Work Text:
Eduardo Saverin goes to New York as an intern.
He comes back a superhero.
(That's not the whole story, of course; it's not even the beginning of the whole story, but it's not the end of it, either, so yeah. This is a thing that happened.)
"You're quitting? After one day?"
Eduardo is fairly sure he's been introduced to every single person who works here. The only problem is that while everyone seems to know his name as that of 'the guy who got bitten by a radioactive spider and almost, like, died', Eduardo only knows the names of maybe half the people here.
As it turns out, agonizing pain does not enhance your memory.
"Yeah," he tells ... Gwen? adding "Sorry," because it seems polite.
What he actually wants to do is yell, "You people have radioactive spiders wandering around in your building and you're just sitting there like nothing's wrong? Are you on drugs?"
He doesn't, though. It would be neither mature nor constructive nor a thing that a superhero would do.
"It's okay," she says. "In fact, I think we already got a new guy. Peter? I think you met him. Yesterday?"
"Yeah," Eduardo says. "Right, Peter. He seemed nice." He has no recollection of meeting anyone by that name yesterday, but he's leaving. He's off. He's going to the airport and -
- and there's a couple of guys robbing a grocery store just two blocks from here. With guns.
Well, shit, Eduardo thinks, and goes to deal with it.
In the end, the only way Eduardo can get away is by getting very, very drunk and then hailing a cab and hightailing it to the airport, which is not at all a thing that a superhero would do, but he's getting desperate here, all right?
He's still not sure how the whole spider super power thing works, or why, or if maybe he should adapt his diet to include more protein or anything, but he knows Mark is out there, alone, and that's not a good state for Mark to be in.
Also: Eduardo is not a geek or a dork or anything, only he's read a couple of comics, okay? If he's a superhero now, that means he's got a nemesis somewhere, and, well, he just wants to make sure Mark is all right and not in the process of being brain-washed or kidnapped or tortured and killed to provide Eduardo with a tragic backstory and a quest for revenge or something.
(When Mark doesn't show up at the airport like the responsible good friend Eduardo's never known him to be and when Sean fucking Parker opens the door to Mark's house, Eduardo figures that yeah, he's got this all figured out. He looks at Sean and thinks, I'm genre-savvy, asshole, and you're going down. Hard.)
(So. Oops?)
There's a conversation Eduardo imagines having with Mark, after, and it does not go something like this:
Mark calls him, three months after they've agreed to never talk about a lot of things that they probably kind of need to talk about at some point. (Also: three months after Eduardo's figured out that, yes, Mark is an asshole, but he's not a supervillain and it would be kind of immature for Spider-Man to come after him. Immensely satisfying, but still immature.)
"You're not supposed to be calling me," Eduardo says.
"You sued me for 600 million," Mark says. "Was that an arbitrarily chosen number, or did you actually have plans for it? Because if you had plans, I can give you the rest."
It's two in the morning. Eduardo's had a grand total of three hours of sleep. He didn't score 1600 on his SAT, but up until about four months ago, he'd have said he knows Mark better than anyone else alive.
"Mark," he says. "What - why would you - "
"I'm talking about a Batcave," Mark says, in that crisp tone he uses when he feels someone is being slow and also an idiot. "Or, well, Spidercave, but that sounds a little creepy, frankly, like it's a cave where you just have a lot of spiders crawling around. So you may want to think about that."
Eduardo adds one and one and arrives at: "I'm not Batman."
"I know you're not Batman," Mark says. "Batman is financially independent. He wouldn't need to sue anyone to get more money; he already has enough of his own. Also, he doesn't exist."
"I'm not - "
"Oh, please," Mark says.
"I'm not financially dependent," Eduardo says firmly. "On you or anyone else," he adds, to drive the point home.
Mark hms. "May I remind you that when I needed money, I wasn't too proud to ask you?"
Eduardo wishes he could know for sure that banging his head against the wall wouldn't make it necessary to call his landlady later today and come up with some very slick and innocuous explanation for the hole. "I think I remember that, Mark."
"Don't be a stranger, Wardo," Mark says, and hangs up.
Eduardo comes up with about a dozen sharp, witty replies to that before some idiot on the other side of New York decides that this is the perfect time to try and steal a car.
