Anything for You
Two.
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Mark never usually attends the shareholder’s meetings, or whatever stupid function they insist on holding after all of the boring monetary talk is over and done with. He knows that he should probably turn up to them more, being the head of the company and all, but then again he manages to justify it by claiming that when he started Facebook it was never about the money, and money still isn’t the most important thing on his agenda. Why should he waste valuable coding time on something he was never interested in, in the very first place? He doesn’t really see the point, and when Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t see the point in something, he’s liable to let absolutely everyone know about it. Therefore, when he sends replacements to the meeting to take notes for him, he usually isn’t met with many complaints.
However, this time, Shirley was hovering over his desk with that familiar look on her face, the one that said to Mark, “Now, I know I’m only your secretary but you’re going to listen to me anyway”.
"I went home last night," Mark said automatically, as he pulled his laptop towards him and booted it up. He looked at her while the password screen was loading. "I even showered, had something to eat and got some sleep. So really you have no business to be here harassing me, go on, be gone with you."
Shirley raised her eyebrows, far too used to Mark’s rudeness by now. That was how Mark knew she would be a keeper – she didn’t run out of the office building crying hysterically after her first week.
"There’s another shareholder meeting coming up," she informs him, as though he had never spoken. "And you’re going."
"Am I now?" Mark asked, his voice monotonous as he logged on to his computer. "Because, last time I checked, I was the CEO, and I didn’t have to go to anything if I didn’t want to go."
"Stop being a child," Shirley said, rolling her eyes. "You’re going."
"And why’s that?"
"Because I said so."
"Oh, because my secretary said so? Gosh. I hope you don’t fire me, Shirley, that would be terrible."
To Mark’s annoyance, Shirley just laughed.
"I would if I could, Mark. Anyway, you’re going. It’s the last one of the year and I don’t think anyone has seen your face since you were about twenty-one. It’s good manners, you know? I know you’re not exactly up to speed with etiquette and manners and all of the social responsibilities of running a large business but hey, that’s why I’m here."
"I thank God for it every day," Mark muttered, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Good!" Shirley said brightly. "Anyway, it’s in New York, so I’ve got you flights sorted and a hotel booked –"
"Wait," Mark interrupted, holding two hands in front of his body defensively. "Shirley, I never said I was going."
"But I said you were," Shirley said simply. The phone rang on her desk and she began heading towards it. "Your flight leaves at eleven on Thursday morning, don’t be late!" she called over her shoulder.
In a flashback to college, Mark had the sudden urge to open his Livejournal and furiously type, Shirley DeMera is a bitch. Do you think that’s because all secretaries are bitches?
He resisted the urge. She would probably end his life if he did something like that anyway. Sometimes Mark wondered if she were him in female form, because that was the only logical explanation in Mark’s mind as to how she managed to put up with him for so long.
He growled lightly under his breath before he slammed his headphones over his ears, turned up his music, and wired in, ignoring absolutely everyone for the next several hours.
Thinking about how he ended up at the shareholder’s meeting once he was actually there did nothing for his temper. He was standing in a corner away from as many people as possible, drinking from his pint glass perhaps a little too deeply, and wondering why the Hell he let Shirley get away with what she did. He didn’t want to be here, everyone else knew he didn’t want to be here, and at this time of year New York City was especially dreadful, with its biting winds, biting snow storms and biting people. After he had spent the last half an hour or so snapping at anyone who dared to look at him, people had finally gotten the picture and decided to leave him alone, and now he was wondering how he could sneak upstairs to his hotel room and bury himself in code for another few hours without anyone noticing.
He looked around the room at all the different suits and faces and wondered how Facebook had turned into this ass-licking – and then his thoughts just shut off completely and his brain went offline because across the room from him stood Eduardo.
"Shit," Mark muttered, and he quickly developed an intense interest in the bottom of his pint glass. If he tilted it just right, he could spy on Eduardo through the bottom of it, but he didn’t do it for too long because it was starting to feel odd and very definitely distinctly creepy.
