Office Dynamics: M/M Workplace Straight to Gay First Time Romance
Read Office Dynamics: M/M Workplace Straight to Gay First Time Romance Online
Authors: Jerry Cole
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Warning - This book is suitable for adults (18+) only. It contains adult language & sexually explicit content. Do not read if you are offended by such content or if you are under the age of 18.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Images licensed through Dollar Photo Club.
Digital Edition v1.01 (2016.01.03)
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Luke got him the job.
Luke has always gotten him jobs. Once, five summers ago, when Jonas had to pay for a trip to Greece in his senior year, Luke referred him to a guy named Pedro who painted houses for a living.
A squat little man with beady dark eyes, Pedro subjected Jonas to six weeks of intensive verbal abuse on top of a fifteen minute lunch break; he kept Jonas on a straight eight-hour work schedule and often, whenever Jonas dripped paint on the floor, hit him on the shoulder with the handle of his paintbrush and called him
cabrón
.
Every day before going to work, Jonas always had it in his mind to quit, but the pay was too good to pass up so he stuck around until he was fired after he took his shirt off and wrapped it around his face because he couldn’t stand the smell.
With Luke, regardless of the calamitous working conditions involved, you could always guarantee that the jobs he offered you would pay very well. Maybe it wouldn’t cover the therapy you required afterwards, but it was enough to sustain you for a couple of weeks until you found another job, and it rid you of any guilt or self-loathing you might otherwise have felt when your contract was over.
Jonas jumped at the chance this time because other than being unemployed, it wasn’t every day he got to be an administrative assistant.
It was only a temp job but money was money; he had to pay the rent. And Jonas knew he couldn’t subsist entirely on junk food and beer if he planned to live past twenty-five. He saw this opportunity as his foray into adulthood, his first real job in the adult world after brief stints in the food-processing industry and a stilted career as a radio announcer.
So he shaved, got rid of most of what Luke often called his “jungle hair”, and bought a couple of suits on Luke’s company credit card.
What he saw in the bathroom mirror in the aftermath made him pause and tilt his head to the side, assessing his newly shaven appearance with an appreciative eye. Luke wasn’t kidding. Shaving worked wonders and bolstered your morale.
Jonas wasn’t a vain person but he had to admit: he looked pretty damn good in a suit.
---
The job seemed easy at first.
All Jonas had to do was transfer calls, schedule appointments, fax documents, sort out junk mail, type memos and make sure all the typographical errors were combed out before lunch, but the great thing was he didn’t have to do everything on the same day and he had a forty minute lunch that allowed him to flirt with Giselle from Accounting when he felt like it.
Not that he was interested, of course. Giselle was the sort of woman who would have been frightening in her late teens; in her early thirties, she made Jonas’ testicles feel as if they were liable to crawl back up inside his body at any time. Still, she was certainly happy enough to flirt, and Jonas had to get his practice somewhere now that he didn’t have so much time to spare getting day drunk in parks.
The whole having-a-job thing, in fact, was okay. After a week or two, Jonas realized they’d been easing him in somewhat. The duties weren’t always quite as straightforward. As easy as he’d initially believed, sure, but Jonas thought he could do it for a couple of months without wanting to put his head in the copier machine repeatedly.
He was lulled into a false sense of security the first week he was welcomed into the sparkling marble-floored halls of H & Co, a management consulting firm occupying the tenth and eleventh floors of West Fordham Tower on Brown Street.
He made friends easily and fell into the daily grind of corporate life, trudging groggily into the shower at seven in the morning where he gargled and shaved with one eye open, and then taking the train downtown forty minutes later, joining the horde of cynical briefcase-touting grunts all grumbling about another shitty day at the workplace and plans to quit before the end of the month.
It was, in a weird way, kind of nice.
Until his boss returned from his trip to Sao Paulo, anyway.
