Anything for You
Three.
*
*
*
Mark’s really drunk.
He didn’t mean for it to turn out this way, it just kind of ... happened. Now he’s in his hotel room, his laptop perched precariously on his lap, tilted to the side slightly, and he’s staring across the room wondering if he can be bothered to go and get another little bottle of spirits from the mini bar. He wants to, but it’s all the way over there, and that’s a considerable distance when your legs feel like jelly and the room is rocking about like a small boat on high seas.
Mark groans, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them, hoping that it would clear his vision slightly. It doesn’t, and all he can see through the blurriness around the edges of his vision is the glow of his laptop screen, with the still unfinished code flashing up at him. He had started off coding furiously, as he always did when he was upset or angry or otherwise emotionally charged, but gradually Eduardo had broken his train of thought once more and it was starting to frustrate him beyond belief. He remembered when he had been able to force the thoughts of Eduardo to the back of his mind and bury it there under mountains of updates and coding and Red Bull, but now those thoughts were breaking free and they were constantly coming to the forefront of his mind and when they did, Mark found himself powerless to do anything productive.
Perhaps a stupid part of him was hoping that Eduardo would be over it by now. After all, it had been years and Eduardo hadn’t been in touch at all – for someone so emotionally tuned Mark realized that this would have caused Eduardo great stress if he wasn’t over what had happened. But if that was the case (which, after tonight, it obviously was) then why hadn’t he said something sooner? It wasn’t the first time they had been in the same meetings, after all. They were both businessmen and they both held shares in the same company; it was inevitable that they would brush shoulders from time to time. Mark was pretty sure that tonight hadn’t been the only damn night he had been subconsciously gawping at Eduardo from across the room, so why tonight? Why was Eduardo choosing now to start dragging everything up? It was almost as though he knew what was going through Mark’s mind at all hours of the day now, and this thought unnerved Mark slightly because Eduardo had had always managed to read him like an open book.
It hurt Mark to think that Eduardo truly believed that Mark didn’t care about what had happened. Of course he cared, and if only Eduardo knew how crazy it was starting to drive him. Mark was the master of repressing emotions, so they had to be unbelievably strong to start bothering him after years. Of course, every single time he saw Eduardo there was a trigger, and he would be distant and extra snappy for days afterwards. But now, he didn’t even need to see him to get that tightening feeling in his chest, that shortness of breath and the dizziness and oh, God, the unrepentant guilt at what he had done.
The worst thing was, Mark had no idea how to prove to Eduardo that he cared. He was an idiot when it came to talking about his emotions; he just turned into a stuttering wreck of umming and ahhing. The only was he really knew how to express himself or get his emotions out was coding, and even then it wasn’t in a language anyone could understand. Only Mark could look at Facebook and see how he was feeling during every single update and development, as though the website were his own private diary written in a language only he could decipher.
Then again ...
"That is a catastrophically bad idea," Mark muttered to himself, as he finally placed the laptop down on the bed beside him and stumbled over to the mini bar, rooting around in the back until he found something of his fancy. Cracking the top open, he took a swig and stared around the room, his eyes falling back on where the laptop looked up at him innocently, as though inviting him to go through with what he had in mind.
"Jesus," Mark mumbles, running a hand through his messy hair as he stared around the room for anything that would distract him from the idea rising at the back of his mind and working its way, slowly but surely, right to the front, to settle in between Eduardo and oh God I’m such a bastard.
Mark knew himself better than to try and convince himself that once an idea got into its head, it would go away if he ignored it enough. He was learning that the hard way, and he groaned and huffed to himself as he stumbled back towards his laptop. He sat on the bed and stared at it for another long moment, as though expecting it to strike like an angered snake. When it didn’t, he bit his bottom lip, glanced around, and when nothing leapt out at him to talk some sense into him, something within him finally snapped and he pulled the laptop towards him with a low growl.
Sometimes, he realized, you had to destroy to rebuild.
*
He’s woken up the next morning to a throat that feels like sandpaper, a head that had a pulse, and the shrieking ring of his cell phone.
Mark groaned and fumbles around on the table beside the bed, managing to knock everything to the floor before his hands, feeling too big for his body, closed around the vibrating phone. Without checking the caller ID, he hits “Accept” and puts the phone to his ear.
"Huh?" he mumbles, before coughing unpleasantly.
"Mark," says a voice, sounding both totally exasperated and incredibly furious all in one.
