Anything for You

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Eduardo spends the next two days avoiding Mark. Of course, he can’t actually avoid him totally, because Facebook has now been down for two days and Mark is probably the most hated person on the planet. He’s lying low at the moment (very wise decision, Eduardo reckons) but there’s no escaping his face on every news story ever. There’s major outrage, and Eduardo thinks that the only person who is even remotely happy about it is that dude from MySpace.

Walking past the small store in the foyer of the hotel he’s currently staying in (Facebook CEO Still Refuses To Make Comments, screams the headline of the nearest newspaper), Eduardo is incredibly dismayed to see a highly familiar, curly-haired, hoodie-wearing figure hovering by the reception desk. The receptionist is looking distinctly annoyed, and Eduardo finds himself wondering how much Mark has managed to offend her in the time he’s been here.

"I’ll handle this," he tells her, hoping that she can read the apologetic look in his eyes, and Mark’s blue eyes widens and he points at her rather rudely.

"I knew he was staying here!" he says triumphantly.

"Well, do forgive me for not telling any person off of the street about the guests at this hotel, Mr. Zuckerberg," the receptionist replies shortly.

"I only asked if –"

"Mark," Eduardo hisses, and he grabs him by the arm and yanks him away from the receptionist before the poor woman finally does what they all want to do and slaps him.

"You’ve been avoiding me," Mark states, and he stares directly at Eduardo with those eyes that have always been blank and yet piercing at the exact same time. "That’s very childish, Eduardo, I didn’t expect it of you at all –"

"I hoped you would get the hint," Eduardo whispers angrily. "Clearly, though, you haven’t improved with taking hints at all, have you?"

"I was hoping you would notice that I wasn’t giving up when Facebook didn’t miraculously come back to life," Mark says slowly, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Of course, it is the most obvious thing in the world, and so Eduardo is a little affronted that Mark seems to think he hasn’t noticed that himself.

"Really?" Eduardo asks, widening his eyes and allowing sarcasm to drip off of his words. "I never noticed Facebook was down, Mark. Why hasn’t it been on the news?"

Mark stares at him for a few seconds, and then to Eduardo’s annoyance he smiles slightly.

"I never thought you had sarcasm in you, Eduardo," he says, and Eduardo growls and grabs Mark by the arm again, dragging him towards the elevator.

"If you annoy me while we’re in this thing with no witnesses I will punch you, Mark," Eduardo warns as the doors shut, and Mark gives him a look that says he doesn’t quite know if Eduardo’s being serious or not. Eduardo can live with this, as long as it keeps Mark quiet enough for him to be able to gather his thoughts a little.

Mark only speaks again when the doors have opened and he’s sure that there’s a cleaner down the hallway. He trots after Eduardo like a timid puppy, and Eduardo briefly remembers when it was the other way around. This is kind of refreshing, in a strange way.

"So if you’ve been avoiding me why have you brought me up here?" he asks, and Eduardo answers without looking at him.

"Because I’ve decided that murdering you brutally in a public place would be very bad publicity," he answers, and Mark pauses before jogging to catch up with him.

"That’s funny," he says. "That’s really funny."

Eduardo leans against the door and looks at Mark briefly as he swipes his key card and unlocks his room.

"You’re great when you think I’m joking," he said wryly, and then he wonders why Mark follows him into the room if the nervousness in his eyes is anything to go by.

"Nice room?" Mark says, as the door clicks shut behind them, and Eduardo almost laughs as he remembers just how terrible Mark is at small talk.

"Cut the crap, Mark," he says, turning to face the other man. Mark’s standing against the door, hands shoved into the pockets of his cargo pants, looking exactly how he used to when he was hunched over his laptop back at Harvard.

"Um?" Mark asks, and Eduardo snorts and rolls his eyes.

"I’m clearly not going to get rid of you unless I hear you out, am I? So spit it out; what the Hell are you playing at?"

"I needed to get your attention," Mark said bluntly, and Eduardo stops and stares right at him. Mark breaks eye contact and becomes intrigued by his battered flip flops.

Damn those fuck you flip flops, Eduardo thinks to himself, and he shakes the thought out of his head and forces himself to go back to what Mark had just said. Was he deliberately repeating things from the past or was this all subconscious? Either way, it was confusing Eduardo. If Mark cared so little why had he remembered each and every one of these damn moments from their past? Was he just messing with his head? Eduardo wouldn’t put that past Mark at all, even though the other man’s nervousness told him that perhaps he wasn’t very good at playing mind games if that’s what he was attempting to do.

"You needed to get my attention?" Eduardo repeats bluntly, and then he lets out a slightly manic laugh and shakes his head. "You need to get my attention so you destroy Facebook?"