---
Luke, who always gave you advice whether you wanted it or not, said there were only two surefire ways that Jonas could fuck this up:
1) If he engaged in romantic/sexual relations with someone from the office and 2) If he stole, borrowed, or used office supplies for any activity that was completely non-work related.
“So try to behave,” he said on Jonas’ first day before giving him a stern look to punctuate his point.
That advice pretty much went out the window as soon as Jonas stepped into the elevator on his second week of work, armed with a bagel he’d stolen off the pastry trolley and a cup of steaming coffee.
The elevator was empty save for another guy he hadn’t seen before. He was slender, and very tall, with soft, slightly ginger hair – what Jonas’ mother would have called
strawberry blond –
and an odd splotchy tan that looked like it wasn’t his usual shtick. He had on brown leather shoes and a smart bespoke suit which meant he was several rungs higher up on the corporate ladder than Jonas. He kept scratching his neck insistently, loosening his collar and rubbing his jaw.
Jonas watched him for a minute before clearing his throat. “Allergies?” he said.
The guy turned to him and blinked. “I don’t know,” he said; he had a kind gentle voice. Jonas thought it was kind of soothing. “It just started itching this morning on my way to work.”
“Have you taken a good look at it?” Jonas asked.
The guy’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “No,” he said after a moment, tilting his head slightly to the right. “I don’t believe I have.”
Jonas shrugged. “Hayfever cream is your best bet, mate,” he said and eyed the redness spreading across the guy’s throat. He winced as he peered into the stiff collar. Definitely allergies. “Does it feel rough?”
He got a shrug in response. “Hayfever cream,” Jonas repeated, nodding knowingly. “Trust me.”
The guy lowered his hand from his neck. “Right,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Jonas stepped out on his floor and turned in time to see the guy’s lips twitch slowly into a tiny smile. Then the chrome doors hissed shut and the moment was broken.
Sipping his coffee, Jonas walked to his cubicle with a spring in his step.
Just another day at work, he thought, biting into his bagel. It needed more cream cheese.
---
He was called that morning into the office of one of the firm’s senior partners whose name Jonas might’ve heard casually thrown around in the lounge on account of how awfully familiar it sounded.
Tristan Hall
. It sounded like an expensive brand of socks.
The word around the office was that Hall was a difficult man to please and had once fired a guy who got him a decaf instead of the half-caf he had asked for. He’d just got back from a six-day vacation in Brazil where his spending, it was said, had most likely contributed significantly to the country’s GDP.
The guy was made of money, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, well-versed in five languages including Latin. At least according to Giselle.
Jonas resented him already; nobody was that perfect and didn’t have anything to hide. It just wasn’t possible.
Carol led him to Hall’s office, squeezing his arm and winking. Her hips swayed hypnotically. “You’ll be reporting to him now,” she said.
With a red-taloned finger, Carol pointed to the end of the hall with all the gloom one might reserve for delivering a death sentence. “Mr. Hall’s quite the powerhouse; try not to let yourself be intimidated, Jonas.” Then she left Jonas to fend for himself like a deer caught in headlights, high heels clicking away.
Jonas gulped. He smoothed the front of his shirt and pushed back his hair, suddenly gripped with paranoia that something of the jungle element had returned to sabotage his career. The glass door squeaked under his palm when he pushed it open; he held his breath.
Seated behind the immense cherry wood desk, to Jonas’ complete astonishment, was the guy from this morning, the first two buttons of his dress shirt undone, red silk tie in a heap next to his coffee mug. And he was rubbing allergy cream all over his neck, tipping his head back as he daubed the stuff under his chin.
He blinked when Jonas walked in.
“Allergy cream,” said Jonas, feeling awkward.
“Yes,” said the guy --
Hall
-- gaping. “You’re the new --”
“--administrative assistant--”
“--secretary?”
Jonas paused. He hated euphemisms. “Yes,” he said. “
Sir.
Yes, sir.”
Hall gestured to one of the leather seats. He cocked his head to one side, lifting his chin a little. “Sit.”
