Office Dynamics: M/M Workplace Straight to Gay First Time Romance (2 page)

Jonas grabbed it from the desk with a forced smile. “Right,” he said. “Thanks.”

“And oh, thank you for the suggestion,” Hall continued, making Jonas freeze up for a second. “The allergy cream. It worked,” he said.

Jonas kept his back facing Hall, hand outstretched in mid-air, aimed for the door. “Sure,” he said. “
Sir
,” he added, just in case he was reprimanded.

Then he left as calmly as he could, picking up his pace as soon as Hall’s office was out of sight; then he started sprinting to the men’s room, and eyeing the twill tie as if it had suddenly grown fangs and was about to attack him, tossed it in the sink.

---

Jonas asked Giselle all she knew about the bastard over lunch; it only seemed practical. Giselle knew everything there was to know about everyone including the elusive security guard on the night shift nobody has ever seen.

“Why are you so pissed at him?” she laughed, waving a plastic fork in his face as she ate her chickpea salad. “He may be a little stern but he’s actually a very generous guy; very few people know that.”

“Very few people including you?” said Jonas, frowning down at his hotdog.

“Well,” Giselle said. “I happen to work in Accounting.” She tapped her cheek with a finger. “He can be a bit of a slave driver, I’ll admit, but he makes up for it with the fat Christmas bonus.”

“What, so he owns the company?”

Giselle nodded. “Forty percent of it. You don’t know?”

“He looks like he should be in diapers.”

Giselle shot him a look. “Okay, fine,” Jonas conceded, “All I’m saying is, he looks kind of young to have that much power over all of us.”

“It’s his grandfather’s company,” Giselle explained, sounding amused. “Part of it belongs to him. The other sixty percent belongs to his dad.”

“Wow,” Jonas said.

“Yeah, wow,” Giselle agreed. “Did he give you a hard time earlier?”

Jonas thought about Hall’s neck, and his fingers, and his minty clean smell. Then he thought about the tie which had nearly choked him when he tried putting it on. He shrugged. “Not really,” he lied. “He just seemed liked kind of an ass.”

“Well,” Giselle said, holding up her hands and turning to face him. “It’s his thing, you know? He does this with all of his secretaries.”

“
All?
” said Jonas. “Just how many has he had?”

“He’s a nice guy,” Giselle insisted, slapping him on the arm chidingly. “It’s an initiation rite. He wants to make sure you’re cut out for the job.”

“Why was I not briefed for this?” Jonas said, gaping at her. “And what does that mean: 
he wants to make sure
? What is he expecting me to be able to withstand? Excruciating physical torture?”

Giselle tilted her head. “Your brother didn’t tell you?”

“He tells me nothing,” Jonas said. They were going to have words later, Jonas thought. Words.

Giselle’s pleased smile did not help the situation any. “You’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I think he’ll like you. I mean, everyone likes you, Jonas.”

Everyone, it seemed, except Hall.

Giselle eyed Jonas’ tie and made a thoughtful face. “Nice tie by the way,” she said, rubbing the fabric between her fingers.

Jonas grimaced. “Thanks,” he said and tugged at it self-consciously.

---

He had to return the tie eventually and he did, ten minutes after he clocked out, waiting like an impatient dog outside Hall’s office and pacing the floor until he was sure he’d worn a rut in the carpet. He was sweating profusely. This was not good.

Jonas rolled his eyes at himself and decided to just get it over with. He knocked twice, waited for a beat, and was rewarded by the sudden heave of the door pushing open.

“Jonas,” Hall said. He looked ready to leave, clutching his phone in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other.

“Mr. Hall,” said Jonas. “I just came to return your tie; thank you.”

Hall nodded, glancing at Jonas’ hand with a light sniff. “You can keep it if you like.”

“I’d really rather not,” Jonas muttered, rolling his eyes.

“What was that?” said Hall.

