Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Could you tell us, Sebastian, why you think you’d excel in this position? What strengths you feel are your biggest to bring to the table?”

No. No he fucking well couldn’t, to be honest. He had no strengths to bring to this job. He absolutely wasn’t looking for a way to ‘excel in this position’ and he didn’t have a fucking clue what to say to that.

This was all wrong. All of it. He should not be sitting in an office facing three men in suits across from him. Two of them had clipboards, and they were flanking the man who had just spoken.

He didn’t have a clipboard. He was sitting with his knees too far apart and his forearms resting on them. He had leaned in when he asked that question, like he was incredibly invested in whatever Sebastian had to say.

Sebastian shifted ever so slightly, uncomfortable in the pants he had on and the button-down shirt that was tucked into them, and was very much having trouble trying to think of anything to say.

One of the men with a clipboard coughed softly and started writing something down, which instantly made Sebastian panic, thinking he was probably recording that he was taking forever to answer. That he was perhaps obstinate or difficult or unprepared…

“I’m sorry.” Sebastian said, laughing softly and fairly evenly, though none of these men would know that he had every reason not to be perfectly at ease. “I’m a perfectionist, which I suppose is a strength I could bring to this job, and is evidenced by the fact that I’m sitting here, thinking so hard about how to answer you that I’m taking far too long.”

He tried for an easy smile, crossing his legs as he looked at the men and shook his head. “I always tend to think before I react, and perhaps in some ways that’s a fault and a weakness. But I feel that in this position, and in IT in general, it would be a strength to think before acting. To process the whole of an issue and a task before doing anything. Often IT issues need you to think about what comes next rather than just reacting and doing the first thing you think of.”

The man without a clipboard, Sebastian was pretty sure his name was Shawn, nodded slowly and with a solemn expression that was clearly fake.

But then, Shawn wasn’t supposed to be conducting this interview. The IT Manager was supposed to be doing it, but he’d been called away by a family emergency and now his manager, Shawn, was taking over the interviews and expected to hire someone that day.

Shawn, judging by his intense manspreading and fake serious expression, was an ass. But that wasn’t anything new to Sebastian. Most of the people he’d spoken to in interviews were asses. Shawn just made it very obvious.

“That’s all very true. But as this is a position that’s less in the line of actual IT work, maybe you could tell us more about how you think you’d use those strengths as Assistant to the IT Manager?”

Sebastian blinked a couple of times, having to work hard not to furrow his brow and look confused because…

Because what?

Assistant to the IT Manager?

He was sure this job was for Assistant IT Manager. He never would have come to a fucking interview that was for an assistant to position. Having to interview for IT jobs at all was a personal step down and away from what he wanted to be doing… He would never have wasted his time applying for this job if he’d realized.

Sebastian took in a breath and opened his mouth, ready to apologize for wasting their time… But then he thought about his dwindling bank account.

About rent due in two weeks.

About how he’d switched to taking the bus instead of driving six fucking months ago just to save on gas money.

And about how very few interviews he’d been called for in relation to the excessive number of applications he’d put in…

Fuck. Fuck.

At this point, a job was a job. He was insanely close to having to apply for retail work just to get by, and that was even more horrifying than working as an assistant to the IT manager.  For him, anyway. Retail was amazing for plenty of people, but he didn’t think he’d fare well in that sort of position.

He closed his mouth again. And then he smiled.

He could keep looking, keep going on interviews, if he got this position. It would be shitty, and it wasn’t at all what he wanted, but it was better than nothing.

“I feel that having the same approach would be an asset. Thinking ahead for the manager of an incredibly busy department so he doesn’t have to. Always trying to be a step or two ahead of where things are so that I can sort out the menial problems before they even have to cross his desk.”

Bullshit. Utter and complete bullshit. Sebastian was talking out of his ass, drawing as much as he could from the limited corporate experience he had, and hoping like fuck that he was gauging it right.

He may have gone too far. He may have crossed into ‘too keen’ territory and come across completely fake (which he was)… But all three men were smiling. The two with clipboards were writing vigorously, and Shawn’s knees had pushed out even wider. His hands tented between them as he nodded very seriously and looked at Sebastian with deep interest.

“That’s exactly what he’s looking for. He has enough to deal with during his day. He needs someone who can be a filter, a buffer, and take care of the small issues that he doesn’t need to waste his time on.”

Shawn looked at the two men next to him who nodded and made agreeable noises as well, then he picked up Sebastian’s resume to look over again.

“You don’t have a background in IT, exactly, but you’re an extremely high level programmer… That would translate well, and means you’re just as computer savvy as the rest of us, just in a different way. Which may turn out to be an asset.”

Shawn looked over the top of Sebastian’s resume and smiled at him. “We have several more interviews to conduct today, so we’ll end here. But thank you for coming in, Sebastian.”

Shawn got to his feet, so Sebastian did as well, blinking a polite smile onto his face as he let Shawn walk just ahead of him and open the door.

“Thank you for your time and the opportunity.” Sebastian said, just as he had at the end of every interview he’d been on in the past nine months of his search.

Shawn smiled at him and nodded, then dropped his head down a bit to speak quietly. “No one we’ve met so far has your qualifications. The others we’re interviewing today don’t either. I think we’d be foolish to let you slip through our fingers, so to speak. You should hear from us today.”

That seemed incredibly unprofessional for him to say to a candidate when there were still interviews to be done… But Sebastian smiled all the same, trying to look incredibly pleased at both the prospect of the job and the fact that Shawn was confiding in him as though they knew each other.

“I look forward to it.” Sebastian said, keeping the smile on his face as he nodded to Shawn, then turned away.

The moment his back was to the door and to Shawn, his features dropped back into his normal, rather stony and neutral look. His cheeks hurt from smiling, and he was not looking forward to the prospect of that happening every day.

Which it would. If he was Assistant to the IT Manager. He was going to have to answer phones and deal with people coming to see the Manager for meetings. He was going to have to be polite and respectful and nice.

How could he have missed that ‘to the’ in the job write up? How could he have read the entire job description and not realized?

He knew how it had happened, really. He was so burnt out from job hunting that he wasn’t really taking everything in anymore. Those two small words and whatever the job description said probably blurred together, or he mixed it up with some other job offer that he had looked at, and it all mashed together in his head like a big lump.

He walked out of the building, shouldering the bag he was carrying a little higher as he quickened his steps to catch the bus that had just pulled up to the stop out front.

Once he was on and sitting, he took out his phone and sent a text to Sam, telling him that the interview had gone well and seemed like it might actually pan out.

After that he opened his email and started sorting through until he found the job listing and re-read it, only then properly taking in everything that it said and how absolutely fucking obvious it should have been to him that the position was not at all what he thought it was.

But… Given the situation he was in, beggars couldn’t be choosers. There was a good chance that he would have ended up applying to this out of desperation, anyway. His lack of reading comprehension the first time through likely just sped up the process of his getting there and interviewing.

Almost as though emphasizing the point and his need for employment as soon as fucking possible, someone got on the bus and plunked themselves down in the seat next to Sebastian when there were dozens of open and unoccupied seats everywhere. He hated the bus. He despised the bus. He wanted to use his car again, and if he wanted that, then a job was the way to do it.

Any fucking job.

Later that evening, Sebastian left his apartment to walk to a bar that was nearby. Abigail was busy that evening, but Sam had been more than happy to agree to meet for a couple of drinks. Sebastian technically shouldn’t have been wasting money on booze, but after the day and the interview and everything else, he figured he was sort of entitled to something.

On the way there his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, assuming that it was going to be Sam, and answered it without looking at the caller ID.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hello, is this Sebastian?”

Fuck. Not Sam. That was so stupid of him to do…

“Yes it is?”

“Hi Sebastian, it’s Shawn from Melendy Corp. How are you tonight?”

Sebastian stopped walking abruptly, his chest squeezing when he realized this was the call. The call. For a job he didn’t want, but he would absolutely take if it really was going to be offered to him, and Shawn wasn’t just calling to thank him for coming and tell him they were ‘going in another direction’. Which he had heard way too often already.

“I’m good, thank you. And yourself?”

“Great, just great. Thanks for asking. I’m sorry for calling so late. We needed some time to talk the day and all the candidates through. But, as I suspected, we all feel like you’re the best fit for the position. You have a friendly but no-nonsense sort of attitude, your resume and experience seem to complement the role well, and you have the right sense of what the position entails to be an asset to the manager and his department. So, if you’ll take it and can start on Monday morning, the job is yours.”

Shawn talked fast and without pausing for a break, which meant that Sebastian was just trying to keep up and was actually silent for a few seconds after Shawn finished as his brain caught up to the end.

To the job offer.

This really was the call.

“Yes. Absolutely.” Sebastian said, smiling faintly in spite of himself. “I can be there Monday morning, just tell me what time.”

“Great! I’m so pleased that this has worked out for all of us. I know the IT manager will be pleased with you when you can actually meet. I know it’s strange that he didn’t conduct the interview, but…”

“Emergencies happen.” Sebastian said with a shrug, even though Shawn couldn’t see him. “You all pulled together to get things done, regardless. Speaks volumes about the company ethic.”

What the actual fuck was he talking about? What a load of absolute bullshit.

But Shawn laughed in a pleased sort of way, then cleared his throat. “I’ll be sending you an email with all the information you’ll need. There are some forms to fill out online ahead of Monday, if you wouldn’t mind. Then you’ll come right in to HR on Monday morning, and they’ll get you set up and walk you to the department.”

“Sounds just fine.”

“Wonderful. Thanks for making this so simple, Sebastian. I look forward to running into you at Melendy.”

They both said goodbye and Sebastian ended the call, then stood on the sidewalk looking at nothing while his brain churned in a whirlwind.

He had a job. That was good. That was very good.

But it was as Assistant to the IT Manager. Some guy he didn’t even know and wouldn’t know until at least Monday.

Sebastian eventually stuffed his phone back into his pocket and turned to continue on his way to the bar.

At least now he didn’t need to worry quite so much about spending money on a couple of drinks. When he looked at the job listing on the bus, he also re-read what was being offered for pay, and he certainly wasn’t going to have to worry anymore. He’d have to spend a couple of months just catching up, but after that it was going to be a breeze.

“You look… I dunno… Did they choose someone else for the job?” Sam asked when Sebastian slid down into the chair across from him.

Sebastian shook his head, then thunked his elbows onto the table and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No. I got the job. I start on Monday.”

“But that’s fantastic!!” Sam said, smacking his hands against his own thighs. “What are you all peeved about if you got a job? You’ve been looking for so fucking long!”

“It’s Assistant to the IT Manager.” Sebastian said, then waited for Sam to say something.

When he didn’t, Sebastian raised his head to look at his friend and couldn’t help but snort at Sam’s look of confusion. “Yeah, see, you’re trying to figure out what I’m pissed about, right?”

“Well yeah. Assistant IT Manager sounds like a really good place to start, so…”

“To the. Assistant to the IT Manager. I’m the personal assistant to the IT Manager. I’ll be answering his phone and taking notes in his meetings and Yoba knows what the hell else…”

“Oh. Oh…” Sam sucked in a hard breath once Sebastian made the distinction, then leaned forward on the table. “Why would you apply for something like that?”

“I missed the ‘to the’. Same as you. Figured it out in the middle of the interview, but… A job is a job. And even this is a million times better than working retail.”

“Hey!! I work retail part time, in case you’ve forgotten!”

Sebastian chuckled, then reached over and took both of Sam’s hands, squeezing them warmly. “And with your personality, it suits you perfectly. But imagine me trying to help customers.”

Sam closed one eye, then smirked and squeezed Sebastian’s hands in return. “Yeah, okay, I see what you mean. You’d be fucking terrible at customer service. You’re basically doing the public a favour by not taking a retail job.”

“It sounds nice when you say it like that.” Sebastian said, then sighed and leaned back in his chair. He let go of one of Sam’s hands, but kept the other where it was. “I hate this. But it’s a job…”

“Does it at least pay pretty good?” Sam asked, turning his hand in Sebastian’s to knit their fingers together, squeezing softly.

“I’ll be caught up easily within two months. The pay is excellent, so… There’s no way I’m going to turn it down. It’s just even farther from anything that I wanted to do.”

Sebastian looked up when a server came over and ordered a beer for Sam and a vodka and cola for himself before turning back again. “At least I don’t have to feel guilty about buying drinks tonight.”

“I was going to buy yours.” Sam said with a grin. “But maybe now I won’t since you’re going to be Mr. Corporate Money Bags. When do you start?”

“Monday. I haven’t even met the IT Manager. No idea who the guy is or what he’s like, he couldn’t make it to the interview because of an emergency, so… I’m just walking in totally blind.”

“Fuck.” Sam said, rubbing his thumb against the side of Sebastian’s hand. “Maybe he’ll be really nice?”

“Maybe he’ll be a giant fucking asshole.”

“Oh, definitely continue thinking so positive, Seb. That’ll take you places.”

Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking his head. “I know, I know… I’m Mr. Doom and Gloom. Not Mr. Corporate Money Bags.”

“Perpetually. But I like you anyway.” Sam grinned at him, giving his fingers a squeeze. “So not to change the subject on purpose, but you saying something about an emergency just made me remember… I was on the phone with my mom yesterday and she said Granny Evelyn fell down the stairs a couple days ago.”

“What? Really?” Sebastian glanced up as the server returned with their drinks, offering a small smile before he turned his attention back to Sam. “Is she okay?”

“Miraculously, nothing broken. She’ll be okay, she was just banged up and bruised. Alex went back for a few days and sorted a bunch of stuff out. She was still having to go into the basement to dolaundry,y so he apparently got a new washer and dryer and got someone to install them in the kitchen. And he moved a bunch of stuff from the second floor to the main floor so she doesn’t have any reason to use any of the stairs now.”

“That was nice of him.” Sebastian said a little shortly, raising his glass to take a healthy swallow.

“Yeah, yeah. I know Alex is super low on the list of people you tolerate. But it was good of him to rush back and do stuff to make the house safer for his grandparents.”

“Mm.” Sebastian nodded, but just made a noncommittal noise and didn’t say anything. He also didn’t meet Sam’s eyes as he took another drink from his glass, even though he was well aware he was being stupid.

It was nice that Alex had rushed back to Pelican Town to make sure Granny Evelyn was okay and to make some changes in the house. His personal feelings and history with Alex didn’t in any way change that.

But he was definitely going to avoid saying anything complimentary about him.

“So tell me about the company you’re going to work for?”

Sam had already made his way through his first beer and had ordered a second round for both of them when he roused Sebastian from his thoughts again. So Sebastian happily pushed aside the rather complicated thoughts about Alex and instead told Sam everything he knew about the company and the people he had met so far.

By the time he left the bar and had made his way home again, Sebastian honestly felt a little bit better about everything. About the job and the position he was in and the fact that it really didn’t stop him from continuing to look for something else. He could use this as a way to get back on his feet and give himself time to find something he really wanted to do rather than continue to flounder.

He spent the weekend doing laundry, filling out the forms that Shawn had sent over, getting his hair trimmed, and then doing some work on his car after it had been sitting idle for six months.

It filled the time well enough that he couldn’t dwell on Monday morning and on who his boss was going to be. This mystery guy was who he was going to suddenly be thrust in with and take over whatever it was that personal assistants did.

On Sunday evening he did some googling on what assistant positions like his entailed, and it did absolutely nothing to lower his stress about the whole thing. Mostly because it seemed like the term was used very loosely and could mean many different things. Some assistants and personal assistants just answered phones and took notes in meetings and managed schedules, which is what Sebastian had thought of.

But others talked about running errands and shopping and doing all sorts of far more personal ‘life’ stuff for their employer. Which was not in any way, shape, or form stuff that Sebastian felt capable of, or even like he really wanted to be part of.

He worried his way through the rest of the evening, deciding to remove his nail polish and redo his nails entirely so they looked perfect for his first day- and also because it gave him something to focus on. No one had said anything about dress code, and no one looked at him funny in the interview for his black nails and side cut hair, so he assumed that it was fine to just be himself. Especially as he tended towards being exceptionally neat and tidy with his looks, even if he did blur a few lines here and there. They couldn’t see the things his clothes covered anyway… So the most unprofessional parts of his appearance were well hidden.

He expected to have trouble falling asleep, but he tumbled down into a deep slumber that he wakened from with an abrupt start half an hour before his alarm was set.

Which was just as well, as he seemed to have trouble getting himself going. He showered longer than normal, took longer to do his hair and get dressed. He even dawdled over breakfast to the point that he left the house a few minutes later than he intended despite getting up half an hour earlier.

He took his car, which was the best fucking feeling ever. No buses, no random people sitting next to him. No exhaust fumes flowing in the windows people always opened. Just peace and quiet and his own music and his own thoughts.

He was well aware that the novelty would eventually wear off, and he’d revert back to hating the rest of traffic and cursing every red light he had to stop at. But for the moment he loved everything about that drive from his apartment building to downtown Zuzu where the Melendy Corp building was.

His email from Shawn had instructed him on where to park and that he should go first to the HR Department where he’d fill out the rest of his intake forms and get a keycard for the building.

From there, someone in HR would bring him upstairs and to the IT department, where they’d introduce him to the IT manager and finish the handover.

Then… Well… Then he was sort of in the hands of his new boss. Which he was trying not to think too much about because it was starting to weigh on him more and more that he hadn’t so much as heard the guy’s name. He really had no idea what expectations he’d have of him as an assistant.

He pushed the main doors of the building open, walking through and up to the security and service desk that was halfway into the large foyer. He gave them his name, and one of the security people cheerfully came out from behind the desk and walked him to the east side of the building and down the hall to HR.

Once he was in their offices, he was immediately whisked along into a flurry of activity by a woman named Rachel, who wore far too much perfume, and was so incredibly nice and eager he guessed that she had to be new as well.

“Have you worked here long?” Sebastian asked casually as he filled in his emergency contact information and other details that the company needed.

“Just a couple of months. My first job in HR… How long have you been in IT?” She asked, taking each paper from him as he finished filling them out.

“This is actually my first IT job. And it isn’t really IT, it’s a personal assistant position.” He finished the last space on the last page and handed it over to her with a smile. “Also my first.”

“We’re sort of in this together, then!” Rachel said, smiling back at Sebastian. “Since I’ve only been here a couple of months.”

“I guess we are.” Sebastian said, then took the temporary keycard she was holding out and waited while she assembled all his paperwork into a file folder.

“I’ll take you upstairs now! Your manager should be in the building, and I’ll do your handover and then you can get started properly.”

“Great.” Sebastian said with far more of a smile behind it than he really meant.

But he was going to have to do that a lot… Be cheery and nice and upbeat.

Fucking. Exhausting.

The crush of everyone arriving at the same time to start work had ended, so Sebastian and Rachel had an elevator all to themselves to take them to the twelfth floor. Although Rachel’s perfume level was sort of like a third person. Maybe a fourth as well…

As the lights illuminated one by one up above the elevator door, climbing them ever closer to whatever this job was going to entail, Sebastian’s anxiety rose as well.

“Could you tell me the name of the Manager I’ll be working for?” He asked, turning to Rachel and hoping his face didn’t look as panicked as he was feeling.

“Of course! I forgot you didn’t get to meet him. Let me see…” She rifled through the pages in the folder, reading for a few moments before she found what she was looking for. “The IT department manager is Alex Mullner. I’ve heard he’s incredibly nice…”

Wait…

Wait, what?

The elevator doors opened, and Sebastian stepped out of them on autopilot, following Rachel into the IT department while his heart pounded and he tried to tell himself it was just a fluke. It was just someone with the same name…

It couldn’t possibly be Alex from home… It’s couldn’t. It absolutely fucking could not…

“…Heard he’s been away for a few days because his grandmother took a nasty fall. Sweet of him to rush right home to help out, really…”

Rachel kept talking, but Sebastian had stopped listening.

Because he could see up the hall and into the open door of the office they were heading to.

He could see Alex Mullner, the Alex Mullner, sitting at the desk inside.

He was called away on a family emergency.

Sebastian remembered Shawn saying that. He remembered commenting about it himself. Saying that ‘emergencies happen’.

Mom said Granny Evelyn fell on the stairs a few days ago. She’ll be okay. Alex went back for a few days…

It clicked in his brain, weirdly lining up and snapping together like puzzle pieces. Not that he thought he should have realized that what Sam had told him and the fact that his new boss had been away were connected in any way, because why would they be? In what crazy situation would he have connected those dots?

But now it all aligned.

And Sebastian had maybe about 20 seconds to get himself under control and act like this was not at all a big deal before Alex saw him.

It was a big deal. It was a really fucking enormous deal.

But Sebastian valiantly stomped down on everything he was feeling. He locked it up, he smoothed it out, and he did the very best he could to keep himself calm and composed.

They walked right into Alex’s office with Rachel tapping her knuckles against the frame of the door as they did, but Alex’s head stayed turned to his computer screen as he typed rapidly.

“Be just one second.” Alex said, his mouth curving into an easy and familiar smile. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to the interview, but I have total faith that Shawn and my team picked well. I feel like they probably know more about what I need in an assistant than I do. I haven’t even reviewed the file or anything, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know your name. I wouldn’t have left at a time like this if it hadn’t been an emergency…”

“It’s fine.” Sebastian said, surprising himself with how level and even his voice was. “How is Granny Evelyn doing?”

It was a jerk move to say that, to just drop a bomb like that, and Sebastian knew that it was… But he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t Alex’s fault that this had happened, and yet Sebastian felt like somehow it was. Somehow this was entirely Alex’s fault, and a verbal smack was all he could actually give him right then.

Alex stopped typing abruptly and jerked his head around in surprise when he heard his seemingly brand new assistant reference his grandmother by name.

Maybe he thought that whoever Sebastian was, he had been just so keen on the position that he had already taken a deep dive into his manager’s life. Maybe that he’d learned all about his family, all about what happened with his grandmother. All about everything.

But that was definitely not the case.

“Sebastian..?”

Alex spoke his name in obvious surprise, but also like he somehow wasn’t entirely sure if it really was him standing there. Like he wasn’t sure he really recognized him despite having known him his whole fucking life.

Asshole.

“Didn’t even need to bother with reviewing my file. You know my name.”

