mark?”

Mark just shrugs again, taking a bite of pasta looking satisfied.

“Good?” asks Eduardo, gesturing at Mark’s plate.

“Good,” Mark answers, and Eduardo sees the corners of his mouth twitch up as their feet brush under the table.

They end up drinking a whole bottle of wine between them and playing quite a heated game of Mario Kart after dinner, sitting side by side on the living room floor feeling pleasantly buzzed. Eduardo wins every single race and after about ten losses Mark throws down the controller in defeat. 

“When the hell d’you get better than me, Wardo?”

Eduardo smirks, “Well without you to talk to they managed to suck me into playing whenever I was visiting.”

Mark turns the TV off and sighs, leaning back against the couch.

“What?” asks Eduardo, leaning back next to him.

“I did this to us. All four of us. I know it was hard for Chris and Dustin as well and it made thinks awkward for all of us and the last memory they have of us was us not speaking and you hating me and me moping around feeling miserable and I just wish they had lived to see us be friends again.” He looks up suddenly, questioningly, “We...we’re friends again, right?”

Eduardo smiles. “Yeah Mark. We’re friends again. And I never hated you. I mean, I wanted to, I was mad at you, I was heartbroken and betrayed but hate was never something I felt. Not towards you anyway.”

Mark smiles. “Sean then?”

“Yes.”

“Then is now a bad time to tell you he’s coming round tomorrow for a playdate with Rosie?” Mark asks, face blank.

Wardo’s eyes go stormy instantly. “WHAT?”

Mark smirks. “Just kidding.” and Eduardo laughs, relieved.

“Asshole.” Eduardo shoves him a little and Mark shoves him back and the wine makes Eduardo feel tingly and happy.

“Seriously though, Wardo,” Mark frowns a little, “Sean, he, I never - ”

“I know.”

“He was never you, Wardo.”

“I know, Mark.”

“I hardly see him now. After the drug bust - ”

“Mark! It’s fine! I’m not jealous of Sean anymore.”

Mark shuts his mouth and tilts his head to consider Eduardo.

“You were jealous?”

Eduardo shrugs and looks away, feeling his ears heating up slightly and hoping they don’t give his embarrassment away.

“Hey,” says Mark, almost too quiet for Eduardo to hear, “it’s okay if you were. I was jealous of Christy. That’s more pathetic, right?”

Eduardo turns to look at Mark so fast that he feels something click painfully in his neck and he winces. “What?” he breathes, staring wide eyed at Mark who closes his eyes and goes pinker than Eduardo’s ever seen him.

When he speaks he stutters slightly and Eduardo thinks he must be drunker than Eduardo is because he’s never heard Mark stutter before. “I-I mean. She got to – the time you spent with her used to be spent with me. And not just her, the Phoenix too. I wasn’t jealous that you were chosen and I wasn’t. I was worried you’d get new friends. You know, cool, handsome ones like you and that I’d be ditched and so I tried to get closer to Sean but - ”

“Did you just call me handsome?” Eduardo interrupts, and feels himself grinning wider and wider because now Mark is the pinkest he’s ever seen him.

“Wardo,” Mark says, and his voice is impatient and clipped in a way that does not fool Eduardo in the slightest, “Wardo, that really wasn’t the point of what I was saying. I was trying to explain my thought processes back then to rectify our communication issues but it’s a two person endeavour, Eduardo, and you need to listen - ”

And that’s when Eduardo kisses him.

There’s no music, no violins, and Eduardo has no idea what made him do something so impulsive, only that Mark had called him handsome and been jealous of his girlfriend and his lips were all red from the wine and his cheeks pink from embarrassment and Eduardo had found himself acting before he could even think it through.

And thank God because if he had thought it through, he would never have done it and Mark wouldn’t be gasping into his mouth right now.

Eduardo takes advantage of Mark’s open mouth to slip his tongue between his lips and the minute it meets Mark’s, Mark all but melts against him, hands sinking into Eduardo’s hair and groaning low in his throat.

Eduardo smiles and pulls away gently, making Mark whimper at the loss of contact, and Eduardo breathes a laugh. “Mark,” he whispers and feels himself smile so wide his cheeks hurt. Mark is breathing heavily and Eduardo rests their foreheads together.

“That’s partly why I was jealous of Christy,” Mark pants, his hands coming down to rest on Eduardo’s shoulders, opening his eyes slowly and smiling dazedly when Eduardo laughs, “And you are very handsome.”

“Mark.”

“You’re, you’re the most beautiful – Wardo – you’re like - ” Mark takes a breath and abruptly blinks to his senses. “Did you say heartbroken before?”

Eduardo can’t help it, he laughs out loud, throwing his head back, giddy from wine and kissing and Mark.

“Yeah, yes I did. But I didn’t really know it at the time. Mark, did you say moping?”

“Yes,” shrugs Mark, a little sheepishly. “Well, Dustin said moping. He said I was the biggest moper since the girl from Twilight. Then Chris told him that that was being harsh to the girl from Twilight because I was way worse than her and then they both laughed.” He pouts and Eduardo can’t help but lean forward and kiss him again, finally sucking on that full bottom lip and drawing a shudder out of Mark.

“Just to be clear,” Eduardo pulls away again, making Mark huff irritably, “Sean Parker is never going anywhere near Rosalind. Ever. Agreed?”

“Eduardo,” Mark says impatiently, “I will literally agree to anything right now as long as you keep kissing me.”

So Eduardo does, laughing into Mark’s mouth.

Mark’s hands are back in Eduardo’s hair almost instantly, as if they just can’t imagine being anywhere else, and Eduardo is tugging at Mark’s waist insistently, needing more and closer and now. Mark groans as Eduardo’s hands find skin under his t-shirt and he swings a leg over Eduardo’s hips so that he’s sitting in his lap, gasping as Eduardo bucks his hips up to meet his.

“Wardo – Wardo, how drunk are you?” he gasps in between frantic kisses, clearly not wanting to separate from Eduardo’s lips for any longer than absolutely necessary.

“Pretty drunk,” Eduardo pants back because Jesus he must be, he can hardly think straight.

“Same,” Mark agrees, though the sound is muffled by Eduardo’s mouth.

Wait, Eduardo thinks and he pulls away sharply. “Wait,” he says out loud, “Wait, stop, stop. We should stop.”

“No, we really shouldn’t.” Mark replies distractedly, kissing along his jaw and down his neck, stopping to suck gently at the sensitive pulse point just below his ear.

“Mmm, Mark, come on, we can’t fuck this up again. I won’t do this while we don’t know what we’re doing.” 

Mark freezes then and pulls back to stare into Eduardo’s face, lips kiss-swollen and eyes suddenly guarded, “You don’t know what we’re doing?”

“Mark, please, come on, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?” Mark’s hands fall out of Eduardo’s hair to rest on his chest, his eyes slightly narrowed in confusion.

“I’m saying that this is big and we’ve had too much wine and I want to do this sometime when I can be sure we both mean what we say and do.”

“I always mean what I – “

“Mark,” Eduardo says firmly, removing his hands from under his shirt, “I don’t want us to fuck up again. I’ve just got you back, Mark.”

Mark’s face softens almost immediately with relief and something else that Eduardo can’t make out. He leans forward with a sigh and rests his forehead on Eduardo’s shoulder. Eduardo’s hand comes up automatically to squeeze the back of his neck. “Sorry,” Mark mutters into his shirt and Eduardo hopes it means I won’t leave again.

“I know, Mark.” Eduardo says softly. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Together?” Mark looks up hopefully and Eduardo laughs. “No, Mark, not together. Not tonight.”

“Soon?” Mark asks as Eduardo pushes him gently so that he can stand, pulling Mark up with him and holding his arm to stop him swaying.

“Soon,” Eduardo replies and his stomach twists and flutters as Mark smiles, satisfied.

Eduardo leads them upstairs, hand resting on the small of Mark’s back like it often used to, making him wonder yet again if maybe he should have seen this coming all along.

When they reach Mark’s bedroom door, Mark turns and stands on his tiptoes. He kisses Eduardo softly, chastely, on the lips and whispers, words only very slightly slurred by alcohol and sleep, “When I’m sober, remind me to tell you that I love you,” before turning and disappearing into his bedroom.

Eduardo forgets how to breathe.

*

Eduardo is woken by the sound of the doorbell and he sits up hurriedly. He regrets it almost instantly when his head throbs in protest and he brings a hand up to rub at his face, groaning.

He pulls himself out of bed and staggers downstairs to open the door, ignoring the fact that he is just in an old t shirt and a pair of faded boxer shorts. He screws his eyes up against the light from outside when he opens the door but they widen when he sees Charlotte, the social worker, standing on the doorstep.

“Eduardo! Good morning. Did I wake you?”

“No, no.” His voice is raspy from not being used yet and he grimaces, “Well yeah a little bit.”

“Well I do apologise. Can I come in?”

“Of course,” he says and stands back, gesturing towards the living room. “I’ll just go and get Mark.”

“S’okay, I’m up, I’m up,” Mark says from behind him, hurrying down the stairs in jeans and pulling on a t shirt.

Charlotte looks between them, eyes narrowed and leads them into the living room. Once they are sitting down she asks, “Where’s Rosie?”

“Mark’s assistant took her for the night.”

“Right,” she says, eyes darting between the two. “And so I assume you took advantage of having the house to yourselves?”

“Uh, there was some wine,” Eduardo mutters sheepishly and scratches the back of his neck. Mark just shrugs.

“Wine.” Charlotte repeats slowly, then sighs, “Gentlemen, please tell me that nothing happened last night.”

“What - ” Eduardo starts.

“Between you two. I recall you telling me, in no uncertain terms, that there’s nothing - ”

“No!” Eduardo says, too loudly and it makes his head hurt. “No,” he says, quieter, “of course not! We just had dinner, got tipsy and went to bed, Jesus.” He huffs an incredulous laugh and Charlotte seems to relax.

“Okay, good. I was worried for a minute what with the hangovers and the...you know...” she waves vaguely towards them and Eduardo just laughs and shakes his head reassuringly, hoping that it is only in his own head that it sounds a little forced. “Well I guess I’ll leave you to it then, I don’t think either of you are in great mind for a conversation. When are you going to get Rosie? 

“I’ll get her when I go to work,” says Mark in a tone that makes it clear he doesn’t appreciate her questioning.

She nods and stands up, “Okay well I’ll be in touch soon, I really do need to see you with her to really know how it’s going. I suggest you both have some coffee before you go and get her.” She smiles good naturedly and leaves quietly, as if she’s trying not to make any loud noises. Eduardo appreciates it, though his head is already starting to clear. He hadn’t been that drunk after all.

When Mark speaks it sounds cold and slightly dangerous. “You know what, have the whole day at work, Eduardo. I’m gonna stay in the office with Rosie.” And he leaves before Eduardo can even work out what just happened.

By the time Eduardo arrives at his own office, apologising to Ruth for being so late, he has decided to ignore Mark’s weird departure until he knew for certain something was up. There is a high chance that Eduardo is just over thinking things due to his own internal panic about last night.

He kissed Mark last night. He kissed Mark and Mark had kissed back. Very enthusiastically. And then pretty much asked for sex. Which, okay, Eduardo does not need that thought in his head right now when he is trying to work.

But that’s not even what has Eduardo staring blankly at his computer screen, unable to take a single word in and turning his phone over and over in his hand reminding himself he can’t call Chris.

Remind me to tell you that I love you.

Had he meant it? Had he been too drunk to know what he was saying? Eduardo had never known Mark to be too drunk to know what he was saying and he doesn’t know whether this makes him feel better or worse. It was fine when the thought of kissing Mark, of touching Mark, was just fantasy and speculation. Something he could think about almost wistfully but not actually worry about actually happening. Now he has no idea what to do. Does Mark want something more than just drunken fumblings? Does Eduardo? Dustin’s voice says yesyesyes but Chris’s warns you know that he can break your heart.

