Work Text:
Her name is Annie, a generic enough name, but Greg didn’t hire her for that reason. He hired her because she’s got an excellent job history, because she spent six years interning for ATN when she graduated from college, and because now she’d come back some ten years after that internship ended saying she was the ideal candidate to be Greg’s new assistant.
And he couldn’t argue with her, because she was right.
The thing he likes best about Annie is how quiet she is, but not in an eerie or even disrespectful way. She addresses him kindly in the morning when he walks into the office (she’s always there before him) and sends him one of those “have-a-good-night” salutations when he leaves (she’s always still working). She knows how he takes his coffee, complicated as his order is, after only telling her once. She’s professional, courteous, and punctual, obviously. She’s older than he is, but she never talks down to him.
She’s been working for him for about a month now, and they’ve barely had a conversation outside her initial interview. She hasn’t called out sick, hasn’t complained about anything. And he knows that this is how it’s probably supposed to be with bosses and their assistants. She’s supposed to speak only when spoken to or whatever. That’s a part of the hierarchy here.
But then he thinks about how Tom had treated him when he’d been Tom’s assistant. They’d been friends more than co-workers. And, well, they were still co-workers, Greg was still technically working for Tom, but the order had all changed. Not that that mattered in terms of Annie, of course, but Greg still thought he might try to make an effort. He might try to get to know her better.
He starts with telling her a joke. He thinks that if he starts each morning with a joke, it might lighten her mood. But maybe her mood doesn’t need lightening, he thinks. Maybe it’s misogynistic for him to think it does. But because he doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t really have any other option as he approaches her desk outside his office, he goes ahead with Plan A.
“Hey, Annie,” he smiles.
She looks up from her computer and answers with the same expression. “Good morning, Greg.”
He approaches her desk, still smiling. “Alright, so I’ve got a question for you.”
Her hands hover over the keyboard, but she stops typing. “What’s up?” she asks.
Then he remembered he’s decided against the question-and-answer joke format and chosen something else, so he shakes his head. “No, not a question,” he corrects himself. “A story. A… a funny story I heard.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he nods. “Um, so… So apparently there was this big court case in town—”
“The insider trading case?”
He regards her comment. “Could’ve been,” he says. “Anyway, the defense lawyer, he… he gets up and he talks to the judge…”
“I heard the defense was that it doesn’t count because he had only given the information to his wife. Can you believe he’s trying to throw his wife under the bus?”
Greg watches her for a while. He’s a little irritated, because he’s trying to tell a joke here, but he supposes it’s not her fault. He’s never told her a joke before. She’s not expecting it.
“So the lawyer goes to the judge and says, ‘Your Honor, my client must be freed! He’s trapped in a penny!’”
Annie looks up at him blankly. Confused.
“He’s in-a-cent,” Greg finishes weakly.
Annie narrows her eyes, and Greg gulps hard. All the breaks in the joke definitely took some of the shine out of the punchline, but again, he can’t blame her for that.
And then she laughs. It’s a real laugh, too. High and light, her eyes crinkling as the punchline hits her. “Oh my god,” she chuckles. “I can’t believe I interrupted your joke! That was funny!”
He smiles a little, happy that she gets it, at least. “I didn’t even know about that insider trading trial,” he says. “If I’d known you had that on your mind, I might’ve picked something else.”
She’s still grinning. “No, no,” she shakes her head. “God, I… I only know about it because they’re talking about it on this podcast I listen to. It sounds boring, right? But it’s actually pretty interesting.”
“Oh,” he nods. “Okay. Cool.” He stands there a moment, overall pleased with himself. “Okay, well… I’m gonna start—start the grind. Let me know if I get any messages.”
“Coffee’s on the desk,” she tells him, typing away. And as he enters his office, he hears her laughing quietly to herself. “In-a-cent,” she muses. “That’s a riot.” And he’s proud of himself as he closes his door.
The next morning, he tries another joke.
“Okay,” he says, setting his briefcase down beside the desk and holding his hands up for emphasis. “What’s pink and fluffy?”
She brings her hands into her lap and straightens her back, apparently ready for a joke. “I give up,” she answers.
“Pink fluff,” he says.
She thinks about it.
“Now, what’s purple and fluffy?”
She smiles and waits.
“Pink fluff holding its breath,” he tells her.
She laughs, but not as hard as she did yesterday.
“I’ll do a better one tomorrow,” he tells her.
“I’ll be on the edge of my seat until then, Greg,” she tells him. She returns to her work, and he opens his office door, notices the coffee waiting. He turns back to her.
“Hey, Annie?”
“Yes, Greg?”