Before Jonas could respond, Hall turned his wrist over to check the time. His watched glinted as it caught the light. Probably cost the GNP of a small nation, Jonas thought.

“I need to be at the Hyatt in twenty minutes. Walk with me.” Hall made a beckoning gesture, and like the idiot that he was, Jonas scrambled after him, holding the elevator door open before it shuddered shut in front of them.

Ensconced in an enclosed space with the one person he’d developed a strange and immense sudden dislike for, Jonas began sweating again.

“Were you on your way home?” Hall asked, texting furiously before pocketing his phone.

Jonas shrugged. “Yeah, kind of. It’s five thirty, and my brother’s expecting me for dinner at around seven, so. 
Sir
.”

“Oh, 
your brother
. How’s he doing these days?”

“He’s…well,” said Jonas. Words, Jonas reminded himself; they were going to have a talk.

“That’s good to hear,” Hall said, pressing his lips together. Jonas stared at his shoes and felt Hall’s unblinking stare penetrate the side of his face.

“Sir,” interjected Jonas after a long bout of eerie silence. “I really appreciate the tie but I think you should have it.”

He was waved into silence. “You should call me Tris.”

“What,” said Jonas. “
Tris?
”

“We’re off work now. Just call me Tris. We’re practically the same age, anyway, aren’t we?” 
Tris
 shrugged, as if he didn’t have a seven figure net worth to his name.

Jonas blinked at him, dumbstruck. Was this part of the initiation rite Giselle had mentioned earlier, he wondered. Finally, the elevator doors opened, saving Jonas from potential embarrassment and mockery.

“After you,” Tris said, extending his arm.

Jonas gritted his teeth and tried his best to smile. “No, no,” he said, “After you, 
Tris.
”

Uttering the name alone felt like swallowing sawdust and nails.

Jonas tried to get used to it.

---

Dinner with Luke and his family went well.

That was to be expected; Luke’s wife, Margaret, was a terrific cook and she never, as a rule, talked about work over dinner. It was too stressful, she claimed, so she talked about other things instead that put a lesser strain on your mental faculties, like the kids, for example, or menial gossip, the weather, gardening.

She always put leftover food in Tupperware that she made Jonas bring home, afterwards. It wasn’t after the kids were put to bed that Jonas grabbed Luke by the arm and hauled him to the kitchen.

“
Dude
,” he hissed. “I thought you said this job was a career opportunity!”

Luke shrugged his arm off and finished his beer. “
It is
! What are you complaining about?”

“My boss came back from vacation with weird allergies,” Jonas said. “Which are probably sexual in nature. And he lent me his tie!”

“Hall’s a good guy,” Luke snorted. “You have nothing to worry about. 
Which tie?
”

Jonas rolled his eyes. “A good guy? Are you sure? He’s…” He threw his arms up in exasperation; there wasn’t even a word for what Hall was.
Jesus
. “Doesn’t that seem a little weird to you? 
He lent me his tie
.”

“Jonas,” said Luke, “Jonas, seriously. You’re overreacting. He’s probably just sick of seeing your skinny ties. They make you look like you’re starring in a porno, for god’s sake.”

“You said they looked nice!” Jonas accused.

“Well, I already got you to shave,” Luke said, shrugging. “And you were feeling so good about yourself, I didn’t want to have to ‘rain on your parade’ so to speak.”

“Oh my god,” Jonas muttered, scrubbing a hand through his face.

“Here,” Luke said, shoving an armful of Tupperware at him. “Marge wants you to have some meatloaf. Eat it before the end of the week; it’ll go bad after then.”

Jonas sighed. “She makes a good meatloaf,” he agreed, tucking a Tupperware under his arm.

Luke waggled a finger in his face. “Don’t let my wife’s cooking go to waste now,” he smiled.

Jonas didn’t smile back. “I’ll try not to,” he said.