Rachel was looking back and forth between them in obvious concern, fingering the file in her hands repeatedly and anxiously. “You know each other?” She finally ventured, her words a bit halting. “No one told me that.”

“No one knew.” Sebastian said, looking over at her. “Including us. He wasn’t able to be at the interview, and no one told me the manager’s name.”

No one said anything. Alex was still looking at him in absolute astonishment. So Sebastian just took the lead since no one else was going to.

“I’ll just see myself out. There’s no need to waste anyone’s time. I’m sure Shawn has a second choice who would do just fine.”

Rachel made a noise of distress, but Sebastian had already started to walk back out of Alex’s office door.

There was no fucking way. Absolutely no fucking way that he could work with Alex at all, let alone with him so directly. And he highly doubted that Alex would even for a second consider keeping him, anyway.

It was just easier… and safer… to remove himself entirely from this office and this company and this building and this whole fucking situation.

Chapter Text

“Wait… Wait!”

Alex spoke twice as Sebastian headed for the door, getting up and coming around his desk to try to intercept him. “Just hang on a second, Sebastian. Just… Wait…”

Sebastian stopped even though he didn’t really want to. He wanted to get the fuck out of there and avoid whatever weird scene was about to happen. Prolonging this wasn’t going to change either of their identities. Which was possibly the only thing that was going to help this situation.

But he stopped. And waited.

Alex floundered for a few seconds, clearly trying to figure out what he was going to do next before he looked over at Rachel. “Can you give us a minute?”

Rachel hesitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot while looking entirely uncomfortable. “I feel like this may be an ‘HR Present’ situation, Mr Mullner. I don’t exactly know what’s just happened, but I don’t think I should leave.”

Alex worked his jaw for a second, and Sebastian watched a muscle flex in it before he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Sebastian and I are… We’re…”

There were so many ways Alex could continue that sentence. So fucking many…

“We’re from the same hometown. We grew up together, went to school together. This is just a little bit shocking for us both, I think. I’d like a chance to talk to him myself. Alone.”

The easy route. Alex went the easy way through, and while half of Sebastian wanted to think him a fucking chicken for it, the other half was insanely grateful.

Rachel looked from Alex to Sebastian questioningly, and Sebastian just raised his shoulders in a half shrug. He really didn’t care at this point. In fact, he was verging on finding the whole thing hilarious in its absolute impossibility. The job he applied for that he didn’t want, which turned out to be a position he hadn’t even realized he was applying for and that he wanted even less… Which then turned out to include Alex Mullner. As his boss. And neither of them knew until they were literally face to face.

If he didn’t at least try to find it funny, he very well might scream.

“I’ll step outside for a few minutes.” Rachel eventually said, despite looking like it was a terrible idea for her to leave them on their own.

She probably wasn’t wrong.

For close to a minute after the door closed, neither of them said anything. Alex was looking at him like he’d seen a ghost, his eyes moving over him slowly before he took in a breath and took a step closer to him.

“It really is you…” He said quietly, his brow furrowing a bit.

“Did you think it wasn’t?” Sebastian asked, taking a step back from Alex to create the same amount of distance they’d had initially.

“I wasn’t… I mean, yes, but… I haven’t seen you in almost ten years. You look so different. The same, too, but different? I don’t know, it’s… Did you know?”

“Did I know what? That I look the same but different?”

“No... Sorry… I’m cramming too many thoughts together at once. I meant, did you know that I was the manager? That you were being hired as my personal assistant?”

“Absolutely fucking not.” Sebastian looked at Alex incredulously, shaking his head and pointing to the door. “If I did know, would I have tried to walk out? Would I literally be waiting for you to get to whatever point you want to make before I can leave?”

“Right… Yeah, that’s…” Alex exhaled an almost shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it resting at the back of his head as he continued to stare at Sebastian. “How the hell did you end up here?”

“I went for an interview with Shawn, and he hired me.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Sebastian knew that. He was just being an asshole. A very, very angry asshole.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Why are you interviewing for personal assistant positions? Did you have a career change at some point that your mom didn’t spread around home?”

Sebastian looked away from Alex and down at his own feet. He didn’t want to answer too honestly. There was no way in hell he wanted Alex to know a Yoba damned thing about the financial situation he was in. But he figured it didn’t matter now if he was honest about what happened in the interview.

“I missed the ‘to the’ part in the job listing. I thought I was applying for an Assistant IT Manager position. We were almost finished with the interview before I clued in. I played it off well enough that they didn’t realize I had no idea what was going on.” He raised his head to meet Alex’s eyes for just a moment before he turned his head to look out the window.

“But you’re a programmer…”

“Freelance went to shit. I started looking for a corporate programming position, but no one is hiring... I expanded my search to include IT a few months ago.”

“And you applied for what you thought was an Assistant IT Manager position? With no IT experience?”

Alex sounded a bit uncertain and anger flared in Sebastian at just the implication he was making there. That he was unqualified. That he was aiming too high. And maybe he had been, but Alex wasn’t the one who had been unemployed for ninth months, scraping to get by, and trying absolutely fucking anything to get a job. Including faking his way through the end of an interview for a position he did not want.

“That’s enough. I’m leaving.” He said shortly, reaching for the door handle again.

He almost got it open, but Alex was too quick for him, and before he could get anywhere, a strong hand curled around his wrist and halted him again.

“Stop, Sebastian. Fucking hell… I’ve forgotten what it’s like to deal with you. You take everything so seriously.”

“Get your hand off me or I’m getting Rachel back here and you can deal with HR.” Sebastian said, turning a murderous look up to Alex’s face.

The threat was enough to get Alex to let him go. Almost too fast, really... Alex jerked his hand back and recoiled at the mention of HR at a speed that was truly shocking. But he didn’t go far. Just enough so that he could rest his back against the door, making it impossible for Sebastian to try to leave again.

“You need a job, and I need an assistant.” Alex said, looking at Sebastian.

“I don’t need this job, and you sure as hell don’t need me as your assistant. I’m sure Shawn has a second-place candidate he can call in for tomorrow.”

“I can’t…” Alex started speaking, then stopped again while making a noise of frustration. He thunked his back a little harder against the door then turned his eyes away. “I can’t take the hit to my reputation that this will bring.”

“Excuse me?” Sebastian looked at Alex, trying to figure out what the hell that meant. Because while he couldn’t readily see an insult in it, it sure sounded like one.

Alex pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Shawn is… He’s big on professionalism and not letting personal things interfere with work and… If you left, and I let you leave because of… Because we know each other and working together would be… Difficult… It wouldn’t go well for me to deal with Shawn after that.”

“So don’t tell him that I’m leaving because it’s personal? I don’t have to say why I’m leaving. I can just leave.”

Alex gestured behind him to the door. “Rachel knows. HR knows now, it won’t be a secret.”

Sebastian exhaled a low breath, then swore a couple of times and folded his arms across his chest. He had momentarily forgotten about Rachel. It was true that there was no way he could leave without the truth being known now. But that didn’t really seem like his issue to handle.

“So you expect me to stay here and be your fucking personal assistant so you don’t have to deal with the fallout?”

“It’s a good job.” Alex said, taking a step closer to Sebastian. “I’m not a tyrant to work for. I can… I can tailor your expected duties to be less personal. And you don’t have to stay forever, just… Stay for a while. Then leave and say it’s because you found something else. You must need a job…”

Sebastian turned his eyes up to Alex’s face, slowly shaking his head as he met his gaze. “Watch it…”

“Fuck… I’m just saying that if you broadened the scope of your job search to include IT…” Alex trailed off and closed his mouth. He looked down and exhaled through his nose slowly before he spoke again.

“Sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t be presuming anything. But it is a good job, Sebastian. It pays well, and I… I would… I would really appreciate it if you could stay. Even just for a few weeks.”

This was absolute fucking madness. Insanity. It was beyond impossible that this was happening at all…

And it was even further along the line of impossibility that he was, actually considering staying.

“What’s the pay schedule?” He asked quietly, not looking at Alex. He wasn’t going to agree to stay for a few weeks if the pay schedule was monthly. That would just cause a shit ton of problems for him.

“Weekly for personal assistants.” Alex said, taking another step closer to Sebastian. “You’d miss the first one, but you’d start getting paid weekly next Thursday.”

Sebastian nodded, schooling his expression down to neutral even though getting a weekly pay cheque was actually really enticing right then.

He could feel his resolve weakening, and he absolutely fucking hated himself for it.

But getting a few weeks of pay from this position would help him so much more than he wanted to admit. He was in trouble financially, and he knew it, but he hated that this decision was really coming down to money.

“I’m going to continue looking for other jobs even if I’m just staying for a few weeks.” Sebastian said, raising his head so he could look at Alex. “If I have to leave to go to an interview or something, you’ll have to let me do it.”

Alex nodded quickly, a slightly hopeful smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Absolutely. Yes, of course. So does that mean yes? You’ll stay?”

“Temporarily.” Sebastian said sharply, silently adding that it was just for the money and Alex better not for a second think it had anything to do with him.

“Okay.” Alex said, smiling and turning around to open the door again. He called Rachel back in, clearly not willing to wait and double check and give Sebastian time to change his mind.

Which was probably smart because he already regretted saying yes.

“Sorry about that.” Alex said to Rachel as she walked back in. “We just needed to make sure that this was okay, since neither of us expected to see each other this morning and… In this situation.”

“And is it okay?” Rachel asked, but she was only looking at Sebastian when she asked.

So he nodded. And he smiled as much as he could. But he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth and say anything about it.

Rachel kept her eyes on him, clearly trying to gauge what actually had happened in here while she waited outside, but eventually she moved with Alex over to his desk and pointed out all the places he needed sign in the forms she’d brought with her.

Once that was done, she smiled at them both. “This was definitely an interesting handover! But we got there in the end, hm? Let me know if there’s anything you need or…”

She paused there and looked at Sebastian in particular. “Just if there’s anything. At all.”

Yeah. She may have been new to her job, but she was not stupid.

Sebastian smiled at her and nodded. “Thanks for everything, Rachel. It was great to meet you today.”

She gave him one last look, then glanced at Alex and smiled at him before she left.

And he was once again alone with Alex.

For a few seconds neither of them said anything or even moved, but eventually Alex cleared his throat and went to a cabinet on one side of his office. “I’ll get you a tablet. There’s a meeting today that you’ll need to go to with me and take notes. The tablet is for that, and for anything else work related you might need.”

He brought Sebastian a tablet in a keyboard case, adding a charger on top of it before he handed it over to him.

“Shawn put in the request for a company phone when you accepted the job. It should be here in a few days, but until then I will need your number in case I have to get in touch.”

“Right. Sure.”

Sebastian tucked the tablet under his arm and took Alex’s phone when he handed it to him to create a contact for himself. He gave it back, then took a couple of steps away from him. “If you text me, just say it’s you in the first message so I don’t ignore it.”

“Absolutely. Of course.” Alex said, moving behind his desk to pick up a small binder that was sitting on one corner. “This is the… I don’t know... The ‘handbook’, I suppose. Information about the job, things you need to do and are expected. That sort of thing. But I can fix it and change things so that everything you’re doing is strictly work related. I don’t expect you to do any of the more personal things for me.”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows a bit and held his hand out for the binder. “And I’m sure it wouldn’t look at all strange to Shawn and everyone else if suddenly your personal assistant had half the duties he’s supposed to? Just give it to me as is, Alex. I’m aware of what the duties of this job can include.”

Technically, that was true. But he didn’t add on the part where he had only looked it up the night before and still had no concept of the full scope of what he was doing.

Alex just looked at him for a few moments, then nodded. But he turned to grab a pen and opened the binder as he spoke. “I really appreciate this, Sebastian. You have no idea.”

Sebastian watched as Alex seemed to scribble something in the binder, then closed it and held it out to him. “I’ll show you your desk area and get you a login for the network.”

He followed Alex out of the office and to the left, where there was a second office type area. One side of it was closed in by the wall of Alex’s office. There was only glass between them, and he didn’t love that Alex would be able to see him all the time, but that was sort of par for the course, he guessed. There was a half wall along the front, but it was an actual wall, not just a partition, and it had a massive desk that was near an absolutely enormous window.

Sebastian didn’t know a lot about offices and office work, but even he knew the value of having windows in your office. Especially when it looked as though the majority of other offices on the floor were typical cubicles and no one had windows.

It was, however, an absolute fucking mess. While Alex booted up the computer and created a profile in the system for him, he took his time looking around.

The desk had piles of papers all over it. Not even stacks, just piles. And the wall was cluttered with notes and things pinned all over it to the point where it was only sort of the suggestion of a wall.

The state of things was either an indication that Alex’s last assistant was absolute shit, or that Alex himself was far harder to work for than he seemed to think he was.

“Choose a password?” Alex said, rousing Sebastian from his thoughts and his analysis of the office.

He moved closer to Alex and leaned in to type, and then retype, a password into the box on the screen, then straightened up again.

“Your login in just ‘Sebastian’ in lowercase. There isn’t anyone else in the company named Sebastian, so there’s no initial or number or anything.”

Sebastian nodded as Alex spoke, shifting the binder and the tablet in his hands. “What time is the meeting?”

“It’s at 1.” Alex got back to his feet, his eyes staying on Sebastian even as he moved towards the office door. “I’ll come over here when it’s time to go.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you. Sebastian, really. Thank you…”

Sebastian just shook his head and turned away from Alex. He plunked himself down into the chair and ignored him until he left.

He already regretted this. Even if it was just for a few weeks, this was by far one of the stupidest things he had ever agreed to.

But three weeks’ worth of pay was not nothing… So Sebastian spent the morning getting acquainted with the company network, reorganizing the desktop (which was just as horrendously messy and cluttered as his actual desk) and then opening the binder to start reading.

The first few pages were just company information about Melendy as a whole. What they did, who they serviced, that sort of thing.

But the rest of it was all about working for Alex in particular. Information about him, where he was from, his family.

All things Sebastian already knew far too well.

He skipped ahead from that and started reading his duties and role as Alex’s personal assistant. The meetings he would go to, how to take notes, the way they needed to be compiled into a report and delivered in hard copy to Alex no more than 48 hours after each meeting. Then about answering the phone, scheduling meetings, and making sure he briefed Alex each morning on what he had to do and when.

Do-able. All perfectly do-able.

There was more, though, which is what Sebastian figured Alex had wanted to take out. Because it listed errands Sebastian was supposed to do for him that were personal. Things he had to schedule regularly to have done at Alex’s apartment. Shopping he needed to do and bring to Alex’s apartment himself to put away.

It talked about his preferences. Meal times. What he liked for lunch on which day and at what time and where to call and order it from.

It also stated that he was expected to be in the office at least half an hour before Alex arrived every day, and he was to stay until Alex had left at night unless he was out running an errand for him.

It was what some of the websites he read the night before suggested. Not even as ‘personal’ as a lot of people indicated they did for their employers...

And he should have guessed that was what it all was when Alex said he wanted to take it out, so he really had no reason to find it infuriating to read and know that he was going to be pretty much at Alex’s beck and call for three weeks...

But it still took a couple of minutes of deep breaths to calm down and not be weirdly, personally insulted that he was going to have to do all of this.

Once he’d calmed down again, he flipped back a few pages in the binder and took out his phone. For half an hour he sat and scheduled events and things into his personal calendar for Alex. He was glad he was getting a company phone in a few days so he could take all of this back again because once he was done and looked at it all, his own events scheduled in green were massively dwarfed and overshadowed by all of Alex’s scheduled in blue.

It was only for a few weeks… The money would be worth it. It was temporary.

He gave his head a shake, then turned his attention to the desk and the office as a whole. The intense level of disorder was making his skin crawl and starting to pick through it all gave him something actively busy to do, which he sorely needed.

He stayed occupied entirely until his phone chimed, and when he looked at it, it was the very first of so fucking many reminders for Alex. Lunch. He had to place an order for his lunch to be delivered at 12:15. Sebastian did that and then went back to organizing.

It was engrossing work, at least, and while he had to stop a couple of times when the phone on his desk rang- answering it with a polite “Alex Mullner’s office, how can I help you?” as the binder had told him to- he didn’t really notice time passing until someone spoke to him.

“Knock knock?”

Sebastian looked up and over at the entry to his office where a young man stood holding two takeout containers.

“Lunch delivery. Well, lunch for your boss, but delivered to you. To take to him. Are you his new assistant? I’m Noah, you’ll see me a lot.”

“I’m the new assistant.” Sebastian said, smiling a bit as he got up to take the containers from Noah. “Sebastian. It’s nice to meet you, Noah.”

“Nice to meet you, Sebastian. You look edgy for a corporate guy.”

Sebastian couldn’t help but smirk as he set the containers down on a newly cleared place on his desk. “My first corporate job. Come back in a week and see if they’ve shamed me into changing anything.”

Noah laughed, then shook his head. “I hope not. I don’t think they really could say anything, anyway.”

“I’m hoping not as well.” Sebastian said, smiling at Noah.

“You didn’t get lunch for yourself. You can if you want it. It’s billed to the company, so you don’t have to pay for it up front unless you’re getting snacks and stuff. Lunch, at least for managers and their PAs, is covered.”

“I didn’t know.” Sebastian said, shaking his head. “But I’ll remember that tomorrow.”

Noah smiled at him, then turned to walk back out. “I’ll leave so you can get that to Alex at 12:15, but it was nice to meet you, Sebastian.”

“You as well.” Sebastian said, raising one hand to wave to Noah before he picked up the takeout containers and walked them to Alex’s office.

Following the instructions in the binder (it was nothing if not thorough) he knocked on the door lightly, then pushed it open, stepping in silently in case Alex was on the phone.

He wasn’t. And he looked up at Sebastian in confusion until Sebastian walked forward and set the containers down on his desk.

“Lunch.” He said to Alex, then turned to go.

“Thank you. I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d do that today. You didn’t have to.”

Sebastian stopped halfway to the door and turned around again to look at Alex. “It was in the binder.”

Alex nodded a couple of times, his eyes staying on Sebastian. “I know. But it still wouldn’t have been a big deal if you hadn’t gotten to it.”

Sebastian just gave him something that vaguely resembled a tight smile, then left before Alex could say anything else to him.

At ten minutes to one, Alex left his office and came to collect Sebastian for the meeting they both had to go to in a boardroom up a few floors. On the way, Alex explained that it was a monthly manager’s meeting where all the department leads got together and briefed the rest of them on what they had been doing and what was upcoming.

It sounded boring as hell. And it was boring as hell.

It was also tedious to be writing out notes as quickly as he could while people spoke, trying not to seethe with anger over the whole idea of sitting there. Next to Alex. Who he had somehow let talk him into sticking around.

The only interesting thing that happened was while Alex was speaking and talking about a massive upcoming IT project to update a lot of the internal networking and infrastructure for the company that was due to start rolling out in six weeks. It sounded incredibly impressive even to Sebastian, but another manager named Reid (who was manager of the programming department and Sebastian couldn’t help making personal note of that) started firing questions at Alex. Really sharp and rather harsh questions that ranged from seemingly like he was trying to nail Alex with something he couldn’t answer, all the way to backhandedly insulting him and his leadership of the IT department.

It was the only time during the rather lengthy talk he was giving that Alex seemed incredibly uncomfortable. Anxiety seemed to fill his eyes while Reid continued to ask him questions, and though his voice was calm and steady with every answer, Sebastian could see him picking at the skin next to his thumbnail. A dead giveaway about how uncomfortable he actually was.

“Enough, Reid.” Shawn finally said from across the table. “We’ve got more ground to cover here. You’ve asked plenty of questions. Sit down, Alex.”

Sebastian glanced over at Shawn, who looked incredibly annoyed, but not at Reid… The annoyed look got shot at Alex, who just smiled and moved to sit back down next to Sebastian.

Which seemed… Strange. Strange that Shawn would seem to hold blame over Alex for whatever had happened there when he was the one standing up calmly answering every one of Reid’s extremely pointed and nasty questions.

But that was really not his concern, and he didn’t really care. At all.

The meeting went until just after 4, and Sebastian got up to follow Alex out of the room. He was thinking about whether or not he should start turning his notes into a report, or if he should just finish out the day by continuing to clean when Alex stopped just outside the door.

Sebastian lifted his head to see what was holding them up and found Shawn looking down at him with a smile and an outstretched hand.

“Sebastian! Nice to see you here and already looking at ease.”

It took so much work not to roll his eyes. But he not only managed to curb the desire, he actually smiled a little bit.

“Nice to see you, Shawn.” He said in return, moving his tablet to hold under his opposite arm as he shook Shawn’s hand.

“I hope your day has been good and things are looking manageable so far. I had meant to tell you about this meeting in the email I sent over the weekend so you didn’t feel like we were just launching you into the deep end. Sorry that I forgot.”

“Totally fine.” Sebastian said, though from the look on Shawn’s face, this was absolutely part of his plan from the start. Shawn looked like the type to test people unfairly like this.

“We’ll let you get back to it, then. Seems like you’re going to work out just fine.”

Sebastian smiled in a way he hoped was convincing and nodded his head before he turned to follow Alex back toward the elevators again.

Alex didn’t say anything in the elevator, but he did let out a very long and very deep sigh as soon as the elevator doors closed. It was enough that Sebastian could easily tell this had not been an easy meeting, and that the way he picked at the side of his thumb was probably more real than the calm tone of his voice while he was speaking.

As they stepped out of the elevator and back into the IT department, Alex glanced down at him and smiled a bit. “You don’t have to stay until I leave tonight. I never ask my assistants to do that on the first day because it generally comes as a surprise that they’re supposed to.”

Sebastian just shook his head, looking at where he was walking instead of at Alex. “I don’t have any plans tonight that I can’t easily move around. Unless you’re going to be here until ten, I’ll leave when you do.”

“Probably no later than six tonight. So… Yeah. Thank you.”

Sebastian just nodded, then gratefully peeled off to his office space so he didn’t have to say anything back to Alex.

He decided not to start on the meeting report right then since he’d have to stop before he could finish, and instead continued to clean up the desk.

Around 5:30 he sat down and looked through the schedule he’d made in his calendar for Alex the next day, and then, for lack of anything else to do, he opened the binder and started to reread it from the beginning.