“Um, can… can you send me a link to the podcast you’re listening to?”
He likes the way she talks to him. Like he’s a person. He likes her easy familiarity. He likes the fact that he’s her boss, he’s one of the Roys, but she never calls him sir or Mr. Hirsch. She calls him Greg. He knows it wouldn’t feel right to be called sir by someone like her, someone who could probably do his job ten times better than him, someone older, someone so experienced in this business. He appreciates that there’s an understanding between them.
He listens to her podcast, a finance podcast, and finds it boring at first. And then when he gets to the episodes covering the big trial, it starts to get interesting.
He wonders if she has a family. It’s not the sort of thing you bring up in interviews, especially if you’re a man interviewing a woman. He thinks she could be married, a woman like her. Smart and pretty. Good sense of humor, obviously. He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about it. It’s not like he’s interested in her in that way, and even if he was, it’s not like he could do anything about it. He learned that lesson a long time ago, not from any kind of training video or Twitter thread, but from the fact that he had sometimes thought of his own boss like that, and sometimes he thought that the thoughts were mutual thoughts, but…
Anyway, Annie is the kind of person he thinks he could be friends with. The way he and Tom are friends. Well, not exactly the same way. But something like that. Something like what he and Tom would be if they weren’t who they were.
“Okay, let’s test this one out,” he tells Annie the following week. “I, uh, heard that Larry from accounting left us to go work for Old MacDonald.”
She’s already smiling. “Can’t wait to hear why,” she says.
Greg grins, but he tries to control himself from snickering. “He’s the new C-I-E-I-O,” he tells her.
“Oh, god,” she laughs into her hands, faux-facepalming. “You know, I’ve always thought farm jokes were corny.”
He laughs a little. “Corny,” he nods. “Okay, I see. I see. Well, you should know that I wasn’t going to tell you a farm joke today because… because I was feeling sheepish.”
She laughs again. “You should moooove into your office and get started. You’ve got meetings today.”
“Right,” he says, suddenly more serious. He remembers the meetings, and he knows it’ll be a long day. He moves toward the door, then stands there. “I herd it’s gonna be a lot of work,” he smiles, triumphant in his latest pun.
It takes her a moment to get it, and she smiles and shakes her head.
“Oh, and hey,” Greg calls to her. “I listened to that podcast you recommended. It’s really good.”
She absolutely beams at this. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “I mean, bit of a, you know, slow start or whatever. But it’s really cool.”
“A man of taste,” she says. And there’s something in her tone, something in the flash of her eyes over his body, that strikes something close to fear in his chest.
He turns back to his office, closes the door behind him, and starts his calls.
The next morning, he greets her, smiling. But he doesn’t tell her a joke. She hands him a sticky note with a message jotted on it, and he takes it into his office. He sips his coffee, savoring the sweet, foamy goodness as he dreads the day’s tasks. And somewhere along the way, he begins to get lost in his thoughts somewhere.
He’s thinking about Tom again. Which he knows he does way too much. He can’t help it. Tom’s been a mess, what with the fragility of his nerves and the impending divorce, the will-they/won’t-they of an already established relationship that’s had Greg feeling like he’s a part of it somehow even though he’s very much not.
Maybe it’s the way Tom’s always calling him to talk about it. Maybe it’s the way Tom’s voice sounds, always so sad, always so desperate.
Maybe it's the way Greg knows he’d give Tom anything at all to fix him. Anything that might make him happy, anything that might give him hope. A place to crash. A listening ear. Someone to hold onto, metaphorically or physically.
Maybe it’s the way Greg feels guilty for the way he thinks about Tom so much. Tom who isn’t his, who will never be his, who never could have been his. Tom with his sad eyes, his beautiful, sad eyes. Greg didn’t know it was possible to feel this way about anyone, and yet here he is, feeling it.
Greg sips his coffee and thinks about late nights with Tom, drinks and dancing and music. The sadness underneath it all. The desperation. Back then, Greg thought Tom was just some douchebag with a pretty face. And then it all unraveled in front of him, two years of adventure. Misadventure, more like. Two years of Greg seeing who Tom really is, Tom still not seeing it, refusing to see it. He tries to focus on statistics on the screen in front of him, but all he can think about is the weight of Tom’s hand on his side, the too-brief grip of their hug, the promises made in shade and secrecy.