Jonas sat. He watched as Hall wiped his hand on a blue silk handkerchief to his right and then peered into a dossier in his lap. Tilting his seat back, Hall began flipping through the pages, the tip of a pen casually pressed to the corner of his mouth, and Jonas watched, oddly transfixed, as his tongue curled around the ivory lid.
It was a little distracting to see him with his shirt loose at the throat too, two buttons undone, the slender curve of his neck exposed like in the old days when women showed a bit of ankle and men went completely riotous afterwards.
Jonas felt a little bit like that, the riotous man sputtering in a mixture of outrage and a faint twinge of inexplicable lust. He wanted to kill himself.
“It says here you have no corporate experience prior to this one?” Hall said after a moment.
Jonas jerked up from his seat in surprise. “It says that?”
“No, I just came to that conclusion after reading your file,” said Hall. He sipped his coffee.
Jonas wished he could fling himself out the window.
There was a pregnant pause during which Jonas swore he could hear his heart hammering in his chest. Behind Hall’s leather seat was a sweeping view of the business district, the sky so immensely blue that Jonas suddenly understood why people often killed for an office like this one.
It was relaxing in its own way, and gave you a sense of perspective: everyone else was a worthless peon if you had a view like this.
Hall tossed the dossier aside, the sudden movement making Jonas jump in surprise.
“All right, Jonas,” he said, folding his hands together, “Everything seems to be in order. You’re not a wanted felon and your background checks out. You will be working for me until my secretary returns in January. I called you here so I could meet you, and now that we’ve met…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together, eyeing Jonas from head to foot. “Is that a skinny tie?”
Jonas touched his tie self-consciously. He was told at the store that it was stylish; he bought three ties for sixty dollars, consequently, and had been rather proud of himself for his initiative. They were on sale. Jonas liked bargains.
Hall, however, did not look like he appreciated them. In fact, frown lines began appearing around his mouth and eyes. If there were an award giving body for people who could frown the hardest, he would’ve won gold, silver, and bronze.
“Don’t wear a skinny tie to work,” Hall said with a pained sigh. “You look like you’re choking. The width of the tie
has to match
the width of your suit jacket’s lapels. It’s all about proportion. Look at you, you look ridiculous. Come here.”
Jonas blinked at him. “Come here,” Hall repeated with urgency, raising both his eyebrows. His mouth was small and set, a little petulant, and delicately pink like rose petals. Jonas didn’t know when he’d suddenly started waxing lyrical in his mind about other guys’ mouths; he thought maybe something about Hall had unhinged him.
Jonas went around the desk and stood awkwardly in front of him, leaping back a step when Hall, without warning, slithered up from his seat. And then his fined-boned fingers were at Jonas’ throat, undoing the knot of his tie and tugging it free from his collar.
Hall stood so close Jonas could almost breathe the fresh coffee smell of his breath; his skin smelled a little like mint candy. Maybe that was what rich people smelled like, Jonas thought.
He swallowed, wondering vaguely if this counted as office harassment. Even if it were, he didn’t think he’d mind. At all.
With a gentle pull, Hall undid Jonas’ tie, dropping it with a flourish on his desk. Then he reached inside one of his cavernous drawers and pulled out a turquoise twill tie of his own which he held up to Jonas’ face with a slightly raised eyebrow.
“I assume you know what to do with this,” he said as if speaking to a very slow child or an idiot.
Jonas opened his mouth then closed it quickly after realizing he had nothing to say. He snagged the tie in a fist, flushing in embarrassment and shame and annoyance.
Hall waved him away in dismissal and Jonas was tempted for a minute to shake him violently by the shoulders or gag him with the stupid turquoise tie. It was what he hated about these types of people, the overblown sense of self and entitlement. He ought to be put in his place, Jonas thought. Someone should teach him a lesson.
“Jonas,” Hall called out just when Jonas was about to reach for the door handle. “You left your tie.”