"Hello, Sheryl," Mark says to the woman in charge of his public relations, with sarcastic pleasantry. "I’m going back to sleep now, so if you don’t mind –"
"The Hell you are, Zuckerberg," Sheryl snaps, and Mark blinks. He’s only just woken up, and he’s managed to offend someone? That’s a new record, even for him.
"What?" he asks, and Sheryl must be bursting to tell him what’s going on because she doesn’t even give a sarcastic reply of What what? or What? Elephants?
"What the Hell were you thinking, Mark?" she demands, and Mark sits up, blinking furiously as the light hits him through a large gap in the curtains.
"I have no idea what you’re on about," he tells her honestly, and then she says something which literally makes his blood run cold and the room spin slightly.
"Have you seen Facebook?"
Shit.
"No?" Mark asks, but he’s already fumbling around for his laptop, bringing it out of standby and cursing as the WiFi takes far too long to connect for his liking (as in, longer than half a second).
"Well I think you’d better check," Sheryl says, and Mark can tell from her voice that she’s trying not to scream at him. "And then I think you’d better make it right and then you have some serious damn explaining to do!"
"Sheryl, I don’t get it. What have I – oh holy mother of God."
Mark actually drops the phone. He can hear the buzzing of Sheryl’s voice, getting ever more shrill, but for the most part his brain short-circuits as he sees the homepage of his website. There’s nothing there, apart from a message in blue, reading simply, I’d do absolutely anything for you. Mark blinks at it several times, hoping that the image would just ... go away, but of course it doesn’t. It stays there, laughing up at him, and Mark swears as he goes directly to the log in page on the address bar and finds the same message. His shock quickly making him angry, he snatches the phone up.
"Why hasn’t it been fixed?" he demands, cutting Sheryl off in the middle of her description of what she’s going to do to him when he gets back. He catches butcher’s knife and earrings made from your balls before she tunes in to what he’s said.
"Are you actually retarded, Mark?" she asks. "The programmers have been trying to fix it all damn morning, but I don’t know what you’ve done to it because no one can change it. You must have pulled one of your nerd tricks; I can’t even understand what they’re on about. It’s all encryption and coding and blocks and –"
"OK, I get it," Mark mutters, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. The splitting headache that's settled there doesn’t recede any.
"You need to fix this now, Mark. The site’s been down for four hours now and you must have been in a coma or something because we’ve been ringing you since the first complaints started coming in. This is going to be news soon. It’ll be online any second."
Mark squeezes his eyes shut as he remembers himself saying those exact words to Sean Parker that night all those years ago. This time, though, he’s the one trying to think of a shit excuse to get out of what he knows he deserves.
"I’ll sort it out," Mark says dully, though he’s still reeling from the shock of seeing the homepage which is currently gloating at him from his laptop screen.
"And what are you going to say?" Sheryl demands. "This will be news; they’re going to want a statement. What the Hell were you thinking?"
"Evidentially not much," Mark mutters, with a wry smile that he’s thankful Sheryl can’t see.
"What does it mean, Mark?"
"I think you and I both know that I don’t need to answer that question," Mark replies, as he watches the clock ticking over to show seven in the morning. He’s had four hours sleep and the confusion of drink is still crowding through his head. The last thing he feels like doing is staring at a bright screen, and all of a sudden something snaps in him as he remembers why he did this in the first place. "And I’m not fixing it yet."
Mark’s glad he’s in New York, on the other side of the country to Sheryl and the offices. He appears to be on speaker phone, because he instantly hears half of the office calling him various names.
"And you can all shut up," he fires, when they’ve quietened down slightly. "Don’t think I don’t recognize your voices, I’ll fire the lot of you. Stephen, Gerald, I know that was you."
"It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a little bit retarded this morning, boss," came Gerald’s voice, and Mark rolls his eyes.
"I have my reasons," he replies.
"Oh? And what are they, exactly?" Sheryl asks, and Mark rolls his eyes.
"Sheryl, I am the CEO. I do not have to explain my executive decisions to anyone. I know what I’m doing –"
"I really beg to differ."
"- and right now it’s going to stay like that. Trust me on this."
"Mark, you’re making a really big mistake, I don’t know what’s going on in your head but –"
"I have to go."
"How long will it be like this for?"
"As long as it takes. You should all be happy; it’s basically a day off."
Mark hangs up.
His heart is thumping madly.