The moment he realized he loved Tom. That he’d probably been in love with him for a long time. He wishes he knew what it was when it happened. Wishes he could point to a moment and say “that’s when it happened. That’s when I fell in love with him.” But he knows it probably wasn’t a moment. It was probably a series of moments. Or non-moments. Looks, thoughts, dreams, innocent touches. Truly innocent. Maybe his love for Tom was there from the beginning, festering under the skin like a fungus, growing in darkness, thriving in filth. Maybe the love was newer, a revelation, a shining light on Saul of Tarsus. A voice in the blindness saying You are in love, you fucking moron. It’s Tom’s voice, of course.
A knock on his door startles him back into reality. He looks up to see Annie stepping carefully into the room, presumably with the schedule for the day. Another busy one. Everything is so busy all the time, and he’s so tired. She always gives him the schedule at ten, so he realizes he’s been here an hour already, just sitting at his desk daydreaming. Pathetic.
She reads the schedule, reminding him of his lunch with Tom. He and Tom always do lunch together on Tuesdays. It’s the shortest day of the work week, task-wise, so it makes sense. But today, he isn’t feeling up to it.
“Can you, um, actually cancel my lunch with Tom?” he asks her.
She looks at him quizzically. “Oh,” she finally says, then nods twice. “Sure. Are you sure?”
He isn’t. But he tells her he is.
“Okay,” she tells him. “Consider it cancelled. I’ll send a memo.”
“No, no,” he shakes his head. “Wait. I… I should do it. I should call him and cancel.”
“Are you sure?” she asks again. And again, he isn’t. “Just, if you call him yourself, are you sure he’ll let you cancel?”
She’s offering a sort of smirk. Like it’s a joke. Their joke. Boss man bad, that kind of thing.
He smirks back. “Yeah,” he shrugs. “You’re probably right.”
“Did you want me to say you’re out of office?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Do you want to be out of the office? Because, you know, he’ll probably come looking for you.”
He watches her silently.
“You could have lunch with me,” she tells him. “I usually just go to that little coffee shop down the corner. Doesn’t seem like his kind of scene, so I doubt we’ll bump into him.”
He thinks about it a moment, considering. Would that be appropriate? Would it be inappropriate? Was it inappropriate to wonder if it was inappropriate?
“We don’t have to,” she offers, and he realizes he’s been silent too long, thinking too long. “I was just trying to offer you an out if you need one. But if you don’t—”
“No, no,” he smiles. “I’d love—I’d like to. I’d enjoy that.”
She smiles, and it’s the first time he’s realized just how pretty she is. Well, he knew she was pretty, but it’s the first time he’s thought of it in the context of this is a pretty woman, and she might like me.
Appropriateness doesn’t really matter, he tells himself. It’s just lunch.
She cancels his lunch with Tom while she knows Tom’s in a meeting, and she and Greg duck out a few minutes early to wander down to the coffee shop she likes. And she’s right, he thinks. Tom would never come in here for anything less than someone holding a gun to his head and forcing him.
They sit in a corner away from the windows, and she orders for both of them. A ham and Swiss on rye for herself, a shredded chicken and pesto panini for him. He realizes he likes it when she orders, the way he always likes it when Tom orders. He likes knowing that someone knows him well enough, feels comfortable enough with him to do that. She’s only been his employee for a couple of months now, but it feels like they could be old friends.
“So,” she says after neither of them say much for a while. “I was disappointed I didn’t get my daily joke today.”
By now, their sandwiches have arrived. He takes a bite of his, surprised by how much he enjoys it. “Okay,” he tells her, his mouth still a little full. “I can tell you one now, if you want.”
“I very much want,” she tells him, then bites into her own sandwich.
“Okay,” he thinks on it, takes another bite. He doesn’t think about how he’s eating until he realizes she might not like it, and by then, he’s gone way too far to pretend that’s not how he eats. He moves on. “What do you call an alligator in a vest?”
“Oh,” she tells him. “I’ve heard this one.”
“Oh, okay. Let me think of another.”
“No,” she reaches across and places a hand tenderly on his forearm. “Tell me anyway.”
The touch catches him off guard. Sends his mind somewhere else.
Tuscany, maybe.
Or maybe somewhere even further off. Somewhere uncharted. Somewhere forbidden.
“Greg?” she smiles. “I mean it. Tell me the punchline.”
“Hm?”
“What do you call an alligator in a vest?” she asks.
He tries out a smile, and he finds it easier than he thought he would. “An investigator,” he says.
She squeezes his arm a little tighter, then withdraws it. His smile is tight, careful. Hers is easy and natural.
Something about this feels… wrong. And not in a fun way. Not in the way things feel wrong with Tom sometimes.
“So,” she starts to say after a sip of her drink. “How’s the new job fitting you?”
He shrugs. “It’s busier than I thought.”
“Mergers are always hell. I’ve been through enough of them to know.”