He read through everything about the company again, including the list of departments and managers. Now that he’d been in a meeting with them and found a few names he could connect with faces it seemed more important. Then, rather than skipping the pages that were an introduction to Alex, he read them.

In a few places he had to stop himself from laughing outright, because honestly it was so weird. Not that the information was wrong or dishonest, it was just so fucking strange to see his Pelican Town life put through the corporate filter and then spewed out onto paper.

He was going to Sam’s place after work. They’d planned that over the weekend, and he was absolutely bringing this binder with him. Just the idea of having a couple of drinks with Sam and reading this with him suddenly brightened his entire outlook on the day.

And he seriously couldn’t wait to tell him about who his boss was and how absolutely fucking absurd the whole situation actually was.

True to his word, Alex left his office just before 6. He glanced over at Sebastian as he left, raising a hand to him almost tentatively.

Sebastian nodded once in return to him and watched as he walked to the elevators. Once the doors had closed behind Alex, he shoved the binder into his bag and got up.

He texted Sam as he followed the same path Alex had taken to the elevators.

Sebastian- Leaving now and coming straight to your place. You better have drinks ready for the shitstorm I’m about to tell you about...

Chapter Text

“Hang on, this is even better…” Sam started laughing as he tried to speak and needed a couple of tries before he could continue.

“Living in such a small town with big computer science dreams was difficult for Alex, but he persevered. He took every computer science course his regional high school offered and spent every moment he could spare in its small and outdated computer lab. His talent and dedication came through with an acceptance to RTI, the top and most highly regarded university for IT and cybersecurity, Alex’s chosen path of study.”

It had taken two drinks and most of a pizza for Sebastian to finish recounting his day for Sam, who had sat slack jawed and wide eyed through most of it. Just as floored as Sebastian had been by the fact that of all the fucking people in the world for his boss to turn out to be.. It had to be Alex Mullner.

Now, though, Sam was reading out loud from the binder, having eagerly grabbed from Sebastian when he told him what it was.

They were both most of the way through a third drink, and Sebastian was laughing so hard he was crying while Sam continued reading out loud. The over the top way they had made Alex’s past sound was too much for both of them considering they had lived through the same school and town life that Alex had... But no one had put their stories through an ‘aspirational corporate translation’ like this.

Sebastian was actually grateful for that fact, and couldn’t help wondering if Alex even liked the way this had been written.

“That’s such a load of shit! All Alex cared about in high school was gridball.” Sam said, wiping at his eyes and still chuckling.

“Nah. It’s accurate...” Sebastian shook his head as he picked a piece of pepperoni off of what was left of their pizza. “He took all of the computer courses the school offered. And he spent a lot of time in the computer lab and read as many computer science books as he could get from the library. He just also cared way too much about gridball.”

“Really? I didn’t know that… Huh. Well, either way, this sounds fucking ridiculous.”

“It does. And I couldn’t wait for you to see it because I knew you’d think it was just as funny as I did.”

Sam smirked, turning a couple of pages in the binder silently while Sebastian finished his drink and set the cup down on the coffee table.

“You’re going to have to shop for him!? And take it all to his apartment to put away??”

Sam looked over at Sebastian incredulously, then shook his head when Sebastian nodded. “Fucking hell. They really take it too far with these jobs. Like… Alex is an adult, he should be able to shop for himself.”

“I think the implication is that Alex is far too busy and works far too much to be able to get these things done for himself.”

“Fucking ridiculous. You’re only staying for a few weeks, right?”

Sebastian nodded again and smiled. “Just for a few weeks. I also told him straight out that I was going to keep looking for jobs, and that if I had an interview booked during office hours, I was going to it.”

“And he said yes?” Sam turned towards Sebastian a little more, looking from him to the binder he was still leafing through.

“He did. I think he realized if he said no, then I would have just walked out. Let him deal with whatever ‘hit to his professional reputation’ it would have been on his own.”

Even Sebastian could hear the sulky tone of his voice, but he still felt that he was entitled to it. It had been a hellish day, and he had three weeks’ worth of the same hellish days to get through.

But at least it was only three weeks.

Sebastian settled back into Sam’s couch, thinking about the day, and thinking about tomorrow morning. He picked up his phone and looked at his calendar, packed full of Alex’s appointments and meetings and reminders for things he had to do through the week… He should have printed tomorrow’s schedule of events for Alex before he left today... But he’d be there for half an hour before Alex. He could do it then, it wouldn’t take long.

“Hey… What’s this?”

Sebastian looked at Sam when he spoke, frowning and leaning in. “What’s what?”

“Did you see this?”

Sam turned the binder so Sebastian could look at it as well and tapped a spot in the middle of the page of family and other listed contacts for Alex. Sebastian hadn’t paid much attention to it because he figured that knowing that information was there was good enough. Once he had a company phone, he planned to put all the contacts in, but wasn’t going to do it with own phone.

But Sam was pointing to a contact that had been scribbled out in blue ink, and Sebastian took in a breath when he made out the printed information under it-

Partner- Reid Lennox, Programming Department Manager. 8th floor ext 7887 cell- 555-555-2746

“Oh holy shit…” Sebastian said quietly, taking the binder to look at it more closely. “Well, that explains a few things.”

“Really? Like what?” Sam asked eagerly, looking at the page and then at Sebastian.

“The meeting we were in today, it was for all the managers of the departments to get together and talk about what they’ve been doing and what’s upcoming. Alex was giving a talk about this huge network and infrastructure upgrade that IT is planning to start rolling out in six weeks… Reid questioned him so fucking hard. Like, mean sort of questions. Clearly trying to find something Alex couldn’t answer and making comments that were heavily implying that he was a terrible department manager.”

Sebastian paused there, rubbing his thumb over the penned out information as he recalled that Alex had scribbled something out in the binder before giving it to him.

He flipped through the whole thing quickly, just looking to see if there was anything else that had been marked out, but Reid being listed as his partner was the only spot with pen on it.

“Reid sounds like an asshole.” Sam said, making a face.

“Or Alex is an asshole.” Sebastian smirked as he said it. “We don’t know anything about it. Reid may have been justified.”

“You’re too biased to cast a vote on this one.”

Sam stretched with his arms over his head, then yelped out a laugh when Sebastian prodded fingers into his side to tickle him. “I’m just saying!”

“I know. And it’s true.” Sebastian said, still smirking as he closed the binder.

“So what’s Reid like? Other than apparently kind of an asshole.” Sam asked, picking up his drink to drain the rest of it.

“I didn’t talk to him, so I have no clue what he’s like.” Sebastian leaned back against the couch, already thinking he was going to sleep there and go home in the morning to get ready for work.

“Well... What’s he look like? How’d he seem when he was giving his presentation? Because if he’s the programming manager, then I’d bet my guitar that you listened to every word he said.”

“Yeah, I did.” Sebastian closed his eyes and sighed. “He’s smallish? Kinda. Really dark brown hair and light blue eyes. He looked really serious… But also seemed nice enough when he wasn’t hounding Alex, just intense. He was talking about building the existing internal company cloud to create a large network for the company as a whole, and so that it could extend to clients who want to have cloud access within the company umbrella. It sounded really cool, actually.”

Sebastian sighed and opened his eyes to look over at Sam. “Why couldn’t I have been hired to be his personal assistant? I would have had a great time in the programming department. Maybe I could have used it as a lead in to a position there.”

“Because the universe is mean and terrible to you, personally.” Sam slid down the couch and leaned his side against Sebastian’s. “Can you make it to the band practice tomorrow night?”

“I honestly have no idea. I have to stay in the office until Alex leaves, and it sounds like that time isn’t set in stone. It probably changes every day. I’ll try, though.”

“No biggie if you can’t. You having a job is the most important thing here.”

“Thank Yoba for that.” Sebastian groaned, then stretched one arm out, settling it around Sam’s shoulders. He gave him a squeeze as he leaned in against him as well. “Can I sleep on your couch?”

“I wouldn’t let you drive home after three drinks, dumbass. Of course you can sleep on the couch.”

They talked for a while longer, mostly about band stuff and the upcoming lives they had later in the month, then Sam got up and said he was heading to bed.

“Lock the door when you leave in the morning. And text me tomorrow if you think you might make it to rehearsal.” Sam said, leaning over to kiss the side of Sebastian’s head.

“I will. I hate that we’re just assuming I won’t.”

“Yeah, well. Better to be pleasantly surprised, right? From the sounds of your office and the state things were left in, Alex may not be the easygoing boss he thinks he is.”

“No kidding. Night.”

“Night, Seb.”

Sebastian got up and stripped down to his boxers before going to the closet to grab a blanket and a pillow. He got settled on Sam’s couch and set his alarm for 5, which would give him enough time to go home and shower and be back at the office for 7:30 the next morning.