What the Hell has he done?
*
*
Mark’s really drunk.
He didn’t mean for it to turn out this way, it just kind of ... happened. Now he’s in his hotel room, his laptop perched precariously on his lap, tilted to the side slightly, and he’s staring across the room wondering if he can be bothered to go and get another little bottle of spirits from the mini bar. He wants to, but it’s all the way over there, and that’s a considerable distance when your legs feel like jelly and the room is rocking about like a small boat on high seas.
Mark groans, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them, hoping that it would clear his vision slightly. It doesn’t, and all he can see through the blurriness around the edges of his vision is the glow of his laptop screen, with the still unfinished code flashing up at him. He had started off coding furiously, as he always did when he was upset or angry or otherwise emotionally charged, but gradually Eduardo had broken his train of thought once more and it was starting to frustrate him beyond belief. He remembered when he had been able to force the thoughts of Eduardo to the back of his mind and bury it there under mountains of updates and coding and Red Bull, but now those thoughts were breaking free and they were constantly coming to the forefront of his mind and when they did, Mark found himself powerless to do anything productive.
Perhaps a stupid part of him was hoping that Eduardo would be over it by now. After all, it had been years and Eduardo hadn’t been in touch at all – for someone so emotionally tuned Mark realized that this would have caused Eduardo great stress if he wasn’t over what had happened. But if that was the case (which, after tonight, it obviously was) then why hadn’t he said something sooner? It wasn’t the first time they had been in the same meetings, after all. They were both businessmen and they both held shares in the same company; it was inevitable that they would brush shoulders from time to time. Mark was pretty sure that tonight hadn’t been the only damn night he had been subconsciously gawping at Eduardo from across the room, so why tonight? Why was Eduardo choosing now to start dragging everything up? It was almost as though he knew what was going through Mark’s mind at all hours of the day now, and this thought unnerved Mark slightly because Eduardo had had always managed to read him like an open book.
It hurt Mark to think that Eduardo truly believed that Mark didn’t care about what had happened. Of course he cared, and if only Eduardo knew how crazy it was starting to drive him. Mark was the master of repressing emotions, so they had to be unbelievably strong to start bothering him after years. Of course, every single time he saw Eduardo there was a trigger, and he would be distant and extra snappy for days afterwards. But now, he didn’t even need to see him to get that tightening feeling in his chest, that shortness of breath and the dizziness and oh, God, the unrepentant guilt at what he had done.
The worst thing was, Mark had no idea how to prove to Eduardo that he cared. He was an idiot when it came to talking about his emotions; he just turned into a stuttering wreck of umming and ahhing. The only was he really knew how to express himself or get his emotions out was coding, and even then it wasn’t in a language anyone could understand. Only Mark could look at Facebook and see how he was feeling during every single update and development, as though the website were his own private diary written in a language only he could decipher.
Then again ...
"That is a catastrophically bad idea," Mark muttered to himself, as he finally placed the laptop down on the bed beside him and stumbled over to the mini bar, rooting around in the back until he found something of his fancy. Cracking the top open, he took a swig and stared around the room, his eyes falling back on where the laptop looked up at him innocently, as though inviting him to go through with what he had in mind.
"Jesus," Mark mumbles, running a hand through his messy hair as he stared around the room for anything that would distract him from the idea rising at the back of his mind and working its way, slowly but surely, right to the front, to settle in between Eduardo and oh God I’m such a bastard.
Mark knew himself better than to try and convince himself that once an idea got into its head, it would go away if he ignored it enough. He was learning that the hard way, and he groaned and huffed to himself as he stumbled back towards his laptop. He sat on the bed and stared at it for another long moment, as though expecting it to strike like an angered snake. When it didn’t, he bit his bottom lip, glanced around, and when nothing leapt out at him to talk some sense into him, something within him finally snapped and he pulled the laptop towards him with a low growl.
Sometimes, he realized, you had to destroy to rebuild.
*
He’s woken up the next morning to a throat that feels like sandpaper, a head that had a pulse, and the shrieking ring of his cell phone.
Mark groaned and fumbles around on the table beside the bed, managing to knock everything to the floor before his hands, feeling too big for his body, closed around the vibrating phone. Without checking the caller ID, he hits “Accept” and puts the phone to his ear.
"Huh?" he mumbles, before coughing unpleasantly.
"Mark," says a voice, sounding both totally exasperated and incredibly furious all in one.