Eduardo’s Chris voice is right, of course. He likes being Mark’s friend again and Charlotte has a point, there’s no way a relationship with Mark would end well. He’s been down that road before and he refuses to go down it again with even more on the line and a heart even more vulnerable. It’s not worth it. Right?

He rolls his shoulders and focuses on video calling some clients back in Singapore, steadfastly ignoring the memory of how tenderly Mark had kissed him goodnight.

*

Eduardo gets home around six to an empty house and he sighs. He hopes Mark at least remembers to feed Rosalind something she can actually eat and doesn’t just throw her some red vines. He knows that Mark is perfectly responsible with Rosalind normally but where Facebook is concerned there is a good chance he won’t give much thought to anything else. Eduardo just hopes that Isobel steps in as the voice of reason.

At 9:03, Eduardo is annoyed. Rosalind should be at home and in bed by now and if Mark is, for whatever reason, avoiding Eduardo then he should not be doing it at her expense. Eduardo grabs his keys and slams the front door behind him, even though there is no one there to appreciate his anger.

The Facebook offices are empty when he gets there except for Isobel who stands by her desk, stapling some documents.

“Eduardo!” she sighs when she sees him, “Thank God. Take them home. Mark has been unbearable all day.”

Eduardo nods. “You should go home. Don’t wait for him to leave when he’s like this or you could be here until midnight. Was Rosie okay last night?”

“Oh she was fine. She was up once but she settled down again pretty quickly. Ignoring her really is what’s good for her, you know, even if it seems cruel at the time.”

Eduardo smiles and touches her arm gently, “Thank you, really. You did us a massive favour.”

“Anytime. Now I’m gonna go before he gives me another pointless task to do. Honestly, Eduardo, take him home.”

She swings her coat up from her chair and over her shoulders, waving goodbye and hurrying out of the office as Eduardo opens Mark’s office door.

When he closes the door behind him, for a minute his irritation disappears and he just stands there and looks. Mark is asleep on the couch, sitting upright with his head resting on the back of the couch. Rosalind is sitting on his lap, quietly chewing on the stuffed chicken that seems to be her favourite toy (Eduardo still needs to ask what the hell that’s about) and she shouts delightedly when she sees him.

“Hi!” she claps and starts to laugh, startling Mark awake and Eduardo almost laughs at his bemused expression. He clearly hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

Eduardo leans down and picks Rosalind up. “Mark, you can’t do this. I called you, you know. I was worried.”

“Why? You knew where I was.” Mark sounds irritated.

“You can’t keep Rosie here at the office this long! It is past her bed time and has she even had dinner? Have you? If you want to work late then you need to leave her with me or at least answer your damn phone.”

“I can take care of myself just fine, Eduardo, and I sent someone out to get her food.”

“Mark, you were asleep sitting upright! Get up, we’re going home.”

Eduardo offers a hand to Mark but he ignores it, pushing himself up from the couch and stalking out of the office. Eduardo shakes his head at Rosalind and she, he swears to God, shrugs.

She has spent too much time with Mark.

Rosalind babbles to herself in the car ride home and Eduardo sees that Mark’s car is already in the drive when he pulls in to park. The house is quiet when Eduardo carries the child up to her room so he assumes Mark went straight to his room when he got in. He tries not to let this bother him. 

“I’m just gonna go get you some clean clothes, ‘kay, querida? I’ll be right back.” Eduardo says as he sits Rosalind on the floor of her room and leaves to go and get something from the dryer. When he gets back he freezes.

“MARK!” he shouts, suddenly not tired or irritated at all, “Mark, she’s standing! Get in here!”

Mark comes flying into the room almost immediately, “What? Woah! Oh my God, Wardo, she’s standing!” he laughs and Eduardo laughs too, “She’s standing! Rosie, you’re standing!”

He crouches down in the doorway and pulls Mark down next to him, “Hey, Rosie, hey, can you get over here?” he reaches out his arms and Rosalind sways a little on her newfound feet.

“Oh my God, Wardo! Rosie, Rosie, come on. Come over here. You can do that, it’s not hard.”

Rosie rubs her eyes and sits back down. “No.” She says and Eduardo drops his arms with a laugh. He turns to grin at Mark who grins back for a second before he abruptly scrambles to his feet with a cough. “Well I’ll just go back - ”

Eduardo grabs his hand before he can leave. “Mark, is something bothering you?” he asks, concerned.

Mark yanks his hands a way. “No.” he narrows his eyes. “Nothing at all.” And disappears into his room.

Eduardo knocks gently on his door after Rosalind is safely in bed. “Mark?” he calls softly and knocks again. When he gets no answer he sighs and tries the door. It isn’t locked.

“Eduardo when I don’t say come in it means I don’t want you to come in.” Mark snaps without looking up from the laptop on his legs as Eduardo peers around the door.

“Mark, did I do something?” he steps further into the room, “Look, if this is about last night – “

“Oh so you do remember last night. I thought there was nothing going on there. The idea of us being together seemed laughable this morning.”

What? That’s what this was about?

Eduardo gapes. “Mark you know we had to tell her no! God, Mark she has been very clear about our personal life getting in the way of raising Rosie.”

“Rosie is our personal life, Wardo!” Eduardo steps into the room properly and closes the bedroom door behind him. “She’s ours! She’s not Chris’s or Dustin’s anymore! They’re gone! She’s ours! We get to decide what is good for her, not some idiotic social worker who doesn’t know anything about us!”

Eduardo sighs and walks over to sit on the bed opposite Mark, his legs crossed, “Mark, it’s not as simple as that.”

“Why not?!”

“Because it isn’t! They need to make sure we are fit to be parents and with our history they are going to be even more dubious about that then they are with most, and as far as they know we hate each other. I sued you for 600 million dollars, Mark. They need to make sure, for Rosie’s sake, that we aren’t going to be adding to that drama.” 

Mark’s jaw clenches. “So last night was a mistake then? You were just drunk and saw an opportunity for an easy make out?”

“No! Mark, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well what was I supposed to think, Wardo? You know I meant it, I made that very clear.” His cheeks burn pink but his gaze remains hard. “It was all on you this morning and you were acting like it was nothing. Like everything was normal. Wardo, I think we’ve proven that we are prone to misunderstandings if not straight with each other. I can’t read your mind.” His hands are picking nervously at the duvet but his eyes are narrow and angry.

Eduardo sighs, Mark’s right. “Okay then,” he says softly and he crawls up the bed and takes the laptop from Mark’s knees to put it carefully on the floor, then he turns back and considers Mark for a second. He’s nervous, defensive, readying for a fight and Eduardo finds he wants to hold his hand. So he does.

“Okay. Mark, I don’t want things to go back to normal. But I don’t know if it’s a good idea or if it will work out; I’m still so aware of how easily you hurt me last time.”

It’s the truth. It might not be what Mark wants to hear but it’s the truth and Eduardo owes him that. They’ve battled their way through enough white lies and secrets. 

Sure enough Mark flinches slightly as if he’s been physically struck and he doesn’t even try to hide the regret from his face. “Wardo. I’m – “

“I know, Mark.” Eduardo smiles softly and squeezes his hand; he hates the look of sadness on Mark’s face. It makes him look about ten years too young and fifty years too old all at once. “I’ve forgiven you, you know. I have. You don’t have to keep apologising. I’m not angry with you anymore. I’m...Mark I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

Mark opens his mouth, eyes pleading but Eduardo shakes his head, “Not...I don’t mean that I think you’re lying. I trust you when you say you’re sorry and when you say you want this, but... I don’t know if I can willingly walk back into a situation that could hurt me even more than last time. Mark.” Eduardo sighs and squeezes his hand again.“I don’t know if I can trust that we can make it. Not yet. We need time. I mean look at what happened today! We’ve basically proven that we haven’t got any better at communicating.”

Mark just stares at their joined hands. “So you’re saying no,” he says quietly, voice small and resigned and a bit of Eduardo wants to ignore everything that he just said. But he doesn’t, because he knows he’s right.

“I’m saying maybe one day.” He strokes a thumb along the back of Mark’s hand. “I’m saying not now when we are only just learning each other again. We’re not the same people we were, Mark. And on top of what we went through, we’ve just lost our best friends and become guardians and we need to concentrate on that right now.”

“Parents,” Mark says, looking up.

“What?”

“We’re her parents, Wardo.”

Eduardo stares at him for a moment, “You think that’s what they’d want?” he whispers.

“I know so. I read my letter.”

Eduardo’s heart speeds up, “What?”

“Yeah. They said that if we’re reading them before Rosalind is five then we’re to make Rosalind ours. Be her parents, maybe adopt her to make it official. They said we should tell her who they were and that they loved her and that – that they wish they could have been her parents for longer but that we should raise her as her parents. They want her to have parents, Wardo.”

Eduardo doesn’t know if he remembers how to speak. Is it okay? To be Rosalind’s dad?

“I – can I see?” he asks eventually.

“Your letter will probably say a similar thing. Read yours. You...can’t read mine.”

Eduardo shakes his head. He can’t read his own. Not yet. Tomorrow maybe. Not yet.

“So,” Mark says quietly and Eduardo hears what now?

“Mark, I want this.” And he does, he realises. He does want this. “But I want my best friend back first. I need time. Give me it?”

For a few moments, Mark doesn’t say anything and his face is impossible to read but eventually Eduardo feels him squeeze his hand.

“Okay.” He nods, “I can do that.”

Eduardo smiles. “Okay.”

He lies down next to Mark on the bed, on top of the covers and still in his suit, and asks, “So how was work?”

And they talk about Facebook and clients and cars and movies until they fall asleep, Eduardo muttering strict instructions to ignore Rosalind if she cries as he slips from consciousness.

*

When Rosalind does start fussing in the room next door, Eduardo is the one to wake up. It’s 5:52 and he reckons that he may as well get up now anyway. He eases himself up off Mark’s bed, forcing himself not to stare creepily at Mark’s sleeping face, however peaceful and innocent it may look, or reach out and sweep the curls off his forehead. He is determined to stick to his own convictions. Dating Mark? Bad idea.

He pads into Rosalind’s room and lifts her up from where she is standing (he grins to himself) in her crib making grabbing motions with her hands. He feeds her some mushed banana, still in yesterday’s pants and shirt and then settles down on the couch with Rosalind snuggled into his side as he reads her a story about a little girl and her favourite cuddly toy.

“’I love you, Blue Kangaroo!’” Eduardo said in his best high-pitched little girl voice, “and Blue Kangaroo fell fast asleep in her arms. The End.”

“You know when you read the little girl’s lines,” Eduardo hears from behind him, “you’re not meant to use your normal voice.”

Eduardo turns around and flips him off so Rosalind can’t see but he smiles when he sees Mark leaning against the doorframe, looking almost fondly at them.

Eduardo gets up, helping Rosalind slide onto the floor and disappears into the kitchen to pour some still hot coffee into a mug for Mark. When he gets back to the living room Mark hasn’t moved from the doorway so Eduardo leans on the opposite side of the door frame and hands him the mug. “Morning,” he smiles and Mark smiles back.

Eduardo feels a tugging at his trousers and they look down.

“OH MY GOD, ROSIE! Did you just walk all the way over here? Mark, oh my God, go over there!” Eduardo shoves Mark in the direction of the other side of the living room and Mark scrambles excitedly over the window and crouches down.

“Rosie, Rosie, come over here, okay? Come over here!” he babbles, arms beckoning, and Eduardo crouches down too to encourage her to start walking. When she takes a step he definitely does not squeal and charges out of the room to grab the video camera from the drawer in the hall. He turns it on and hurries back into the living room where Rosie is halfway across the room and picking up speed.

Mark is grinning and beckoning and Eduardo is laughing excitedly behind the camera and when Rosie reaches Mark he lifts her up above his head and spins her around and Eduardo feels so happy that he’s worried he’s going to start crying. He puts the camera down without turning it off and runs over to join them, gathering them both in a delighted hug without even thinking and laughing even harder when Rosie starts pulling on both their hair.