"It’s not destroyed," Mark says quickly, and there’s the flash of the old Mark – the sheer horror on his face at the very thought. "It’s ... it’s passing on a message. All the coding is still there, it’s just ... the functions aren’t accessible. It’s staying like that."

"Until when?" Eduardo asks, and he sighs and stares at Mark, wondering how to point out what he needed to without sounding like he cared about Mark too much (even though he probably did, just a little bit). "Mark, if you carry on with this you’ll lose users, you’ll lose business, and you’ll end up with a website that’s worth nothing. Why the Hell are you sabotaging your life’s work over this? You threw away our friendship for it. I thought it must be your damn life."

"Exactly," Mark says softly, and then he does that thing where he scrunches his face up as he tries to work out how to put human things such as emotions into words. Slightly intrigued, Eduardo sits on the end of his bed and watches the young CEO. "I threw everything away for it," Mark says carefully, and then he sighs and scuffs his feet against the carpet.

"So you’re trying to reverse it?" Eduardo suggests, and Mark fumbles and shrugs slightly.

"I figured that ... that perhaps if I did the opposite, if I risked Facebook for you ... I thought that perhaps I’d be able to show you that I do care," Mark said, and then he squeezes the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. "Because ... ah, I’m not great with words, see –"

"You don’t say."

"Thanks. I dunno, I just figured that ... if I risked everything, if I risked the thing that everyone thinks I love more than life itself ... I thought that perhaps you’d understand what I was trying to say. That ... I hate that all people see is my accomplishments."

Eduardo blinks.

"You ... do?" he asks, and he didn’t see that coming. Yes, he knew that Mark was never in it for the money, but Facebook was like his child – whenever someone praised it or asked if he were the one who created it, Mark’s face lit up like nothing Eduardo had ever seen before.

"Yes," Mark says, still shifting, and Eduardo wishes he would just stand still for two seconds. "They just see all the good I’ve done ... but, I dunno. Facebook is more than a website for me. It tells a story and whenever I look at it all I can see is what I lost. It’s a constant ... a constant reminder of what an asshole I’ve been."

"You ... just admitted you were an asshole," Eduardo says, and he whistles softly. "Wow, Mark. This is quite a shock."

"You’re being so encouraging," Mark mutters, glaring from beneath his curls briefly, before dropping his eyes back down to his feet as Eduardo’s dark eyes met his. "I’m not sorry for what I did, Eduardo," Mark suddenly adds, and Eduardo snorts.

"Starting to ruin the moment, now, Mark," he says, and the anger can’t be kept from becoming a threatening hum in the bottom of his words.

"But I am sorry for how I went about doing it," Mark says quickly, forcing himself to look up at Eduardo. Eduardo keeps eye contact, wanting to see if Mark’s brave enough to stay looking at him as his words sink in, and he is. There’s uncertainty and fear and guilt and hope all in one look and Eduardo can’t remember the last time that Mark Zuckerberg was this readable.

"What?" Eduardo asks bluntly, and it’s not what he wants to say but it’s all his shocked brain can make sense of.

"I shouldn’t have been so ... so cowardly about it," Mark sighed. "I shouldn’t have gone behind your back like that. It was a necessity; it needed to be done, but the way I did it ... it was no way to treat you. Not after ... not after everything you’d done for me and for Facebook. I know it wouldn’t even exist if it hadn’t been for you, and I just wish ... I just wish I’d been more honest with you from the outset. But, Eduardo, I meant it when I said that you’d get left behind if you didn’t move out to Palo Alto. I meant it, and I was right; that was exactly what happened. And I didn’t want it to happen. I needed you there, but ... you wouldn’t listen to me. You got my attention by freezing the account ... I was angry, I lashed out, I got back at you and then ... well. The rest is history."

"And then you risk absolutely everything, despite what it’s done to us, just to let me know this?" Eduardo asks, and Mark nods, pulling a face.

"I know it sounds stupid. To be honest I don’t know what the Hell I’m doing. I just know that I needed to do something huge ... something bigger than Facebook. Because you were – you are – bigger than Facebook, Eduardo ... I needed you then, and I need you now. Fame and success and fortune is nothing to me. The parties, the billions of dollars invested in it ... they’re not the stories I tell when I’m asked about Facebook."

"Oh?" Eduardo asks, and there’s a lump in his throat that he’s desperately trying to swallow. "What story do you tell?"

"The best one I can," Mark whispers, looking from his feet to Eduardo and back to his feet again at a dizzying pace. "Of the moment where I realized that everything was happening. The moment where I realized that for the first time in my life I had a best friend, and we were doing something amazing together. Where it felt like the whole world was at our fingertips. I tell them about when Facebook first went live, and you laughed at me for days because I just fell asleep over my computer. Or the way you smiled at me from across the room when we hired the new interns, on the last night where everything was truly OK. The best story I can ever tell is the one where I was taking on the world with you."