"Hello, Sheryl," Mark says to the woman in charge of his public relations, with sarcastic pleasantry. "I’m going back to sleep now, so if you don’t mind –"
"The Hell you are, Zuckerberg," Sheryl snaps, and Mark blinks. He’s only just woken up, and he’s managed to offend someone? That’s a new record, even for him.
"What?" he asks, and Sheryl must be bursting to tell him what’s going on because she doesn’t even give a sarcastic reply of What what? or What? Elephants?
"What the Hell were you thinking, Mark?" she demands, and Mark sits up, blinking furiously as the light hits him through a large gap in the curtains.
"I have no idea what you’re on about," he tells her honestly, and then she says something which literally makes his blood run cold and the room spin slightly.
"Have you seen Facebook?"
Shit.
"No?" Mark asks, but he’s already fumbling around for his laptop, bringing it out of standby and cursing as the WiFi takes far too long to connect for his liking (as in, longer than half a second).
"Well I think you’d better check," Sheryl says, and Mark can tell from her voice that she’s trying not to scream at him. "And then I think you’d better make it right and then you have some serious damn explaining to do!"
"Sheryl, I don’t get it. What have I – oh holy mother of God."
Mark actually drops the phone. He can hear the buzzing of Sheryl’s voice, getting ever more shrill, but for the most part his brain short-circuits as he sees the homepage of his website. There’s nothing there, apart from a message in blue, reading simply, I’d do absolutely anything for you. Mark blinks at it several times, hoping that the image would just ... go away, but of course it doesn’t. It stays there, laughing up at him, and Mark swears as he goes directly to the log in page on the address bar and finds the same message. His shock quickly making him angry, he snatches the phone up.
"Why hasn’t it been fixed?" he demands, cutting Sheryl off in the middle of her description of what she’s going to do to him when he gets back. He catches butcher’s knife and earrings made from your balls before she tunes in to what he’s said.
"Are you actually retarded, Mark?" she asks. "The programmers have been trying to fix it all damn morning, but I don’t know what you’ve done to it because no one can change it. You must have pulled one of your nerd tricks; I can’t even understand what they’re on about. It’s all encryption and coding and blocks and –"
"OK, I get it," Mark mutters, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. The splitting headache that's settled there doesn’t recede any.
"You need to fix this now, Mark. The site’s been down for four hours now and you must have been in a coma or something because we’ve been ringing you since the first complaints started coming in. This is going to be news soon. It’ll be online any second."
Mark squeezes his eyes shut as he remembers himself saying those exact words to Sean Parker that night all those years ago. This time, though, he’s the one trying to think of a shit excuse to get out of what he knows he deserves.
"I’ll sort it out," Mark says dully, though he’s still reeling from the shock of seeing the homepage which is currently gloating at him from his laptop screen.
"And what are you going to say?" Sheryl demands. "This will be news; they’re going to want a statement. What the Hell were you thinking?"
"Evidentially not much," Mark mutters, with a wry smile that he’s thankful Sheryl can’t see.
"What does it mean, Mark?"
"I think you and I both know that I don’t need to answer that question," Mark replies, as he watches the clock ticking over to show seven in the morning. He’s had four hours sleep and the confusion of drink is still crowding through his head. The last thing he feels like doing is staring at a bright screen, and all of a sudden something snaps in him as he remembers why he did this in the first place. "And I’m not fixing it yet."
Mark’s glad he’s in New York, on the other side of the country to Sheryl and the offices. He appears to be on speaker phone, because he instantly hears half of the office calling him various names.
"And you can all shut up," he fires, when they’ve quietened down slightly. "Don’t think I don’t recognize your voices, I’ll fire the lot of you. Stephen, Gerald, I know that was you."
"It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a little bit retarded this morning, boss," came Gerald’s voice, and Mark rolls his eyes.
"I have my reasons," he replies.
"Oh? And what are they, exactly?" Sheryl asks, and Mark rolls his eyes.
"Sheryl, I am the CEO. I do not have to explain my executive decisions to anyone. I know what I’m doing –"
"I really beg to differ."
"- and right now it’s going to stay like that. Trust me on this."
"Mark, you’re making a really big mistake, I don’t know what’s going on in your head but –"
"I have to go."
"How long will it be like this for?"
"As long as it takes. You should all be happy; it’s basically a day off."
Mark hangs up.
His heart is thumping madly.
What the Hell has he done?