Eduardo manages to convince Mark that they need to baby proof the house and he calls Ruth to reschedule his morning meeting for tomorrow and then goes upstairs to shower and change while Mark gets Rosie dressed and drops a quick email to Isobel telling her that he’s working from home today.

They pile into the car, Mark spending the entire drive trying to get Rosalind to say ‘tree’ every time they drive past one and getting increasingly frustrated when she refuses to repeat him.

“Mark, she learnt to walk today! She can’t do everything at once!”

“She’s my daughter, of course she can.”

Eduardo snorts and rolls his eyes but at the same time doesn’t understand. Daughter daughter daughter, how has Mark accepted this so quickly? Does he really think of Rosalind as his child already? Should Eduardo?

“Then again,” says Mark with a sigh, “she is also yours. And that may explain why she’s just staring at the sky.”

“I do not stare at the sky!”

“I swear to God, Wardo, if you turn her into some weird weather geek I will marry you so that I can divorce you and take full custody of Rosalind on the grounds that you’re ruining all her chances at having friends ever.”

Eduardo looks at Mark in the rear-view mirror and raises his eyebrows at him. “That seems like a gross over-reaction.”

Mark just sighs long-sufferingly and shrugs. “What can I say, Wardo? You have been warned.”

Eduardo chuckles quietly. “You know,” he says as he pulls into a parking space outside their nearest baby store, “as a weather geek, I didn’t do too badly on the friends front.”

Mark meets his eyes in the mirror. “That’s not what you said the other day.”

Eduardo shrugs and unbuckles his seatbelt, “Yeah and I can still take it back so enough of the meteorology jibes, or I’ll have to remind you where Facebook’s start up money came from!” He jumps out of the car with a grin as Mark tries to flip him off without smiling and walks around the car to lift Rosalind onto his hip.

As soon as Mark is standing beside them, Eduardo sees a flash go off from the other side of the parking lot. Mark turns to follow Eduardo’s gaze and another couple of flashes go off.

“Seriously?” Eduardo snorts. “Have they just been lurking here in the hope we’d show up one day?”

“How is this even an interesting picture?” Mark frowns and Eduardo locks the car as they turn to ignore the flashes.

“I dunno, Ruth says we are absolutely all over the news recently and they’re getting pretty frustrated that we haven’t been out all three of us yet. Apparently there’s even some kind of poll going on whether we’re going to kill each other and how long it will take.”

Mark shakes his head. “Yeah my new PR guy keeps trying to get a statement out of me about our relationship but I didn’t want to – you know. I didn’t want to say anything when I wasn’t really sure what to say. I did assure everyone that I wasn’t going to kill you though.”

“You know we probably should make a statement soon. It’ll surely be good for Facebook if people know we’re friends again.” Mark grabs a cart from the doorway and they stroll down the aisles aimlessly looking for stuff they need.

“Yeah,” Mark sighs, “I just got so annoyed that all they cared about was whether we were living in some kind of soap opera when we were going through a complete overhaul of our lives!”

Eduardo bounces Rosalind on his hip slightly, “Well to be fair, we kind of were living in a soap opera. I’m surprised neither of us has slept with a relative or turned to alcoholism or something.”

“I might turn to alcoholism if I have to watch another episode of The Wiggles,” grumbles Mark as he throws stuff randomly into the cart from the baby-proofing shelves while Eduardo rolls his eyes and checks for anything he might have missed.

“You should try Phineas and Ferb. It’s pretty good.”

Mark turns to look at Eduardo with an expression veering dangerously towards affectionate. “You’re just a little boy in a grown man’s body aren’t you?”

Eduardo snorts incredulously and sticks out his hand with mockingly earnest eyes. “Oh hi, Pot, I’m Kettle! Please, tell me again how black I am!”

Mark rolls his eyes and mutters “Moron,” as he turns to keep walking down the aisle and Eduardo rolls his eyes at Rosalind, “Don’t you listen to a word he says, ever, Rosie. He’s a lying liar who lies.”

They spend the rest of their day, after dodging as many cameras as they could without looking rude, trying to set up all the baby-proofing which ended up with several heated debates and a child covered in bruises from falling down every five minutes. She seemed to think that she needed to try running everywhere.

Eduardo is exhausted. They’ve been running around after Rosalind all afternoon, trying not to let her run into anything that could do serious damage and to catch her when she inevitably tumbles to the floor, all while simultaneously attempting to install baby gates on the stairs and complicated looking devices on the lower drawers of the kitchen.

By the time dinner time rolls around, Eduardo calls for a pizza. There is no way he’s attempting any sort of cookery right now (and no, that is not because he is confused by the baby proof drawers, okay? Shut up, Mark).

It turns out Rosalind is a massive fan of airplanes flying into her mouth because she laughs so hard she cries the first time Eduardo tries it in an attempt to get her to eat. Her laughter is so contagious that Eduardo finds himself making up increasingly silly stories to get her to open her mouth and putting on the most ridiculous of voices. At one point he looks over at the opposite side of the table and sees Mark, laughing silently, filming the whole thing.

Eduardo gasps exaggeratedly and points to the camera. “Look, Rosie! We’re being filmed! You better eat this last mouthful so you don’t look bad.” She eats it obediently and then claps so violently that she ends up spitting most of it out anyway and Eduardo turns to laugh at the camera and wave until she copies him and Mark, despite the camera not being able to see him at all, waves back at them.

Later when Eduardo sits sprawled on the couch with Rosalind yawning against his side, Mark picks up the camera again and points it towards them.

“And here, ladies and gentlemen,” he says in what Eduardo assumes is meant to be a dramatic English accent, “is a sight so rarely seen that it is a miracle I am able to capture this footage. I must approach with care, such a ridiculous creature is prone to high-pitched and annoying little-girl tears when tired.” He pauses for effect. “Oh and look! Rosie’s here too!”

Eduardo narrows his eyes playfully in Mark’s direction and Mark snickers. Rosalind yawns again and rubs her face into Eduardo’s shirt. Eduardo smiles softly down at her and rubs her back gently.

“Hey, Wardo, would you read her a story?”

Eduardo looks up at Mark. “What?”

“For the camera. Read her a bedtime story.”

Eduardo opens his mouth and then closes it again. Then he looks down at Rosalind and brushes her hair out of her face, “Hey, querida, you want a story?”

She looks up sleepily. 

“Story?” Eduardo repeats and Rosalind nods slowly.

“Okay, Mark, pass me one, will you? Maybe the Blue Kangaroo one, she really likes that.”

Mark shakes his head and passes him another one from the pile and sits down on the couch next to them, swivelling to face them and still pointing the camera.

“No Matter What,” Eduardo reads, the front cover showing a big fox hugging a baby fox, “I haven’t seen this one before.”

“I bought it for her birthday,” Mark shrugs, “but I never got a chance to read it to her. I think you’ll like it, it has a mushy ending.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes at him and looks down at Rosalind. “This one?” he asks and she nods again with a quiet “Please.”

“Okay,” he begins, opening the book to the first page,

 

“ Small was feeling grim and dark.

Playing toss and fling and squash and yell and scream and bang and crash,

Break and snap and bash and batter... 

‘Good grief.’ said Large ‘What is the matter?’ 

Small said ‘I’m a grim and grumpy little Small and nobody loves me at all.’ 

‘Oh Small.’ said Large ‘Grumpy or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.’....”

 

Eduardo reads on, using a high-pitched squeaky voice for Small and the most comforting voice he can muster for Large. Mark has a soft smile on his face behind the camera, as if he doesn’t even realise it’s there and doesn’t much care if it is. Rosalind touches each page as Eduardo turns them, looking between him and the pictures with sleepy eyes.

“’Does love wear out,’ said Small ‘Does it break or bend?’...”

Eduardo feels a tiny fluttering in his stomach as if some emotion inside him knows the answer and wants to burst out of him in waves of no, it doesn’t, I’m still here, I’m still here. But he doesn’t quite understand what that means.

The story goes on; the baby fox asking the Daddy fox if he’d love her if she were a crocodile; a bear; a bug.

“’Of course’ said Large, ‘Bug or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.’...”

It’s a good story, Mark was right to suggest it. Eduardo finds himself feeling like it means something, like there’s something he’s not quite understanding but he doesn’t stop reading, doesn’t want to. And he doesn’t look at Mark or the camera.

When he turns to the last page his voice is so quiet that the camera probably can’t even hear him and Rosalind is on the brink of falling asleep.

 

“Large held Small snug as they looked out at the night,

At the moon in the dark and the stars shining bright.

‘Small, look at the stars – how they shine and glow,

But some of those stars died a long time ago,

Yet still they shine in the evening skies

And love, like starlight, never dies.’” 

 

He closes the book gently and no one makes a sound. He looks down at Rosalind and smiles, slow and soft, as she breathes evenly in sleep and curls a tiny hand into the fabric of Eduardo’s shirt. When he looks up at the camera to say something about it, his eyes catch with Mark’s and every single word he’s ever known leaves his brain completely. There’s nothing at all there, no memories, no knowledge, no understanding; just Mark’s eyes staring at him like he’s trying to will Eduardo into understanding something, like there’s something he desperately wants to say but doesn’t know how. Like something important just happened and Eduardo doesn’t know how to breathe.

How is it that five, maybe six years ago Eduardo could look into those eyes and see whole conversations there without even trying and now he sits, scrambling desperately for just one sentence, one word, one notion of what Mark is saying, and comes back with nothing but white noise?

And then suddenly, Mark’s eyes aren’t there anymore and they aren’t saying anything. Very quietly he hears the click of Mark turning off the camera and he’s turning away to put it on the end table nearest him. He stays staring down at it for a moment and when he turns back to look at them it’s like Eduardo imagined the whole thing.

“You want me to put her to bed?” he asks, quietly so as not to wake her.

Eduardo opens his mouth to say that it’s fine, he’ll do it but Mark just shakes his head. “No, I can do it, I’m gonna go upstairs and work anyway. I’ve only checked up on work once this whole day,” and he’s almost smiling.

*

Eduardo gets home from work about twelve the next day feeling as if he’s done a whole day’s work already. He’d had three video meetings and two phone calls with difficult clients and he’s about ready to fall onto the couch and never get up. He drops his laptop bag in the hallway and leans down to take off his shoes but Mark shuffles out of the kitchen with a heavy looking picnic basket under one arm and Rosalind in the other.

“Don’t take your shoes off; we’re going to the park.”

“What?” Eduardo asks, wondering vaguely where the basket even came from.

“The park. Have you had lunch yet?”

“No.”

“Good. I made a picnic. And it’s heavy. So let’s go.” And he herds Eduardo back out of the door while Eduardo is still a little too bemused to argue.

Mark drives them to the large park a few blocks away and explains how Matt, his new head of PR, had said they should make more outings as a family.

“I mean those photos of us at the baby store went viral; it was huge! Now, apparently, they want more so I released a statement this morning that should go public by this afternoon but they’re gonna wanna see proof that we don’t hate each other and that Chris and Dustin made the right choice for Rosalind.” He parks the car and turns around, “Matt wants us to do an interview with some news company on Monday. It’ll only be a few questions, just us sitting in my office but it would be good if you were there too. Matt says I need someone to keep me running my mouth off.”

Eduardo laughs and nods, “Sure,” but he’s nervous and Mark notices.

“What?” He asks, raising his eyebrows impatiently.

Eduardo sighs and gets out the car to lift Rosalind out while Mark grabs the basket and walks along beside them, still looking expectantly at Eduardo.

“It’s just,” he runs a hand through his hair, “I don’t think your employees like me very much. Everyone just thinks I’m that whiny guy who sued us, you know? Don’t even pretend that Sean didn’t encourage those kinds of judgements.”

Mark just shrugs and says, “So show them they’re wrong,” like it isn’t worth any more thought than that, and walks on ahead to drop the basket onto an acceptable patch of grass.

Eduardo watches as he lays out a blanket and flops down onto it.

“Seriously, where did all this even come from?”