Crime never sleeps and neither does Eduardo.
It's kind of a problem.
"Look," Eduardo says. "I'm not saying that we're still friends or anything."
"You just didn't have anyone else to call," Mark says. He sounds understanding, which is a little (or, okay, a lot) scary. Mark doesn't do understanding. It's outside his expertise.
"I have friends." Eduardo is a friendly guy. Spider-Man could probably walk into a bar and get dozens of people to offer to buy him a drink. And then he'd either fall over out of sheer exhaustion, or sense a crime being committed somewhere nearby.
"Not according to your Facebook profile," Mark says. "You do have some friend requests, though."
"I don't - I'm busy." Eduardo feels it sounds a little lame. Asking, "From you?" probably doesn't help.
"No," Mark says. "I didn't see the point."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." Mark sounds amused. "You should get some sleep. Other people, they can afford to make mistakes. Not you and me."
"Other people?" Eduardo doesn't think it would be productive to point out that running Facebook is hardly the same as keeping people safe. Nobody's going to die or get hurt if Mark messes up a bit of code. (Well, nobody other than Mark, anyway. And that's only going to be in Mark's head.)
"You know what I mean," Mark says. "Normal people."
"I'm not like you," Eduardo says.
"Nobody is like me," Mark says. "And nobody's like you, either. At least, not anymore. That's the point I was making."
Baseless speculation notwithstanding, Eduardo does not have a Batcave. Or a Spidercave.
He has a very nice, only slightly overpriced apartment. It's on the fifth floor, and it's taken him three weeks of trying before he's accepted that he can't get the windows to close from the outside.
"You should have them replaced," Mark says, predictably, when Eduardo makes the mistake of mentioning this. "Or find a better apartment. You're rich; it's not like you can't afford it."
"Right," says Eduardo. Part of him is wondering how it is that he can't find any time to do things like shop for groceries or, say, have a life, but still can find time to talk to not-friends. "I can just call someone and tell them I - what?"
"Why would you need to tell them anything?" Mark asks, as if this genuinely puzzles him. "Oh, and I took the liberty of updating your profile. Nothing major, don't worry."
Eduardo almost replies, "What profile?". "You haven't accepted any friend requests or something, did you? Because we're not friends, Mark. We're just ... talking."
"I just changed your relationship status from Single to Too Busy Saving the World to Be in a Relationship," Mark says. "And yes, that was a joke."
Eduardo makes a mental note to check his Facebook profile tomorrow - or maybe next week. "I figured."
"Still, I think people should know," Mark says.
"You know," Eduardo says, almost without thinking about it. "Not that I - why do you know?"
"I'm very smart," Mark says. "And other people are very dumb. It adds up. But people know who I am, Wardo, that's my point. I've done - I've created something really amazing, and now I'm famous."
Eduardo has no idea what happened to the spider that bit him. He hopes someone stepped on it.
"I'm not you," he says. "I'm not doing this because I want to be famous, Mark."
Mark scoffs. "I didn't create Facebook because I wanted to be famous. I created it because it's cool."
"And when you screwed me over, did you do that because it was 'cool', too?" Eduardo doesn't ask. "Being a superhero isn't cool, Mark. It's dangerous. It's exhausting. Ugh. Why can't I just have an apartment where the windows close both ways?"
"Hey," Mark says, "you're the one who nixed the idea of a Batcave."
"Because I'm not Batman."
"Well," Mark says. "I'll ask around a bit, see what I can do."
Eduardo tells himself that this is not a threat. Even so, "You don't have to."
"It'll be fun," Mark says. "Don't worry about it. Ex-friends, right?"
Saving the world, Eduardo is fairly sure, would be easy. Spider-Man is not the kind of superhero who people count on to save the world, though - he's more of a Mom and Pop superhero.
Patrolling the streets of New York, looking for petty thieves and lost pets.
"Did you know crime rates in New York have actually gone up the past year?" Mark asks. "It's very interesting. I mean, you're definitely making a difference."
"I don't really - " Eduardo starts before the most important word in Mark's statement registers. "Did you say up?"
"Maybe people want to meet Spider-Man," Mark speculates.