Hopefully, the three weeks he had promised Alex would fly by, because he already fucking hated this schedule.

~~~~~~~~

By the time Sebastian watched Alex walk across the floor and into his office the next morning, he had already gotten his day’s events typed up and printed, made some more headway on cleaning up his desk, and he had gone downstairs to get a latte for him from the cafe.

“Good morning!” Noah had greeted him when he stepped up to the counter. “You here for Alex’s latte? Do you want to save yourself some time and put in lunch orders now, too?”

“Yes, and also yes. You’re fantastic for suggesting that, thank you.” Sebastian gave Noah a look of gratitude and fished out his phone to put in Alex’s order.

“And what about you? You need lunch today, too, and if you don’t order, then I’m just going to bring you something I choose, and I have terrible taste.” Noah smiled impishly at Sebastian, giving him a wink as he started Alex’s latte.

“Message received…” Sebastian chuckled, then looked up at the menu and chose a chicken sandwich and fries, which Noah wrote down with Alex’s lunch order.

“I’ll be upstairs around 12:10 with everything for you. You want a latte?”

He really did… But he needed to coast by, spending as little as possible until next Thursday and his first paycheck. Maybe then he could occasionally get one over the next weeks before he left.

“I’m good, but thank you.”

Noah tilted his head a bit, then smirked and turned away. A couple of minutes later he set down two cups. One with an A written on the lid and one with an S.

“Coffee is life, Sebastian. And I don’t get paid enough to care about not giving it away. Just don’t tell anyone.”

“You’re an angel.” Sebastian said with a warm smile, shaking his head. “Thank you.”

“Anytime. Have a good morning!”

Sebastian had carried the cups back upstairs and had just started drinking his when he saw Alex.

He waited five minutes, then picked up the schedule he’d made and the cup of coffee with an A on the lid, which he carried to Alex’s door. He knocked lightly, then pushed the door open.

“Hey… Good morning…” Alex said, looking up at him as he walked in. For a few seconds he stared at him again, just like he had the day before, but he seemed to catch himself this time and look away before it got weird.

“Good morning.” Sebastian said, walking up to Alex’s desk and setting down the latte.

“You have a meeting at 10:30 this morning with Shawn, another meeting at 4 this afternoon with the finance department manager, and three people are waiting for you to call them back.”

Sebastian ran through the list, then held the sheet he had printed out to Alex.

Alex hesitated, then reached out to take the schedule Sebastian had made. He looked at it, then back up to Sebastian. “You didn’t have to make this. I… I do keep my own calendar. It just helps to have someone run through it first thing as well as be keeping track in case I forget something. But this is… Thank you.”

Sebastian nodded to Alex just once. “Do I need to come to either of the meetings you have today?”

“The one at 4 with the finance department. Does that interfere with anything else you have scheduled today?”

Sebastian took out his phone to look through what tasks he was supposed to be completing that day and shook his head. “No. There are a couple of errands out of office, but it should be easy for me to come back for the meeting. Anything else?”

“Ah… Yes, just…”

Alex got up from his desk and walked over to a large filing cabinet which he unlocked and opened. He rummaged for a minute, then came up with a set of keys and a credit card that he brought to Sebastian. “These are to my apartment. You’ll need them for errands sometimes.”

“Right.” Sebastian took the keys, but it felt really fucking wrong to do it.

“And this is a company card for any shopping you do for me. Use it, and I just pay the balance.”

“Uh huh. Okay, thanks.”

“Thank you, Sebastian.”

Sebastian nodded once again, then walked out of Alex’s office while contemplating telling him and his reputation to go fuck themselves for the millionth time so he could just walk out.

But instead, he went back to his desk, updated his own calendar with reminders for the 4pm meeting, and then settled to finish his latte while he worked on the report from yesterday’s manager meeting.

By the time his phone chimed to tell him it was time to leave for his first errand, he had calmed down again, and had finished most of the first report. It wasn’t hard, but the meeting had been incredibly long, so there was a lot to organize.

Aside from all of the reminders and calendar events, the only other thing Sebastian had put on his phone related to this job was the company email app. A page in the binder had been dedicated to the email account and that it was the ‘hub’ of everything that he would need for Alex when it came to errands, shopping, and anything that wasn’t on the regular schedule that Alex would ask him to do.

He at least appreciated the level of organization that went into this job. And the fact that with everything in email he wouldn’t have to talk to Alex half as much about everything he was supposed to do.

With the company credit card in his wallet, Sebastian stuck a note to his monitor (another thing the binder had instructed him to do) saying where he was going and when he’d be back in case Alex came looking for him, then he headed for the elevator and went down to the parking lot.

As much as he hated having to do errands for Alex, it was actually kind of fun to be technically working and technically getting paid for leaving the office.

He was picking up dry cleaning for Alex that morning, and shopping for some groceries after lunch and before the meeting he was attending with him. There were three suits that he picked up from a really ridiculously high end dry cleaner (who used a QR code from an email sent to the PA account when the suits were dropped off to find his order) which he hung in the back of his car.

He drove back to the office after that, figuring it would be faster for him to take the dry cleaning and the groceries to Alex’s apartment all at once later rather than make two trips.

And... There was a part of him that was stalling as well. He really didn’t want to go into Alex’s apartment. That just seemed so fucking personal… And he wanted to strictly avoid everything personal with Alex.

Sebastian spent the rest of the morning finishing his report of the meeting notes from the day before and had just stacked and stapled them after printing when Noah appeared in his office door with takeout containers.

“Thank you so much.” Sebastian said as he took the containers. “For the delivery and for telling me about lunches being covered.”

“No problem! The managers always seem to forget to tell the new PAs, so I try to make a point of mentioning it whenever someone new starts.”

“Is there a high turnover for personal assistants?” Sebastian asked as he set the containers with his lunch to one side, looking at Noah with interest.

“Not really. More so than managers, obviously. And some managers have a higher PA turnover rate just in general because they’re difficult. Alex doesn’t, but his last assistant was absolute shit.”

Noah made a bit of a face, looking around the office a bit. “You’ve started getting it back under control, but wasn’t it a dump? The guy was so disorganized and didn’t even care. Alex let him get away with it for ages until Shawn pressured him to let him go and find someone else. Most other managers would have booted him out in less than a month!”

Sebastian nodded as Noah talked, filing that information away. Because it had been a toss up if the last PA had been horrible, or if Alex was horrible. Sebastian had (with bias, as Sam tended to point out) wanted to think that Alex was the problem, but he had to concede that point with what Noah said, considering he’d actually been around to see it.

“You seem organized, though. And professional… I doubt you’ll have any problems.”

Noah smiled so genuinely that Sebastian almost felt guilty in the knowledge that he was just faking this for a few weeks before walking out again.

But that wasn’t his problem…

He and Noah said goodbye, and he picked up Alex’s lunch and the report he’d finished and brought them into his office.

“Shit… Is it lunch already?” Alex said, looking up from his computer and over at Sebastian.

He looked tired. Really tired. Sebastian couldn’t help but wonder if his meeting with Shawn had maybe been absolutely horrendous.

“Yes.” Sebastian said, setting the takeout containers down for Alex to take. “I picked up your dry cleaning, and I’ll leave when I’m done eating to go and do your groceries and be back for the meeting at 4.”

He held out the report to Alex, who looked confused for a moment as he took it, but then lit up a bit when he realized what it was. “You got this done fast. And it’s so well organized and put together.”

“It wasn’t hard. Just long.” Sebastian shrugged a bit, trying to ignore the tiniest little bit of him that was pleased that his work was well received.

“Today’s meeting won’t be as long as yesterday’s. And not as scattered, either. It’s just to discuss expenses for the upcoming network project.”

“Okay.” Sebastian said, nodding to Alex as he stepped back and turned to head to the door.

He left Alex to his lunch while he went to eat his own. He took a full break, which included scrolling on his phone and answering a text from Sam that he had sent earlier.

Sam- Are you alive??

Sebastian- Yes. Had to pick up Alex’s dry cleaning this morning though. And shopping for his groceries as soon as I’m done lunch. XP

Sam- That is still nuts to me. Like seriously…

Sebastian- Lunch from the cafe downstairs is free, though. And the guy who brings it up is cute and gave me free coffee this morning. ;)

Sam- Cute guys and free coffee can make up for a lot. ;) ;) ;) Text me later about band practice?

Sebastian- You want me to text even if I think I can’t make it?

Sam- Yeah. Just so we know. But no stress if you miss it.

Sebastian- Talk to you later Sam.

He switched over to scrolling on social media while he ate the last of his fries, then cleared up his garbage and got ready to head out and get Alex’s groceries.

It was nuts. Sam wasn’t wrong. But there were jobs for everything, and just because this wasn’t at all what he wanted to be doing, it didn’t make it a bad job. Just… A complicated one.

Alex shopped at one of the expensive grocery stores. Which Sebastian just rolled his eyes at as he parked because of course he would shop here. He had a dry cleaner that looked like a fancy hotel front lobby, there was no chance he frequented any of the normal grocery stores…

The list was mostly fresh fruit and vegetables along with some other perishables, which Sebastian was going to be expected to buy for him a few times a week.

Yoba forbid Alex have to eat slightly wilted kale…

He grabbed a basket on his way in and took out his phone to go through the list, picking up things as he wandered. Kale, carrots, a truly shocking amount of broccoli, eggs, salmon fillets and some cheese went into the basket quickly, but the rest he had to hunt for.

Amaranth, he learned, was actually sort of like a grain. And he had wasted ten minutes searching in the produce section for something like a vegetable before he looked it up on his phone and realized his mistake.

Finding hazelnuts in the shell also proved difficult, but he eventually found those as well.

The last thing on the list was Stardrop Sorbet.

And Sebastian didn’t have trouble finding that, exactly… He just had trouble actually picking it up and putting it in the basket.

Because that one… That one held some memories that he would have preferred not to think about right then.

For a lot of different reasons.

But he buttoned all of that up as tightly as he could and made his way to the checkout at the front of the store. He paid for Alex’s groceries, then watched as they got packed up in cloth bags that he hadn’t even paid for. The store just… Did that. And the clerk and bag packer both looked at him incredibly strangely when he asked if he should bring them back.

With a sigh, Sebastian put the bags of groceries into the backseat of his car, then got into the driver’s seat. He’d put off going to Alex’s apartment that morning, but now there wasn’t any way around it or any reason to delay it.

He typed the address into his phone so it could navigate him there, and was not surprised when fifteen minutes later he was pulling into the lot of a very large apartment building.

The binder had told him that the guest parking area was right near the front doors, so he found his way to that, then got out of the car.

It looked fancy from the outside, and that idea was only reinforced when Sebastian stepped inside and found himself in a very large and very posh looking lobby.

“Can I help you?” A man in a suit and a cap said from behind a desk to one side.

There was a doorman. A real fucking doorman.

“I’m Alex Mullner’s personal assistant. 11C. Dropping off his dry cleaning and groceries.”

He hoped that was right. The binder hadn’t actually told him there was a doorman and what to say.

“Sebastian?”

“That’s right.”

“Mr Mullner gave us your name so we’d know to let you in. Go right up. You may get stopped a few more times when you come here, but we’ll get to know you, eventually.”

He smiled at Sebastian in a friendly way, which Sebastian returned before he walked past the desk and over to the row of elevator doors. He stepped into one, hit the button for the 11th floor, and sighed in absolute fucking exhaustion.

It wasn’t like it was hard work physically, but mentally this had been a lot. The warring feeling of being grateful for this job for the time being- and also being absolutely fucking hateful that he was having to do such personal things for Alex was taxing.

And steeling himself outside of Alex’s door before he unlocked it to go inside didn’t help much, because as soon as he walked in he wanted to turn around and leave again.

Not because it was ugly or too fancy or any normal sort of reaction that he could handle... But because the second the door closed behind him he was seized with the most insatiable curiosity to look at everything. To walk around and look in every single room and every single drawer and every single closet....

Sebastian took off his shoes and forced himself to not crane his neck around as he walked through and found the kitchen. He set the bags and Alex’s suits on the island, then slowly and methodically went through putting his groceries away.

The sorbet into the freezer without looking at anything else in there.

The bag of amaranth in a cupboard behind a bag of the same kind that was opened and nearly finished.

The rest in the fridge, placed neatly where Alex would be able to see them.

Easy. Simple. This was fine.

But the suits needed to go into Alex’s bedroom. ‘Hung at the back of the rest of his suits on the left-hand side’ as the binder had told him, and walking deeper into Alex’s apartment proved anxiety inducing.

Sebastian felt weird. Like he shouldn’t be there and had no business seeing Alex’s life.

Which he kind of didn’t… Or at least he didn’t want to…

He looked into the doorway of a home office, a bathroom that looked like it never got used, and a bedroom that was clearly a guest room before finally finding Alex’s bedroom.

Spacious as all of the apartment was, and neat. With an ensuite, which would explain why the other bathroom looked that it wasn’t used.

It smelled like Alex’s cologne. The one he wore now that Sebastian had been trying very hard not to notice since the day before, when he had typed his chosen password into the computer.

He’d needed to lean in close to Alex to do it, and the warm smell of something that made him think of sun-warmed cedar trees had flooded him. It was in his office at work as well.

And of course it would be here, in his bedroom.

Sebastian turned to the closet that took up one wall and opened the sliding door on the left-hand side. He shoved the suits that were already there up a bit and hung the ones he had picked up that day behind them.

As he did, he knocked down a tie that had been draped over the shoulder of one of the suits he’d pushed out of the way, and Sebastian squatted down to retrieve it.

And saw a brown cardboard box on the floor.

With ‘Reid’ scrawled across the top in black marker.

It was none of his business.

It was really none of his fucking business…

But Sebastian still knelt down on the floor and quietly raised the lid on the box to look inside.

It was an odd assortment of stuff, which was to be expected. Things that Reid had either left there over time, or had missed when packing up his stuff if he had lived there.

Had he lived there? Had he and Alex lived in this apartment together?

There were some necklaces and rings, even a couple shiny silver lighters suggesting that Reid might be a smoker. Folded, soft feeling black shirts. A bottle of lotion and one of shampoo as well. Some books were stacked against one side of the box. Fiction, from the looks of it, rather than anything work related. And tucked to one side was a piece of paper, which Sebastian picked up and turned over reflexively, his eyes following the words scrawled on it before he even noticed that he was reading.

“Alex, I’m sick of this, and I’m done. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that you have to prioritize me. You have to do BETTER in this relationship. I have actual standards, Alex, and relationships take work. They aren’t some storybook romance that just HAPPENS, no matter what you think they are or should be. You refused to fight for me, and I’m sick of living in someone else’s shadow. I’ll send Ewen over for my things.”

Sebastian sighed out a short, hard breath through his nose, his cheeks burning in shame over reading something so personal that he really shouldn’t have. He put the note back where it came from and put the lid back on the box before getting back to his feet. He draped the tie over the shoulder of the suit it had fallen from, then closed the closet and walked himself right to the door where he jammed his feet back into his shoes, and left after locking the door behind himself.

That was stupid. That was really fucking stupid, and he shouldn’t have done it.

Nothing in that apartment was his business, aside from what he brought in to put away, and he was absolutely fucking livid with himself for giving in so fucking easily to temptation.

He drove back to Melendy more than a little bit distracted and tried his best to brush off and clamp down on his scattered emotions before he walked back through the doors.

His eyes scanned across the first floor to the cafe, and he immediately wanted a latte. More than anything else right then, he wanted a fucking latte.

A glance at his phone for the time said he had enough to get the drink and have it upstairs before he had to go to the afternoon meeting with Alex, so he went over to the cafe before he could change his mind about spending the money.

Noah wasn’t there. Some other guy was making the drinks, but he smiled with just as much open friendliness as Noah did and moved quickly to make Sebastian’s drink.

“You’re Alex Mullner’s new PA, right?”

A voice spoke close to Sebastian’s shoulder, and he turned towards it, then instantly froze.

Inquisitive and intense pale blue eyes looked back at him, belonging to a man who was only a couple of inches taller than he was. With dark brown hair and a jaw so sharp it made the plush softness of his mouth look like almost too much.

Reid Lennox.

“I am, yes.” Sebastian said, forcing himself to find his voice even as he thought about what he’d just seen at Alex’s apartment. What he’d just read.

“Huh. I saw you at the meeting yesterday.” Reid’s eyes moved over him avidly and without hiding that he was looking him over.

“I saw you as well. Your corporate cloud proposal sounded incredibly interesting.” Sebastian said, taking his drink from the worker behind the counter with a smile of thanks.

He stepped to the side and was thinking he’d just leave when Reid looked at him and held a hand out. “Don’t go anywhere just yet.”

Sebastian stopped. Nodded. And felt weirdly caught off guard and put into his place.

Reid ordered his coffee, then turned sharp eyes to Sebastian. “You said that like you understood what I was talking about.”

“I did understand what you were talking about. I’m… I’m actually a programmer.” Sebastian ventured, hoping he wasn’t blushing from being far more forward than he normally would be. But he wasn’t above trying to wedge a foot in any door that was presented to him.

Reid tilted his head a bit, looking at Sebastian for a few seconds before an amused look crossed his face. “You code webpages for your friends, maybe?”

Oh that was nasty… And that alone was enough to raise Sebastian’s hackles a bit and tamped down on the embarrassment he felt. Because that was a massively fucking rude assumption for Reid to make about him. And the fact that he’d made it and said it the way he did made Sebastian’s own sharp and nasty nature rise up and overtake everything else.

“Graduated from the GSU enhanced programming pathway, actually.” He said, tilting his head much the way Reid had, giving him a hell of an obviously fake and snarky smile. “I worked freelance before coming here.”

Reid’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of GSU, and his openly appraising gaze moved over Sebastian a second time. “If that’s true, then why the hell are you here working as a PA?”

“Freelance dried up. I’ve been looking for an in house corporate position, but I’m picky. Took this as something different.”

Lies. Bullshit. Utterly and completely, but there was no fucking way he was going to let Reid walk away from him thinking he was less.

“Did you just work in private freelance?” Reid asked after a moment’s pause.

Sebastian shook his head, shifting his weight a bit as he took a sip from his latte, appearing completely casual and unaffected by anything Reid was saying. “Private and corporate. I spent the year before last consulting for Tesix.”

That got Reid’s attention properly. The mention of Tesix, an enormous corporation in Zuzu City, made his eyebrows shoot up practically to his hairline.

“Really… Tesix.” Reid quirked one side of his mouth up into a smile, then nodded a couple of times as he took his drink from the cafe worker without so much as a second glance. “Alright. I’m seeing you now, PA. You clearly did know what I was talking about yesterday. What’s your name?”

“Sebastian.” He said, then glanced at his phone for the time. “And I’m going to be late. It was nice talking to you, Reid. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other around.”

Sebastian moved to the side and started to walk away, but before he could make it a few steps, Reid spoke again.

“Sebastian? Your name is Sebastian?”

Sebastian turned to look at him and nodded a couple of times. “Yes. Why?”

“Sort of an uncommon name, isn’t it?”

Reid’s eyes had narrowed a bit and he was looking at him now with a level of interest that seemed probing.

“I suppose so.” Sebastian said, raising one shoulder a bit. “I’ve only ever met one other ‘Sebastian’.”

Reid nodded slowly, then took a couple of steps to close the distance between them again. He stood too close to Sebastian, looking at him in a way that Sebastian knew was supposed to be intimidating… And it was, honestly, Reid could do this incredibly well… But Sebastian was far too used to people acting like this with him to feel anything other than annoyed by it.

“Good luck working for Alex, Sebastian.” Reid said quietly but intensely.

“If you need someone to vent to, or talk coding with, come and find me…” Reid gave him one last hard look, then took a step back and walked towards the doors.

Sebastian watched him until he went outside, then turned and walked toward the elevators.

That had been weird. Beyond weird, actually. And while half of him could see an ally in Reid. A programmer. Someone who clearly had his issues with Alex. Someone Sebastian could easily relate to… The other half of him couldn’t help thinking about the note he’d read. The words written out on that single sheet of paper that had spiked a searing sort of hurt through Sebastian even though they had nothing to do with him. Poisonous and designed to damage the person reading them. Intended to hurt Alex personally and in particular.

He stepped off the elevator and walked back through the office to his desk, where he settled into his chair. He set down his coffee cup, then sat there and stared at it for a few minutes while dealing with an internal argument that just wouldn’t shut up.

Guilt. He was sure it was just guilt. Knowing he had opened that box in Alex’s closet and read that note from Reid. Seeing things he shouldn’t have and that weren’t meant for him in any way.

That was the sole reason that Sebastian got up from his desk and picked up the latte he had gotten for himself.

It was guilt and nothing more that had him carry it over to Alex’s office where he knocked lightly on the door, then let himself in.

Alex looked up from his computer as Sebastian walked over to his desk, then frowned slightly at the coffee cup that was held out to him.

“Is this on the schedule?” Alex asked, looking at him in confusion.

“No.” Sebastian said, shaking his head as he kept telling himself he was just making amends for being such a fucking nosey asshole. “I just thought you might like it before the meeting.”

Alex hesitated, then smiled almost tentatively as he took the cup from Sebastian’s hand. “That’s… Really nice of you. Thank you, I really could use some more coffee.”

Sebastian just nodded, then turned to walk back out of the office, rubbing one hand against the other to try to erase the feel of Alex’s fingers brushing against his as he took the coffee from him.

He was just easing his own guilty conscience.

Anyone would have done the same thing.

Chapter Text

“Nnnnnn…. This has to be an absolutely fucking terrible idea…”

Sebastian chuckled a little breathlessly after he spoke, then leaned into the press of soft lips against his own again, kissing them back with an increasing amount of hunger that totally clashed with what he’d just said.

“It’s only a fucking terrible idea if one of us takes this too seriously. And that’s not going to be me.”

Noah hushed the words against Sebastian’s lips, slitting his eyes open just enough to look down at Sebastian, who had him backed up against a closed and locked door. He smirked at him, then tilted his head to nip at the full pout of Sebastian’s lower lip.

Sebastian pushed a thigh up hard between Noah’s legs and quirked one side of his mouth up when Noah made a hard noise and shuddered, wiping the smirk off his face rather effectively. “As long as you definitely aren’t thinking anything even remotely serious.”

“Not even slightly... Fuck... Mmm... I just want to mess around with you. Then serve you coffee and bring you lunches while we smile really politely at each other and think about this.”

“It’s just a little bit inappropriate, then. Just a little bit of a bad idea.” Sebastian said, shifting his thigh in harder to grind it against Noah, making a low noise as Noah’s hips flexed against him and his hands grabbed harder into Sebastian’s back.

After two weeks of getting coffee from him every morning and Noah bringing lunches upstairs, and... he had to admit.. a rapidly escalating amount of flirting between both of them... Noah had managed to glean a fair bit of information from Sebastian. Including that he was in a band, and that they had a live coming up, which he immediately said he would go to.

And he did. And even managed to get backstage and find Sebastian afterwards, which led to them making out in the hallway. Something that had started with whispers and chuckles but had quickly turned far more heated and needy.

Sebastian had dragged him into an unused dressing room up the hall, closing and locking the door behind them before he pushed Noah’s back up against it and pressed himself roughly against his front as they continued making out.

Noah groaned, then made a petulant noise as Sebastian pulled back from him, the look on his face making it abundantly clear he wasn’t nearly ready to be done with this yet.

Sebastian grabbed a handful of Noah’s shirt and pulled him forward with a smirk as he backed up towards the couch on one side of the room.

“Sit in my lap. Facing me.” Sebastian said as he sat down on the couch. He slid his hands up Noah’s thighs when he did what he was told and straddled Sebastian’s hips.

“Do you mess around with all the PAs?” Sebastian looked up at him with a heated smirk as he undid the button and the zipper on Noah’s jeans.

“Just the really hot ones. So… Hardly any of them.” Noah smirked back at him, but the expression faltered with a shudder as Sebastian’s hand pushed down the front of his pants and stroked against his cock.

“Not many of the other PAs count as hot to you? Too bad…”

Sebastian rubbed his fingers against Noah for a few more seconds, then pulled his hand back, tugging down the waist of his jeans and boxers just enough to bare his hard flesh so he could curl his hand around him properly.

“Not many… Nnnnn… Especially not the hot rockstar type…” Noah took in a breath, his hips jutting forward and hands planting down hard on Sebastian’s shoulders. “Oh fuck that feels good…”

Sebastian squeezed him roughly as he started to stroke over him, tilting his head back so he could watch Noah’s face. “It seems like all the cafe guys are hot.”

He only knew three of them so far. Liam, Matt and, of course, Noah, but they were all attractive. Noah maybe more so than the rest, with his light brown hair and incredibly dark blue eyes... But Sebastian also knew he was probably slightly biased given that Noah was currently sitting in his lap and was letting him stroke his cock.