“I bought it. We went to the store this morning,” Mark says, waving an impatient hand up at Eduardo while he starts unpacking food. He turns around after a few seconds to look up at Eduardo and raises his eyebrows. “Are you going to just stand there all afternoon? I have to go back to work at some point, you know.”

He pulls out Rosalind’s stuffed chicken from the basket and she scrambles to be let down so Eduardo sits carefully on the blanket and takes the offered salad from Mark’s hands.

“So apparently,” Mark says, sitting back with a tuna sandwich, “people like me more now that I’m a dad. Makes me look more sympathetic...or something.”

Eduardo nods, “Yeah well they know you have feelings now.”

“I really don’t see why that has anything to do with Facebook. People should like Facebook and want to use it because it’s good, not because I have feelings,” he says, annoyed, and Eduardo snorts, “Maybe. But I suppose it looks better if the guy who controls the tool in which they socialise knows how to socialise himself.”

“I know how to socialise!”

Eduardo raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth to retort but Rosalind leans over and starts making the chicken peck at Eduardo’s food, making loud ‘om nom nom nom’ noises and smacking her lips.

“Well, would you look at that,” Mark says, and his voice is so strained that Eduardo looks up and sees that he is trying valiantly not to laugh, “She’s your daughter after all.”

Eduardo looks back down at his salad. Chicken. She’s making her chicken, eat chicken. 

Mark explodes into laughter. He clutches at his stomach and almost falls onto his back with the force of it and Eduardo even thinks he sees tears in his eyes before he’s covering his face with his hands to try and stifle his hysterics. Eduardo has seen Mark laugh before of course, because contrary to what the public thinks, Mark does have feelings and he does laugh if he finds something funny enough but he has never, not once, seen Mark laugh like this: eyes shining with mirth and mouth wide in a grin, gasping for breath and shoulders shaking. Eduardo cannot help it. He laughs too.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees some flashes go off but he hardly even notices. They’re laughing like children after too many sweets; like drunk teenagers staggering out of a party watching their friend put a cone on his head; like two best friends with a lot of problems sharing a private joke they weren’t even aware they had.

Later, after Mark films Eduardo pushing Rosalind on the swings and Eduardo tries to snatch it off him to film him on the seesaw with her (it’s a hilarious sight, okay?) and after Mark gets home from work in the evening, Mark puts Rosalind to bed.

She’s already asleep and Mark is just standing there. Eduardo steps into the room from the doorway and stands next to him, smiling when he sees Rosalind hugging the chicken to her chest.

He nudges Mark with his shoulder gently. “I’m sorry I accused you of planting that story in the Crimson,” he says quietly. Mark shrugs like he already knew.

“You know,” Mark says after a couple of minutes, “I bought her that chicken just after she was born.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. I’ve been teaching her to do that for weeks.”

“What?” Eduardo turns to look at him, confused.

“I’ve been playing ‘feed the chicken’ with her for weeks in the hope that she’d feed it chicken at some point.”

Eduardo laughs quietly and shoves at his shoulder. “Asshole,” he says, but even to his own ears it sounds way too affectionate. Mark’s lips twitch up at the corners and he looks up at Eduardo.

“Come to dinner with me tomorrow.”

“Oh sure,” nods Eduardo, “I’m sure Rosie can cook for herself for just one night.”

Mark levels him with a classic ‘don’t be an idiot’ glare and Eduardo sighs.

“You mean like a date?” he asks nervously. Mark shrugs. “Mark, I don’t – “

“It’s just dinner, Wardo.”

Eduardo considers him for all of two seconds before he nods. “Okay then.”

“Good.” Mark smiles, and he stands up on his tiptoes, hand on Eduardo’s arm to steady himself, and places a quick kiss on Eduardo’s cheek. Then he’s gone before Eduardo can do anything more than blush.

He really, really tries not to reach up and touch his cheek, but he knows he’s fighting a losing battle.

*

So they go out to dinner. They sit at a small table near the back of an expensive restaurant and Mark even wears a tie for the first hour of the evening. They order the most expensive wine on the menu and clink glasses with a smile when Mark mentions they’ve made it a month with Rosalind already and they talk and they talk and they talk.

They talk about Singapore and how Eduardo should take them both to see it one day; they talk about Facebook and the press and the interviews they’re going to have to do (“Eduardo stop whining. There’s not a single person alive that isn’t charmed by you the minute you open your mouth, hell, the minute you look in their direction even. You’ll be fine. More popular than me in no time.” “Yeah well that isn’t really saying much.” “Asshole.”) and they talk about Chris and Dustin and Harvard and their families and sports and TV and books and travel. They talk about everything that’s happened to them in the years since the depositions and it’s everything that Eduardo pretended he didn’t want for nearly four years.

And then it’s the weekend and it’s so comfortable, so easy, that Eduardo catches himself almost waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mark works throughout Saturday and Eduardo takes Rosalind shopping and to the park before coming home to an evening of watching Finding Nemo with Mark and then Up after Rosalind is in bed (Mark insists when he learns that Eduardo never saw it). On Sunday Mark tries to cook dinner but fails dismally and they end up ordering a pizza and watching a Spongebob marathon with Rosalind, Eduardo promising to teach Mark how to cook some time and Mark grumbling about being able to do it himself if he’d had a recipe to follow.

It’s all just very...domestic. Nice. And for the first time since that grey and miserable Monday back in June Eduardo starts to think this is my family when he looks at Rosalind scribbling squiggles onto a blank piece of paper on the floor or at Mark sitting with an arm draped casually over the back of the couch, chewing on a red vine. And he loves them. Both of them. When he looks at them, he feels safe and so tentatively happy and Palo Alto - this city that’s haunted him for years – may just be becoming his home.

*

“Now I want both of you to just relax, okay?” Matt is kneeling down in front of the couch in Mark’s office where the two of them sit with Rosalind in between them. “Eduardo, I know you’re not used to doing interviews but I’m still pretty sure you will cause me less hassle than Mark will so I’d appreciate it if you could try and jump in if he tries to say anything that would make my job harder.”

“I am sitting right here,” snaps Mark and Matt levels him a longsuffering look. Eduardo sees why Mark hired him; he definitely has the ‘no nonsense’ air that Chris used to emulate.

“Yes you are, but telling you to behave is not guaranteed to have any effect so I have to cover all my bases.”

“Is there anything we should definitely try and say? Or not say?” Eduardo asks, eyeing the readying camera crew nervously.

“Well mostly just use your common sense. Don’t say that you hate kids or that you’re annoyed with Chris and Dustin or that, you know, you still hate each other’s guts and try to impress upon them that this shouldn’t impact Facebook in any way. Users need to know that the site isn’t being compromised. Also, all of this has been really good for publicity and those pictures of you laughing at the park the other day were unbelievably popular. Mark, they like seeing you happy, okay? Try not to scowl.”

Mark looks mildly affronted and Eduardo snorts.

“Okay guys, you ready?” asks a friendly looking man, probably ten or so years older than them. “I’m Charlie, I’ll be interviewing you today. Nothing to worry about, just a few questions that you are, of course, free to not answer if you are uncomfortable at any point.”

“Are we likely to be?” Mark narrows his eyes.

“Excuse me?” Charlie’s smile falters a little.

“Are we likely to be made uncomfortable by any of your questions?”

“Well hopefully not, of course, but I have to tell you that you’re free to – “

“Well of course we are. You couldn’t make me answer anything.”

“Mark, do you remember what I said to you only a minute ago?” Matt sighs, frustrated.

Mark opens his mouth but closes it again and nods stiffly. “Okay then,” Matt sighs and gets up, throwing Eduardo a pleading look over his shoulder as he leaves the room.

“Bye!” Rosalind calls cheerfully after him and Charlie chuckles, “Alright then, shall we get started? Camera and sound ready? You guys ready? Yes? Okay then, camera on.”

It starts off mostly mundane and generic questions: what it’s like being back in The States, how tired they are, how much they were in Rosalind’s life before the accident and how she is adjusting. Eduardo relaxes into it pretty quickly and starts making Charlie laugh and engaging Rosalind into saying things to make the camera crew coo at her. Mark speaks when he is spoken to and for the most part he seems almost bored. He isn’t frowning or snapping but he isn’t smiling either and only really gets animated when asked about Facebook.

“Now obviously,” Charlie says after a few minutes, leaning forward slightly, “everyone knows the story about you two: the dilutions and the lawsuit and I gotta tell you, I for one never thought I’d see the day that Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg strolled through the park carrying a baby and a picnic basket. Have you two really managed to overcome your differences? Because I have to say, it’s a massive inspiration if you have.”

“I issued a statement a few days ago saying that we were friends again and I wasn’t lying for the sake of the press,” says Mark, but he doesn’t sound angry. “If you’d asked me a month ago then I would have agreed with you, I never thought we’d manage to get over everything that happened, as much as I always wanted to and I think that... I mean we haven’t solved everything. There’re years of tension and resentment and, in my case at least, remorse that we can’t just erase but we’re getting there. Right?” He looks at Eduardo.

“Right.” Eduardo smiles. “What you have to remember, Charlie, is that we were 19 and 21 and we were both so stubborn. We’re not kids anymore and having a toddler to look after certainly puts things into perspective. I thought Chris and Dustin were mad at first, thinking Mark and I could ever work things out when I was so unbelievably furious with him but,” he shrugs, “I guess I was wrong. As much as I miss them both, and of course I really do, I’ve got my best friend back and I owe them for that.”

Mark smiles at him and looks back at the camera, “I’ve been told everyone thinks I’m a robot with no feelings so I would also like to just add that I really am a human.”

“It’s true.” Eduardo looks at the camera earnestly. “I’ve seen him drunk. And tired.”

Charlie laughs, “Oh, what is a drunk Mark Zuckerberg like?”

Eduardo smirks. “If you like, next time someone takes Rosie for the night I’ll get him hammered and parade him around the streets.”

Mark just turns to look at the camera. “I lied. We’re not friends anymore.”

Charlie laughs. “Oh dear, and you were making such progress! Now you mentioned Chris and Dustin, Eduardo and obviously I’m not going to ask whether you miss them or anything like that because obviously you do but, can you tell us anything about why they chose you two for this? I mean, do you think they knew before you did that you’d be able to make up?”

“I really don’t think that that was their main priority,” says Mark, slightly impatiently. “When they wrote their wills they needed to be sure that Rosalind would be in the best position possible and as her godfathers we already knew her and loved her and also, of course, have the means to give her a good life. Whether they thought we could reconcile or not, they did know that we would be there for Rosie whatever issues we had between us, even if it meant working out a joint custody agreement if it really didn’t work out. We were all very close. Even when Wardo and I weren’t speaking we both saw Chris and Dustin a lot. They wouldn’t have wanted Rosie with anyone else.”

Eduardo nods and Charlie smiles at them both. “But they’d be happy that you reconciled, I bet.”

“Obviously,” Mark says and Eduardo rolls his eyes at him.

“Obviously,” Charlie repeats. “And I mean I’ve seen pictures of Chris and Dustin of course, they were on the news at the time. She really does seem to be inheriting Chris’s genes. Does she get anything from Dustin? I mean not genetically obviously but did living with him for a year have any impact on her personality, d’you think?”

Eduardo smiles. “Well she smiles a lot. Dustin was honestly always smiling. There was always a joke to be made or a silver lining to be found with Dustin and I’m pretty sure Rosie is going to grow up just the same.”

“Yes well she’s certainly been very well behaved today.”

“Yeah, you should hear her at night though. But you can never be angry with her. She has some killer puppy dog eyes. Which she also probably got from Dustin.”

“Or you,” says Mark.

“What?” Eduardo and Charlie say at the same time. Mark shrugs.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Eduardo has the eyes of a baby deer. When he wants something, he’s pretty good at getting it.”

Eduardo gapes at him for a second. “Seriously?”

Mark rolls his eyes at him. “Wardo, back in Harvard we used to call you Bambi.”

Charlie laughs, “I actually can see the resemblance! Eduardo, you’re not helping yourself right now with this deer caught in the headlights look.”