"I speak at schools." Eduardo likes speaking at schools. Nobody's shooting at him there. "I speak at youth centers. I'm practically a public figure." Spider-Man is, anyway.
"Nobody's hired you for their birthday party yet? Well, give it time." Mark sounds amused.
"Funny."
"I'm serious," Mark says. "You're Spider-Man, Wardo. People should be begging you to hang out with them, instead of complaining oh, say, that you didn't track down Mr Tiddles in less than an hour. Incidentally, why did it take you that long? I just asked on Facebook and got ten reactions within five minutes."
"You - "
"I suppose I could have called," Mark says. He does not sound particularly apologetic.
"Why?" Eduardo asks. He's tired enough to want coffee, which is a bad idea, because coffee means he won't be able to even take a nap during the next five hours. "Why, Mark?"
"To tell you where the dog was," Mark says.
"I didn't mean that."
"I know," Mark says. "Anyway, I looked at some apartments, and I think I found some viable options. I could e-mail them to you, if you want?"
After six months, Eduardo still hasn't met his supervillain nemesis. He's beginning to suspect the comics just haven't gotten that bit quite right - and why should they, anyway?
It's not as if the world is full of superheroes they can base their stories on.
Half the time, he doesn't even know what part of the country Sean Parker's hanging out in. True, he does keep tabs on Mark, but they're the low-key, 'not-really-a-friend' sort of tabs. Anybody who knows Mark a little could probably picture him building a secret death ray or something in his basement (or just right in the office; it's not as if anyone's going to question him), but Eduardo isn't anybody. He's been Mark's only best friend for a very long time. He knows Mark isn't the mad scientist type.
Mad, though, possibly. If you define 'mad' as 'incapable of thinking like a normal person'.
"I'm coming to New York next month," Mark says.
"Want me to pick you up at the airport?" Eduardo asks, because he can't help himself.
"That would be nice, yes," Mark says. "Thanks, Wardo." He hangs up before Eduardo can explain that yeah, remember that time you were going to pick me up at the airport? Good times, right?.
Right.
By some miracle, Eduardo makes it to the airport only two hours late.
Mark is still waiting for him, of course, not impatiently or tapping his foot while pointedly looking at his watch, but just curled up on a bench somewhere with his laptop.
"Hey," Eduardo says. To any other person, he would have apologized for being late.
"Hey." Now Mark glances at his watch. "You're earlier than I expected. Good. Quiet day on the job, then, or should I feel guilty that you let some crimes pass you by on the way here? I hear muggings are quite a problem in certain neighborhoods."
"I wouldn't know anything about that." Eduardo isn't sure how to tell Mark to maybe keep the whole part where Eduardo is also Spider-Man on the downlow. Possibly, he should have e-mailed.
Probably, Mark doesn't read all his e-mails himself. "You should," Mark says. "You live here, Wardo; it's simple common sense to find out these things."
"I guess that's what I have you for." Eduardo doesn't know why Mark is even here.
Mark frowns. Maybe he doesn't know either. "You don't have me for anything. If that was what you wanted, you should have said so."
"Let's get your luggage into a cab," Eduardo says, because there's this itchy feeling at the back of his mind that he desperately wants to believe is a crime in progress, and it would kind of suck to dump Mark after having come all this way to pick him up.
The idea that Mark might have planned to stay in a hotel does not occur to Eduardo until his living room has been turned into an improvised guest room, with his couch as Mark's bed.
Being raised to always be polite, he blurts out, "Sorry, it's probably not going to be as comfortable as a hotel." It's not quite as blunt as saying, please check into a hotel, because whatever the two of us are, I'm not sure if it involves having sleep-overs.
"It's fine," Mark says.
"You're not getting my bed. I need my bed. My rest, I mean."
"Wardo," Mark says. "It's fine. Do you need it in writing or something?"
Mark sounds a little annoyed, a little prissy. Eduardo thinks he should be happy about that. As he keeps telling Mark, they're not friends anymore. Mark acting as if they are would just be confusing, has been just confusing.
"No," he says.
Mark gestures dismissively, then unpacks his laptop. "I need to get some work done, anyway, and I'm sure you're busy doing ... things. Did you get a chance to look at those apartments?"
"No," Eduardo says. He's not sure what apartments they're talking about.