“Maybe we’re typecast.” Noah said with a breathy laugh, pushing towards the slide of Sebastian’s hand. “Are you going to make out with all of us?”

“Only the ones that seek me out as purposefully as you did.”

Sebastian squeezed his hand around Noah, then rubbed the pad of his thumb hard and firm against his frenulum, relishing the way the way Noah squirmed and the choked, almost mewling sound that came from him as he did it.

He was well aware that this probably was a bad idea. But Sebastian was only going to be at Melendy for another week, so it really didn’t matter in the bigger picture.

And Noah didn’t give the vibe that he was thinking about anything past fucking around. Sebastian had gotten to know well enough over the years what to watch for and what to be careful of in people. Who truly just wanted to have fun versus who was saying they just wanted to have fun while hope or expectation for more hung in the back of their eyes.

“Oh fuck.. FUCK… You’re gonna make me cum so fast… Oh it’s fucking embarrassing but you feel so fucking gooooood….”

Sebastian smiled a bit, his eyes lidding as he watched Noah’s face. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were closed while his mouth hung open. His breath came in fast pants as his hips jerked forward harder and harder. He really was gorgeous... Soft in the way that made you want to grab and squeeze a bit too hard, but direct and unashamed of what he wanted. He was a few inches taller than Sebastian, but didn’t seem to give two shits about it. Which was a plus as well...

Sebastian squeezed his hand around him even tighter, crooking his finger up to rub over the leaking tip of his cock with every stroke, relishing the sharper and sharper noises that came from Noah the harder he stroked him.

“Shit... Shiiiit... Sebastian... fuck fuck FUUUCK!!!”

Sebastian felt him harden even further, a hot solid weight against his palm as he strained in a way that was probably painful before he released with a choked cry. Noah’s hands squeezed into Sebastian’s shoulders as he throbbed in hot streaks over his hand and onto Sebastian’s shirt under them, his hips continuing to push towards him and the tight squeeze of his palm.

Sebastian stroked Noah through every flex of his muscles, coaxing every last twitch from him that he could get before he stilled his hand.

“Oh fuck… Oh fuuuuuck…” Noah half breathed and half groaned the noises out as his head dropped forward and he panted roughly.

“You really are gorgeous.” Sebastian said, wiping his hand on his side before he slid them both around and onto the soft curves of Noah’s ass.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to be that good with just one hand. That really was embarrassing.”

Sebastian smirked a bit, then squeezed roughly into Noah again. “It’s flattering, actually. I’m not here to judge how long it takes you to get off. I’m here to get you off.”

“Nnn... If you put it like that...” Noah tilted his head back as Sebastian squeezed his ass, making a quiet noise.

“You have a really soft ass...”

“Thank you. …I think?”

Sebastian laughed, then pulled Noah closer against him, smiling when his head fell forward and their eyes met again. “Definitely a compliment. Swear I meant it as a good thing.”

Noah chuckled softly, then trailed his fingers down the damp patch of his own release on Sebastian’s shirt over his belly to the waist of his jeans. “Mmm… I can go down on you? If you want…”

“No.” Sebastian shook his head a bit, patting a hand against Noah’s hip. “Not because I don’t want you to, though. I sweat like a fucking pig on stage, and it would be really fucking gross.”

“Maybe I don’t care?”

“I do.” Sebastian smiled at Noah a little more warmly, reaching one hand up to his cheek. He pulled his head down and kissed him in a slow, full slide. He sucked Noah’s lower lip into his mouth and let his teeth graze against it before he allowed it to slide slowly out of his mouth again.

He dragged his tongue lewdly over Noah’s lips and made a low noise before he spoke very quietly. “But I would want you to.” He said letting their lips catch together. “I’d love your mouth and your tongue and your hands all over me. And I would love to get my fingers and my cock inside of you and see just how loudly I can make you cry out… This is just the wrong place and the wrong time.”

Noah shivered almost violently, and Sebastian heard him swallow roughly before he made a low noise.

“You’re way too hot for your own good.” Noah half spoke and half groaned as he sat up again. He sucked on his own lower lip, his eyes a bit glassy as he looked at Sebastian, then sighed out a low breath as he released it, smoothing his hands over the sides of Sebastian’s shoulders where his tank top didn’t cover him. “I love the tattoos... I wasn’t expecting that… Although maybe I should have? But you always look professional at work. Edgy, sure, but very professional.”

“I keep everything to areas that are pretty easily hidden by clothing. And never wear anything but long sleeves to work.”

“Anything other than tattoos?”

Noah’s voice was teasing, but also intensely interested, and Sebastian chuckled. He grabbed both of Noah’s hands, then brought them up to his chest, pressing his fingertips into him so he could feel the hard ends of the metal bars that ran through both of his nipples.

“Just these. I got them done, and I do like them, but I’m definitely more of an ink guy than a metal guy.”

“Mmmm… Oh I love these…” Noah’s fingers rubbed at him through the fabric of his shirt, teasing the bars and the sensitive skin of his nipples until it peaked roughly and Sebastian started to feel his breath catch a bit.

With a low noise, he nudged Noah out of his lap and onto the couch next to him, wanting temptation at least a foot away from him before he got in far too deep with this.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Sebastian asked, looking over at Noah who was doing his jeans back up again.

“Nope. Just don’t blow it in my face.”

“That’s foul. I wouldn’t even do that to someone I hated.”

Sebastian fished a battered pack of cigarettes and his lighter out of his pocket. He shifted to sit up properly on the couch as he tucked one between his lips and sparked the lighter against the end to light it.

“How are you liking working at Melendy?” Noah asked him, settling to sit sort of on his side faced toward Sebastian with his legs curled next to him.

“It’s… Fine.” Sebastian said, raising his shoulders in a half shrug. “Being a PA isn’t really my chosen profession, though.”

“Really?? How did you end up as one?”

Sebastian chuckled, then told Noah the story of his interview with Shawn, the mistake he’d made in applying, but how he winged it and managed to cover his tracks.

“And you still got hired??” Noah laughed, settling further into the cushions of the couch. “Talent.”

“Sheer stupidity. But it worked out in the end, and it’s a decent job.”

Aside from having to work for Alex. Running his errands. Taking notes in his meetings. And generally feeling squashed and emotionally suffocated by the whole thing.

“So IT is your thing?”

Sebastian shook his head, tilting his head back to blow a stream of smoke straight up. “I’m a programmer, actually. I know plenty about IT and cybersecurity, but it’s not my path and expertise.”

“Oh… Have you… Uh… Have you met the programming department manager..?”

Noah’s eyes had dropped down as he spoke, and Sebastian watched him toy with the threads on one of the very strategic rips in his jeans.

“I’ve met Reid. And I know he and Alex were together, you don’t have to worry about telling me gossip or anything.” Sebastian smiled a bit, leaning over so he could slide a hand onto Noah’s thigh, pushing two of his fingers into one of the rips in his jeans.

“Oh thank Yoba.” Noah said, exhaling a long breath as he raised his eyes to look back at Sebastian. “How much do you know about it?”

“Just that they were together, but now they aren’t. Judging by the way Reid acts towards Alex in meetings, I’d say their split wasn’t amicable.” Sebastian shrugged nonchalantly, even though he desperately hoped he was encouraging Noah to tell him more than that.

“That’s putting it mildly. It was a huge thing when they broke up…” Noah said, rolling his eyes and smoothing his palm over the back of Sebastian’s hand on his thigh. “But pretty much just because of Reid. He’s a viper… That’s the best way to describe him. He’s insanely smart, but he’s absolutely ruthless and insanely mean a lot of the time. People don’t always realize it, though... I don’t know how he ended up with a sweet guy like Alex.”

Sebastian bristled at the mention of Alex being a ‘sweet guy’, forcing himself not to react because as much as he liked Noah, he sure wasn’t interested in telling him any of that story any time soon. “I’ve only talked to Reid once, but he was pretty nasty.”

“I’m not surprised. Unless you serve a good purpose to him, he treats you like crap.”

Sebastian thought about that conversation he’d had with Reid a week and a half ago. Not just the way Reid had spoken to him, personally, but the way he talked to and treated who he now knew was Liam at the cafe. He’d ordered his drink ssnappishly and then had taken it when Liam held it out without so much as looking at him. Asshole behaviour, really.

“I’m pretty sure he’s sleeping with his PA.” Noah continued, smoothing his hands through his hair. “I can’t prove anything, but I’m pretty sure about it. And if he’s not, then he’s purposefully being way too familiar with him.”

“That’s Ewen, right?” Sebastian said, absorbing this information and tucking it away in case he needed it later. “I’ve seen him at meetings. Tall broad guy? Looks at Reid like an adoring puppy?”

Noah laughed as he nodded. “That’s Ewen, yeah. I bring coffee and stuff upstairs through the morning for Ewen to bring to Reid, but they leave together for lunch most of the time now.”

“Is their going to lunch together weird? I genuinely have no idea what the nuances would be in a manager and PA arrangement.”

“It’s really fucking weird. Like… Managers and PAs should get along and even be friends, of course. But there should still be a line drawn there, and going out together to eat every day is not normal.”

Sebastian nodded slowly, smoothing his hand over Noah’s closest thigh and squeezing softly. “You’re going to have to teach me more about the manager and PA relationship. I have a feeling it’s something I could easily fuck up.”

“I would be very happy to give you some private lessons, if you want.”

Sebastian snorted, pulling his hand out of Noah’s jeans as he stubbed out the end of his cigarette. He pulled Noah down and closer to him, leaning in to flick his tongue against the bud of his upper lip. “You are fucking dangerous...”

“I know. But I’m fun dangerous.” Noah said, then pressed in closer to Sebastian, kissing him fully with a low groan.

Sebastian wanted to know more about Reid. About him and his PA but also just about him, but he didn’t want to make it obvious that he was digging, so he didn’t say anything else to Noah about it and just let himself get swept back up into kissing him.

Sebastian spent Sunday sleeping, forcing himself up late in the afternoon just long enough to get something to eat before he set his alarm for 5 the next morning and fell back into bed. He slept right through and woke up to his alarm, thankfully feeling rested and not too worn out.

He had been doing a decent job of making it to band practices over the past two weeks and seeing his friends and everything, but it had been hectic to deal with work the way he was, and still maintain things with the rest of his life. It was going to be like that wherever he got a job, though. Working freelance had allowed him far more balance in his life. Needing to work actual business hours was going to be tough regardless of where he went after he was done with Melendy and Alex.

“You’ve got three meetings today.” Sebastian said when he brought Alex’s latte to him that morning, scrolling through the calendar on the company phone he’d been using for a week and a bit to find the events for the day.

“Three?” Alex interjected, looking up at Sebastian and frowning. “I only have two in my calendar.”

“Reid scheduled one first thing this morning.”

He almost felt bad saying it. He had cringed when he saw the request come in, but there was nothing that it clashed with in Alex’s schedule, so he had accepted it.

Alex faltered, and Sebastian watched as obvious discomfort flitted across his face before he sighed and nodded his head. “Okay. What time and who’s going?”

“It’s at 1pm. The request was sent to you, Shawn, and to project management. I don’t remember the name of the manager there, sorry.”

“Anthony.” Alex supplied, then picked up his own phone.

Sebastian watched Alex as he added the event to his calendar, then continued to go through the regular morning rundown with him.

“Four people are waiting for return calls, and there’s a supplemental manager’s meeting that’s been scheduled for Friday at 2:30. Do you need me to come to any of today’s meetings?”

“No.” Alex said, shaking his head as he added the other meeting to his calendar. “Today’s meetings are fine for just me.”

“Okay. I’ll be out of the office after lunch on some errands, but here all morning.”

Alex nodded, looking distracted and worried as he picked up his latte, and Sebastian turned to leave again.

Discomfort of his own pricked at him through the morning as he worked on typing up notes from a meeting they had gone to on Friday into a report. Sebastian wasn’t entirely sure what the discomfort was about, exactly, just that it was there. Moving under his skin and poking at his anxiety until he had to get up from his computer.

He stuck a note on his monitor to say he would be right back just in case Alex was looking for him, then he went downstairs to the cafe to get another latte.

“Rough morning?” Noah asked him with a smile as he stepped up to the counter.

“Weird morning.” Sebastian replied, sighing out a short breath. “I can’t settle, so I thought I’d come get a latte. And yes, I see the stupidity in getting caffeine when I’m feeling like this.”

“Well, so long as you recognize it.”

Noah grinned at him, and Sebastian laughed, watching him as he moved around to make the latte.

He had been slightly hesitant that morning when he first got there and needed to get Alex’s coffee. He wasn’t completely sure how Noah would act with him after Saturday night, but he’d been utterly normal and casual with him, which instantly made him relax. It also wiped any trace of thinking he’d made a mistake by fooling around with him. He’d obviously read Noah right in his intentions.

Which… Kinda made him want to hook up with him again if he was honest. He hadn’t been lying about how much more he had wanted. It was just so not the right place for anything more than they had done.

“I’ll see you at lunch?” Noah said as he set the latte down, then pushed Sebastian’s hand away when he started to hand him money. “No one’s here to see me give it to you. Just take it, hm?”

“If you get fired because you’re giving me free stuff, I’m not letting you sleep on my couch.”

Noah laughed at that, then smirked at Sebastian. “You’re not the only one I give free stuff to, and I won’t come looking for your couch if I get fired. I’ll go for one of the higher ups and couch surf in luxury.”

“Oooo… Cheeky.” Sebastian picked up his cup and gave Noah one more smile before he turned to go back upstairs.

He felt a little better after that and managed to mostly get comfortable at his desk for the rest of the morning.

He got his report done and brought it into Alex’s office, leaving it on his desk while he was at a meeting, then went back to his own to work on something else.

When lunch rolled around, Noah was in a bit of a rush so he came and went very quickly to drop off the take out boxes for himself and Alex. Sebastian actually watched Alex get back from his meeting as Noah left, so he picked up his lunch and brought it right in to him.

“Some phone messages for you. I forwarded them to your office phone whenever you get a chance. Nothing sounded pressing.” Sebastian said as he set the boxes down.

“Thanks… I mostly just have time to eat before I go to this afternoon’s meeting. If any of them call back, tell them I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

Sebastian nodded, then tapped the report he had set down on Alex’s desk earlier. “Friday’s meeting. And I’m shopping for you this afternoon. I’ll wait until you leave for your meeting before I go, just in case you need something.”

“Thank you.” Alex said, letting out a low breath.

Sebastian raised his eyes to look at Alex, easily seeing how tired he was and how uncomfortable he was with whatever Reid had pulled together for that afternoon.

Fleetingly, Sebastian wished he could help him or do something to make it easier or even just offer some sort of comfort…

But he just nodded and then turned to leave Alex’s office and go back to his own desk. He had lunch and a break, scrolling on his phone and sending a few texts to Sam while he ate.

Sam- Soooooo… Was your cute little hookup making moony eyes at you today?

Sebastian- Nope. He was being real when he said he just wanted to mess around with me. ;)

Sam- You have all the luck.

Sebastian- Not always. But I did this time. ;)

Sam- Does he know you’re leaving at the end of the week?

Sebastian- No… I’m going to have to tell him but I don’t want to.

Sam- Softie.

Sebastian- Bite me.

Sam- Bring that sooooooft sweet ass of yours close enough and I will HAPPILY bite you. ;)

Sebastian- You need to get laid.

Sam- Are you offering..?

Sebastian- I’d make you work for it and you hate that. ;)

Sam- Ugh. Can I have your cute guy’s number?? :3

Sebastian- Byeeeeee Sam. ;)

Sebastian smirked, chucking his phone onto his desk as he cleaned up his lunch trash. He went to the bathroom, then had a look towards Alex’s office as he came back. It was empty, so he was guessing he’d left for the meeting, which meant Sebastian could leave and go do his shopping for him.

He grabbed his coat and pocketed both his personal phone and his company phone before heading out of the office and back to the ridiculously upscale grocery store.

He was getting used to it, though. The store itself, and shopping for Alex, seeing as he had been there 7 times in the past two weeks he had been working for Melendy. He no longer felt the need to roll his eyes as he walked in, and he knew where to find everything because there rarely seemed to be much variety in what Alex ate, and all of it was annoyingly well balanced.

He took a basket from near the door and pulled his phone out to look at the list. It was a longer one, but still included all of the typical things. Amaranth, salmon, milk, eggs, a baguette, fresh vegetables and fruit. But this one also included a bag of coffee, a large bar of milk chocolate and some cookies from the bakery that looked so fucking good Sebastian considered getting some for himself until he saw the price.

He checked out, smiling at the cashier as he regularly saw her now and they exchanged simple pleasantries. She knew he was shopping for his boss, and he knew that she despised this store, but it paid way better than other places.

The doorman on duty when Sebastian walked in didn’t even look twice at him, just said hello and wished him a good day, and Sebastian barely thought about the fact that he was walking into Alex’s apartment as he unlocked the door and let himself in.

He worked on autopilot now, putting the groceries away, and not looking around and poking into stuff that was none of his business.

He was right in the middle of putting things into the fridge, half thinking about how he was going to tell Noah he was leaving at the end of the week, when he heard a key in the door.

Sebastian froze, listening as the lock flicked over the wrong way, since the door was unlocked from Sebastian coming in, then turned the other way before the door opened. A moment later it shut again heavily, and he heard the sound of someone dropping stuff onto the floor.

“FUCK… Fucking… fuck fuck FUCK….”

This was the second person to string expletives together like that around him in the past few days.

He had to admit that he had liked it much better when Noah had done it...

Sebastian was still frozen in place as he listened to whoever it was continue to swear softly, and then jumped slightly when whoever it was seemed to kick the door. Was there supposed to be a workman or maintenance coming in that day to do something that he had forgotten about? He had actually all but completely convinced himself that was what was going on until Alex himself came around the corner into the kitchen and then froze as well as soon as he saw him standing there.

Holding kale in one hand and a sweet potato in the other.

“Sebastian..?”

He was staring at him again. Like he had the first few days he had been around the office. Alex had mostly stopped doing that, though even Sebastian didn’t blame him for staring now. Neither of them had been expecting each other.

“Shit. I forgot you were shopping for me. I must have scared the crap out of you coming in like that. I’m sorry.”

Alex sighed, dragging his eyes away from Sebastian as he loosened his tie, then yanked it off from around his neck.

“Are you sick..?” Sebastian ventured, finally finding his voice as he watched Alex shrug out of his suit jacket and undo the first few buttons on his shirt.

Everything he did... Everything Sebastian watched him do seemed to ratchet up his anxiety for Yoba knew what fucking reason. He had gotten used to seeing him at the office, wearing a suit, professional and put together.

This... This was not that...

“Sick? No… Oh… Because I’m not at the office. Right. No, I’m fine… Just…”

The meeting with Shawn and Reid and… Fuck, what was his name? Alex had told him that morning. Anthony. From project management.

“Bad meeting?” Sebastian glanced over at Alex as he resumed putting his groceries away slowly and methodically, hoping that it wasn’t obvious that his hands were shaking.

“Yes… Really bad. I knew it was going to be… That’s why Reid schedules them last minute. I can’t back out of them or say I have a conflict.”

Sebastian nodded, closing the fridge and moving to fold up the cloth grocery bags. Alex leaned his backside against the counter, resting his hands on the edge of it on either side of himself as he let out a long breath.

“I should probably explain. Why it’s such a fucking... thing.. with Reid and me…”

Sebastian raised his eyes to look at Alex as he started to speak and then stopped.

“I know why.” He said quietly, saving Alex the trouble of trying to explain when he didn’t have to.

“You do?”

“I’ve gathered the basics. You scribbled his name out in the binder kind of ineffectively.” The corners of Sebastian’s lips twitched up just a bit as he looked at Alex.

Plus he’d gone through his shit in the closet. But he wasn’t about to confess to that.

Alex laughed quietly, looking down. “Yeah, it was on the fly. I should have just taken that page out.”

“If you had, then you would have had to actually explain it all to me now. It saved you the trouble.”

“That’s true.”

“And I don’t need to know more than just that. It’s enough for me to understand the situation.”

Sebastian finished folding the bags, then stacked them all together and pushed them to the side. He leaned his forearms against the kitchen island that separated him and Alex. “I can just reject Reid’s meeting requests when they come in like that. I’ll shove something made up into your calendar at the time he requested and say there was a conflict and you can’t make it. I’ll tell you that it happened, then you can decide for yourself if you want to accept or not. If you do want to accept, then I’ll call Ewen directly to tell him that you had a cancellation and can make the meeting after all.”

“Really?” Alex raised his head again to look over at Sebastian.

Sebastian shrugged. “For this week, anyway. If it works out, it can just be something you tell whoever comes in after me.”

“Oh… Right. Yeah… Yeah, it would be a good trial, I guess.” Alex’s eyes immediately dropped down and his hands tightened on the edge of the counter.

They were both silent for a full couple of minutes, then Sebastian let out a low breath and tilted his head as he looked over at Alex. “Coffee?”

“Hm?” Alex looked over at him, confused.

“Do you want some coffee? I’ll make some before I go if you do.”

“Oh… No, that’s….” Alex trailed off and then let out a very long sigh, his expression shifting so that it was clear just how fucking exhausted he was. “Actually, I really would love some coffee. If you truly don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Maybe go change? It’ll be ready when you’re done.”

Alex nodded and pushed off from the counter to walk out of the kitchen and down the hall to his bedroom. Sebastian heard the door close quietly behind him, then he turned to take out the bag of coffee he had bought that day and just tried to breathe.

He busied himself with that for a few minutes, adding coffee grounds to make half a pot and adding in the water before switching the whole thing on. He was thankful that despite Alex’s fancy apartment and fancy stores and fancy lifestyle in general, his coffee maker functioned pretty much exactly the same as any other standard one. It just looked much more upscale.

It was almost done when Alex came back into the kitchen dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and Sebastian took one look at him and then jerked his head away like he had walked in naked. His heart slammed up into his throat and refused to move as he took out a mug for Alex. He set it on the island before he turned and took the cream out as well, putting it next to the mug.

“Thank you so much.” Alex said, smiling a bit. “I really appreciate it.”

“Sure.” Sebastian said, edging his way around the island, forcing the words out of himself. “I’ll head out now. I hope that your evening is good. Less… stressful…”

“Don’t bother going back to the office or anything.” Alex looked over at him, then down at the mug he was toying with other counter. “I’m not there. Have an early night.”

“Thanks. That’s helpful, actually. I have band practice tonight.”

“Band? Really? Is it still your band with Sam?”

Sebastian couldn’t help the fraction of a smirk that came to his lips, thinking about how angry Sam would be to hear it called Sebastian’s band with Sam. But he just nodded. “Yep. Sam has me roped in to the point I can’t leave now.”

“Do you do shows? Lives? Whatever you want to call it.” Alex smiled at him a bit more easily and normally as he picked up the pot of coffee and poured some into his mug.

“We do, yeah. Just did one on Saturday. Have another in a few weeks.”

He continued to step towards leaving the kitchen even as he talked, but he didn’t want to be horrifically rude about it.

“That’s so cool. Really… And wonderful that you and Sam have stayed friends.”

Something about the way Alex said that… about him and Sam staying friends…

It made them both stop and take in a breath.

“I should go.” Sebastian said after a few beats of silence. “See you in the morning.”

“Yes. Of course. See you in the morning.”

Sebastian didn’t dare look behind himself as he walked out of the kitchen and headed to the door. He pulled his shoes back on and let himself out into the hall, but he truly didn’t feel like he could breathe until he was outside of the building and getting into his car.

He sat for a few minutes, his hands tight on the steering wheel as he took in slow, deep breaths to try and settle himself down again.

That had been really awkward. Really uncomfortable in some very strange ways.

Something about seeing him in his apartment, watching him take off his tie. Undo the top buttons on his shirt... It suddenly made him more real. Like working with him at the office every day had been like interacting with a cardboard cutout of him and now he had actually really fucking seen him.

Seeing him come back to the kitchen in jeans and a t-shirt. The same colour of denim he had always worn even if the cut of them was different. The same heather grey t-shirts he had in abundance in high school.

Sebastian could remember how they smelled. How they felt under his cheek and under his palms. The warmth of Alex’s body seeping through, the rumble of his voice or his laugh that Sebastian could feel just as much as hear when he was pressed against him, or when Alex was draped over him using him like a human pillow…

He made a noise of frustration and pressed his forehead down against his hands on the steering wheel, trying to banish all of those thoughts from his mind and stomp it all down as hard and as deeply as he could.

He started the car, backing out of his space even as he continued to take deep breaths. Even as everything in him twisted so tight that he thought he might scream... But he needed to be anywhere but there. He needed as much fucking space between himself and Alex as he could get.

Just a few more days.

He only had to do this for a few more days, and then he could walk away from this ridiculous job, walk away from Alex, and put it all to rest again.

Chapter Text

The rest of the week sped by without much commotion. There were no last-minute meetings sprung on Alex by Reid for Sebastian to decline. Alex seemed to have recovered fine from whatever happened in the meeting on Monday afternoon, and everyone just did their jobs.

Sebastian shopped for Alex a few more times, typed up meeting notes into reports, and finally finished cleaning up his office from the lousy PA that had come before him.

“Just in time for me to leave.” He said quietly to himself on Friday morning when he dusted his hands off and surveyed the tidy and organized space.