“He can’t help that, it’s his natural expression,” Mark deadpans and Charlie laughs heartily, making Rosalind giggle on the couch and Eduardo just blinks at all of them, bemused.

“Okay well I’m going to leave it there because if we’ve started comparing these guys to a robot and a Disney cartoon then I think that’s really a sign to stop! Thank you both very much for taking the time to talk to us, I know it’s been a tough month for you. And thank you to little Rosie as well, we wish you all the best.” 

*

It’s a week later by the time the interview airs, but Eduardo doesn’t see it because it’s also the morning that Rosalind says ‘thanks’ for the first time and it completely puts it from his mind. He’s helping Rosalind into her shoes by the time Mark comes hurrying down the stairs, mumbling about over sleeping.

“Mark, slow down. They’re not gonna start the meeting without us. You’re the CEO,” Eduardo says calmly and then, because he can’t help it, adds “Bitch.”

Mark turns to glare half-heartedly at him and starts toeing on his flip-flops.

“Jesus, Mark, go and brush your hair at least.”

“It’s fine how it is,” Mark says petulantly and Eduardo huffs, straightening up and moving forward to smooth out Mark’s hair.

“Um,” Mark says while Eduardo’s hands are trying (and failing) to make his hair lie flat. He stills when he realises just what he’s doing.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, withdrawing his hands. “Sorry. It really was just sticking up everywhere though.”

Mark smirks. “Yeah well sorry we can’t all pull off the ‘my hair has a life of its own’ look.”

Eduardo lifts a hand to his own head self-consciously and Mark snorts, “Now can we leave? I seem to remember you have issues when other people are late and I don’t want to make you a hypocrite or anything.”

Eduardo wonders why he isn’t nervous. It’s the first shareholders’ meeting he’s ever actually been to and it will be full of people who will want to speak to him about Facebook, about Rosie and about Mark, but he finds he really isn’t all that nervous. It’s been another great week full of lunches at the park; Mark playing with Rosie in the kitchen while Eduardo cooks various dinners (sometimes with Mark trying to help); watching through Mark’s collection of Pixar films in the evenings and then continuing to beat him at Mario Kart after Rosalind goes to bed. Eduardo thinks briefly, as he pulls into the Facebook parking lot, that maybe that song he’s been waiting for, the song that was meant to follow the one before but didn’t, is finally starting to play.

“Hi, Eduardo!” Isobel smiles warmly at him as they enter the conference floor.

“Hi, Issy,” he replies with an answering smile.

“I’m here too,” Mark points out rather petulantly and Isobel shoots a quick glare his way.

“They’re all in there so you’d better go on in. You want a coffee or something, Eduardo?”

“You really don’t have to do that.”

“Oh no really, it’s my pleasure. Go on in, I’ll bring it in to you.”

She makes to hurry off but Mark stops her, “Isobel, you know you’re my assistant, right?”

She huffs, “Fine, Mark. Do you want anything?”

“Coffee,” he snaps and she sends another glare his way before smiling at Eduardo and disappearing off to the cafeteria.

“Shall we go then?” asks Eduardo, starting in the direction of the conference room. Mark nods stiffly, a slight frown on his face, and follows him in.

So, okay, Eduardo isn’t totally oblivious. He knows flirting when he sees it and Isobel is most definitely flirting with him. She leans in much closer than is strictly necessary when she brings his coffee into the meeting and touches his arm lightly before she turns to leave. When they are finally allowed out after a couple of very tedious hours of finance reports, she meets them outside the room with Rosalind on her hip to ask Eduardo if it had been a good meeting and when Mark is pulled into a conversation with Peter Thiel, she tucks her blonde hair behind her ear before saying,

“You’re good for him, you know. He’s been like a whole new person since you guys made up. Well, not a whole new person but... a nicer version of the person he was. He smiles now,” she says, as if she were saying that Mark has suddenly taken to skipping through the offices scattering petals behind him. Though, to be fair, to Isobel the smiling is probably similarly alarming.

Eduardo grins at the floor and she reaches over to squeeze his forearm. “You guys must be really good friends, huh?”

Eduardo nods with a smile and looks up and over to Mark. But Mark isn’t listening to whatever Thiel is saying at all. He’s glaring murderously right at them.

He turns back to Isobel and takes Rosalind from her as he sees Mark brush Thiel off and make a beeline for them. “Thanks for looking after her, Issy. Seriously, we really appreciate it.”

“Anytime.” She smiles sweetly and Eduardo is pretty sure she inches slightly closer to him.

“Isobel,” Mark says sharply from Eduardo’s right, “I’m pretty sure I don’t pay you to stand around chatting with the shareholders.”

Isobel looks affronted and opens her mouth to speak but Mark pointedly turns from her to look at Eduardo. “Did you bring sandwiches?”

“Yep.” Eduardo gestures with his briefcase.

“Good. Let’s go to my office,” and he marches off towards the elevators, even though his office is only one floor up.

“Mark,” Eduardo ventures tentatively once they get to Mark’s office and he sets Rosalind down on the floor, “are you, um, is everything okay?”

Mark turns around slowly and shrugs. “Isobel likes you.” It isn’t a question and he’s clearly trying for nonchalance as he looks at Eduardo with a very carefully impassive face. Eduardo just nods, he’s not going to pretend he didn’t notice. Mark looks like he wants to ask something but eventually just looks down and nods, turning back towards his desk to move some papers about pointlessly.

So remember when Eduardo said he wasn’t totally oblivious? Well now he kind of wants to hit himself in the forehead because yeah, he kind of is. Mark isn’t angry with him. He’s jealous.

“Mark,” Eduardo says gently and Mark pretends not to hear him. “Mark!” he says louder and Mark’s hands still on his desk. “Mark, turn around,” Eduardo sighs and Mark straightens his back from where he’d been standing slightly hunched over his desk and turns to face Eduardo with the same impassive face that used to infuriate Eduardo. “I’m not interested in Issy, Mark.”

Mark’s guard begins to crack at the edges as his eyes meet Eduardo’s. “You’re not?” Mark says and his voice is the same ‘would-be casual’ as his face and Eduardo has to suppress a grin at how obvious Mark doesn’t even realise he’s being.

“No,” he says firmly, “I’m definitely not.”

It’s sort of like someone’s let all the air out of a bouncy castle or something, the speed at which the tension leaves Mark’s body. His face visibly relaxes with relief before he schools it back into a blank mask and Eduardo feels such a rush of affection that he can’t even remember what the hell he’s been waiting for.

Because now he’s thinking about it, seeing the relief in Mark’s eyes, Eduardo is hit by all the little things Mark’s done this week which he probably should have noticed at the time. The Brazilian wine he brought home that night which apparently wasn’t even very good but that he thought Eduardo might appreciate; how he asked every evening how his day was and whether he slept well; that afternoon when they couldn’t have lunch and Mark had texted him just to say hi and even that one night when Mark had pulled out Eduardo’s chair for him.

Yeah okay, so Eduardo was definitely on the oblivious side.

“Mark, you’ve been trying to...woo me this week, haven’t you?” he says, incredulously but with a smile. Mark shrugs defensively and doesn’t meet Eduardo’s eyes. “You have!” Eduardo says triumphantly. “In your own, weird, Mark way – “

“Well if it’s not working all you have to do is say so,” Mark snaps and Eduardo can see him beginning to shrink in on himself.

“No, no, Mark, come on, that wasn’t a criticism! I just... uh, I just – “

“You need time, I know. I get it.” Mark interrupts and when his eyes meet his they’re not angry or closed off or defensive. They’re hopeful and they’re honest and they’re open. “But I’m not giving up, Wardo, just so you know. I’m always going to want this and I’m not giving up until you tell me to. I’m... I’m not making that mistake again, okay? I’m not gonna do that.”

And his voice is firm and sure and passionate but at the same time, Eduardo can hear the crack of vulnerability under it all; like Mark is teetering on the brink of breaking open altogether and Eduardo, the hope that maybe one day he’ll have him the way he wants him, is the only thing holding him together.

And Eduardo doesn’t really understand why he didn’t just close up those cracks weeks ago.

He looks out through the glass walls at the empty office outside, everyone’s on their lunch break or still upstairs in the conference room, and he steps forward slowly so that Mark doesn’t back away and collide with his desk, until he’s standing very deliberately in Mark’s space. Mark’s jaw slackens slightly and his breathing hitches, his eyes darting between Eduardo’s eyes and his lips.

“Okay.” Eduardo murmurs softly, watching as Mark licks his lips and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing noticeably and his breathing slightly laboured, “You know, it’s been two weeks. That is... well, that’s quite a bit of time.”

Mark’s eyes snap up to his from where they’d been staring dazedly at his lips and they’re wide and hopeful and so open that Eduardo just wants to gather him into his arms and never let him go. But he doesn’t, he just inches closer until their feet are almost touching and their faces are almost close enough for Eduardo to feel it when Mark breathes out, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eduardo answers. “You wanna have dinner with me tonight? After Rosie is in bed? That bottle of wine is yet to be opened and maybe we could...talk.”

“Yeah, uh, yeah, yes.” Mark stutters breathily and Eduardo smirks at how clearly he’s affecting Mark. Mark swallows again at the upturn of Eduardo’s lips and his gaze lingers on them when Eduardo says “Good,” almost too quiet to even be audible if it weren’t for their proximity.

For one of the longest minutes of Eduardo’s life, they are quiet; the only sound coming from their breathing and their noses are almost brushing.

“Wardo?” Mark croaks eventually, eyes lidded and heavy and face flushed.

“Mmm?”

“We...uh....we’re in a glass office.”

“I didn’t know that. Tell me more,” Eduardo says drily and Mark huffs in a way that isn’t at all as irritated as he probably wanted it to be but actually more of a shudder.

“I just mean...uh...” he blushes and his next words come out all in one breath, “anyone could walk past right now and if you haven’t walked away in approximately five seconds I’m going to kiss you whether it’s advisable or not.”

Eduardo’s heart beats wildly in his chest, “You are, huh?” he asks lowly, leaning forward just a fraction so that their noses touch. Mark whimpers somewhere in the back of his throat and Eduardo smiles.

“Well I guess I better walk away then,” Eduardo whispers and Mark’s eyes slip shut.

“Yeah,” He breathes inanely.

Eduardo leans even further, so their lips are barely a hair’s width apart and then he smirks.

“Okay then,” he pulls away and steps out of Mark’s space, smiling brightly. “Walking away. See you later, Mark!” he says, with a rather triumphant grin as Mark’s eyes fly open, and he hoists Rosalind off the floor, waves cheerily in goodbye and drops Mark’s sandwich on the table by the door as he leaves.

As he walks away from Mark’s office he gets a fleeting glance of him bracing himself against his desk, trying to calm his breathing. He smiles helplessly to himself all the way back home and when he pulls his phone out of his pocket on the way to the front door there’s a text from Mark.

Asshole.

Eduardo laughs happily and sends back:

;)

*

Eduardo settles on the couch later that afternoon and pulls his laptop out of its bag while Rosalind watches whatever brightly coloured cartoon is playing. It makes the slow whirring sound of a laptop starting up and Rosalind turns around.

“Facebook,” she says, pointing at the computer and, even though it really came out something like ‘fay-boo’, Eduardo bursts into laughter.

“Oh, querida, no way did you just say that.”

“Facebook,” she repeats happily and Eduardo laughs again.

“Oh, you are so doomed. Mark is gonna try and turn you into mini-CEO.”

“Yeah,” she says inanely and turns back towards the television. Eduardo chuckles again and reaches for his phone. There is no way he can wait for Mark to get home for this.

His phone starts ringing in his hand before he can hit the speed dial for Mark’s number and he freezes when he sees the caller.

Shit.

He leaves the room quietly, shutting the door so that Rosalind is out of earshot and then takes a deep breath and accepts the call. He brings the phone to his ear slowly and exhales.

“Father.”

*

Eduardo doesn’t hear Mark come in at first and it means that he plasters the smile onto his face a fraction too late. Mark narrows his eyes almost instantly.

