One. Two. Three seconds pass before Mark nods, taking an even longer swig from his beer bottle. He needs to be intoxicated right now, he needs not to be overanalyzing every single detail, and fun though the Winklevii are to make fun of, there is still something about their gall that rankles now, perhaps rankles even more now that Mark's been vindicated again by his best friend. As much as the current situation is far, far worse than things have ever been between the two friends before, there was one slight, minute advantage, in that when Eduardo was so angry with him, when they have no amount of friendship forged between them, he was honest. That the Winklevii had no right to what Mark had made became doubly obvious once Eduardo noted each time of how little they mattered, of how they never factored into Mark's thought process at all, an agreement that the others in the room might have suspected of being a collusion. Mark knows better. They never really... talked, not for those couple of years that built up to the final deposition. Yet they still saw eye-to-eye on a great deal. There, at least.
Not in others.
The deposition was painful for other reasons, too. Cutting remarks here and there. The pointlessness of going into every little facet and pixel of Mark being dumped by Erica, the way Eduardo was so quick to think that Mark had planted the story of the chicken (it makes Mark wonder if Eduardo ever had such a suspicion back then, and he hopes not, he really does). All of it points to how little Eduardo thinks of Mark, even if he wants to argue that there is still reason there for Eduardo to care for Mark, that it's never been a matter of Mark lacking in the slightest. Doesn't matter. Mark still feels small, when he thinks too much. All he has is facebook. All that won't abandon him, or take advantage of him, is facebook and the mark that it is leaving on the world. It makes Mark feel needed, cool, his gateway drug. Now that's gone, too.
"They were just angry that things didn't go exactly as they planned, that daddy's pampered little crew boys were being denied glory, maybe even angry that they didn't win in the Beijing Olympics," Mark rattles off one after the other, glad when he realizes that his vision is swimming just a little as he waves a server down for another glass of beer, a third of which he downs again in one go. "But, you know, chump change is chump change. I was advised to settle before they went out to smear my reputation even more. So I did. And that's, you know, over."
no subject
Not in others.
The deposition was painful for other reasons, too. Cutting remarks here and there. The pointlessness of going into every little facet and pixel of Mark being dumped by Erica, the way Eduardo was so quick to think that Mark had planted the story of the chicken (it makes Mark wonder if Eduardo ever had such a suspicion back then, and he hopes not, he really does). All of it points to how little Eduardo thinks of Mark, even if he wants to argue that there is still reason there for Eduardo to care for Mark, that it's never been a matter of Mark lacking in the slightest. Doesn't matter. Mark still feels small, when he thinks too much. All he has is facebook. All that won't abandon him, or take advantage of him, is facebook and the mark that it is leaving on the world. It makes Mark feel needed, cool, his gateway drug. Now that's gone, too.
"They were just angry that things didn't go exactly as they planned, that daddy's pampered little crew boys were being denied glory, maybe even angry that they didn't win in the Beijing Olympics," Mark rattles off one after the other, glad when he realizes that his vision is swimming just a little as he waves a server down for another glass of beer, a third of which he downs again in one go. "But, you know, chump change is chump change. I was advised to settle before they went out to smear my reputation even more. So I did. And that's, you know, over."