The room seemed to have taken on an incredibly awkward atmosphere now, and Mark found himself obsessing over if Eduardo had seen him or not, and if he had, was he just ignoring him? Or had he just not noticed? Or was he obsessing as well? Or – why was Mark even thinking about this? Of course Eduardo would be here. He was still a shareholder, after all, even if those shares were currently incredibly diluted. It would make sense for Eduardo to be here. He was probably always at the meetings, Mark had just never noticed because he was never there himself. He didn’t really want to go all Freudian on himself, but perhaps this was the exact reason that he avoided the damn things? He didn’t particularly want to run into Eduardo – the last time they had spoken to one another had been when the settlement had been signed and Eduardo had made it quite clear that he probably couldn’t care less if Mark had spontaneously combusted on the spot.
Mark snapped back into reality at that point, to find that as he had been staring into space, he had also been gawping rather stupidly at Eduardo, who had definitely noticed now, because he was staring right back. Mark didn’t have time to try and decipher what the look meant, because he quickly became interested in the bottom of his glass again. He imagined, however, that it probably wasn’t a good look. It was probably more of an Oh look, there’s the asshole himself look or maybe a Hey, why the Hell is Mark gawping at me from across the room? look.
Mark glanced up in what he hoped was a discreet fashion. Eduardo was focused on his own glass now, and Mark could see the way his bottom lip was jutted out slightly, his teeth clenching ever so slightly against it, his knuckles a vague white as they clutched the glass probably a little too tightly.
He couldn’t deal with this, not at all. This wasn’t in the job description, and he was going to murder Shirley when he next saw her. He was actually going to chase her out of the building with a broom, Heaven help her. Mark slammed the now empty pint glass on the shining wood of the bar with perhaps a little too much force, and decided that he was going back up to his room, back to the safety of the mini bar and his laptop and safe, safe lines of code. At least code was simple to understand – it only had one correct answer for what you wanted from it and if you messed up there was a wonderful invention called the backspace button. Mark had thirteen point five billion dollars to his name, but sometimes (OK, most of the time) all he really desired was a God damn backspace button for life. Or maybe even a delete button? That would come in some serious handy as well.
He had made it out into the hallway outside the function room before someone grabbed him by the arm, before abruptly releasing their grip as though Mark’s arm were made from hot coals. Mark jumped, not exactly the best with physical contact at the best of times, least of all when it came as a complete surprise to him. He whirled around to see Eduardo standing just behind him, arms by his sides with his fists clenched now, and although he didn’t look overly drunk he certainly looked very angry.
"Going to tell me why you were staring at me through the bottom of your glass for half an hour, Mark?" he choked out, and he sounded as though he were trying not to start shouting. Mark looked around himself wildly as though contemplating his escape routes; however, none were practical when Eduardo was so close to him.
"I ... err ... wasn’t?" Mark spluttered, though he knew that in no way at all did it sound convincing.
"Do you think I’m stupid or something?" Eduardo demanded, and Mark thought he detected a slight slur to his voice. He couldn’t see any other logical reason that Eduardo would start something with him – that wasn’t usually Eduardo’s thing. He had usually been peace-keeping as Mark tried to awkwardly stutter himself out of some tactless comment he had blurted out.
"No, of course I don’t, what – why would you think that?" Mark asked, a little affronted, because he didn’t really see how one could come to such a conclusion just from noticing that they were being observed through the bottom of a pint glass.
"You know, when I saw you here, and I saw you’d noticed me, I thought ... I thought you would at least have the decency to say something to me once you’d noticed I’d spotted what you were doing," Eduardo spat out, and he looked Mark up and down like he was something dirty on the ground. The look made Mark’s chest twinge in a highly unpleasant way. "But I should have known you better than that, Zuckerberg. You don’t give a shit, do you? You never did."
"That’s not true," Mark said quietly, after a slight pause where he struggled to recover from the biting words. "Wardo, I –"
"Don’t call me that," Eduardo hissed. "You lost that right when you signed your best friend away for dollar signs."
As quickly as he had appeared from the crowd, he had disappeared back into it, and Mark’s heart was thudding so hard against his chest he thought it was trying to break out of it and his cheeks were hot and flushed, and he clenched his fists together and shook his head, glaring at his shoes.
"Well," he eventually muttered to himself, letting out a forced laugh that sounded to him like more of a choked sob. "That went well."