“What?” he asks, not even bothering with a hello.

“Nothing.” Eduardo shrugs, trying to sound confused at Mark’s concern but probably failing at nonchalance just as epically as Mark did back in the office.

“Wardo, what’s wrong?” Mark asks again, eyes hard and searching from the living room doorway.

“Nothing, Mark! Honestly, everything’s fine!” he stands and smiles weakly at him.

“Bullshit,” Mark says fiercely.

"Mark!” Eduardo reprimands, “Rosie is right there!”

"So stop lying,” Mark’s eyes are dark and his shoulders are tense and it’s a far cry from the Mark Eduardo had open and whimpering a few hours ago. He’s guarded, angry, defensive and Eduardo does not like where this is going.

“Mark, I’m not – “

“Have you changed your mind again? Is that what this is about?”

“What? No! Well...I mean...I, look – “

Mark snorts, mirthlessly, “Forget it,” he spits out and whirls around, striding from the room. Eduardo swears quietly to himself in Portuguese and follows him out the room, shutting the living room door behind him.

“Mark, wait,” he says and Mark turns where he stands in the hallway, hands shoved into his pockets and face stormy, “I haven’t changed my mind, okay? I still want to have dinner later. Just us.”

“You know, Wardo,” Mark says, apparently ignoring Eduardo completely, “I realise that I’m the one who fucked up last time, okay? I know that. But what I also realise, which apparently you don’t, is that the main problem that lead to everything going to shit was that we were stupid assholes that didn’t communicate. We didn’t talk to each other, Eduardo and I’m trying to fucking change that but you don’t seem to be trying at all. You say you want to fix this and that you need time to work it out or whatever but that process would move a lot faster if you stopped doing exactly what you did last time.” His voice had gotten progressively louder and Eduardo is getting annoyed.

“You think I’m not trying?” he asks, affronted, “Mark, I said nothing was wrong because I didn’t want it to become a big deal. It wasn’t anything about you and me, okay?” Mark scoffs and Eduardo wants to hit him. “Not everything is about you, Mark!”

“So what was it about then?”

“Fine, you wanna know so badly? My father called.” Mark’s face shifts slightly but he doesn’t move. “He said he saw the interview we did and didn’t approve of me dropping my life in Singapore and going, his words, ‘crawling back to that Zuckerberg boy’. He told me that I was to sign over full custody of Rosalind to you and go back to Singapore where he has made arrangements for me to reclaim my old office and apartment.”

There’s a beat of silence and then, “What did you say?” Mark asks, his voice forcedly level but vibrating with anger or fear or hell, Eduardo doesn’t even know anymore.

“Jesus, Mark, what do you think I said?”

“Well you know what, Wardo, I have no fucking idea.”

“What, you think I’d just drop you guys like that?” Eduardo can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Well why not?!” Mark’s voice is suddenly loud, almost a shout and Eduardo flinches minutely at the abruptness of it, “You know, ever since this started you’ve been dying to get out.”

“What?!” Eduardo’s voice is high and incredulous, “Are you serious? Mark, I have changed my whole fucking life around! I moved to a city that held only bad memories, to a man that, at the time, I was furious with, to take care of a child that I was not ready for!”

“Oh what and you think I was ready?” Mark’s words are coming out spitfire fast in frustration. “You wanted kids! Okay? You did! You always said so in college and me? I never thought I would find anyone, who I could realistically have, that I actually wanted kids with. I never even considered it, Wardo; it wasn’t on the cards for me! But it happened, we’re parents now and I understand that this isn’t how you wanted it, okay I get that you wanted it to be with someone that you love but it happened like this and I’m sorry I’m not whoever you pictured in your head but you and I have a daughter now, okay? We have a daughter. And I understand that but I don’t think you fucking do.”

“Of course I do!” Eduardo is shouting now.

“Yeah?” Mark’s voice is dangerous and challenging. “Have you ever referred to Rosalind as your daughter? When people in the store or at the park ask if she’s yours do you say yes?” Eduardo opens his mouth but Mark spits out “Like hell you do,” before he can even decide what he was going to say. “I get it. You didn’t want this. You didn’t want her and you didn’t want me. So maybe you should go back to Singapore.”

Eduardo splutters slightly, “Jesus Christ, Mark, you are being ridiculous! I said I didn’t want to be here, past tense, not that I don’t want to be here now! Mark, I love Rosalind. I’m not pretending.”

Mark huffs another mirthless, cruel laugh and shakes his head. “You’re not pretending with Rosalind?” he asks, almost mocking.

“Of course I’m fucking not!”

Eduardo doesn’t know what the hell is going on or why Mark is suddenly quite so furious or why he just saw something crumble behind Mark’s eyes.

“Okay,” Mark says, voice the same forced attempt at level as it was earlier, “so just me then.”

He doesn’t say it like a question and it hits Eduardo like a bucket of ice-cold water.

“Mark,” he says, quietly now. “Mark, that’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah well that’s what it sounded like,” Mark snaps and those cracks in his shell, those ones that were so close to bursting, are creaking with the effort of not letting go and for a crazy moment Eduardo thinks he can see Mark clinging desperately to the hope of Eduardo; those thin threads keeping the seams from splitting entirely; trying to keep it from slipping away.

“Mark, you’re being – “

“Ridiculous? Yes, you said that already.”

“Mark.” Why must he always make things so difficult? “This is why I wasn’t going to tell you. You’re making a big deal out of this when it shouldn’t be! I told him no, Mark! Jesus, of course I told him no. He was mad. He shouted at me and said some things...but I said no.”

“You said no.”

“Yes.”

“Straight away?”

“What?” Eduardo asks and he’s so tired of arguing with Mark.

“I mean did you consider it first?”

“What do you mean did I – “

“I don’t think I was being particularly cryptic with my meaning so I’m assuming your deliberate obtuseness means that you considered agreeing before saying no. Am I wrong?”

Eduardo can see how desperately Mark wants him to say yes and Eduardo almost laughs at the irony of Mark begging to be wrong but he’s mad. Mark makes him mad.

“You know what, Mark? Yes. I considered it. My father is a hard man to say no to and my whole life was there for three years before I had to leave with absolutely no warning. So yeah, I considered it. For about a second. And then I remembered you and Rosie and I stopped considering it! Mark,” he barks, trying to get Mark to understand, “I stopped considering it.”

“Yeah well don’t do me any favours,” Mark spits out.

Eduardo curls his hands into fists and takes a deep breath. He refuses to smash anything.

“What is this all about?” he asks instead, voice quieter and eyes fixed on Mark’s. “I’ve told you that I don’t want to leave and I’ve told you that I love Rosalind. I’m sorry if I’ve found it harder than you to accept that my best friends aren’t coming back but I don’t think it is unreasonable to need some time before I can start thinking of my goddaughter as my actual daughter! Jesus, Mark, it’s hardly been a month!”

“Fuck you,” Mark says, fury lacing every single consonant and hurt shining unashamedly from his eyes. “You think I’m some kind of fucking robot who doesn’t give a shit? Fuck you.” His voice is cracking and Eduardo doesn’t know if it’s the fury or the hurt slipping through the fractures in his guard. He thinks it’s probably both. “You love Rosalind? Fine. I’m sure we can figure out a joint custody agreement for when you fuck off back to Singapore.”

He storms past Eduardo and up the stairs.

“Christ, Mark, now who’s not listening?!” Eduardo calls after him and Mark wheels around at the top of the stairs to stare daggers down at Eduardo.

“Oh I’m listening to every word, Eduardo.” His hands are shaking where they grip the banister. “And it sounds to me like if it weren’t for me being a hindrance you would be on the first flight out of here with Rosalind. Go back to Singapore. I genuinely don’t give a fuck.”

And then he’s gone, slamming his bedroom door and leaving Eduardo fuming with rage and frustration and fuck knows what else at the bottom of the stairs.

Rosalind is crying in the living room and Eduardo wants to scream and curse and throw electronics against walls but he can’t. So he presses a hand against his stinging eyes, rolls his shoulders and walks back into the living room with a soothing smile in place.

*

Eduardo doesn’t see Mark again that evening, nor does he see him the next morning before he leaves for work. When he gets back around one Mark brushes past him the second he opens the door and gets into his own car before Eduardo can say anything. Not that he was going to. He doesn’t know what to say anyway.

“How has this happened, Rosie?”

“Facebook,” she babbles.

“No,” Eduardo sighs. “No, not this time. This time it’s just us.”

“Yeah.” She toddles over and pats at his knee. He helps her climb up onto the sofa and hugs her tight.

“I don’t know what to do, Rosie,” he whispers, voice cracking as he strokes her back. “Tell me what to do.”

He doesn’t know how to fix it with Mark. That was always the problem, wasn’t it? He just doesn’t know how to fix it and this time it’s worse. Before, when Mark lashed out and belittled him and acted like he didn’t care, Eduardo believed him. He did what he was told and left, feeling unwanted and un-needed and unloved.

But now everything is completely clear and a hundred times more confusing because now Eduardo knows that when Mark’s mouth is saying leave leave leave his heart is begging stay stay stay. And it hurts a thousand times more than it ever did before when he thinks of I want-I want-I need you out here and I need my CFO and Wardo, we did it and point zero three percent.

Because Mark had said leave. He’d said leave with a share dilution and a thousand flippant dismissals.

But he’d meant stay. And Eduardo hadn’t.

“Pai.”

Eduardo freezes and pulls back from Rosalind slowly. “What did you just say?”

“Pai,” she says again, reaching out and patting his face.

And then Eduardo’s crying. He’s crying like he’s miserable and like he’s happy and like he’s tired and like he loves.

“Pai?” Rosalind asks and buries her head into his neck with her small arms clasped tightly around his neck.

“Yeah, querida.” Eduardo chokes out finally, “Yeah, I’m Pai.”

And he’s never meant anything more in his life.

*

Dear Eduardo,

            I am pretty sure you’re never actually going to read this and I therefore feel pretty ridiculous writing it but Jonas said it would be a good idea and then Dustin got all excited about it. He’s writing Mark’s now (don’t worry, I’ll read it afterwards to check that it isn’t just a couple of pages of coding ideas and inappropriate jokes) but I wanted to write yours.

            So for the sake of this letter I’m going to assume that I am dead and you didn’t know I was going to die and Dustin...I guess he’s dead too. That is the only explanation for you reading this really and so if you are then...God, I’m really sorry. I obviously don’t know how it happened but if we’re both gone...I’m sorry. And if there’s a heaven that I’m in right now then I bet everything I have that I miss you. Don’t tell Mark, but you were always my best friend (you were the only other sane one in our group). Please don’t be too sad though. If you’re reading this then Dustin and I, we died together and even though I wish he’d survived...you should at least be thankful that we’re together wherever we are. If anyone can turn the afterlife into a party, it’s Dustin.

            Now I also assume Jonas just told you about Rosie, am I right? And you think we’re totally insane. You may even be mad at us and believe me that isn’t our intention. Wardo, Rosie is the best thing that ever happened to me, next to Dustin. She is absolutely and without a doubt, the most precious thing in the world and it hurts that I won’t see her grow up. I don’t know how old she is now but as I write this it’s a couple of weeks before her first birthday and you and Mark...well you and Mark still aren’t speaking. But you see, Wardo, I would die a thousand times all over again if it meant she had the best life she could possibly have and she needs you and she needs Mark. You love her, I know you do, and she loves you too. I feel much better about dying when I know she will have you.

            Now about Mark. Okay so for all I know, you are reading this when Rosalind is about 15 and you don’t need to live with Mark at all. Or maybe you’ve made up (I really hope this is the case) but right now you can hardly even look at him and it breaks my heart, Wardo. And it breaks Dustin’s too. We’re not just leaving Rosie to you two for her sake, Wardo, but for yours and Mark’s too. With us gone, if you two still aren’t speaking, you will need her as much as she needs you and if she is still little then she will need parents. I...Dustin and I discussed it and if you’re reading this before she’s five then I don’t want you to feel bad about being her dad. Let her call you that, let her think of you as that and let yourself be that. Please. For us. Tell her about us, tell her we miss her and that we love her but be her father.