He’s suddenly aware again that she’s older than he is. Not by so much that it feels matronly or anything, but… well, she probably has about fifteen years on him. She wears it well, though. She takes care of her skin, dyes her hair, wears the right amount of makeup, tailors her clothes to her body.
“How’s Tom doing with all the change?” she asks.
“Tom? Oh, he’s… He’s fine. I mean, he’s going through a lot of changes right now, but he’s fine. I think he likes this kind of chaos.”
“Yeah, he always did strike me as kind of…” but then she stops, doesn’t finish the thought.
Greg looks up from his plate and watches her. “Kind of what?” he asks.
“Well,” she shakes her head a little. “I probably shouldn’t say. I know you two are friends.”
“It’s fine,” he tells her. “I’m sure I’ve said worse. Tom doesn’t really make a good first impression.”
“Does he make a good tenth impression?” she asks with a bit of a laugh in her voice. “Because I’ve already met him several times.”
Greg shrugs, and he’s smiling a little. He knows what she means. He’s been there, too.
“I just… shouldn’t say anything,” she tells him. “It’s not my place. I guess he’s technically my boss, right? Indirectly?”
“No,” Greg answers, and he’s firm on this. “Tom has no authority over you. He’s my boss, but he’s not yours.”
“Yes, but you’re my boss. And he’s yours.”
“You’re under me, not him,” he tells her. “Not… not that you’re under me, but… And I don’t mean it like that, obviously, but…”
“You’re blushing,” she tells him. “I know you didn’t mean it like that.”
And she’s not blushing. She’s cool, calm, and collected. Anyone else in the room would think she was his boss.
“I just meant that if he ever tries to boss you around,” Greg tells her softly. “He can’t. I mean, he can. He can do pretty much anything he wants, you know. Within reason, I mean. But if he does, you don’t have to take it.”
“Oh, I know,” she assures him. “I would never take it from him.”
There’s something in her tone just there. Something he can’t place. Something with enough plausible deniability to keep him from outright believing she’s attempting inuendo.
Greg finishes the last of his sandwich. She finishes hers. She glances at her phone screen. “We should get back,” she tells him. “Tom will be looking for you.”
“Right,” he nods. He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet.
“No, please,” she holds up one hand and shows off the credit card in her other. “I’ve got this. I’m treating the boss to lunch today.”
“Oh… no, you don’t have to—”
“I know,” she says. “But I’m going to.”
“Let me get mine.”
“No, I’m paying. And you’re going to let me. And that’s that.”
Despite himself, he gives in. She marches to the counter and pays for both of them, and he watches her, wondering how anyone ever feels that kind of power, how anyone is able to look at their employer and say this is how it’s going to be, like it or not.
He wishes he had ever said that or anything like it to Tom. Anything beyond playfulness, beyond small moments of weakness. Beyond jest. He wishes he’d stood up to Tom in any kind of meaningful way.
He waits for her by the door, and after she’s paid for them, she joins him. They make their way back out again, back toward the office. They’re quiet as they walk, but they stand close together. And he likes it, he decides after a little bit of thought. He likes this closeness, this comfortability.
He likes her, he thinks.
He’s felt this with women before. Briefly. Women he’s tried to date, but it never worked out. It’s always been nice to have a woman beside him, one who enjoys his company, who knows how to talk to him, who knows what he needs. She likes his jokes. They’re bad jokes. No one should like those jokes. But he likes that she likes them, that she likes him. He isn’t going to date her, of course, but maybe he doesn’t need to date her. This is better. It’s safer.
It's just the two of them in the elevator. She still stands close to him as they make their way up. Maybe she’s too close now, but that just means she feels safe with him, right? Greg likes to be the safe person to someone, to anyone.
“You, uh… you never told me what it was? About Tom?”
She looks beside her, cranes her neck to get a proper look up at him. “Oh,” she starts dismissively. “It’s nothing.”
“No, really,” he says. “What is it you were gonna say?”
She seems to watch the digital numbers as they fly slowly by. Then she looks back at Greg. “It none of my business, of course, but he sure does seem to like you.”
Greg hadn’t expected this. He’d expected a proper insult. Tom’s mean or Tom’s loud or Tom throws a lot of tantrums. This accusation, if it can even be called that, is mild in comparison.
“I guess he does,” Greg tells her with a shrug. “Yeah, I mean… we’re friends.”
“You canceled lunch with him today.”
He bites his lip, chews at a bit of skin.
“And you said he can be a bully, didn’t you?”
“I know him better. He looks like a bully to people, but that’s… it’s a misnomer.”
“Oh?”
“Well, yeah. I think so. He’s just needy. Sometimes needy comes out like angry.”