His day looked very light, aside from the supplemental manager’s meeting that afternoon. He did have to go to that with Alex, and planned to finish out the day by writing instructions for whoever came in after him on where to find his notes to write up a report on Monday.

He also needed to tell Noah that this was his last day.

Sebastian had been saying every day that week that he was going to tell Noah. That he was going to get it over with. That it wasn’t a big deal, they could still talk if they wanted to. He didn’t have to work at Melendy for that.

And yet, he still hadn’t said anything to him.

Sebastian stuck a note on his monitor around 9:45 to let Alex know he was going out for his dry cleaning and to get his groceries, then he went downstairs and walked determinedly to the cafe. He’d get a latte, tell Noah, then leave to do his errands.

“That kind of day already?” Noah asked when Sebastian stepped up to the counter for the second time that morning. He smirked when Sebastian turned his eyes up in fake frustration, then laughed at the sigh he heaved. “Oh boy… Well, I may or may not accidentally ‘spill’ an extra shot into your latte for you. Just telling you now that I’ve been very clumsy with espresso this morning and it could happen.”

“Angel.” Sebastian said, chuckling when Noah laughed again. He seemed to find it incredibly funny that Sebastian had started calling him an angel, and considering what had happened the weekend before, Sebastian could see his point. But the way he reacted to it just made Sebastian use it more frequently.

“Are you going back upstairs?” Noah asked as he put a lid on Sebastian’s cup and set it down for him.

“No, heading out for errands.” He replied, then trailed off as he tried to force the words he needed to say out of his mouth. But they wouldn’t come…

“You okay?” Noah tilted his head a bit, looking at Sebastian in slight confusion.

“Yes… Sorry… It really is one of those days.”

Noah smiled at him, then reached over the counter and very lightly touched his cheek. “Fresh air and caffeine. These office buildings are stifling…”

“You aren’t wrong.” Sebastian said, giving it up as a lost cause as he raised his cup in thanks. “See you at lunchtime.”

He’d just have to text Noah about it. Maybe explaining it all once he was done working here would be best. He could tell him the whole story, and then it would make more sense as to why he had only been there for a few weeks.

He got Alex’s dry cleaning first and hung it in the back of his car before he went to the grocery store to get the few things that were on the shopping list for that day.

From there he drove to Alex’s apartment and brought his things upstairs for the very last time.

He sighed as he let the door close behind him, his eyes moving around as he walked up the hall and into the kitchen. He laid the dry cleaning on the island and put the fruit and vegetables into the fridge neatly. Then, with the dry cleaning in hand again, he went up the hall to Alex’s bedroom.

His eyes moved down almost automatically when he opened the closet door, unable to help himself from taking a look at the box with Reid’s name on it, though he hadn’t touched it, or anything else he wasn’t supposed to, since the first day he’d been there.

But today he found himself just looking at the floor. The box wasn’t there.

For a moment, Sebastian bit the inside of his lower lip and let his brain spiral with the complete nonsense panic that somehow Alex figured out he had looked in it and so he put it somewhere else. Something Sebastian said gave it away. He said something about the note or something in the box.

It was stupid. He knew he hadn’t said anything… It was far more likely that Ewen had finally come to get the box, as Reid said in the note that he would. Or that Alex had gotten tired of looking at it and had brought it to Ewen himself.

He let out a very long, steadying breath and gave his head a shake before he hung the suits up where they were supposed to go. He smoothed them out a bit, and adjusted the tie draped over the shoulder of the shirt in front of them, then he closed the closet door.

His work phone pinged, and he took it out of his pocket to see a text from Alex.

Alex- Have you been to my apartment yet?

Sebastian- There now, just finishing.

Alex- Thank Yoba. Can you please bring me a clean shirt? Coffee is not my friend today. Again.

Sebastian couldn’t help but smile a little bit at that. It wasn’t the first time in the past few weeks that Alex had caught him while he was out and asked him to bring a clean shirt or a clean tie. He was constantly distracted and working while drinking or eating, and it often didn’t go well.

Sebastian- What colour and do you need a tie?

Alex- White with pale grey pinstripes. And yes… I don’t know what tie, though.

Sebastian- I can handle choosing a tie. I’ll be back soon.

Alex- Thank you. :)

Sebastian put his phone back into his pocket, then opened the other end of Alex’s closet where his shirts were hung. He sorted through a few, taking out the first white with grey pinstripes one he found, then set it down on the end of Alex’s bed.

He sorted through ties next, keeping in mind that Alex’s suit that day was a very dark grey, and picked out one that was deep indigo and one that was sky blue. He held both of them against the shirt, then put the blue one back. The indigo one he hung around the neck of the hanger with the shirt so he could carry them both out with him.

For a moment after he put his shoes back on, he did pause and just look around a bit.

He wouldn’t have to come back after this. He would literally lock the door behind himself and never come back.

Sebastian chewed the edge of his thumbnail and thought for the millionth time that week about Alex walking into the kitchen. Dressed in jeans and t-shirt.

Actually looking like Alex. No suits, no big office, no fancy apartment and fancy life...

Just... Alex.

He dragged his thumbnail back out of his mouth, then turned and went out the door. He locked it behind himself, then went downstairs and back out to his car. He hung the shirt and tie in the backseat and drove back to the office with his window down, hoping that the blast of autumn cool air would clear his head.

“Did getting out for a while this morning help you feel better?” Noah asked when he brought up lunches for Sebastian and Alex.

“It did.” Sebastian said with a smile, though he was ignoring the weird way he had felt in Alex’s apartment. Not just because the box was gone. But because it was the last time he’d be there... And it had been kind of hard to actually leave.

“I’m glad.”

Noah hesitated for a second, then looked at Sebastian uncertainly, walking closer to sit against the edge of his desk. “I’m sorry if it was weird that I touched your cheek earlier? I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Sebastian tipped his head slightly, looking at Noah in confusion for a second, then exhaled a low laugh. “Noah, you’ll have to try harder than that to upset me.”

Noah laughed softly, smiling at him in obvious relief as he stood up again. “Just checking. I hope you have a good afternoon, and a good weekend. See you Monday!”

“Have a good weekend.” Sebastian said, feeling really fucking guilty right then about the whole ‘Monday’ thing.

He’d text him over the weekend. He’d explain then. Now really wasn’t the time.

Sebastian worked while he ate lunch, making sure everything was organized on his desktop and on the tablet so that whoever came in after him would be able to find everything they needed and wouldn’t have to dig through everything the way he’d had to.

He was just finishing labelling one of the main folders on the desktop when Alex walked into his office. “Ready to go?”

Sebastian glanced up at him and nodded, getting to his feet and pushing his chair in before he picked up his tablet.

“What’s a ‘supplemental’ manager’s meeting?” He asked as he fell into step next to Alex on the walk to the elevators.

“Just a check in. It generally means more than one manager has expressed to Shawn that we need to all sit down and just touch base again. Either because of questions, or maybe something has come up in their department that they need to make everyone aware of.”

Sebastian nodded at the explanation, thinking it sounded straightforward enough, but he couldn’t help wondering if it actually was. At least given the circumstances of some of the departments right then. One in particular...

They walked in together, and Sebastian sat down next to Alex. He opened his tablet and a blank document while he looked around the table.

Most people there he knew the names of now and recognized them based on their department.

But the one that stuck out the most, who always did in meetings, was Reid. Reid, who had just sat down at the table directly across from Alex, placing Ewen right across from Sebastian.

Shawn called the meeting to start, and Sebastian fell into what was now routine note taking.

Everything seemed fairly normal. Shawn checked in with finance and project management, but neither of them had much to say, so he moved on to Reid.

Who smiled in a way that immediately made Sebastian wary.

“Thank you, Shawn.” Reid said, nodding to him before he turned to the rest of the table again. “I won’t take up a lot of time. I just wanted to address something that has been brought to my attention about the IT project that’s coming up. I don’t want to sound like I’m calling anything into question, only that this is something very high risk and I feel it needs to be addressed.”

Reid made a pained sort of face that was so fucking fake. Anyone who attended meetings with Reid and Alex should be well aware that Reid sought any opportunity to try to nail him with something, but somehow it never seemed to register with anyone that Reid’s ‘questions’ and ‘issues’ were a personal attack.

“Alex’s proposed new network SSO… It looks good and sounds secure, but if that SSO gateway, at it’s current proposed configuration, fails… The entire company loses access to the network. That includes not just us here in this building, but every Melendy peripheral, every client that has their network patched in through ours… Everything goes dark. This isn’t something small, which is why I wanted to bring it to all the department heads before things... progress... and we’re locked in with no way out.”

Silence fell around the table for a few seconds, then a rumble of voices started as everyone started talking to each other.

What Reid said sounded absolutely fucking dire. And it was, but only if the proper backup and precautions weren’t taken, which surely they would be.

But that? That wasn’t the issue. The issue with the question was that Reid had made this sound like an IT problem when it was, actually, IT in conjunction with programming that would take on what had to be done to prevent that from happening. Programming was actually responsible for providing the fallbacks and authentication redirections. That was their fucking job…

Alex couldn’t respond to that question. Not the way Reid had phrased it, and not in full. He wouldn’t know how to, he could only speak to the IT side of things, and while he likely was fully aware that programming would have a hand in solving this ‘issue’, there was nothing he could constructively say about it right now that wouldn’t look like he was just trying to brush it off or pass on responsibility.

And Reid knew that. Without a doubt he knew how it would sound, and he absolutely fucking knew that it would look like all the weight of this was on Alex, and that no one would know that half of that entire issue was programming’s responsibility. He had clearly ramped up how he was going about these attacks on Alex and had thought this through leading into the meeting. How he was going to wind this around to whatever point he truly wanted to make was beyond Sebastian, but that wasn’t anything he needed to worry about right that second.

His immediate concern was Alex. Sitting next to him and obviously floundering to try to think of something to say when he didn’t have an answer to give. When he couldn’t have an answer and he was backed utterly and completely into a corner that wasn’t even his.

Everyone at the table was talking to each other now. Worriedly and hurriedly. Which was bad, but it also meant that very little of their attention was actually on Alex…

Sebastian opened a new document on his tablet and increased the size of the font so it would be incredibly easy to read. He started typing quickly and slid his foot over to nudge Alex’s under the table pointedly to get his attention.

It took Alex a second to realize what he was doing. Sebastian could see him out of the corner of his eye and the way he looked at him in question, then heard his small intake of breath when he saw what Sebastian was typing.

After a few moments, Alex cleared his throat, and shook his head as he raised his voice over everyone else’s. “Apologies. I just wanted to take a minute to think through Reid’s question to give a proper answer. It is something that needs full attention, and I want to thank Reid for bringing it up. But the SSO gateway in corporate settings is never a single point of failure. That would be incredibly irresponsible. It’s mirrored across multiple nodes with automatic failover. If one node drops, authentication requests are redirected through a backup instance with cached session tokens, so no one loses access mid-session. We’d also be implementing token-based local fallback for high-priority accounts so even if the gateway and the backup went down, those users would retain time-limited access until the main service is restored.”

Silence fell across the table as Alex spoke, and Sebastian quickly erased what he had typed. He had made some assumptions about what the company network needed and looked like, but what he’d had Alex say was enough that it would probably get him through this.

But Reid had clearly come to fight… Because it only took him about thirty seconds to fire something back at Alex, his tone sharp and angrily condescending.

“Redundancy means more endpoints to secure, Alex. Every backup gateway is another attack surface. You’re multiplying risk to the company with this proposal, not reducing it.”

Sebastian had already started typing before Reid had finished speaking because he knew immediately what track he was taking. There had been a few ways that he could have gone with a comeback, and Sebastian would have had no issue following up to any of them.

“All nodes are locked behind the same IAM policy, with zero-trust verification between them. They don’t expose new entry points… They just replicate the same secure service. We’d be using mutual TLS for inter-node communication.”

Alex spoke as Sebastian typed, keeping his tone casual and calm despite the fact that Sebastian could see his knee bouncing under the table in obvious anxiety. Which was understandable… This was an absolutely fucking insane position for him to have to be in.

“Well…” Shawn said the one word after a long silence, looking at Alex and then looking at Reid with a rather strange expression. “Unless you have more questions, Reid, I think we’ll move on.”

There was quiet for a few seconds, and Sebastian kept his head down, not daring to look up just yet.

“Paul, why don’t you go ahead now…”

Shawn moved the meeting forward, and someone further down the table started talking. Sebastian cleared his screen and went back to his page of notes. Only then did he raise his head and look across the table.

Reid was looking directly at him. Hard, and incredibly angry, and with rather intense suspicion. A look that most people probably would have shrunk under, but it just made Sebastian want to scream at him to ‘bring it on’ because Reid would have his work fucking cut out for him if he wanted to fight with him in this context.

He held Reid’s gaze with a stony and unyielding expression of his own, daring him to fucking say something or accuse him of something openly in front of anyone... He held it until Reid was forced to look away and go back to what was happening down the table. Then with a short breath, Sebastian turned his attention back to his tablet screen.

Next to him, Alex was still bouncing his leg under the table, and Sebastian could practically feel the waves of tension rolling off him. Without thinking about it, Sebastian looked down toward the discussion happening like he was paying attention, then dropped his hand under the table and reached over, very lightly touching his fingers to Alex’s thigh. Just to let him know he was there. Just to say he wasn’t alone.

He felt Alex tense as he touched him, but only for a few seconds before he seemed to relax a bit. Slowly he stopped bouncing his leg, and Sebastian eventually heard him let out a very quiet but very long breath. Once Alex seemed to have calmed down enough to not be ready to explode, Sebastian patted his fingers against his thigh gently before sliding it back again so he could continue typing notes.

No big deal. That was totally normal. It was completely normal that Sebastian’s gut reaction was to reach out to him. And it wasn’t weird at all that it calmed Alex down.

By the end of the meeting, everyone who hadn’t been directly involved in what Reid had tried to do seemed to be in good spirits. Sebastian quietly closed his tablet and got up when Alex did, following him out the door.

“Good job in there, Alex.” Shawn said as they were leaving. “Those were some difficult but important issues that Reid raised.”

“Yes, I’m glad that he brought them up. It was good for everyone to be present to hear them and what we plan to do about them.” Alex said, his voice calm and even like it always was.

It kind of seemed like a superpower to Sebastian. The way Alex could sound perfectly calm even when he wasn’t in the least. He had always been like that...

Shawn moved on to talk to someone else, so Sebastian followed Alex to the elevators and stepped into one with him when the doors opened.

As soon as the doors closed again and they were completely alone, Alex let out a hard breath and looked at Sebastian. “‘Thank you’ doesn’t even scratch the surface, Sebastian...”

“That was so incredibly fucking unfair!” Sebastian turned to face Alex, his anger at Reid and what he’d just tried to do absolutely exploding out of him now that they were finally away from it all.

“What kind of absolute fucking ASSHOLE takes things that far? To the point where he’s backing you into a corner with responsibilities that aren’t even yours? So much of that is programming’s fucking responsibility, he KNEW how that would look and KNEW you couldn’t say it was programming’s responsibility without looking like you were trying to pass blame. I could absolutely fucking kill him!”

Sebastian stopped there, breathing heavily and still seething... But Alex was looking at him in absolute shock, and he realized then just how much he had just gone off.

“Sorry.” He said after a few moments, taking in a deep breath and holding it before he let it out again slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Alex said quietly. “It’s exactly how I felt. How I’ve felt every time I’ve had to go to a meeting with him. It’s never ending... And no one else has noticed that he’s making it completely personal.”

“They’re all fucking idiots. It was clear this is personal from the very first meeting I went to with you on the first day.” Sebastian muttered the words, shifting his shoulders a bit as tension strung his muscles tight.

The elevator doors opened, and Sebastian walked out as though he hadn’t just been having a meltdown. They walked towards the office, and Sebastian heard Alex take in a breath like he was going to say something...

But then he didn’t…

So Sebastian turned to go into his office and sat down at his computer. He took some deep breaths to try to calm the absolute whirlwind that his brain was right then. He needed to start making notes and putting things together for whoever was going to start as Alex’s PA next week… But all he actually did was sit and think about the meeting and Reid’s set up. Not to mention what Reid was going to try to do next, because this wouldn’t stop him. What happened today had clearly just made him even more angry. The look he gave Sebastian was poisonous and hostile and spoke volumes about what was likely still to come.

After sitting for nearly an hour and not actually doing anything, Sebastian got up and walked to the door of the stairwell. He pushed through and walked down a couple of flights, stopping on a landing as he took his phone out to call Sam.

“Seb?? What’s up??” Sam answered after the second ring, his voice obviously concerned.

“How much are you going to hate me if I’m sporadic at practices for a while longer?”

Sam was silent for a few seconds before responding. “Probably not much… But why?”

“I don’t think I can leave this job. I think I have to stay here.”

“Well duh…”

Sebastian pulled the phone away from his face to look at incredulously before he put it back to his ear. “What do you mean duh?”

“I mean that while you absolutely totally believed you were only staying there for a few weeks, you weren’t actually going to leave after today.”

“And you couldn’t have, I don’t know, let me in on this little insight you had?”

Sam laughed, and Sebastian could hear him shuffling around, likely getting more comfortable now that he knew that Sebastian wasn’t calling him with an actual emergency situation. “You wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Let’s skip this part and move on to you telling me why you now think you can’t leave.”

Sebastian wanted to be angry, but honestly he was just too fucking tired and upset and confused to get anywhere with it.

So he took in a breath and told Sam about Reid and what had happened. Sam knew that Reid and Alex had been together, and he knew that Reid had been going after Alex in meetings, but Sebastian filled him in on everything else.

“There’s no way today ended it. There’s no fucking way that Reid will take this loss and move on and leave Alex alone. He’s just going to get worse.”

“Does Reid know you had anything to do with Alex getting through today?”

“Most likely. He knows I’m a programmer, and he was glaring at me pretty fucking hard in the meeting. So if I walk… He knows that Alex is on his own again.”

Sam said nothing for close to a minute, then exhaled a long breath. “You gotta stay, Seb.”

“I know. I know I do, Sam... But... But this has been so fucking h-hard…”

Sebastian scrunched his eyes shut in embarrassment as his voice cracked and all the fucked up, twisted up emotions he’d been dealing with over the last few weeks pushed dangerously close to the surface.

“Hey… It’s okay. I get it.” Sam said quietly and soothingly. “I really do. This is so unfair. But you don’t have to stay forever, right? You can stay until this new project Alex is doing is finished, and then you’ve gotten him through this much. Mmaybe after that he’ll be fine on his own. It sounds like Reid is just going after him in relation to this project, right? I doubt he’d be able to nitpick Alex too hard on day-to-day stuff.”

Sebastian nodded, pressing his back against the wall as he rubbed his eyes, willing them not to actually spill over. “That’s true… If I stay through the project, that should be enough. You really aren’t going to be mad about the band practices?”

“Nah. You and I could both do this in our sleep at this point,. It’s the other guys we gotta keep on top of. We’ll just hold off on adding anything new that you’d have to learn until you’re out of this mess. We’ve got more than enough music to do varied shows, anyway.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Sebastian. And you know if there’s anything I can do, you just need to ask.”

Sebastian smiled, feeling his eyes mist over again for completely different reasons. “You’re the best.”

“In the meantime, maybe you should very seriously give some thought to, I don’t know, actually getting laid?” Sam’s tone had turned teasing and leading, and he clicked his tongue at him a few times after he spoke.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Sebastian said with a laugh. “You’re fucking terrible.”

“I know I am. Love you, Seb.”

“Love you too, Sam.”

Sebastian hung up, still chuckling, and sat down on the stairs for a few minutes. He needed to get back. He hadn’t put a note on his monitor to say where he was, but he also needed a minute to put himself back together again.

Sam had been there. Through school. Through high school and the eventual crumbling of Sebastian’s entire world. Through everything… He knew how hard this was, and he also knew that staying now was the right thing to do.

Sebastian knew that too.

Once he felt reasonably composed, he went back upstairs and walked through to his office, where he sat down and started working on putting together the notes from the meeting into a report, since he would be there on Monday to finish it now.

He kept an eye on Alex’s office as he worked, and when it looked like he was getting ready to leave, Sebastian got up and walked over. He knocked lightly on the door, then pushed it open to let himself in.

“Hey…” Alex said, looking up at him as he came up to his desk. “I’m getting ready to go. So… I guess you want to…”

“Can I get a second monitor for my desk?” Sebastian asked, trying not to enjoy the immediate confusion that crossed Alex’s face.

“You… What?”

“A second monitor. It would be helpful if I could have one monitor that always has your calendar open, and one with my desktop. It would save a lot of time.”

Alex blinked a couple of times, looking just as lost as he had in the meeting that afternoon. Maybe it was mean to blindside him twice in one day... But it actually made Sebastian feel a lot better to pull this one last little stunt.

“You can have a second monitor, of course, but…”

“Thank you. I’ll see you on Monday.”

He smiled very faintly, then he turned and walked back out of Alex’s office and over to his own.

If nothing else, at least all the work he’d done organizing his office wouldn’t be wasted on someone else.

Sebastian didn’t bother waiting to actually see Alex walk to the elevators before he turned off his computer and gathered his own things to leave. He’d just told him he was coming back on Monday, so he figured getting a two-minute head start out of the office would barely even register.

As he walked out of the elevator on the ground floor, Noah crossed in front of him heading to the door, and Sebastian turned quickly to catch up to him in confusion. “What the hell are you doing here right now?”

Noah immediately made an exasperated face and held his phone up. “I forgot my phone here when I left this afternoon. What a fucking idiot, leaving it here on a Friday so I had to come back and get it. Now I’m into evening bus times, and it’s going to be so crowded…”

Sebastian chuckled, patting a hand against Noah’s shoulder, sliding it down onto his back as pushed the door open with his other hand, letting Noah walk through first before he followed behind him. “You want a ride home?”

Noah looked at him eagerly, then immediately tamped down on it a bit and shook his head. “I don’t want you to have to go out of your way.”

“I couldn’t care less if it’s out of my way, Noah. I could actually use some friendly company.” Sebastian smiled at Noah quite genuinely, because honestly he really did want his company. Even if it was just to sit in the car while he drove him home.

“Well… If you really don’t mind.” Noah smiled, reaching up to touch his cheek, much like he had earlier in the day. “Thank you.”

“You’re doing me a favour as well.” Sebastian said, reaching up and curling his fingers around Noah’s against his cheek. He held on as he dropped their hands down between them and started walking toward the parking lot.

“Long day?” Noah asked, raising his eyebrows as he looked at him, squeezing his fingers around Sebastian’s. “I know it started that way, but it sounds like it ended like that as well.”

“Long. Complicated. Incredibly strange…” Sebastian looked at Noah next to him and smiled. “I’m glad it’s the weekend.”

“Me too. Do you have a live this weekend?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Two weeks from tonight.”

“Where is it? I want to come and see you again.”

“Liquid Lounge. You going to turn into a groupie?” He looked at Noah and smirked a bit flirtatiously, giving his hand a soft tug.

“Absolutely. I’ll come to all your shows and do increasingly weird things to get your attention.” Noah chuckled, then turned to glance behind them as they turned into the parking lot. “Oh… Hey, Alex!”

Sebastian faltered a bit, turning his head to look behind them at Alex, who was maybe about nine feet behind them.

Alex looked right at him... And Sebastian let go of Noah’s hand without even realizing that he was...

“Hey, Noah. You’re here late.” Alex’s gaze had moved to Noah, who was smiling at him broadly.

“I forgot my phone here like a dumbass and had to come back for it. But I had good timing, at least. Sebastian very kindly offered to drive me home and save me from the horror of Friday night buses.”

“Sebastian is saving everyone today…” Alex said, slowing his steps as Noah did, which forced Sebastian to do the same, and they all stopped where they were.

“Is he really?” Noah smiled, looking from Alex to Sebastian and then back again. “Did he save you?”

“He did. Several times, actually.”

Alex tilted his head, turning his eyes from Noah to Sebastian. “I liked your tie choice, by the way.”

Sebastian looked at Alex’s tie, the indigo one he’d brought him along with his clean shirt, then up to his eyes.

“The sky goes this colour at the beach at home in the summer... Right as the sun disappears but before the sky goes completely black. Do you remember?”

Alex’s smile was quiet. Almost private... A smile Sebastian knew but hadn’t seen in a really fucking long time.