Mark sighs and shakes his head. "Good thing I got here. No promises, but I'll see what I can do, how's that?" His laptop finishes booting up and just like that, he's gone, off to Mark world.
Eduardo wishes he had Mark's focus sometimes. It would make his life a lot simpler.
Of course, 'simpler' doesn't always equal 'better'.
Mark has no friends, no life and will spend the night sleeping on Eduardo's couch.
By comparison, Eduardo has lots of friends (as previously concluded), two lives and the prospect of a night spent on the mean streets, dispersing justice and ass-kickings.
It should be abundantly clear who of them got the better deal, and who only got a good night's sleep.
"I made some coffee," Mark says the next morning. He sounds more awake than Eduardo wants to have to deal with.
On the other hand, one nice gesture deserves at least a "Thanks". Mark isn't usually the kind of guy to think about other people to the point of making them coffee in the morning. Eduardo feels he owes it to the world to encourage this type of behavior.
Mark gives him a long look.
"What? You do something nice for me, I say 'thanks'."
"You're out of coffee," Mark says.
Mark sends him grocery shopping. With a list. It's a little ridiculous, really.
"Mark." Eduardo has always been the responsible one. "Listen."
"It's a perfectly balanced shopping list that should meet both your budgetary requirements and your nutritional needs," Mark says. "Although I based that last one on a poll. There's really not a lot of scientific data regarding superheroes and their food requirements on-line."
"How long are you planning to stay here?"
Mark shrugs. "Long enough. My presence at the office isn't absolutely required anymore nowadays."
Long enough for what? Eduardo wonders if Mark's employers are throwing a party in his absence. Probably not. Mark is not a bad guy, not really. He's just ... Mark.
"You expect me to cook for you?"
Mark's expression suggests Eduardo is being deliberately obtuse. "I need to get some coding done. If it's a problem, we'll just get a pizza or something."
Two months and a lot of pizza later, Mark is still there. Eduardo isn't completely convinced Mark ever even leaves the apartment, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
For example, he keeps finding new clothes in his closet.
"It's a nice shirt," Mark says, when Eduardo confronts him.
"I know it's nice. I just want to know where it comes from."
Mark looks smugly enigmatic. "Consider it a gift," he says. "From a friend. Perhaps even an admirer."
"They're called 'fans', and you're not one of them," Eduardo says.
"Actually, if you paid more attention to these things, you would know that three of my dummy accounts have joined the Spider-Man Fanclub. Membership gains you access to some very exclusive footage."
Until that moment, it has not occurred to Eduardo that Mark might out him. "How exclusive?"
"I'm hurt," Mark says. "Really, Wardo."
"Imagine how I felt," Eduardo says. It's the magic hour right now, early enough for the city to go about its business without needing Spider-Man.
"You were justifiably angry." Mark makes it sound logical, like it's no big deal. "Then. This is now. Why would I screw you over again? What would I have to gain? You have to be reasonable about these things, Wardo. You can't keep blaming me for the past."
"I'm pretty sure I can, actually." Eduardo wonders how they got here.
"You weren't angry when you met me at the airport," Mark says. "Or when you called me, before. Ergo, you have not been angry with me all this time. Ergo, you've moved on. We both have."
Eduardo doesn't quite see what Mark had to move on from. "We do? From what to what?"
"You're my best friend," Mark says. "You know that."
I was your only friend. "Not anymore."
"Boyfriend, then," Mark says. "We've moved on from being friends to being boyfriends."
Eduardo is pretty sure he'd have noticed something if Mark thought of him that way. "You think stabbing someone in the back is a reason for a relationship upgrade? Jesus, Mark."
"I don't think we need to make this about religion."
"I don't think we need to make this about anything."
"Good," Mark says. "I'm glad you understand."
Eduardo's day more or less passes him by in a blur. You'd think that swinging through New York by shooting web from your hands would never stop being exciting and new and exhilarating, but it does.
There's a part of Eduardo that figures, well, it makes sense. Not being in love with Mark per se, but the fact that being so is messing up his whole life? That makes perfect sense.
The way Eduardo looks at it, you need at least some reason to be friends with someone. For him to still be friends with Mark wouldn't make any sense at all.