“I don’t call any of my friends needy.”
She’s pushing it now. He’s given her room to push, he supposes, but he doesn’t like to hear this.
“Tom’s alright,” he tells her quietly.
“Ten bucks says he’s waiting by your office right now, ready to chew you out for missing your lunch date.”
He thinks about it.
“No bet,” he tells her.
She smiles, satisfied.
The elevator doors open, and they step out. Sure enough, as they round the corner to Greg’s office, Tom is there, sitting idly in Annie’s desk chair, looking at his phone. Annie places a hand on Greg’s arm. “What did I tell you?” she says.
“There you are,” Tom greets Greg. His gaze shifts over to Annie. “Well, good to know you were busy at work during your lunch hour.”
“The memo didn’t specify that he was working, Tom,” she tells him plainly, donning her professional voice once again. “The memo simply stated that he had a conflict in commitments.”
Tom’s brows lower, his sights shifting back to Greg again. “You took your secretary to lunch instead of me?”
“Assistant,” Greg and Annie both correct him.
“Well, we could have all gone. I would have added her.”
“Then add me next time,” Annie says. Tom leaves his chair so she can sit, and she opens the computer, immediately begins working.
“You owe me a lunch,” Tom tells Greg.
“Sure, man. I’ll get you next week.”
“Tonight,” Tom tells him. “You’ll get me tonight. We’ll go for dinner.”
And Greg, damn him, likes being told what to do. He likes being told by Tom what to do.
“Okay,” he says. “Tonight.”
Tom slaps his shoulder. “Attaboy,” he tells him. “I’ll pick you up. Seven.”
“Seven,” Greg agrees.
Tom leaves again. Greg waits to be sure he’s gone, to be sure he’s done with him. And then he looks down at Annie, who is looking at her screen.
“Have fun with that,” she says.
He doesn’t answer. He just slips back into his office and disappears for a while. For as much as he’s able to until he can go home.
At home, he showers and changes his clothes in preparation for dinner. And as he stands in front of the mirror, he wonders why. Why does he do this, why does he get clean and pretty for Tom? Why does he bother?
He hates that he still tries to impress Tom. It should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Tom would be lost without him. Tom would be a wreck. Tom would be fucked ten different ways and none of them good. So he should be trying to impress Greg every minute of every day. Greg has dirt on him, or did, and knows him better than anyone. Greg could do what he’s done before and go behind backs and talk to reporters and threaten with information. He could hurt Tom so easily just by walking out of his life. And yes, it would hurt him, too, but he’s used to that sort of pain. Tom isn’t. Tom’s heartbreak with Shiv is the closest he’s ever come to emotional disaster in his life, but Greg knows he could make it worse. Tom can lose a spouse, but he can’t lose his only friend.
But even as he thinks this, he chastens himself for the thought. Because he knows that hurting Tom would never feel satisfying. It’s why he hasn’t hurt him already, it’s why he’s never really even given it serious thought. Not only because he loves Tom, but because Tom loves him. In a different way, sure, but it’s still love. And it would devastate Tom, any kind of loss would now. Tom’s one stubbed toe away from hanging himself.
Greg wants to be able to hurt Tom. To him, that would be the deepest form of intimacy. To know Tom and be known by Tom so thoroughly that he could hurt him with an almost surgical precision. To cause someone this kind of pain… well, nothing could be more personal or more soul-baring.
He’ll never do it. So he continues trying out shirts, wondering which will meet Tom’s approval most. He wears the cologne Tom bought him and steps into shoes Tom recommended and combs his hair that way because Tom once said – only once said – that he liked it in that style. Greg finishes the look, and he’s ready to go, but he keeps standing in front of the mirror. He looks himself over and wonders why Tom likes him so much. He wonders what it is about him that makes Tom love him so much that even strangers notice.
And then a terrifying thought occurs. Because he realizes that this can’t go on forever. It really can’t. Despite the way he’d stood up for Tom earlier, he knows Tom can be a bit of a bully. It’s just… well, Greg’s never really minded it. Or, well, he had. But he doesn’t anymore. Because he knows Tom now. But even in spite of that, this has to end. He either has to slowly wean himself off Tom or cut him off altogether. Cutting Tom off altogether would be cruel to Tom, but weaning himself off, Greg thinks, would be its own kind of pain.
Or…
There is a third option. He could just tell Tom how he feels and have it over with.