Speaking was out of the question. The smile. The memory. It was just... It was too much in a day that was already absolute fucking emotional chaos.

He nodded. He met Alex’s eyes and nodded. That was the absolute best he could do.

“Have a good weekend. Both of you.” Alex said after the silence stretched a bit too long. He turned and walked over to a silver sedan and got in, while Sebastian directed Noah to his own car a few spaces away.

Neither of them said anything until they were both sitting and buckled up and Sebastian had started the car.

“You didn’t say a word to him.” Noah said, looking at Sebastian curiously through the dark and barely lit interior of the car.

“No.” Sebastian said quietly. “I didn’t.”

There was nothing for him to say to Alex. Nothing he was comfortable with saying, anyway.

“Where am I heading?” Sebastian asked at a normal volume as he pulled up to the end of the parking lot.

“Do you want to take me to my place? Or did you maybe want to go to yours?”

Sebastian jerked his head around to meet Noah’s eyes in surprise, raising his eyebrows a bit. After a moment, he smirked and tilted his head. “My place... Or I drop you off at your place alone? You don’t want to invite me into yours?”

“I would, but I have roommates, and I have a feeling you don’t.” Noah smiled at him, then reached one hand out to slide onto Sebastian’s closest thigh. “You can just bring me home, though, if that’s what you want. Just offering options.”

Sebastian looked at Noah for a few more seconds, then flicked on his blinker to turn into the street.

“My place then.”

“Oh thank fucking Yoba…”

Sebastian laughed, and Noah slid his hand higher on his thigh, squeezing into him warmly.

Maybe Sam was right about what he needed right then. Not that he’d tell him he was right, but maybe he was.

The day he’d had… What he’d just signed himself up for in deciding to stay…

Why the hell would he say no to this?

Chapter Text

“This is annoying.” 

Sebastian breathed the words out, trying to sit as far back in his chair as he could while rather despondently watching Sam pick up the things from his desk across from him and move across the room to sit down with Abigail instead. 

Sebastian looked down at the top of his desk, frowning rather darkly and ignoring the sound of someone else sitting down in Sam’s seat. 

Why did teachers do this? Why did they force you to be partners with whoever they chose instead of just letting you pick for yourself?

Sebastian chanced a look over at Sam sitting with Abigail, wishing like anything that he could be sitting with them instead of…

“We better get started.” Alex said rather abruptly, forcing Sebastian to look up to where he now sat across from him at Sam’s desk. “The sooner we choose a book and stuff the sooner this is over with.”

Alex didn’t like him any more than he liked Alex, and that was abundantly clear to anyone who actually used half their brain. So why their teacher decided to push them together to work on a book report together was a mystery to him. A very unfair one at that…

“Fine.” Sebastian said, resting his arms on his desk. He kept his eyes steady on Alex, watching him as he chose his next words carefully. “Maybe you should choose the book? It might be easier.”

“Why? So you don’t have to do any work?” Alex fired the words back with a frown. 

“No. Because I know reading isn’t really something you’re good at, and it would be easier for you to just pick something than to hear you tell me all my suggestions are too long or too hard for you.”

Even at ten years old Sebastian knew how to cut someone with nothing but what he said, and clearly those words were sharp enough to hurt because Alex flinched pretty hard. 

Good. 

For a few moments Alex looked angrily down at the desk, and when he did speak it was without raising his head. “Mr Gellert said we could choose anything with a story.”

“I don’t think a children’s book will count.” 

Sebastian hadn’t really meant to say anything else that was nasty unless Alex made him, but that came out of his mouth before he could stop it. 

He actually felt a little bad when he saw Alex’s ears go red…

“I was going to say maybe that he’d count a graphic novel.” Alex said, still looking at his desk and not at Sebastian. 

“What’s a ‘graphic novel’?” 

“How can you not know what a graphic novel is?” Alex did raise his eyes this time, looking angry and hurt, but also slightly curious. 

Sebastian raised his shoulders in a slow shrug and Alex sighed and got up from Sam’s desk. 

He walked back to his own desk and nudged Katie who was sitting in his seat after being paired with Haley for this project. Katie leaned over and Alex poked around inside his desk before he found a book and carried it back. He handed it to Sebastian, then sat down again, seeming intent to just wait for Sebastian to look at it. 

Sebastian looked at the title and frowned a bit, but not because he disapproved, more because it looked and sounded interesting…

“Dungeon Runners?” He said, glancing at Alex for a moment before turning the book over to read the back cover. 

It sounded really interesting. How had he never come across this book before? He would have grabbed it in a second…

But when he opened it, he frowned again, only this time in confusion. There were pictures… It was all pictures, and the people in them were talking like a comic book, but… 

Different. 

Unaware of time passing, Sebastian had started at the first page and was rather avidly taking in the pictures and the beginning of the story, his eyes moving rapidly as the story and the images sucked him right in. 

“It’s good, right?”

Sebastian startled a bit, honestly having forgotten he was at school, let alone sitting across from Alex, holding a book that he had given him. 

“It’s really good.” Sebastian said as he raised his eyes to Alex’s. “Should we ask if we can do the report on a graphic novel?”

Alex smiled a bit, then got a slightly more impish expression on his face. “Maybe we should just do it. Mr Gellert said anything with a story. He didn’t say how many words had to be in it, or that it couldn’t have pictures. This has a story, and it’s a really good one.”

Sebastian pressed his lips together, feeling a little shiver of uncertainty run through him at the idea of doing something that may or may not actually be okay… But Alex made a strong point. This was clearly a book and clearly had a story, so… Maybe if Mr Gellert had a problem with it he should have been more clear. 

He’d never done anything even slightly or potentially defiant before, even though he thought some pretty defiant things all the time. 

Something about not doing it alone made it easier, though. So he nodded, smiling a little bit back at Alex as he did. “Okay. Can I borrow this? I’ll read it tonight and bring it back tomorrow.”

“You can read it all in one night?” Alex asked, looking pleased that Sebastian had agreed to do the report on his book of choice. 

Sebastian looked down at the book, flipping through it to judge the amount of words on every page, then nodded as he looked up at Alex. “Sure, yeah. But I can see if they have it in the library and take out a copy if you want yours back.”

Alex shook his head, his smile growing a bit uncertain. “No, you can borrow mine. I’m just surprised it will only take you one night. You read really fast.”

“I know. It’s sometimes awesome and sometimes not.” Sebastian said, going back to the start of Dungeon Runners to look more closely at the pictures. 

“Why would it ever not be awesome?” Alex asked, leaning forward a bit so he could see what Sebastian was looking at in the book. 

“I go through books too fast and I’m always having to get new ones. If I could take my time then books would last longer and I wouldn’t always be trying to find more.”

“Hm… I guess I could see how that would be annoying. But even when I try to get through something fast I read really slowly. That is really not awesome.”

“Somehow we need to combine our reading speeds. Then it would be perfect.” Sebastian smiled at Alex, and was kind of surprised to find he was happy when Alex smiled back at him. 

“There’s three ‘Dungeon Runners’ books. I can bring the other two to school tomorrow and give them to you if you want to keep reading.” Alex said, still smiling. “And I have more graphic novels. Lots of them. You can borrow whatever you want.”

Sebastian smiled, forcing himself to close the book and set it down on his desk. “That’s really nice of you.”

“I know you like books. I do, too, just… These kind.”

Sebastian exhaled a small breath and looked down, suddenly ashamed of himself. 

“…I’m sorry for what I said before. About reading not being your thing and my book choices being too long or too hard. And for saying you’d want to do a report on a children’s book.” Sebastian pushed the Dungeon Runner’s book on his desk a bit, fidgeting in discomfort over what he’d said to Alex which was, it turned out, totally not true. 

“It’s okay. I’m sorry for saying you wanted me to pick so you wouldn’t have to do any work. You were actually kind of trying to be nice by having me pick a book.”

“Sort of.” Sebastian said, relaxing a bit when they both had apologized and it seemed like it was okay. “As nice as I can be. Which is only a little bit.”

Alex giggled quietly, the impish look coming back onto his face. “You are kinda mean. It’s fun, though. When you aren’t being mean to me.”

Sebastian giggled as well, squirming in his seat and feeling a bit embarrassed that Alex would like seeing him be mean. 

Chairs scraped around them and Sebastian became belatedly aware that Mr Gellert must have told everyone to go back to their own desks. 

“We have a week to do the report.” Alex said quickly, leaning forward a little more. “Do you want to come over this weekend and work on it? You can look at all my other books and take some if you want to.”

Sebastian nodded eagerly, smiling at Alex. “That sounds good. I’ll check with my mom and tell you tomorrow. But I don’t think she’ll mind since I can walk on my own to your place. And it’s for school.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.” 

Alex smiled at him once more, then he picked up his things and got up to go back to his seat. Sam was still talking to Abigail across the room, half his butt hanging off the chair as he seemed to be stalling getting up. 

Sebastian picked up Dungeon Runners again, looking at the front and the back of it before he put it away in his desk. He was looking forward to reading it tonight. 

And he was looking forward to getting together with Alex this weekend. 

Chapter Text

Noah was so fucking soft and warm…

Sinking into him, feeling him arch up to push towards his hips and the soft gasp that came when Sebastian pushed in harder made him think again that this might really be what he needed.

And just a little while later, as Noah grabbed at him and pulled at him, asking for more as he drove into him in rough, pointed thrusts, he knew it was what he needed…

Noah’s legs curled around Sebastian as he pushed himself up a little higher, leaning down to close his teeth into the curve of Noah’s neck with a groan. His hips ground into him harder and harder, which made Noah cry out louder and louder each time.

It was so fucking good. Yoba... He needed more of this...

They hadn’t said anything on the way to his apartment. And once they were inside, they had a very brief conversation about whether they were going to pretend to be polite and have a drink together or not….

And decided not…

Not when there would be plenty of time to talk afterwards.

Not when Sebastian really just wanted Noah’s clothes on his bedroom floor.

Now they were tangled together, squeezing and grabbing and arching together as heat and need overtook every other possible thought.

Noah’s hands were on his back, then down on his ass, pulling at him, then reaching above his own head to grab at the headboard as Sebastian rested on one arm and moved a hand between them to stroke Noah’s cock as he fucked him.

“FUUUCK….” Noah arched and strained as Sebastian squeezed him tightly. “Oh fuck, FUCK SEBASTIAN… I’m so close… S-so close…”

Sebastian was as well, hanging in by the skin of his teeth, really.

It had been a while… Too long. Sam always said he waited too long.

And last weekend with Noah had been a hell of a fucking tease.

Such a tease, but now…

Sebastian groaned out a hard noise, biting into his lower lip as everything in him pulled. He squeezed his hand tighter around Noah’s cock, then lost it at the gasping cry that came from him.

Noah came in a flurry of curses and cries, pulsing in hot streaks over his belly while Sebastian shuddered at his own release. His hips smacked up roughly against Noah’s ass, pressing and grinding in as deeply as he could as he throbbed hot and hard inside of him.

“Oh fuuuuck… Oh Yoba…” Noah groaned the words out, breathless and panting. He wrapped his arms around Sebastian and pulled him right down on top of him.

“Mmmmmmmmm…. You cum so hard….” He murmured close to Sebastian’s ear. “Fuck… I love it when I can feel a guy flexing inside me…”

Sebastian smirked, feeling more than a little breathless himself as he turned his head, tracing his lips and tongue along the edge of Noah’s jaw. “You are so fucking soft and warm and gorgeous to be inside of…”

Noah chuckled softly and swept his hands up and down Sebastian’s back. “I love that sort of flattery… I don’t want someone to tell me I have nice eyes. I want someone to tell me that sinking into me is the best thing they’ve ever felt.”

Sebastian laughed at that, shifting himself a bit so he could raise his head and look down at Noah. “I like how forward you are. You say what you mean. It’s nice.”

“More fun that way.” Noah raised one hand, pushing it into Sebastian’s hair as he looked up at him. “You’re insanely fucking gorgeous… Seriously. You’re not a big guy, but you’re sharp and a little dark and yet… You’re fucking plush as well. Grabbing your ass made me jealous….” He paused for a second, then tilted his head and furrowed his brow. “Are you…”

Sebastian waited for him to continue, then raised his eyebrows and looked at Noah in question when he didn’t. “Am I..?”

Noah wiggled a bit under him, his face going slightly uncertain. “Do you bottom as well?”

Sebastian chuckled low in his chest, dropping his head down to kiss up the side of Noah’s neck, ending close to his ear so he could whisper to him. “Yes…”

“Nnn… It would be a fucking waste if you didn’t.” Noah said with a laugh, turning his head so that he was nose to nose with Sebastian. “With that ass and those thighs..?”

“Everyone always wants to talk about my ass. No one ever wants to talk about my cock.” Sebastian murmured the words in amusement, leaning in to press a few teasing kisses to Noah’s lips.

“Oh I will speak volumes about your cock if you want me to.”

Sebastian laughed, shifting himself up so he could slide back from Noah slowly, moving up the bed and dragging the blankets with him to cover them both. He settled next to Noah, pulling him in close against him.

“You’re cuddly?” Noah said as he slid up against Sebastian, smiling in a way that seemed half surprised. “You don’t strike me as the cuddly type.”

“I’m really cuddly, actually.” He smiled at Noah, curling an arm around him. “Maybe not with every single person I’ve ever been with, and it’s sort of situation dependent, but for the most part, yeah.”

“How are you single? You’re hot as fuck, top and bottom, and like to cuddle.”

“I’ve got really shitty interpersonal skills and refuse to communicate deeply.”

“Translation?” Noah tilted his head, looking at him quizzically.

“I’m an absolute asshole, and trying to deal with me when it comes to real emotion of any kind makes having a tooth pulled with no freezing seem easier and less painful.”

Noah laughed at that, so openly and easily that Sebastian couldn’t help but smile as he watched him.

They settled together, and for a while they were both quiet. Noah was pressed against him, lying on one of his outstretched arms, while Sebastian was sort of half on his back and half on his side with one knee bent up under the blankets.

“Can I ask you something?” Noah said quietly, turning his head to look up at Sebastian’s face.

“Mm… I have a feeling I don’t want to answer something that you think you need permission to ask. But sure.”

Noah smirked at him a bit, then turned towards him a little more. “What did Alex mean about his tie? About it being the colour of sunsets and… Asking you if you remembered?”

Sebastian made a low noise, shifting a bit and rubbing a hand over his face as he exhaled a short breath. He knew at some point if he kept talking to Noah and started hooking up with him he was going to have to explain. And he couldn’t blame him for catching that in particular, because it was kind of a strange and pointed thing for Alex to say if you had no context for it…

After stalling just a bit, he gave in and turned his head to look at Noah. “Alex and I are from the same hometown.”

“What??” Noah looked at him in obvious surprise. Then he turned himself over and propped himself up so he could see Sebastian properly. “Are you serious?”

“Mm hmm. Grew up together. Went to school together. All of that. He was talking about the beach in our town. It’s a tiny, tiny, little coastal town a couple of hours from here.”

“Holy shit. Did you know he was the manager? You told me you interviewed with Shawn, so…”

Sebastian shook his head, curling one arm behind his head to settle back on. “No clue. Alex had gone home abruptly when his grandmother had an accident, so Shawn was doing the interviews. No one told me his name, and Alex was in such a whirlwind when he got back after being gone for a few days he hadn’t even looked at any of the information that had been sent up about me. I asked the HR person taking me upstairs for his name in the elevator. I had less than a minute between that and ending up in his office.”

Noah was looking at him with wide eyes, listening to everything he said with the same look of surprise. “That must have been so incredibly weird for both of you. I don’t know if I could work for someone, like the job you do for Alex, that I knew growing up. Serve them coffee and stuff? Sure. But not what you’re doing...”

“I wanted to walk out. He asked me to stay. He said he couldn’t take the hit to his professional reputation that would come if I left. I said I’d give him three weeks, then tell HR I found something better and leave so it wouldn’t be on him.”

Noah nodded as he spoke, then pushed himself up a bit with a sharp noise of distress. “Wait! Three weeks?? But today would be the end of three weeks, wouldn’t it? You’re not coming back?”

“I’m staying.” Sebastian reached one hand out, smiling as he pushed it through Noah’s hair, honestly thinking it was kind of nice to have someone upset at the prospect of him not being around. “I changed my mind, don’t worry. I’ll be there on Monday.”

“Good.” Noah’s voice was almost mad as he settled again. “I was going to be so pissed… Why did you change your mind, though? Is it fun working for Alex?”

“It’s not fun.” Sebastian said a little more quietly, stroking his fingers through Noah’s hair absently. “Alex and I don’t get along. At all. But there’s some stuff going on with a project IT is working on that I know he needs help with, so I decided to stay.”

That seemed safe enough to say. He didn’t think Noah would walk around blabbing it if he told him what Reid had done and what was actually happening, but it seemed better all around for as few people as possible to know.

Noah was quiet for a bit, then he tilted his head to turns his eyes up to Sebastian’s face. “I have a million questions now… But I feel like I’ve already been pushing my luck, so I’m not going to ask them. Yet, anyway.”

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Sebastian’s mouth, holding there for a few seconds before he pulled back again. “You want me to head home?”

“Only if you want to.” Sebastian said, a million different threads of gratitude towards Noah pulling together inside him right then. Most people didn’t know where to stop in a conversation like that, but Noah did. “I’m not quite enough of an asshole to make you go get on a bus now, and I’m sure as hell not getting up to drive you home tonight.”

Noah grinned and slid back down onto the bed, wiggling himself up against Sebastian. “Thank you…”

Sebastian pulled the blankets higher over then, sliding down a bit to tangle himself up with Noah. “Besides… The prospect of potentially getting to fuck you again in the morning is waaaay too tempting to pass up.”

Noah laughed, ducking down under the blankets entirely, which made Sebastian laugh as well.

He stayed until just after lunch on Saturday. Long enough for them to take a very extended and steamy shower together late in the morning, and for them to have something to eat before Noah decided for himself that it was time to go.

Sebastian drove him home, then picked up a pizza that he spent the rest of the weekend eating while he tried not to think about going back to work on Monday.

It wasn’t like anyone there except for Alex, and now Noah, knew that he was supposed to be done on Friday, but somehow he still felt like everyone would know he had caved.

Even though he knew he was doing the right thing.

Seeing Noah before Alex even arrived helped. He seemed so happy to greet him and get him the regular lattes that Sebastian always ordered for Alex and himself first thing in the morning.

“I don’t know why you insist on paying for yours.” Noah said as he grudgingly took Sebastian’s money for his own drink. “I have told you that we don’t actually write down who gets what on the corporate expense account, right?”

He had. About a week in, and seemingly when Noah decided he could trust him, he had told him that they don’t write down names on that account. Just amounts. Which meant that Sebastian could be getting everything for free if he wanted to.

“Yeah… You’ve told me, but it just doesn’t feel right.” Sebastian half shrugged, then pushed Noah’s hand that was holding his change toward the tip jar with a warm smile.

That was the singular point of positivity that he had about staying. It meant money. It meant regular, steady income. It meant he didn’t have to worry.

And that, on its own, was pretty amazing.

He thanked Noah and went back upstairs, only to have his steps slow as he walked toward his office and saw that Alex was already in his.

“Shit…”

Had he looked at the time wrong or spent longer than he thought downstairs talking to Noah? He should have had another fifteen minutes before Alex got there…

Sebastian went straight to his office, knocking and opening the door with difficulty while holding both lattes.

“I must have lost track of time.” He said immediately as he walked up to Alex’s desk, holding his latte out for him.

Alex looked up at him and smiled as he shook his head. “I’m here early, sorry... I wanted to get here with enough time to get the monitor you asked for from the equipment room. It’s on your desk now.”

Sebastian didn’t say anything for a second, then smiled a bit as Alex took the latte from him. “Thank you. Just… Give me a minute and I’ll be back to go over your day.”

“I’m not even supposed to be here yet. Don’t rush.” Alex settled down in his chair and set the latte next to his keyboard.

Sebastian nodded and started to turn to go, but he paused and gestured towards the cup that was dangerously close to Alex’s laptop. “You or your laptop are going to wear that coffee. You should move it…”

Then he turned to leave, but he heard Alex chuckle, and Sebastian couldn’t help but smile as he closed the door behind himself.

Just as Alex said, there was a monitor box sitting on his desk waiting for him, and he smiled a little more as he sat down. He moved the box to the floor for the time being and opened Alex’s calendar.

Immediately, five notifications popped up. Three of them were requests for meetings directly from Ewen in Reid’s office, and two of them came from other departments.

Sebastian exhaled a slow breath through his nose and raked his teeth over his lower lip. Then he declined the meeting requests from Reid, filling Alex’s calendar spaces for those times with completely made up engagements.

He did accept the ones from Shawn, though. And made a note to himself about when they were so he could go to them as well.

Sebastian was planning on attending all of Alex’s meetings now. Even if Alex didn’t know it yet.

Once that was done and he had sync’d the calendar to the one on his work phone, he got up again and walked back to Alex’s office.

“No meetings today.” He said, standing on the other side of Alex’s desk. “The one you see in there for this afternoon is fake because Reid sent three meeting requests for this week. I made the blocks of time he requested green. You can look at them and decide for yourself if you want to go. If you do, just tell me and I’ll adjust it.”

“Thank you.” Alex said, smiling a bit. “What’s your schedule today?”

“I’m finishing the report from Friday’s meeting this morning. This afternoon I’m shopping and bringing some of your clothes to the dry cleaner. There’s also something about a return to a store?” Sebastian raised his head to look at Alex, meeting his eyes and waiting for an explanation.

“Some clothes I ordered online and don’t like. They can be returned in store, but… Do that and the dry cleaning drop off another day. I was going to tell you to go home as soon as you’re done shopping. The weather is supposed to get extremely bad tonight.”

“Is it?” Sebastian frowned, turning his eyes to the window. It was cloudy and overcast, but no more than usual for fall verging towards winter.

“A really big storm. They aren’t sure if it’s going to be rain or freezing rain. I’d hate for you to get caught out in it. Shop this afternoon and then go home, don’t even bother coming back here.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Sebastian nodded, making a note to go and look at the weather since he hadn’t heard anything about it aside from what Alex just said.

He went back to his desk and went about setting up his new monitor. New, new. It was brand new, never been used before, and it was really quite nice.

He moved the old one over, turning it so the back of it was towards the door of his office, and put the new one in front of himself with a smile. The one with its back to the door would be the one he kept Alex’s calendar open on, hidden so that it was kept private and no one walking by could see it, but easily accessible so that he could see any meeting requests or schedule changes happen in real time and he’d be able to work on anything else he wanted to on the other monitor.

Once everything was set up, he did go and check the weather for himself and saw that Alex was right. They were forecasting a hell of a storm, but weren’t certain about what exactly was going to happen with it as it reached the city. It wasn’t supposed to have an impact until much later in the day, so he decided to just keep an eye on it and do as Alex asked. He’d shop for him since that was straightforward, but the other errands he’d save for another day.

Through the morning he worked on the report from Friday’s meeting, trying to finish that up. He’d gotten a start on it, but it still needed a lot of work since it had turned into a fairly intense meeting. Thanks to Reid.

It also got a little bit complicated at the point after Reid had gone after Alex. Sebastian could remember the exchange between them (and himself), but there were a few minutes where the meetings had continued, but his notes hadn’t.

When he’d reached under the table to try to calm Alex down… His attention hadn’t been on the person speaking at all. He’d been focused entirely on Alex’s panic and his own anger at Reid for what he’d done.

After worrying about it for a few minutes, he just forged ahead and hoped that it was only Alex who looked at these. He’d know why there was a lapse, and Sebastian doubted that he’d care that much.

“Did you hear about the storm?” Noah asked when he brought in lunch, smiling at Sebastian warmly.

“I did. I’ll be going out to shop for Alex after lunch and he told me to go home right afterwards so I’m not out in it.”

“That’s nice of him. I’m glad that I’m always done by two. I should be home before it really starts.”

“Don’t forget your phone this time.” Sebastian said with a smirk. “Although maybe it was a good thing you did on Friday.”

“I honestly can’t think of a single thing to be angry about with that.” Noah said, smirking back at him and rather obviously letting his eyes wander down Sebastian’s body before raising to his face again.

“Get home safe.” Sebastian said after a long pause where it seemed like both of them were wishing they weren’t at work.

“You too!” Noah said, giving him a wink and a wave.

Sebastian took Alex’s lunch in to him, setting it down quietly on his desk when he saw he was on the phone. Wordlessly, he leaned over his desk and moved his still half full coffee cup out of the way of his office phone cord, which was dangerously close to knocking it over while Alex was distracted and talking on it.

He went back to his own desk to eat, sending Sam a few texts as he always did, then he checked Alex’s calendar once more and stuck a note on his monitor to say he was getting Alex’s shopping and would be out the rest of the day.

The roads were really busy, no doubt everyone was trying to get some place or do something before the weather moved in. It was still being forecasted as hitting later in the day, but the sky was looking incredibly ominous and foreboding as Sebastian walked into the grocery store and grabbed a basket. He collected everything that was on the list on autopilot, knowing now where it all was and not having to search, and was back to the front in about half an hour.

