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In the halcyon days of their time spent at Harvard, the only way Mark Zuckerberg didn’t die of Vitamin D deficiency was because of orange slices.
Which was, in all honesty, quite ironic. Because he wasn’t the biggest fan of orange juice, and he couldn’t imagine himself picking orange sherbet at the ice cream shop he used to frequent growing up in New York. But there, right beside the taste of the shitty beer he used to drink like water and the hot pockets he’d scarf down at 3 am while waiting for his code to compile, was the citrus fruit that he had grown to love.
There’s a sort of haziness with the memory associated with it now, as if he was remembering it after a long dream. But what he does remember is the long, lithe fingers placing the slices on a napkin right beside his computer mouse, and the low voice that came with it.
“You have to eat something healthy, Mark,” The voice spoke, like they were admonishing a child. “Don’t look at me like that. Tuna isn’t a substitute for a healthy meal.”
Mark popped a slice in his mouth and rolled his eyes, even though his heart was warmed by the fact the action was rewarded with a smile. The last time he’d eaten one of these was probably… 8th grade? At best?
The taste reminded him of summer and the ocean and all things associated with it, which was funny considering it was currently mid November and threatening to snow. But he continued to slowly work his way through the orange as Eduardo quietly laid on his bed, flipping through an Econ textbook and occasionally writing things down.
“I’m finished. Happy, Mom?” He asked, showing Eduardo the empty napkin before crumbling it into a ball and throwing it towards the nearest wastebasket. He missed.
“Very.” Eduardo replied. They continued to work in silence, focused on their various classes (well, Mark was focused on ignoring them, but he digressed), letting the silence of the room to lull him into a very productive coding tear.
What Mark didn’t expect, however, was that the slices kept appearing.
He didn’t know whether or not if Eduardo was the one who was peeling them himself, or if he was able to afford the pre-peeled ones at the organic grocery market down on Cornelia Street. But the act was incredibly nice, considering the fact Mark personally hated peeling oranges. The feeling of the juice becoming stuck to his hands, or the idea of the skin of the orange itself digging underneath his fingernails made Mark shiver from the thought alone. It was a damn shame, considering how much he had come to like them, but it was a fact of life for him at this point.
Eduardo was the one who peeled the oranges for him, and Mark would eat them up like it was the only thing he was allowed to consume ever again. It’s not until he’s older (and the jury's out on wiser) that he truly realizes what it meant. That he was incredibly blind.
Back then, it was a give and take relationship. Eduardo would give and give and give, and Mark would take and take and take until there was nothing left of either of them. Until it felt that both of them were screaming, and the other couldn’t hear them. It felt like a rock in his stomach when he thought about it now, their relationship from the days that now were so long ago, yet felt like it was just yesterday afternoon.
The sight of oranges sickened him. But the deeper part of him, the one he buried under code pushes and server uptime and countless all-nighters, missed the tangy citrus all the same.
He forgot about it in favor of working on Facebook, and replaces the sour tastes of oranges in favor of expensive beer and red vines that are kept at his desk at all times.
It’s not until years later, after small moments of apologies and forgiveness and just a tiny bit of bitter-sweetness, that he remembered the slices back at Kirkland.
Eduardo was stationed on the couch in his office (the closed off one he uses for meetings), balancing his laptop on his lap and a ponkan between his fingers. He had a concentrated look on his face, as if he was working on a particularly hard equation or working on a graph.
Mark’s eyes trail from the bug fix he was working on to Eduardo’s frustration, watching with slight amusement as Eduardo let out little huffs of anger.
“I used to peel these all of the time, back in Brazil,” he muttered, his nails barely digging into the bright orange skin. “I feel like I’m five years old again.” Even his seldom heard Brazilian accent was slipping in there.
After a few more moments, he let out a large sigh and set it down, choosing to focus back on his work instead. If Mark let out a little smile at how cute it looked, well, no one else was here to call him out on it.
“Maybe it’s a result of inbreeding, or something, but they were never that thick!” Eduardo crossed his arms. “I’ll have to bring a few back the next time I go home, because clearly something is going on here.” The tone was light, even though frustration was clearly still underlain.
As soon as Eduardo began to focus back on typing, Mark reached over and grabbed the ponkan, squeezing it once in his hand before digging a sharp fingernail into the tough skin.
Every single part of Mark wanted to gag right now, but he continued to silently and methodically peel the citrus until there was no skin left to remain standing. He even meticulously picked out the white strands, until they were all sitting on the napkin, waiting to be thrown away.
When Eduardo looked up again, his eyes widened.
“You used to do the same for me, back in Kirkland,” was all Mark could say, his smile looking more like a grimace. “Here. Take it. I have to go wash my hands.”
When he gets back from the bathroom from scrubbing his hands (and especially under his fingernails, eugh..), he got back to see Eduardo mostly finished with the ponkan, save for two slices.
Mark’s head tilted in a question. Eduardo answered him easily.
“They’re for you.” He spoke, the smile on his face looking like something Mark wanted to see for the rest of his days. “We both know I can’t not give you what you want.”
The reply Mark gives was light, but also bellied their shared history. “I wanted to see you smile. I got what I wanted already.”
The matter-of-fact tone would’ve sounded rude to anyone else, but Eduardo only smiled harder as he stood up and walked over to Mark, who was still nearby the door. It reminded him of the sunset over the pacific coast, it reminded him of shared nights under the blankets in the freezing dorm, and it reminded him of the buzz underneath his skin after a successful hackathon.
“I haven’t been able to peel an orange without thinking of you,” Eduardo whispered, setting his arms onto Mark’s shoulders and watching as those bright blue eyes widened. “You were the color orange, to me,”
Confidence. Warmth. Communication.
“I haven’t been able to eat an orange without thinking of you,” Mark admitted, remembering the times that even the smell of an orange made him sick to his stomach. Now, however, he thinks he could eat it happily for the rest of his life. “I’ve missed you, Wardo.”
The nickname comes easily to his lips, spoken as if in the middle of a prayer. Eduardo visibly softened.
In the absence of words, a pair of warm lips press against Mark’s as his eyes fall shut, wrapping his own arm’s around Eduardo’s neck and pulls him close. It’s something that he didn’t dare wish for, even in his wildest dreams, but now that he has it.. he never wants to let it go.
Eduardo tastes like citrus and coffee and in probably the sappiest words he could come up with, everything Mark has hoped and wished for, besides Facebook.
And in return, Mark would give Eduardo everything he ever dreamed of. Because instead of orange slices, Mark would give him the world.