He’s imagined it before. He’s imagined telling Tom he’s in love with him. Sometimes he imagines doing it over sushi lunch. Sometimes it’s in Tom’s apartment after a few drinks. Sometimes it’s at the end of a business meeting. That was a great meeting, Tom. By the way, I think about you pretty much constantly and you’ve pretty much ruined the idea of romance for me forever because I know that no matter how much power, money, or control I chase, it’ll never make up for the bone-deep longing I feel for you!
But he’s never planned on telling him. Because there’s a difference, of course. He can imagine telling Tom the way he imagines all sorts of things. The way he imagines kissing Tom, or touching Tom, or Tom touching him. The way he imagines what Tom tastes like first thing in the morning or imagines Tom waking up hard after dreaming of Greg. But planning on any of that is impossible. Because imagining is thinking. But planning is doing. He doesn’t want to do anything about his feelings.
Except he knows he probably should. He probably needs to.
He’s still standing at the mirror when Tom arrives, knocking on his door all Tom-like. He never calls or texts, always comes upstairs to announce himself. But Greg doesn’t like the shirt he’s picked. And he hates that it won’t earn a compliment from Tom.
He opens the door, welcoming Tom inside the apartment.
“Ready?” Tom asks.
“Um… might change my shirt,” Greg says, trying to be normal about Tom again. Trying to remember how to be normal. Trying to remember if there was ever a time he felt normal about him.
“Why? It’s a good shirt.”
“Yeah?” Greg smiles.
“Yeah,” Tom nods. “Good color. Nice fabric. Is it one of the one I got you in Italy?”
Greg nods. He only now remembers it is.
“Well, see? I have excellent taste.”
Greg turns to grab his jacket.
“So you and Annie seem to be hitting it off.”
Greg turns back to Tom.
“Just be careful,” Tom adds. “Lawsuit waiting to happen, you know.”
And then there are comments like this, Greg thinks. Comments that very much remind him of how he’s supposed to feel about Tom.
“It’s not like that,” Greg says. “She just started working for me.”
“I know. I’m the one who recommended her, remember?”
Greg does remember. In fact, that was one primary reason he hired her. It was the experience, mostly. But just behind that, it was Tom’s recommendation.
“I was just taking her to lunch,” Greg explains. “I’ve been trying to get to know her.”
“And did you?”
It’s the tone, the curtness, the brevity of the questions. “Did I get to know her?” he asks.
“Yes, Greg. Do you feel like you’ve bonded with her now? Does she know you’re one of the nice ones?”
Greg inhales deeply, trying to keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t. Because what he wants to do is tell Tom how insane he is to ask these things. Especially considering everything they did together while Greg was his assistant. Everything they talked about. It wasn’t always professional.
“She seems like the kind of person I can have conversations with,” Greg tells him. “I don’t know. She’s normal. It’s nice.”
“Normal?” Tom laughs. “Nice? Jesus Christ, Greg, just say she’s boring.”
“She’s not boring.” He returns the way he was going, picks up the jacket from the back of the chair. “She’s… I think she likes me.”
Tom narrows his eyes. “She likes you?”
“Yeah. Like, I don’t know… I think she might like me.” He slips into his jacket.
“Greg, she doesn’t like you.”
“I don’t know. I mean, she wanted to have lunch with me today. It was her idea.”
“I’m sure.”
“And then she paid. She wouldn’t let me pay even though I tried to. A lot.”
“Greg, you can’t date your secretary.”
“Assistant,” Greg corrects. “And why not? Plenty of people at work do it.”
“Yes, but they shouldn’t, either.”
“It’s not like anyone’s doing anything to stop them.”
“So it’s only wrong if people are stopping them?”
Greg sighs. “Let’s just go to dinner.”
“You can’t date her,” Tom says, “Because she’s closing in on forty years old.”
“You’re forty-five!” Greg laughs.
“Yes, but I’m not fucking you.”
“Yeah, but you want—”
Tom watches him, his eyes gone wide now.
Greg knows he shouldn’t have said it. Oh, god. Oh shit. What has he done?
“What?” Tom asks quietly.
“I’m… I’m kidding.”
“You think I want to fuck you, Greg?”
Greg freezes. Somehow, it’s much worse coming out of Tom.
“I was joking,” he insists.
Tom shakes his head. “You weren’t joking. You really think I want to fuck you.”
No. Greg really doesn’t. Or… well, the thought had crossed his mind. That Tom might have wanted him. But then, Tom seemed so in love with Shiv. So ruined by losing her. So Greg figured maybe not.
The room falls silent. Greg stands by the chair, his hand slowly, carefully smoothing out the fabric from the front of his jacket. He can’t take his eyes off Tom.
And Tom is still standing by the door. Staring back.
“Can we just go to dinner?” Greg asks after a while.