            And please, Wardo, give Mark a chance. You know when the dilution happened that Dustin and I, we were on your side. We shouted at Mark, Dustin even threatened to give up his shares at one point and I almost walked out. But since then, he’s told us his side and...and he would kill us for telling you but...well it looks like we’re already dead so there’s something you need to know. Eduardo, Mark’s been in love with you since he was 19 years old. I’ll let him explain his own motives behind what he did but please, don’t ever doubt the fact that he loved you and still loves you and is sorry. I know what he’s like, he might be too scared or too stubborn to say so now but he’s told us. He’s told us everything. And he’s sorry. And he loves you. I can’t ask you to forgive him but I ask you to at least hear him out. Let him try. Trust me. Call it my dying wish if you must.

            And I obviously don’t know what your feelings are, whether you love or ever loved Mark too but if you don’t, be gentle with him. Whether it was his fault or not, he’s had to lose you once before and I don’t think he could handle a second time. He’s so much more vulnerable than he lets on.

            So anyway, please don’t be sad for us anymore and please don’t let your life be miserable. Love Rosalind, she needs a father who can teach her not to wear shorts and flip-flops in the snow and not to try and live on Red Bull (seriously Wardo DO NOT leave her solely in Mark’s care) and if you can’t love Mark, then at least let him love you.

 

We miss you, wherever we are and we’re sorry,

Thank you,

Chris and Dustin.

P.S. HEEEEEEY! Dustin here. I couldn’t let him seal this without saying hi too. Well actually I guess it’s goodbye. Except it’s not because we’ll be waiting for you up here and when you get here make sure to come straight over to our cloud. I’m gonna throw the biggest party in heaven. God will never know what’s hit him. (I actually feel sorry for the guy when Mark gets up here. I bet he won’t even think twice about answering back). Bye for now, Wardo and we’ll see you soon (on the party cloud, don’t forget.)

*

When Mark gets in at 10:43, Rosalind is already in bed and Eduardo is sitting waiting for him on the couch. The lamp on the end table is on, setting a dim glow around the room and Eduardo looks up at Mark when he shuffles into the room. Their eyes meet for a few seconds and Mark sighs. He sits down close against Eduardo’s right side and it’s a good thing too as his voice is so quiet – like he’s hardly used it all day and has forgotten how.

“I would give a fuck,” he says, twisting his hands nervously on his lap.

“What?”

“If you went back to Singapore, I would give a fuck.”

Eduardo turns his body slightly to look at Mark better. “Mark you have to believe me when I say I don’t want to go back there.”

“But you considered it.” He shrugs, defeated. It doesn’t suit Mark, defeat. He’s supposed to be confident and arrogant and obnoxious.

“Yes,” Eduardo nods, “Because I hated making my father disappointed. Again. And this is all so new and life then was easy.” He sighs, “And obviously I wasn’t happy here at first, of course I wasn’t. I was still upset with you and upset about Chris and Dustin and overwhelmed with Rosie and I hated Palo Alto. But I’m not miserable here now, Mark. I’m sorry if I made you believe I was.”

Mark still isn’t looking at him but his voice is louder than before. “You want to stay?” he asks.

“I want to stay,” Eduardo replies.

“You’re sure?” Mark turns to look him in the eye and Eduardo resists the urge to reach up and touch his cheek.

“I’m sure.” He smiles.

“Okay.” Mark nods and he looks back ahead, fingers drumming sporadically against his thighs.

Eduardo turns away too but reaches over to link his right hand with Mark’s left.

“I read my letter,” he says eventually and he feels Mark’s breath catch beside him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think before I felt too guilty to call her my daughter when it should be Dustin and Chris here in this house with this life. I didn’t want to let myself be happy here. I should have read the letter when we first got them.”

“Yes,” Mark says simply and then pauses. “I’m tired of fighting with you, Wardo.”

He sounds it.

“I know.” Eduardo nods. “I reckon we wouldn’t be us if we didn’t fight though,” he says with a small smile.

“Can’t we just stick to fighting about normal things?” Mark almost whines, “Like what movie to watch or who has to do the dishes or change Rosie’s diaper?”

Eduardo laughs quietly and squeezes Mark’s hand. “We’re definitely on the right track at least. Look at us! Having a grown up discussion instead of just jumping to conclusions and lashing out like we used to.”

Mark nods and smiles at their clasped hands, “Forget Facebook, this is our biggest achievement to date.”

Our biggest achievement. We did it. We’re the president.

"Rosie said Facebook yesterday.” Eduardo remembers, grinning at the memory.

Mark laughs softly. “Finally. I’ve been coaching her on that one for ages.”

“Yeah?” Eduardo turns to look at him, “Before or after you taught her ‘Pai’?”

Mark turns to look at him, eyes unsure and searching Eduardo’s face. “I...I thought that’s what you’d want. I mean we can’t both be ‘Dad’ and I thought you might like to keep the Portuguese going so I looked it up. I’ve been showing her pictures of you and repeating it for ages. She...she said it?”

“Yeah.” Eduardo’s voice sounds scratchy and choked even to his own ears. “Mark, I...I can’t believe you did that.”

Mark looks down and shrugs and Eduardo finally doesn’t have to think about it anymore.

“Mark, I was an idiot. I don’t want more time.”

Mark’s head snaps up. “What?”

“You were right. I wasn’t trying as hard as you and we need to stop fighting about everything and misunderstanding everything and...I want to be with you. Now. Not in a few months when ‘the time is right’. Jesus, what does that even mean? I was being stupid and scared.” He squeezes his hand again. “Thank you for being patient.”

Mark’s eyes are shining but terrified, like he’s scared to let himself feel hopeful and Eduardo, very suddenly, wants to kick himself for doing that to him. “What were you scared of?” Mark asks, voice shaken and nervous and Eduardo has to fight every single impulse in his body to stop himself reaching out and drawing Mark in. He wants to hold him to his chest and keep him from ever looking like this again and he wants to not have to answer this question. Because what good will it do? He doesn’t want to hear Mark’s response and he doesn’t want to see Mark’s guilt and he doesn’t want to have to try and find the words.

But he has to. Mark’s been trying, for weeks he’s been grasping for them and he’s looking up at him now like he’s bracing himself for the answer to a question he already thinks he knows the painful answer to. But like he needs to hear it anyway. And Eduardo has to (this time) give Mark what he needs.

Eduardo shrugs helplessly.

“I’m always going to lose,” he says finally, voice barely more than a whisper and it’s like there’s no air in the room anymore; like there’s no air in the whole of Palo Alto and Eduardo’s words are the ones driving it away and bringing it back all at the same time. “Whatever happens between us, Mark, when it comes to Facebook...I’m always going to lose.”

Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all these years of hurt and anger and betrayal have stemmed from. It was never about the injustice or the pride or the betrayal or even about being surprised that Mark had done what he did (though all those things were there) but about how somewhere in Eduardo’s head or heart or being he’d known that he loved Mark and he’d known that Facebook had meant more to him that he, himself, ever could and still he’d given him everything. It had been about shame and self-hatred and how he’d brought it all upon himself.

Except now...now he hardly knows what to think anymore and he’s about to do it all again. Give Mark everything again and maybe lose to Facebook again one day too but this time...well maybe this time he’ll be ready. Maybe this time he can live with the knowledge that Facebook means the world to Mark because this time he’ll know that he means the world to Mark too.

Mark twists around slightly to face Eduardo more directly and Eduardo mirrors him automatically, “Wardo,” he says and something in his eyes makes Eduardo think or maybe this time I can win, “I, Wardo you’re not going to lose. Not ever. Not to Facebook, not to anything. Christ, I didn’t...it wasn’t like I chose Facebook over you, Wardo! I didn’t...that’s not what it was about! It was...it was because I –“

“Because you loved me,” Eduardo says quietly and Mark’s breath hitches.

“Chris and Dustin tell you in the letter?” he asks eventually.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says and looks down at their hands. “Plus I...I kind of hoped.”

“God, we are so fucked up,” Mark huffs shakily, like it’s supposed to be a joke except it’s really, really not.

“Mark,” Eduardo says softly and Mark looks back up at him, “You loved me all that time?”

“Since before Facebook,” Mark admits quietly as if he hopes Eduardo won’t hear. “I don’t even know when.”

“And you...you still love me?”

Mark nods. I can win, I can win, I can win.

“You love me.”

Mark huffs defensively, “Yes, Eduardo and it doesn’t matter how many times you keep saying it, it will still be true, so I would appreciate it if you –“

And then Eduardo’s kissing him. Hard. The hand that isn’t clasped in Mark’s comes up to cup Mark’s jaw and he kisses him like he should have back in the office or in the park when Mark had been laughing or hell back on that cold February day when Mark had shrugged and said sure I do. He kisses him and it feels like I need you, I’m here for you only this time he doesn’t know which one of those is him; and Mark practically melts against him, kissing back like this is all he’s ever wanted, frantic and desperate and grasping –

And then they’re not anymore because Mark has pulled away, his free hand shaky on Eduardo’s chest, “Wait, wait,” he pants. “Are you going to just –“

“I love you, too,” Eduardo says between breaths, cutting him off.

“What?” Mark freezes, eyes searching and finally allowed to be hopeful.

“I don’t know if I did back then,” Eduardo continues. “Maybe I did. It would certainly explain some things but...but I do now. For sure.”

And he does. He knows it so clearly and so suddenly that he must have known before in some part of him. This is Mark. Genius, stubborn, acerbic, socially incapable, ridiculous, impossible Mark. And loving him doesn’t feel new. It feels amazing.

Mark is looking at him like he’s half expecting him to laugh and say ‘just kidding’ but there’s a slow and tentative smile creeping onto his face. “So you – you want to – be with me?” he asks and he is obviously so unsure about how he is meant to go about this that Eduardo almost can’t contain the swell of affection warming his chest.

“I want to be with you,” he confirms and kisses both of Mark’s cheekbones because he can.

“Like...properly?” Mark asks, “Like ‘going on dates and cuddling on the couch and holding hands on the street’ be with me?”

Eduardo laughs happily and climbs onto Mark’s lap, arms coming up to rest around his shoulders and Mark’s hands going instantly to Eduardo’s waist.

“I didn’t have you down as the cuddling type, Mr. Zuckerberg.” Eduardo grins as he rests his forehead against Mark’s.

“I think I’m definitely starting to see the merits of being the cuddling type.” Mark smiles back and Eduardo just can’t help kissing him again soundly, Mark bunching his hands desperately in Eduardo’s shirt.

“You know,” Eduardo pants against his lips after several minutes of heated kissing, “If the circumstances had been different I would so be texting Dustin right now about you saying you wanted to cuddle and hold hands.”

Mark grins and lifts a hand to Eduardo’s neck. “Yeah well joke’s on you, he already knew.”

Eduardo pulls back a little. “What?” he asks, eyes shining with mirth. Mark blushes (Eduardo decides that blushing Mark may just be one of his favourite things). “There was a drunken night once, just before they got married and it only took a couple of shots to have me saying things that make me glad they can’t repeat them.”

Eduardo shakes his head incredulously and kisses him again because Mark’s lips taste like forgiveness and happiness and family and I love you I love you I love you and Eduardo doesn’t think he’s ever going to stop smiling.

“They’d be happy for us,” he says when Mark drags his lips away from his own and starts sucking along Eduardo’s jaw.

“Yeah,” he breathes, hot against Eduardo’s ear and he shudders. “I bet they’re high-fiving in heaven as we speak.”

Eduardo laughs. “You don’t believe in heaven.”

Mark pulls back to level Eduardo with a long suffering glare. “For the purpose of my mental image, I do,” he says, before wrapping his arms around Eduardo’s waist tightly and kissing his laugh into a groan.

Mark’s hands are like fire through his shirt and within minutes they’re roaming frantically over his back like they just can’t touch enough of him. Eduardo shudders and trails open mouthed kisses down the pale column of Mark’s throat, smiling when he pulls the neck of his t-shirt aside to start sucking at a collarbone and gets a breathy moan in response.