*
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Mark never usually attends the shareholder’s meetings, or whatever stupid function they insist on holding after all of the boring monetary talk is over and done with. He knows that he should probably turn up to them more, being the head of the company and all, but then again he manages to justify it by claiming that when he started Facebook it was never about the money, and money still isn’t the most important thing on his agenda. Why should he waste valuable coding time on something he was never interested in, in the very first place? He doesn’t really see the point, and when Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t see the point in something, he’s liable to let absolutely everyone know about it. Therefore, when he sends replacements to the meeting to take notes for him, he usually isn’t met with many complaints.
However, this time, Shirley was hovering over his desk with that familiar look on her face, the one that said to Mark, “Now, I know I’m only your secretary but you’re going to listen to me anyway”.
"I went home last night," Mark said automatically, as he pulled his laptop towards him and booted it up. He looked at her while the password screen was loading. "I even showered, had something to eat and got some sleep. So really you have no business to be here harassing me, go on, be gone with you."
Shirley raised her eyebrows, far too used to Mark’s rudeness by now. That was how Mark knew she would be a keeper – she didn’t run out of the office building crying hysterically after her first week.
"There’s another shareholder meeting coming up," she informs him, as though he had never spoken. "And you’re going."
"Am I now?" Mark asked, his voice monotonous as he logged on to his computer. "Because, last time I checked, I was the CEO, and I didn’t have to go to anything if I didn’t want to go."
"Stop being a child," Shirley said, rolling her eyes. "You’re going."
"And why’s that?"
"Because I said so."
"Oh, because my secretary said so? Gosh. I hope you don’t fire me, Shirley, that would be terrible."
To Mark’s annoyance, Shirley just laughed.
"I would if I could, Mark. Anyway, you’re going. It’s the last one of the year and I don’t think anyone has seen your face since you were about twenty-one. It’s good manners, you know? I know you’re not exactly up to speed with etiquette and manners and all of the social responsibilities of running a large business but hey, that’s why I’m here."
"I thank God for it every day," Mark muttered, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Good!" Shirley said brightly. "Anyway, it’s in New York, so I’ve got you flights sorted and a hotel booked –"
"Wait," Mark interrupted, holding two hands in front of his body defensively. "Shirley, I never said I was going."
"But I said you were," Shirley said simply. The phone rang on her desk and she began heading towards it. "Your flight leaves at eleven on Thursday morning, don’t be late!" she called over her shoulder.
In a flashback to college, Mark had the sudden urge to open his Livejournal and furiously type, Shirley DeMera is a bitch. Do you think that’s because all secretaries are bitches?
He resisted the urge. She would probably end his life if he did something like that anyway. Sometimes Mark wondered if she were him in female form, because that was the only logical explanation in Mark’s mind as to how she managed to put up with him for so long.
He growled lightly under his breath before he slammed his headphones over his ears, turned up his music, and wired in, ignoring absolutely everyone for the next several hours.
Thinking about how he ended up at the shareholder’s meeting once he was actually there did nothing for his temper. He was standing in a corner away from as many people as possible, drinking from his pint glass perhaps a little too deeply, and wondering why the Hell he let Shirley get away with what she did. He didn’t want to be here, everyone else knew he didn’t want to be here, and at this time of year New York City was especially dreadful, with its biting winds, biting snow storms and biting people. After he had spent the last half an hour or so snapping at anyone who dared to look at him, people had finally gotten the picture and decided to leave him alone, and now he was wondering how he could sneak upstairs to his hotel room and bury himself in code for another few hours without anyone noticing.
He looked around the room at all the different suits and faces and wondered how Facebook had turned into this ass-licking – and then his thoughts just shut off completely and his brain went offline because across the room from him stood Eduardo.
"Shit," Mark muttered, and he quickly developed an intense interest in the bottom of his pint glass. If he tilted it just right, he could spy on Eduardo through the bottom of it, but he didn’t do it for too long because it was starting to feel odd and very definitely distinctly creepy.