Tom shakes his head. “No,” he answers. “No, Greg. We can’t.”
“I’m hungry.”
Tom doesn’t respond to this.
“Are you mad at me now?” Greg asks.
Tom watches him for a moment. Then he removes his jacket and walks into Greg’s kitchen. Okay, then, Greg thinks. I guess we’re dining in.
“It was a joke,” Greg tries again, joining Tom. “I’m bad at jokes. Ask anybody.”
“Should I ask Annie?” Tom says, pulling a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet.
Greg smiles a little, betraying himself.
“Is that funny, Greg?” Tom asks. “Or does the mention of her name just bring a smile to your lips?”
Tom asks it without a hint of glee. He asks it without any kind of mirth. It almost sounds like contempt, in fact.
“Maybe it’s the second thing,” Greg shrugs, taunting him.
Tom pours the liquid into a glass. His eyes flit up from it briefly to look at Greg, then back down. He finishes pouring.
"So you have a crush again, do you?” he asks.
Tom remembers the last time Tom asked this. He remembers that being the last time he thought Tom might be…
Well, it doesn’t matter what he thought back then. Like a lot of things, that proved to be just another dream dashed.
“Maybe I think she could be good for me,” Greg says. Because this, at least, is true.
“Oh? Good for you?” Tom takes a sip from his drink. “You think so?”
“Don’t you have a car waiting downstairs?”
“He’ll keep.”
Greg knows they’ll be here a while.
“Tell me more about your inappropriate crush, Greg.”
“It’s not… I don’t know. I just think she’s nice.”
“Have you always been into women your mother’s age?”
“Dude, she’s younger than my mom for sure.”
“Dr. Freud tried to warn us.”
“She’s younger than you.”
“Yes,” Tom says, his voice firm, louder. “You’ve mentioned that.”
Greg feels a shift now somehow. He hates when this happens, the way it’s happened so many times. He hates that he knows something has changed, but he doesn’t know what, and he doesn’t know how. Which means it’s completely out of his control. And he doesn’t want anything else to be out of his control.
“Don’t you think she’s pretty?” Greg asks.
Tom takes another sip. Greg’s sure he knows that it’s all taunting. It’s all games. It’s all pushing to see which side cracks first.
“Oh, she’s gorgeous, Greg. Would you like to discuss that?”
Greg sighs and finally allows himself to remove his jacket. He tosses it back out onto the chair, then enters the kitchen fully again, crossing his arms in front of him.
“So are you going to fuck her?” Tom asks.
Inside, Greg feels sick at the idea. And, well… he supposes that settles that.
“Maybe,” he says.
Tom watches him, his eyes shifting up and down Greg’s body. “No you’re not,” he says finally, laughing.
“I could,” Greg shrugs. “I think I could. I think she likes me.”
“She thinks you’re fun. Women always think younger men are fun. She probably has fantasies of training you to be her good little boy who knows how to fuck mommy.”
“Dude, can you stop saying that?”
Tom laughs a little. “Just a joke, Greg.”
“Well, it’s not funny.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not like that.”
Tom smiles again, finishing off his drink. He promptly refills it. “Would you like some?” he asks Greg.
“No, thank you.”
It’s funny, Greg thinks. Because here Tom is in Greg’s home, using Greg’s drinks, offering to share them with Greg when he knows Greg will decline. Because when Greg bought that bourbon, he’d bought it for Tom. He bought it knowing that if he had it, he could offer it to Tom, and Tom would say yes, and there’d be a reason for him to stay a little longer, to talk a little more.
Tom pours and places the bottle back in its place. He lifts the glass to his lips, but he doesn’t drink any.
Greg is watching him. Looking at him in a way he usually doesn’t.
“You won’t fuck her,” Tom says, “Because you can’t, can you?”
Greg swallows hard. “No,” he admits. “I can’t. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
Tom shakes his head. “Jesus, Greg, I’m not talking about ethics. I’m talking about you.”
Greg’s brows lift higher.
“You can’t fuck her for the same reason you couldn’t fuck that princess. Or that ugly PR girl.”
“You said she was a goddess.”
“Yeah, well, I was high.”
Greg wants to laugh. But he knows it isn’t funny, the point Tom’s making.
“And how do you know I didn’t fuck them?” Greg asks.
Tom cocks his head to the side. “Please.”
“What?”
Tom licks his lips, then places the glass down on the counter. “I know your little secret, Greg,” he says.
“My… my secret?”
Tom just stares at him. And Greg understands.
“So… so you know?”
Tom nods.
“And… what does that mean for me? You’re going to tell people?”
“Oh, be serious, Greg. I wouldn’t tell anyone. It’s our little secret.”
