Anything for You

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It feels right, having Eduardo in California with him. Mark can’t stop the small smile that’s always on his face whenever he looks up and catches Eduardo nosing around the offices, or discussing the best ways to get Mark to actually eat something with Shirley, or sitting on the couch behind Mark’s desk watching him type like they’d done back at Harvard. Mark forgot just how much he missed Eduardo’s constant presence, even if the other man was constantly mothering him, telling him he wasn’t eating enough, or that he really needed to shower, or interrogating him on the last time he’d slept and for how long.

Right now, though, the office is dark and they’re both jammed together on one of the couches scattered about the office. Mark’s checking up on a few things and Eduardo’s watching the way Mark’s fingers fly effortlessly over the keyboard, except now they sometimes pause and Eduardo catches Mark looking at him from the corner of his eye. He always starts typing furiously again once Eduardo notices, though, and Eduardo finds it slightly adorable.

"I’m surprised you still have a website left to work on," Eduardo yawns, as Mark finishes a few small updates and hops from page to page to make sure there’s no glitches. "Did you lose many users?"

"In the first few days after Facebook went back online, they came crawling back," Mark said casually, and then he smiled slightly and shrugged. "The first day there was a distinct decrease in usage, but no one can stay away for long. I’m not sure why, I mean I can’t personally see the appeal in FarmVille to be honest with you ... but I guess something must be there because there’s not been too much of a backlash."

"Lucky for you," Eduardo says, and Mark snorts.

"I don’t care," he says, and Eduardo looks at him.

"You don’t?" he asks.

"No," Mark says quietly, and he closes the laptop screen over, plunging them into darkness until their eyes adjusted to the room without the blue-silver glow from the computer screen. "Why should I care? I realized a few things, didn’t I? I realized what actually mattered."

Eduardo blinks at him, and Mark’s blushing furiously now. Eduardo can’t help but laugh softly, and he reaches out and touches Mark’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around it in a gentle grip and stroking the soft skin on the underside.

"You know," Eduardo says softly, laughter still playing in his tone. "You could have just, I don’t know. Apologized like a normal person."

Mark manages a small, nervous laugh.

"That would have been far too boring, Wardo, come on."

"I didn’t think normality was your thing," Eduardo smiles, and he reaches over with his free hand and tilts Mark’s face so he’s looking at him. Mark’s nervous, Eduardo can see it as plain as day in his eyes, and he wonders why.

"I had to do something huge," Mark said quietly. "Because, I figured that ... I don’t know, that what I’d done to you in the first place was huge, and I didn’t think that sorry by itself would cut it, would make it right. I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking very clearly, it all made so much more sense when it was all in my head."

"I get it," Eduardo says, and Mark looks at him properly when he hears the sincerity in his voice.

"You do?" he asks, and he looks distinctly relieved.

"Of course I do," Eduardo says, and then he tilts his head down slightly and laughs. "Mark, sometimes I swear you forget who I am. I’ve always known these things with you. Remember back at Kirkland? I could tell what mood you were in just by how tense your fingers were as you typed. I get it; I get why you did what you did."

"And ..." Mark begins, and then he licks his lips slightly, as though trying to find the courage to say what he’s thinking. "And did it work?" he eventually settles on, and Eduardo smiles softly.

"It doesn’t erase what happened, Mark," he says honestly, and Mark shifts slightly uncomfortably and nods.

"I know," he says.

"But it does change a few things," Eduardo continues. Mark looks at him with these huge hopeful eyes and Eduardo finds himself wondering if this man is for real. "Like I finally understand why you did what you did. And I understand that while you have your reasons for doing it, you still didn’t want to. That’s all I wanted to know, Mark. You made it all seem so ... so effortless. I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t deal with thinking that I was so expendable to you, because ... because you were everything to me."

Mark’s slightly breathless; he can feel it in his chest, and for a brief moment it’s like the walls have closed in around him because he can’t see anything else in the room with him apart from Eduardo. Eduardo, who’s sitting right there, with that ridiculous hair of his that Mark’s grown to love, and those huge dark eyes and that soft half-smile that’s always on his face when he sees Mark now, and for a brief moment everything seems so surreal that Mark’s actually dreading the possibility of hearing his alarm clock.

He shuffles backwards slightly, pulling his feet up onto the couch, and for a moment he just stares at Eduardo, taking in the fact that yes, he’s actually here, and perhaps after everything that’s happened, after all they’ve been through and after all of the arguing and denials and avoidances, perhaps they’ve finally found a starting place again. There’s a chance they can start over, this time as friends rather than friends trying to juggle a business partnership as well, and maybe, just maybe, they can make that work.

But something’s not settling right in the back of Mark’s mind, and Hell, he’s done some pretty impulsive things lately and they’ve seemed to work out right, and he can’t stop the niggling feeling that he doesn’t want just friends. That’s why he reaches over to Eduardo and tangles his hand in his hair, and that’s why he pulls Eduardo closer to him and presses their lips together, and he hopes that it’s also the reason why Eduardo doesn’t pull away. Instead he stretches out slightly, pushing himself down against Mark, and Mark curls his arms around him and holds him closer, and for that brief moment everything seemed infinite.

"You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you to do that for," Eduardo whispers, leaning his forehead against Mark’s, and Mark smiles and laughs softly.

"I thought it was about time one of us did," he says cheekily. "Because, you know, you were taking your time, Wardo."

Eduardo swats at him and grins.

"You are something else, Mark Zuckerberg," he mutters , and he kisses him again, his lips soft and warm, and Mark wonders why he’s waited this damn long to make everything right again.

It all seemed so clear to him now, as he lay on the couch, tangled up with Eduardo. The whole time, Mark had been searching for something that had been missing, though he wouldn’t accept what it was to himself. Instead he tried to convince himself that it was because something wasn’t right with Facebook – it wasn’t expanding quickly, updates had to be done because it was getting behind, the servers weren’t working fast enough ... but he saw everything with perfect clarity now. He saw exactly what had been missing the whole time, and he promised himself then and there that, this time, he wouldn’t mess it up. He couldn’t, because this meant more to him than anything else ever had, and ever would.

I’ve gotten drunk and shot the breeze with kings of far off lands
They’ve shown me wealth as far as I could see
But their kingdom seemed all shrively and they all cried with jealousy
When I leaned in and told them about you.