The room seemed to have taken on an incredibly awkward atmosphere now, and Mark found himself obsessing over if Eduardo had seen him or not, and if he had, was he just ignoring him? Or had he just not noticed? Or was he obsessing as well? Or – why was Mark even thinking about this? Of course Eduardo would be here. He was still a shareholder, after all, even if those shares were currently incredibly diluted. It would make sense for Eduardo to be here. He was probably always at the meetings, Mark had just never noticed because he was never there himself. He didn’t really want to go all Freudian on himself, but perhaps this was the exact reason that he avoided the damn things? He didn’t particularly want to run into Eduardo – the last time they had spoken to one another had been when the settlement had been signed and Eduardo had made it quite clear that he probably couldn’t care less if Mark had spontaneously combusted on the spot.
Mark snapped back into reality at that point, to find that as he had been staring into space, he had also been gawping rather stupidly at Eduardo, who had definitely noticed now, because he was staring right back. Mark didn’t have time to try and decipher what the look meant, because he quickly became interested in the bottom of his glass again. He imagined, however, that it probably wasn’t a good look. It was probably more of an Oh look, there’s the asshole himself look or maybe a Hey, why the Hell is Mark gawping at me from across the room? look.
Mark glanced up in what he hoped was a discreet fashion. Eduardo was focused on his own glass now, and Mark could see the way his bottom lip was jutted out slightly, his teeth clenching ever so slightly against it, his knuckles a vague white as they clutched the glass probably a little too tightly.
He couldn’t deal with this, not at all. This wasn’t in the job description, and he was going to murder Shirley when he next saw her. He was actually going to chase her out of the building with a broom, Heaven help her. Mark slammed the now empty pint glass on the shining wood of the bar with perhaps a little too much force, and decided that he was going back up to his room, back to the safety of the mini bar and his laptop and safe, safe lines of code. At least code was simple to understand – it only had one correct answer for what you wanted from it and if you messed up there was a wonderful invention called the backspace button. Mark had thirteen point five billion dollars to his name, but sometimes (OK, most of the time) all he really desired was a God damn backspace button for life. Or maybe even a delete button? That would come in some serious handy as well.
He had made it out into the hallway outside the function room before someone grabbed him by the arm, before abruptly releasing their grip as though Mark’s arm were made from hot coals. Mark jumped, not exactly the best with physical contact at the best of times, least of all when it came as a complete surprise to him. He whirled around to see Eduardo standing just behind him, arms by his sides with his fists clenched now, and although he didn’t look overly drunk he certainly looked very angry.
"Going to tell me why you were staring at me through the bottom of your glass for half an hour, Mark?" he choked out, and he sounded as though he were trying not to start shouting. Mark looked around himself wildly as though contemplating his escape routes; however, none were practical when Eduardo was so close to him.
"I ... err ... wasn’t?" Mark spluttered, though he knew that in no way at all did it sound convincing.
"Do you think I’m stupid or something?" Eduardo demanded, and Mark thought he detected a slight slur to his voice. He couldn’t see any other logical reason that Eduardo would start something with him – that wasn’t usually Eduardo’s thing. He had usually been peace-keeping as Mark tried to awkwardly stutter himself out of some tactless comment he had blurted out.
"No, of course I don’t, what – why would you think that?" Mark asked, a little affronted, because he didn’t really see how one could come to such a conclusion just from noticing that they were being observed through the bottom of a pint glass.
"You know, when I saw you here, and I saw you’d noticed me, I thought ... I thought you would at least have the decency to say something to me once you’d noticed I’d spotted what you were doing," Eduardo spat out, and he looked Mark up and down like he was something dirty on the ground. The look made Mark’s chest twinge in a highly unpleasant way. "But I should have known you better than that, Zuckerberg. You don’t give a shit, do you? You never did."
"That’s not true," Mark said quietly, after a slight pause where he struggled to recover from the biting words. "Wardo, I –"
"Don’t call me that," Eduardo hissed. "You lost that right when you signed your best friend away for dollar signs."
As quickly as he had appeared from the crowd, he had disappeared back into it, and Mark’s heart was thudding so hard against his chest he thought it was trying to break out of it and his cheeks were hot and flushed, and he clenched his fists together and shook his head, glaring at his shoes.
"Well," he eventually muttered to himself, letting out a forced laugh that sounded to him like more of a choked sob. "That went well."