Greg feels breathless. He trusts Tom, of course. He’s pretty sure he trusts him.
Tom returns to his drink. Greg leans his weight against the counter, watching.
“We should go to dinner,” Greg says quietly.
“Why don’t we do dinner after?” Tom says.
“After… what?”
Tom rounds the counter, glass in hand. He’s close to Greg now, and he takes another sip.
“You’re sure you don’t want any?” Tom asks, lifting the glass to Greg’s lips.
Greg’s throat feels parched, his mouth dry. He shakes his head.
“Alright, then.” Tom sets the glass down. And then he’s even closer, his body pressed close to Greg, Greg’s backside against the counter. Tom’s hands reach down between their bodies, and he feels them working at his belt.
He’s frozen.
“Where would you like to eat tonight, Greg?”
Greg can’t find thoughts, much less words. Because Tom smells like Bourbon and cologne, like the closest thing he's ever had to home, like years and years of promises Greg had made to himself, assuming - hoping, in some ways – that they would never come true.
And yet here they all were.
“I…” he starts to say, then stops to swallow, to find his breath. “Anywhere.”
“Don’t say that, Greg,” Tom tells him, opening his belt. “Tell me exactly where you’d like to eat.”
Greg’s breathing picks up as he feels fingers playing around the button, as he feels those fingers dangerously close to his skin.
“What are you doing, Tom?”
Tom brings his lips close to Greg’s, but he passes over them. Instead, they graze along his jaw, making their way up to his ear.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispers.
Greg closes his eyes. Tom’s hand has slipped inside his clothes now, fingers wrapped around him. He’s immediately, embarrassingly hard at Tom’s touch.
“Italian,” Greg answers.
“No, no,” Tom says, his voice almost stern in nature. “Be specific, Greg. Tell me what you want.”
Greg feels the air against his skin as his sensitive prick is pulled from his pants. And Tom is stroking him softly, almost torturously so.
“Um… I… I think maybe…” But he gasps as Tom’s hand moves lower, cups his balls, as fingers slide all the way up again.
“Go on, Greg. Tell me.”
Greg moves his head, his lips searching for Tom’s. But Tom denies him, pulling back.
“Not until you tell me what you want,” he says.
“I want… I don’t know… pasta?”
Tom laughs a little, breathy and soundless. He coaxes Greg harder. “Oh, you’re funny. I can see why she likes you.”
“Please don’t mention her now.”
“Why, Greg? Because you can’t get hard for her like you can for me?”
“Fuck… Tom, I’m…”
“You’re gonna come right now, aren’t you?” Tom asks, his hand moving faster. “I haven’t been touching you two minutes, and you’re gonna blow your fucking load for me. That it?”
“Tom, fuck…”
Greg’s body tenses, fingers digging into the flesh of Tom’s forearms. He’s trying not to, but it doesn’t matter where his mind goes, doesn’t matter what he tries to use to deflect from this reality. He can’t help himself. Because every time he’s imagined Tom touching him, it never felt like this feels. It’s warm and it’s strange and it’s… well, it’s even kind of uncomfortable. But it’s Tom. Real Tom. Not imaginary Tom.
He comes, his body trembling against Tom’s body, his face buried against Tom’s shoulder. And it’s all over too quickly. He’s ashamed of himself.
And then Tom is kissing his cheek. Greg feels it against his skin, and it feels like a miracle. Tom is kissing his cheek, then his jaw, and Greg turns his head so that Tom is kissing his chin now. Greg wraps his arms around Tom, and Tom kisses his lips, and Greg can feel Tom wiping his damp hand on the back of Greg’s shirt. He laughs a little, laughs right into the kiss, but it’s not so funny that he stops kissing him. Nothing is that funny.
“What about you?” Greg whispers between kisses. Because he can feel that Tom’s hard, too. And he’d do anything for Tom. He wants to.
“I can take care of myself,” Tom breathes against his lips.
“You don’t want my help?”
“What I want,” Tom tells him, then kisses him again, “is for you to pick a fucking restaurant so we can eat.”
“Really?”
“Well, maybe if you’d been able to control yourself, we could have made a whole night of it.”
Greg buries his face in Tom’s neck.
“Now,” Tom says. “Go change your clothes into something that isn’t covered in jizz. And then maybe after we eat, you’ll have your strength back, and we can do something about it then.”
Greg kisses Tom’s neck. He knows he’ll probably never shake the story of the first time Tom touched him. Tom will probably taunt him about it forever. But at least in a couple of hours, he’ll have a chance to make up for it.
And if not tonight, he knows he’ll likely have all the time in the world after.