And then Mark’s hands are fumbling at the buttons of Eduardo’s shirt and Eduardo is sucking marks into the delicate skin between shoulder and neck, making Mark’s hands shakier and clumsier as he gets more and more frustrated with the buttons.

“Wardo,” he pants, annoyed. “Shirt.”

Eduardo huffs a laugh over the newly forming bruise on Mark’s skin and Mark visibly shivers against him. He makes quick work of his shirt, not even bothering to fold it before chucking it to one side and feels himself blushing violently when he sees Mark staring wide-eyed and hungry at his newly exposed chest.

“God,” Mark whimpers weakly before pulling Eduardo back in by the neck and kissing him so deeply that Eduardo doesn’t think before grinding his hips down, hard and scrambling to remove Mark’s own shirt.

It’s all a bit of a blur after that. He barely remembers how they got upstairs and into his bed; vaguely recalling spending a good few minutes pressing Mark up against the wall outside his room, rubbing his leg up in between Mark’s and silencing the answering moans with his mouth so as not to wake Rosalind.

He doesn’t remember when they lost their pants but they’re gone by the time they collapse in a tangled heap onto the bed, Mark’s hands slipping down his back and under the waistband of his briefs to make Eduardo jerk back into the touch with a shudder.

“Mark,” he gasps, pressing him down into the sheets with his hips and sucking behind his ear. “Mark.”

He remembers his briefs being thrown across the room and pinning Mark’s arms down above his head to kiss down his neck and chest but then it’s all a frantic, desperate blur of skin and hands and hot, wet kisses (and an impatient Mark urging Eduardo to ‘hurry the fuck up already, Wardo, I’m not gonna break’) between Mark’s boxers getting discarded and Mark’s pale legs finally wrapping around Eduardo’s tanned waist, heels digging insistently into the small of Eduardo’s back.

And then Mark’s chanting his name under his breath like it’s the only word he knows, like it’s the only thing that matters and Eduardo’s almost delirious but it’s like every single gasp of his name brings him closer and closer to fixing those desperate cracks in his being; like every thrust of Eduardo’s hips pulls him further from the brink he’s been teetering on and so Eduardo thrusts harder and faster until he can feel himself getting closer and closer and Mark sounds like a broken record that doesn’t want to be fixed.

*

When Eduardo’s eyes flicker open the next morning he doesn’t know whether it was the crying in the next room or the disgruntled groan against his collarbone that woke him. Mark buries his face further into Eduardo’s neck and grumbles something about cockblocking toddlers which Eduardo doesn’t quite catch but laughs at anyway.

He turns his face ever so slightly to brush a kiss through the curls nestled under his chin and tightens his arm around Mark.

“You’re gonna have to move if you want me to get up,” Eduardo mumbles, voice still thick with sleep.

“I don’t want you to get up,” Mark whines, but rolls off Eduardo anyway with a sigh.

Eduardo grins over at him and then, because he can now, leans over to kiss the pout off Mark’s lips. Mark sighs into it and Eduardo forgets why he has to leave the bed.

Except Rosalind chooses that moment to let out a particularly loud scream and Eduardo reluctantly pulls away and rolls out of bed, taking the time to stretch lazily before pulling on some pyjama pants and a t-shirt and smirking when he hears Mark stifle another whine. 

When Eduardo opens the door to Rosalind’s room she stops crying immediately and reaches out with a grin.

“Pai! Pai!” she babbles and Eduardo scoops her out of her crib with a laugh and tickles her until she’s screaming all over again.

“Paiiiiiiii!” she screeches with a laugh and Eduardo takes it for a yield and stops tickling her to hug her close instead.

“Morning, querida,” he says softly into her hair.

Mark is standing in the doorway when Eduardo turns around and he’s smiling at them in a way Eduardo’s never seen him smile before. Eduardo crosses the room almost instinctively and leans down into Mark’s space to gently press his lips to the large dimple on Mark’s left cheek. 

Mark’s smile grows impossibly wider and when Eduardo pulls back, Mark angles his face up and stands on his tiptoes for a kiss. Eduardo is just leaning in when the doorbell rings and their brief illusion that they’re the only three people in the world is shattered. Mark huffs.

“I’ll go,” he sighs, falling back onto the flat of his feet and transferring Rosalind onto his own hip. “You need to go get dressed for work anyway, right?”

Sadly, Eduardo really does. It’s the middle of the week and he has a meeting at eleven and he’s pretty damn sure ‘because I’d rather stay in bed all day with my cute new boyfriend’ doesn’t count as a legitimate excuse to skip work, so he lets Mark take Rosalind downstairs to answer the door and tries not to grin the whole way through his morning shower.

When Eduardo finally appears downstairs he’s a little more awake and therefore, thankfully, sees Charlotte standing in the kitchen before he does anything telling like shove Mark up against the counter. Rosalind is sitting in her highchair being fed by a cooing Charlotte and Mark is buttering some toast on the island opposite her.

“Mr Saverin!” Charlotte greets warmly. “Nice to see you got dressed for me this time,” she adds playfully and Eduardo’s cheeks tinge pink.

“Yeah, sorry about last time. We probably didn’t give a great impression.” He shuffles over to stand next to Mark and smiles at him softly when he slides the toast over to him along with a mug of coffee. “Thanks,” he says softly and nudges Mark gently with his elbow, smiling wider as Mark goes pink and nudges back.

Charlotte coughs pointedly and both of them turn to look at her. She isn’t saying anything, just looking between them with narrowed eyes that make Eduardo feel hot and uncomfortable. There is no way she knows. They haven’t even said anything to each other and he’s only been in the room for a couple of minutes and Mark wouldn’t have said anything, would he? And Jesus Christ, why is she folding her arms like they’re two naughty schoolboys caught cheating on a –

“What?” snaps Mark eventually and Eduardo can feel him readying for a fight beside him.

“I think you know exactly what, Mr. Zuckerberg,” Charlotte says with a frown.

“And I think you’re – “

“Mark,” Eduardo warns and elbows Mark before he says something biting and offensive. “Um, I’m afraid we don’t really know what you – “

“You had sex, didn’t you,” Charlotte says, unamused, and it isn’t even posed as a question. Eduardo feels his face flame red and Charlotte stands up with a frustrated sigh.

“It was the one thing I gave you strict instructions not to do and I distinctly remember you promising me there was absolutely no chance of it happening and – ”

“Pai!” Rosalind interrupts from the highchair, bored of waiting for Charlotte to continue feeding her and wanting to be let down, “Pai!”

Eduardo shoots an apologetic look at Charlotte and hurries round the island to lift Rosalind out and bounce her up and down gently.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” Eduardo says, putting Rosalind down on the floor with a kiss to the forehead. “I know I said you didn’t need to worry about that but – ”

“What was that she just called you?” Charlotte interrupts, curious. “Some kind of nickname?”

Eduardo shoots an unsure look at Mark but he simply continues to glare in Charlotte’s direction.

“Uh,” Eduardo says dumbly, “’Pai’. It means ‘Dad’ in Portuguese. I’m from Brazil.”

Charlotte’s face softens. “She’s calling you ‘Dad’?” she asks softly and Eduardo shrugs happily, the grin slipping unintentionally onto his face.

Mark comes round to stand next to him and slips his hand into his, squeezing.

“Yes,” he says defiantly and Eduardo falls in love with him all over again, “she calls him ‘Dad’ because that’s what he is. Look, I know you’ve been trained to learn a certain set of rules about what is and what isn’t good for a child but we love her and she loves us so I don’t really understand why it should be any of your business how we feel about each other as long as it isn’t homicidal.”

Eduardo bites his lip against a grin and looks at his feet. He feels like he’s twenty years old and at college with an amazing boy who he managed to befriend against all odds. He feels, all over again, like this ridiculous friend of his is standing there running his mouth off, getting them into trouble, yet inexplicably making Eduardo feel like actually he’s getting them out of it. He feels like they’re barely out of their teenage years and creating something together that is theirs and only theirs and this time? This time they’re going to get beyond the beginning.

When Eduardo looks up, he can’t read Charlotte’s expression. She is looking at their joined hands with a soft yet conflicted look and Eduardo does his best ‘doe-eyed’ expression that Mark had says he does so well.

Charlotte sighs. “Look,” she begins, “any fool could see that you really care for that little girl and I have absolutely no doubts about the fact that you care for each other,” Eduardo feels Mark squeeze his hand again and smiles, “but, Mr. Zuckerberg, the rules are in place for a reason, whether you agree with them or not, especially with a case such as yours. You are public figures, the both of you, not to mention the money and lawsuits and drama you have floating around in your history. If you are going to do this,” she gestures vaguely between them, “and I have no problems with you doing so, but if you’re going to do this then you really need to make it official.”

A heavy silence falls over the room until Rosalind knocks over a stool and Mark lets go of Eduardo’s hand to right it again and ruffle her hair. When he straightens again, she sighs.

“Okay well as far as Rosie is concerned, I am happy that this is the right place for her to be and I don’t need to visit again but just...just think about it, okay? Talk to your lawyers and maybe to PR and just...think about it.”

Mark shrugs stiffly and Eduardo opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before saying, “Uh, just so we’re clear, when you say ‘official’ you mean – ”

“Marriage, Mr. Saverin. Marriage and perhaps adoption.” She smiles then at the sheepish and awkward looks on their faces and shoulders her bag. When she reaches the front door, Eduardo trailing behind her with a rather dazed expression, she stops and squeezes his shoulder,

“For what it’s worth, Mr. Saverin,” she says quietly, “I think you two would be better together than you would be apart.”

And then she’s gone with a firm handshake and an encouraging smile and Eduardo closes the front door with a sigh. He stands there for a second, staring at the dark wood of the front door and trying to slow his heart. Distantly he hears Mark herding Rosalind into the living room behind him but he doesn’t follow them. He groans and leans his head against the door, squeezing his eyes shut and taking a deep breath.

“Is the thought of marrying me really so depressing?” Mark says from behind him and Eduardo spins round to – to what, object? – but Mark is smirking and Eduardo huffs a laugh of relief instead.

Mark smiles up at him and Eduardo wonders for the thousandth time how anyone could think him cold and drags him into a tight hug. They stand like that for a while, Eduardo’s arms around Mark’s shoulders and face buried in his hair and Mark’s fingers tapping patterns across Eduardo’s back like he’s trying to code him into staying.

After a minute, Mark brushes his lips over Eduardo’s neck and sighs. “I know we have to talk about it at some point but I would really like to just enjoy this for a while before we have to engage in more ‘grown up’ discussion.”

And Eduardo knows it’s kind of cheating, and he knows he could save them from possible arguments by insisting they talk about it now, but he’s tired and he’s happy and he’s Mark’s so he laughs and nods against Mark’s temple.

“I have to go to work,” he says eventually, pulling back slightly and running his hands up and down Mark’s arms gently.

“Work from home,” Mark suggests hopefully and Eduardo laughs again and runs fond fingers through Mark’s hair.

“Can’t, I’ve got a meeting at eleven. Hey!” he greets as Rosalind barrels into their legs and Mark bends down to pick her up. She grins between them for a second and then reaches out to pull at one of Mark’s curls.

“Mom!” she says happily and Eduardo bursts into laughter.

“Did she just call me – ” Mark is spluttering and looking so affronted that Eduardo has to lean against the door for a second and wipe at his eyes. When he can breathe again he slaps Rosalind’s free hand in a high five and Mark raises his eyebrows.

“What?” Eduardo grins, “You thought your chicken prank would go unpunished?”

“What?” Mark narrows his eyes and Eduardo just laughs again and picks up his briefcase from beside the door. He kisses Rosalind and then Mark on the cheek.

“You’re not the only one who can teach her things!” he says, and with a final laugh at the dawning look of realisation on Mark’s face he’s out the door and in the car, grinning all the way to work.

Asshole

he receives ten minutes later. He grins and replies,

<3