For him to still be in love with Mark, well. It's not the craziest thing that's ever happened to him.
Plus, he figures that being Spider-Man also means he can't ever get serious about anyone who is normal, or who doesn't know his secret. Mark isn't normal, and Mark knows his secret.
Mark is, in short, his perfect love interest - as long as you don't take into account that Mark is emotionally incapable of being anyone's love interest.
"I think you are emotionally incapable of being my boyfriend," Eduardo says.
They're having pizza again, because Mark is on another coding spree and Eduardo had to rescue a cat from a tree.
"I think you are overthinking this," Mark says. "I've been here two months. You never complained."
"Why would I complain? I thought you were going to leave."
Mark frowns at him. "That doesn't make any sense. Did you want me to leave? If so, you should have said. I'm not deaf."
"I ... "
Mark looks at him expectantly, like he's giving Eduardo at least 99% of his attention. Possibly 100%.
"I wish you hadn't done what you did," Eduardo says.
"I'm sorry," Mark says. He sounds sincere, like he truly means it.
Eduardo is tempted to take what he can get. It's an apology; Mark means it: why quibble over details?
"For what?" he asks instead.
"I'm sorry that I can't say that I agree with you," Mark says. "I'm sorry that I can't - that I won't tell you here and now that if you put me in the same situation, I would make a different choice. And I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth, so I hope you can at least appreciate the fact that I'm being honest with you."
"Not really, no."
Mark says nothing, not even that he's sorry for that, too. Presumably, he doesn't feel that Eduardo's failings are any responsibility of his.
"Jesus, Mark."
"By all accounts, he was a fairly forgiving sort," Mark says. "But fine. Should I consider myself evicted from these premises? It's not raining, only if that's what you want, I'm sure that I can find a cardboard box or something along those lines, to dwell in suitable misery."
"I'm not evicting you," Eduardo says. "Just ... maybe we should look into buying a second bed or something. It can't be good for your back to keep sleeping on the couch."
"Or you could finally take a look at the apartments I e-mailed you about three months ago. I believe some of them included more than one bedroom."
Eduardo figures that if he's not going to throw Mark out, this is the next best thing. After all, if he has no intention of becoming Mark's friend again (never mind his boyfriend), there's no reason to go hunting for a new apartment. His old one's perfectly fine.
"Most of them're probably not available anymore by now," he says. "You should probably look into that first, before we start calling people when we can come by for a viewing."
Another two months later, Eduardo still hasn't looked at any other apartment.
"Would it help you to sort out your feelings if I arranged a brief kidnapping?" Mark asks.
Eduardo has slept for three hours. He wants coffee and he wants it now. "No."
"You're being very difficult about this."
"Do you actually know someone who does that sort of thing?" Eduardo asks. He hopes the answer is 'no'. He suspects the answer is something more along the lines of 'well, we're still negotiating about the price and the accommodations, because I do need to work, but yes, I had more or less finished making the arrangements so that we could have a traditional rescue romance'.
He doesn't think it's a good thing that he can think about it like this, nowadays.
"I'll call it off," Mark says. "It's not a problem." He sounds as if he considers this a rather generous gesture on his part. "You need the rest, anyway. Really, Wardo, I worry about you."
"I worry about me, too," Eduardo says.
"You should."
"Are we out of coffee again?"
"I told you to get some two days ago. It's not my fault you don't listen."
"Mark," Eduardo says. "Would you like to move in with me? In a boyfriend-boyfriend kind of arrangement? Roommates with benefits, that sort of thing?"
Mark sighs. "You want me to get coffee? Now?"
"That, too."
"Oh," says Mark.
Mark Zuckerberg comes to New York as Eduardo's ex-friend, not really looking for a redemption arc, but the way these things work is, sometimes they just do.
Except that Mark doesn't really do redemption, in much the same way as Eduardo doesn't do forgiveness - which might be just as well, he thinks, given the whole Redemption Equals Death trope that some of these superhero comics seem to be far too fond of.
(This is still not the whole story, of course, but for now, it will have to do. Happy endings are hard, especially in comics.)
("But seriously, please tell me you don't know any people who would kidnap you.")
("Don't worry. I told them not to do anything until you were less busy.")