---

“
Jonas
,” said Giselle nicely with a put-upon sigh the next day. “You need more friends.” She squinted at her monitor and pushed her glasses up her nose.

“Terry from IT owes me money; I’m not talking to him until he pays me back,” Jonas told her. He shredded a packet of sugar and dunked its contents into his coffee, stirring it before taking a perfunctory sip. Too hot; he left it alone to cool. “He said to call him Tris. 
Tris
. He said to call him 
Tris
. What was that all about?”

Giselle clacked away at her computer. “He was probably just being nice; maybe it means he likes you.”

“Maybe,” said Jonas, though an hour later that didn’t seem to be the case.

Tris called him into his office and waved a stack of folders in his face. “Photocopy these,” he said, dropping back into his seat and crossing his ankles on his desk. He wore brown argyle socks and started texting as soon Jonas collected the stack, laughing at some private joke and shaking his head. “I need twenty-five copies before...” he checked his watch. “Ten-thirty.”

“That’s in ten minutes,” Jonas said.

There were ten folders with at least twenty pages in them and the rickety copier only printed fifty pages per minute. The walk to the copying room alone already took five minutes and even if Jonas sprinted it would be damn near impossible to make it in time unless he was suddenly gifted with superhuman speed.

“Make it happen,” Tris said, not even bothering to look at him.

Jonas, already feeling harassed so early in the morning, turned on his heel and went. Post haste.

---

After that, Tris sent him on a barrage of unending coffee runs. Either his coffee needed a little more syrup or he’d decided, while Jonas was weaving through cabs and trying not to get run over, that he wanted a soy latte after all with one of those cheery little leaves on the surface.

Jonas was tempted for a moment to spit in his drink but he wasn’t that petty and he knew he’d only feel bad afterwards.

The only thing that kept him from wanting to tear out his hair was the thought of those crisp dollar bills sliding out of the ATM machine come payday. He was doing it for the money.

Money couldn’t buy you happiness, but it paid the rent and put food in your belly, Jonas thought. And sometimes you had to do sordid things for it like take off your clothes or sell your liver, but it all worked out in the end. You had a roof over your head and so on.

By five in the afternoon, Jonas was too tired to even complain to Giselle, who kept making sympathetic faces at him whenever he saw her in the hall by the potted plant.

He was on his way out, hefting his satchel on one shoulder and turning off his monitor when he saw Tris standing outside in the otherwise empty hall, texting, mouth furrowed, tapping his phone with nimble fingers.

For someone who did nothing but order people around all day and sat in soft comfortable chairs, Tris looked exhausted, brows knit in concentration, a frown hanging off his face.

Jonas was about to wait until Tris was gone but just as he was about to duck under the desk and hide, Tris spotted him and waved him over with a cordial nod.

What a strange guy, Jonas thought. Just over an hour ago, Tris was spitting coffee into the bin, demanding Jonas take his drink back to the shop for the sixth time.

Jonas ambled over with as much indifference as he could muster.

They walked to the elevator together in a silence that expressed unrequited distrust and Jonas was seized by the sudden realization that Tris could’ve been waiting for him all this time, like a predator, like a snake, skulking in the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It was a terrifying thought.

“So,” Tris said, shoving his hands into his pockets; he didn’t have a briefcase today. “Plans for the night 
Jonas
?”

Wow, okay, Jonas thought. Back off, man. Half of his face twitched as he thought about what to say without coming off hostile. He remembered it was a Friday night which meant he had to sound cool and pimping. Pimping?

“I’m going out drinking with my friends,” he said, blinking at himself. Obviously, he hadn’t thought that one through.

“Oh, really?” said Tris, eyes lighting up. Jonas fervently hoped he wasn’t going to invite himself because not only would that be incredibly awkward to his nonexistent friends, it’d also be incredibly rude.

“I’m going out for drinks myself,” confided Tris with a smile that looked odd on his normally placid face. “Maybe I could give you a ride. Where did you say you were going?”