As he waited in a very long line, one of the shop employees was quickly working on adding boxes of candles to a display right at the front. Sebastian watched as a few people in line picked them up and added them to what they were buying, and honestly? It wasn’t a bad idea.

“Better safe than sorry.” The worker said when Sebastian picked up two boxes, thinking he’d leave one with Alex and take one home for himself.

His shopping may have only taken half an hour, but waiting in line to check out took another half an hour on top of that. By the time he put everything into his car, the wind had picked up considerably, and Sebastian knew the storm was definitely not coming later.

He half walked and half ran from his car into Alex’s building, smiling at the doorman as he headed for the elevators. He’d drop everything off as fast as he could and then leave. There was probably enough time for that…

He was in the middle of putting things in the fridge when the rain started. It came down in torrential sheets that made it impossible to see anything out of Alex’s windows, and Sebastian swore softly, trying to move faster to put things away so he could get out of there…

Even though he knew he was fooling himself…

He was just putting the cloth bags in the cupboard when he heard Alex’s apartment door open and then close again. Rapid steps followed and Alex, absolutely soaked, came into the kitchen and immediately looked relieved when he saw him.

“I thought you might be on the roads.” Alex said, half out of breath. “I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”

Sebastian frowned and pulled his work phone out of his pocket. He unlocked the screen and shook his head, holding it up for Alex to see that there were no missed calls. “It must not have gone through.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re here, so that’s good.” Alex said, resting his hands on the island and leaning against them as he let out a long breath. “I could see it was coming in fast, so I sent everyone home in the department. I called you to tell you to go home from wherever you were, and when you didn’t pick up, I thought I’d try to catch you here. You can’t go out again.”

Sebastian nodded, absently sweeping a hand across the surface of the island. Because if there was one thing you learned growing up in a coastal town, it was that you didn’t fuck around with storms like this. They were unpredictable, wild, and could change so fast from rain to ice that you wouldn’t know that it had changed until it was way too late.

He’d known as soon as the rain started that he was stuck there. He just... Wasn’t really having an easy time digesting and accepting that.

After a stretch of silence, Sebastian raised his head to look at Alex, who was watching him with careful eyes… And dripping onto the counter and floor...

“Go and change before you freeze.” Sebastian said, picking up a tea towel to wipe off the island.

Alex made a noise that wasn’t quite words, then turned to walk through the apartment to his room. Sebastian wiped the water off the counter and off the floor, trying very hard to convince himself that this was fine. That really, it was just a good thing that he wasn’t out on the roads trying to get home. That safe was better, no matter where he was.

Fuck.

He folded the tea towel back where it had been hanging, then leaned against the edge of the counter, not entirely sure what to do with himself. He took his phone out and started to type out a message to Sam, but he deleted it again and set his phone down, leaning over the island with a harsh breath of annoyance mixed with anxiety.

Alex came back down the hall after Sebastian had managed to pull himself together again. He was in jeans and a grey t-shirt again, and while it didn’t hit him quite as hard this time, it still stole his breath for a few moments and forced him to look away. It was just so... Much. All of it. Everything. And it seemed that no matter what he did, things just kept slamming into him right now.

Alex stopped at the entry to the kitchen and smiled at Sebastian, gesturing towards the living room. “Make yourself comfortable?”

Sebastian followed him because he really couldn’t just spend the entirety of the storm standing in the kitchen. Even if he sort of wanted to.

He sat down a little ways down from Alex on the massive sectional couch that he’d barely even glanced at before tonight, taking his phone out of his pocket as it pinged.

Noah- I’m home, are you? I hope you didn’t get caught out in this.

Sebastian- I made it as far as Alex’s. It came in faster than anyone thought, I’m stuck here now…

Noah- At least you’re inside somewhere. Is he at the office?

Sebastian- No. He’s here. So this is going to be awkward.

Noah- Well shit. I’m here if you need virtual backup.

Sebastian smiled a little bit and sent a couple of heart emojis back to Noah before he put his phone down again.

Alex had turned on the TV while he was texting and was watching a channel with the news reporting on the storm. It looked horrendous, and Sebastian shivered as his eyes followed the scene on the screen. After watching for a few minutes, he thought that maybe he better count his blessings he wasn’t out in it, regardless of where he was sheltering. Something that came on this fast and wild definitely wasn’t something to trifle with.

“Did everyone leave from the office?” Sebastian asked, then felt bad when Alex jumped. “Sorry…”

“It’s okay, I was deep in thought there.” Alex turned a bit towards him and shook his head. “IT all left, and a couple of other departments got sent out as well, but it’s up to the managers to make those calls, and not everyone did.”

“Anyone who didn’t is an idiot.” Sebastian said, leaning back against the couch with a sigh. “But not everyone has the experience we have when it comes to this sort of weather.”

“Mm. Exactly.” Alex nodded, then tilted his head a bit and made a face. “Willy used to get so angry at the tourists who would stay on the beach when a storm was coming in.”

Sebastian laughed, nodding a few times. “He’d be in the Saloon bitching about them constantly in the summer. Talking about how they deserved to get pulled right out to sea if they were stupid enough to think, that ‘a little weather won’t hurt them’.”

Alex chuckled as well, settling back on the couch a bit more. “City people really just don’t get it.”

“You don’t consider yourself a city person?” Sebastian asked, his eyes moving around the apartment for a few moments before returning to Alex’s face.

“You know I never could.”

Alex’s voice was quiet, and it sent a shiver down Sebastian’s spine. Because even though it was only five words, and an answer to his question… the depth of those words was more than the ocean when he had included Sebastian in the statement.

And Sebastian really wished that he hadn’t made it quite that personal, and he wished that he didn’t know exactly what Alex was saying. He didn’t want to be able to read that far into Alex. To know what he was saying with his tone and not just in his words. He’d left that behind a long fucking time ago.

Sebastian cleared his throat. Then cleared it again and looked away from Alex, speaking with his eyes on the TV and redirecting them to a safer topic. “I was thinking about meetings and Reid and everything that’s going on.”

“Okay. What were you thinking?”

“I’m going to all your meetings with you, first of all.” Sebastian chanced a glance at Alex’s face and then looked back at the TV. “Because he’s definitely going to catch on to the way we’re declining meetings, and will probably start getting his way around other people to schedule meetings instead so we can’t avoid them all.”

Alex didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then he shifted on the couch and turned a bit towards Sebastian, looking at him curiously. “Have you… Talked to Reid? You sound like you’ve gotten his MO awfully fast from what I had been assuming was just experiencing a handful of meetings with him.”

Sebastian glanced at Alex again and their eyes caught and held for a few seconds before Sebastian nodded. “We talked at the cafe for a few minutes the second day I was there.”

Alex was trying very hard to look and act casual about that, but the intense uncertainty and trepidation sort of bled through his seams. Sebastian exhaled a very long breath and saved him the anxiety by going ahead and telling him the whole story.

“He started out just clarifying that I was your new PA. I said I was, and commented on the company cloud proposal he made the day before. He said something about how it sounded like I had understood what he said. So I told him I did, and that I was actually a programmer.”

Sebastian paused there, his eyes turning away again. “At which point he got quite patronizing, and made some remark about me coding websites for my friends, which… I corrected him on. Politely but pointedly.”

Alex snorted softly and rubbed a hand over his face. “Reid always thinks the absolute lowest about anyone he meets until they prove him wrong.”

How the hell had Alex ended up with someone like that?

The thought crowded fast and hard into Sebastian’s mind, almost like for the first time he truly absorbed the fact that Reid and Alex had been together. Long enough and seriously enough that Reid would be listed as his partner in the binder full of company information about Alex. They had met, and dated, and possibly lived together and shared a life together and…

Sebastian pinched that thought where it was and didn’t let it go any further. Because he was confusing two sides of one coin in this...

There were two Alexs in his head.

And one of them definitely would have ended up with someone like Reid.

“So Reid knows you’re a programmer?”

Alex’s voice brought him back from the thoughts he was sort of spiralling in, and Sebastian nodded. “Yes. I clarified my actual background… So he knows. And while he can’t prove anything, he did glare at me pretty murderously after you managed to answer his issues on Friday. So I’d guess that he suspects I helped you, and I would also guess he’s going to be looking for any opportunity to come for you when you’re on your own.”

“So you think I need a babysitter.”

“That isn’t what I meant!” Sebastian turned to look at Alex in surprise, holding his hands up a bit.

“It sounds like you think I can’t handle myself.”

“I swear I’m only trying to help...”

“…I’m joking, Sebastian.”

Alex was joking. Sebastian took a moment and saw the smile on his face that was half intense amusement and half gratitude. “Ass.”

That made Alex laugh, and Sebastian couldn’t help but smile a bit when he did.

“I really don’t want to add to your workload.” Alex said after a pause, sighing out a low breath. “But I think it is smart.”

Sebastian nodded, settling back a little more into the couch. He tugged at the sleeves of his shirt as he looked at the TV again. “Reid will probably know what we’re doing, but so long as we’re careful, it won’t be anything he can act on.”

“It’s a place to start until we can get a feel for what he’s going to try to do next.” Alex watched him for a few seconds, then tilted his head slightly. “Do you want a t-shirt or something? Sorry, I should have asked that before. It’ll be too big for you, but it’d be more comfortable than a button down.”

Alex didn’t actually wait for an answer. He got up and motioned for Sebastian to come with him. So he did, following Alex down the hall and into his bedroom, where he stood awkwardly just inside the door while Alex opened drawers and rooted through them.

It was weird to see him in here. It was weird to be standing in there with him.

He actually managed to find a black t-shirt, which he held out to Sebastian with a smile. “It’s probably a little bit smaller than the others. I’ve had it for ages.”

“Thanks.” Sebastian said as he took it from him, then edged toward the door. “I’ll just change in the bathroom.”

He ducked down the hall and into the bathroom that looked like it was never touched, closing the door behind himself before he let out a long breath. It was nice. He just kept telling himself that. It was nice of Alex to offer him a shirt. It was nice of Alex to care about his safety and have him stay there.

But Sebastian’s skin was absolutely crawling as he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged it down his arms. He set it to the side, then picked up the t-shirt Alex had given him. It was soft with age and made of rather thin material, and while it was definitely too big on him, it didn’t swallow him whole, so that was good. Even if everything else made him feel on the verge of panic, the shirt was comfortable.

He took his belt off as well, which immediately made his pants far more comfortable, then picked up his work shirt and carried it with the belt out to the living room again.

Alex was in the kitchen from the sounds of it, so Sebastian sat down on the couch, setting his discarded clothing on the floor next to it.

He stayed in the living room, watching the storm coverage on TV until he couldn’t stand just listening to Alex working on his own, so he got up and walked into the kitchen to join him. “Can I help with something?”

“No, it’s fine. I was just going to throw together something pasta related for dinner.” Alex said without turning around. “I couldn’t sit still anymore.”

Sebastian smirked a bit at that, stepping up to the island and leaning against it on his forearms. It was… Interesting and strange watching Alex move around the kitchen. A space that Sebastian had spent a fair bit of time in, but still found unfamiliar. It was also a space that he knew solitary and without someone else in it since he had been here alone almost every time he had come to Alex’s apartment. But it was Alex’s kitchen, and he moved around in it and cooked in it with that feeling of belonging that all people get in their own space.

It was just another layer of realness to Alex that made Sebastian uncomfortable. Like seeing him out of a suit for the first time and away from the office. He wanted him to stay distant and flimsy and not solid and real the way he was starting to become here…

But he also couldn’t stop watching him.

He had thought Alex’s apartment was too sleek and cold and lacking in any sort of comfort. But with Alex in it, it was suddenly warm and inviting, and Sebastian noticed things he hadn’t before. Knick knacks on the shelves. Cookbooks, worn and old and probably from Granny Evelyn’s kitchen, were stacked at the back of one of the counters. There was a plant hanging in the window over the kitchen sink.

It was the weirdest feeling… Like he was caught between two truths.

Two Alex’s.

“I didn’t even ask if you like pasta. If you still like pasta anyway, I know you… used… to…”

Alex had turned around and his eyes had fallen onto Sebastian at the island. Something in him seemed to stutter and short out, and he literally stood there and stared at him in obviously surprised silence.

Sebastian was about to ask him if something was wrong when he realized all at once and far too late what Alex was looking at.

Sebastian could follow Alex’s eyes down to his arms resting on the island. The intense scrollwork of black ink crawled down his skin from under the sleeves of Alex’s t-shirt, ending halfway down his forearms. The shirt was big enough to hide a fair bit of it, but not nearly enough to hide all of it. The sleeves didn’t cover his arms entirely, and the neck was probably too wide, and hung down enough that it would be easy to see the black lines that started under his collarbones.

Sebastian pulled his arms back toward himself self consciously when the silence stretched, and the action was enough to jumpstart Alex again, who immediately brought his eyes from Sebastian’s arms to his face. “Sorry… Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s fine.” Sebastian said, even as he felt heat come into his cheeks and he fought with the childish desire to pull his arms inside of the t-shirt entirely to hide them.

“I wasn’t expecting… Not that I was expecting anything, actually, I was just….”

“I do still like pasta.” Sebastian interjected quickly, desperately wanting to turn this subject over entirely. He fucking hated himself for not thinking of this before he had accepted the t-shirt. For seeing himself in the mirror and still not thinking about it.

Alex swallowed. Visibly. Then smiled at Sebastian and nodded. “Good. It’s easy and fast…”

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” Sebastian said, then backed off entirely and retreated back to the living room, where he took out his phone and texted Noah for no other reason than to have someone to talk to.

He’d settled down by the time Alex came into the living room holding two bowls of pasta, and Sebastian set his phone down so he could stand up and take one of the bowls from Alex.

“Is that Sam?” Alex asked as Sebastian’s phone pinged a couple of times in quick succession.

“Noah.” Sebastian replied as he sat down on the couch again with the bowl. It was hot, and it smelled fucking incredible.

“…Ah. Right. … You guys became… friends… pretty fast.”

Sebastian raised one shoulder in a half shrug, trying to ignore what sounded like judgement coming from Alex’s short and abrupt statements. “Seeing someone multiple times a day every day will do that. He’s openly friendly, anyway, it was hard not to be friendly back.”

And maybe it had been a bit fast to go from talking at work to stroking Noah off backstage after a concert, to having him stay the night a week later. But Noah was gorgeous, and he was interesting, and he was fun.

Also, Alex didn’t know any of that. He knew they were friends enough for Sebastian to offer him a ride home. Anything past that he was just assuming.

Correctly. He was assuming correctly, but he still didn’t know for sure, and his reaction seemed out of place and out of line.

They ate in awkward silence for a while, but it only took a few bites of the pasta in a creamy and extremely cheesy tomato sauce for Sebastian to stop being put out about Alex seeming to have opinions on how and with who he spent his time.

“This is incredibly good. Thank you. He said quietly, turning his eyes up to Alex and offering him a small smile.

“You’re welcome.” Alex said. He looked down for a second, then raised his eyes back to Sebastian and took in a breath like he was going to say something... But the lights flickered and they both looked over at the lamp in the corner... Then they flickered again before going off, along with the TV, and the apartment was cast into darkness and silence.

“Shit.” Alex said, shifting forward on the couch. Sebastian could hear but not see him set his bowl down on the coffee table, then he fumbled around and turned on the flashlight on his phone.

“I bought candles.” Sebastian said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “They were putting them out at the grocery store, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some for both of us.”

Sebastian set his bowl down as well, then followed Alex and the light from his phone into the kitchen. He went to the cupboard he’d put the box of candles into and took them out, setting them on the counter before he dug in his pocket for his lighter.

For a couple of minutes, Alex took candles out of the package, and Sebastian lit them, then they carried them back to the living room and set them around to cast the room into dim light.

“At least we got dinner before the power cut.” Alex said, smiling over at Sebastian as they sat down on the couch.

“True.”

They both picked up their bowls and continued eating in silence.

Without the TV and the background noise of the appliances and other ambient building sounds, the howl and lash of the rain outside was far more obvious, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. They’d had tons of storms like this in Pelican Town.

Almost as though thinking about Pelican Town summoned him, Sebastian’s phone started to ring and Sam’s contact picture filled the screen.

With a chuckle, Sebastian leaned forward to pick up his phone and answer it, but he didn’t even have time to say hello before Sam was talking.

“Holy SHIT! Can you believe this storm?? I don’t think we’ve had one like it the entire time we’ve lived here!”

Sebastian laughed as he looked at Sam who was lighting candles and practically vibrating with excitement. “You need to calm down if you’re going to have lit candles around your place or you’re going to burn the whole building down.”

“Fuuuuuuuck you. Just because I caught one curtain on fire one time... I’m guessing you’re at home and that your power is out, too?”

“Power is out, but I’m not at home. I was at Alex’s when the rain started.”

He said that and just that... Then watched as Sam whipped his head around to look at him wide eyed on the screen. Because he knew exactly how Sebastian likely felt about all that.

“Oh yeah?” Sam said, his voice a little uncertain and his eyes searching around Sebastian, trying to ask without actually asking if Alex was there, too. “Can I say hi?”

That was a smart way to do it. If he hadn’t there Sebastian could have just said so, and since he was, it just made Sam seem friendly.

Sebastian turned the phone so that Sam could see Alex, who waved at him and smiled a bit. “Hey Sam.”

“Hey man!” Sam said his voice bright and immediately moving to overly casual. “Wow, it’s been fucking forever, hasn’t it?”

“A long time, yeah.” Alex said, nodding his head. “You doing okay over there?”

“I’m just fine. Wild storm, though. Feels just like home.”

Sebastian turned the phone back so Sam could just see him, and he watched as he pressed his lips together and turned his eyes to the side a bit like he was just as out of his depth as Sebastian himself was right then.

“I’m glad you called, I would have texted you if I hadn’t heard from you. Make sure you aren’t doing something stupid.”

“You have absolutely no fucking faith in me. It’s really disappointing.”

“You have the survival instincts of a headless gnat, Sam.”

Alex started laughing next to him and Sebastian watched as he put his face in his hands and tried to keep quiet.

“Is that Alex laughing at me now? You’re both assholes.” Sam was grinning though, and he turned warm eyes to Sebastian. “Better go so we can save phone battery. But call if you need to?”

“You, too.” Sebastian said, then blew a small kiss back to Sam when he kissed his fingers and tapped the screen.

He set his phone down with a chuckle when the call ended and he shook his head. “Yeah, he really is exactly the same.”

Alex hadn’t asked the question out loud, but Sebastian knew that he was about to.

“Did he actually set his curtains on fire?” Alex asked, looking over at him with a smile.

“He will insist on correcting you to curtain, singular, but yeah he did. It was just a few months after he got his place, too. The whole building fire alarms went off and everyone evacuated. He had already put it out by the time the fire department got there, but he still sheepishly had to admit that it was him.”

Alex laughed, leaning back on the couch and shaking his head. “They let him stay?”

“Yeah... Sam’s shameless and impossible to say no to when he starts grovelling and looking for forgiveness. He literally went door to door to every single apartment and gave them mini bottles of alcohol and an apology. Everyone there loves him now.”

“You’re right. He really hasn’t changed...”

“Not even a little bit.”

Sebastian rested back against the couch, then let out a very long breath. It was early, but he was tired as fuck. This day had been nuts. From walking back into Melendy and his office next to Alex’s when he was supposed to be done, to the impending storm, to getting stuck in Alex’s apartment...

That last one was sort of a blanket for the entirety of the afternoon and evening that had been stretching his ability to cope, and do so politely.

The call from Sam had helped, but the weight of it all was just... So much...

“This has been a day.” Alex said with the rather unearthly timing of echoing Sebastian’s thoughts.

He wished he couldn’t do that. He wished he didn’t now know that Alex could still do that.

“Might be best if we just called it and went to sleep?”

“That’s fine with me.” Sebastian said. “I just need a pillow and a blanket and I’m good here.”

“I have a guest room, you don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

He didn’t want to sleep in Alex’s guest room. There was something daunting about it, though he wasn’t sure why. Something too clean and too sterile that he didn’t want to disturb.

And it was really close to Alex’s room. The living room was all the way at the other end of the apartment and felt… Safer.

“The couch is fine.” Sebastian said without looking at Alex. “I sleep on Sam’s couch all the time, I like it.”

Sebastian could feel Alex’s eyes on him, but after a minute of silence he got up off the couch and went down the hall, returning with a couple of pillows and an enormous fluffy duvet.

“If you’re sure.” Alex said, still hesitant as he handed over the pillows and blanket.

“I’m sure.” Sebastian said, taking everything from Alex and holding it slightly awkwardly in his arms.

For a few seconds they just stood there, then Sebastian shifted a bit. “Thank you. For urging me to go home early, and for just letting me stay here and making dinner and everything. It’s all been really kind of you.”

Alex smiled a bit, looking at him as he nodded. “Of course… If you want anything from the kitchen just help yourself. And if you need me I’m just up the hall.”

Sebastian nodded and Alex took a candle and went up the hall. Sebastian listened for the soft click of his bedroom door closing but didn’t hear it. After a bit he figured Alex was probably leaving it open so that if he did need him for something he wasn’t faced with a closed door.

Which was nice…

With a sigh he turned and put one of the pillows on the couch, then flopped the massive duvet onto the cushions as well. He undid his pants, sliding them off to fold with his shirt and belt that he’d put on the floor earlier, then he went around and blew out the remaining candles before crawling under the duvet and settling himself on the couch.

The couch was incredibly comfortable. The duvet was warm and cloud like, the pillow was soft and Sebastian was mentally exhausted.

But sleep was nearly impossible.

He wanted to scroll on his phone to help distract his mind, but it really was better to conserve his battery in case the power stayed out for a long time.

So he was left listening to the storm outside, and thinking far too much about the fact that he was in Alex’s apartment. That Alex was just down the hall lying in that enormous bed of his.

That the whole place smelled like him. That he was wearing one of his t-shirts.

It was all… so much… There were parts of him that felt so fucking raw and sore. Parts that he’d been ignoring not just today, but for the last three weeks trying to stay calm and work with Alex and see him every single fucking day. Parts of him that he’d long silenced and locked down and fully ignored in the hopes they’d disappear entirely.

He thought they had disappeared entirely...

Much later, when he had finally drifted enough to a space of being mostly asleep, he heard someone walk down the hall and into the kitchen. He heard a cupboard open, and he heard the fridge open and distantly the sound of someone pouring something into a glass. Not someone. Alex. He was the only other person there. Maybe he couldn’t sleep either.

The fridge closed.

Soft footsteps padded out of the kitchen, then stopped.

Alex had gone back to his room.

But… something in the drift of his mind said Alex wasn’t in his room. He was there with him.

“You okay?”

The two words nearly slurred into one as Sebastian tried to get them out, not even really aware that he was speaking.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were asleep.”

Alex was there… Maybe… Hard to tell if this was actually happening.

“Mmm… S’fine.”

Silence for a moment then footsteps, just softly, came closer. “You aren’t really awake are you.”

“Nnn…” Sebastian was drifting back and forth between awareness and total obscurity. He really wasn’t sure whether or not Alex was really there and talking to him.

A soft sound like Alex had set down a glass, then footsteps came tentatively closer.

A shift and a low sound and someone sat down on the floor next to him.

He thought? Maybe they did… Or… Maybe he was dreaming.

“You likely won’t remember this in the morning…” Alex said very quietly, his voice right next to Sebastian’s head.

That felt better. He hated it when Alex was too far away.

“I want to ask you a question.”

“Mm..?”

Silence long enough that Sebastian drifted further from any semblance of real consciousness.

“…Do you hate me?”

The words were so hesitant and so quiet and something roused in Sebastian just slightly. He was pretty sure he was moving one of his arms, sliding his hand out until it connected with something warm. Alex. He was reaching for him, curling his hand around him.

“Could never hate you.” He mumbled. At least he thought he did… Hoped he did… Because why would Alex think he could possibly ever hate him?

He felt a soft rise and fall under his hand. A soft intake of breath, like what he said had been unexpected.

Something shifted. The duvet. The person sitting on the floor next to him… Alex? … Alex was pulling part of it around himself. Then there was a gentle weight on the pillow next to his head. The warmth of someone else’s breath against his cheek.

“I miss you so much, Sebastian…”

Alex… His voice so soft and quiet. He sounded sad. Lonely…

Sebastian was drifting further, comfort and security suddenly blanketed around him and drawing him down fast into sleep. He curled his hand further against the warmth he thought was Alex.

“Here… M’right here, Alex…” He mumbled softly. “I wouldn’t… leave you…”

Then he drifted entirely and whatever was or wasn’t happening was lost to him.

Chapter Text

Alex, clearly fuming mad, stomped over to Sebastian, who was shaking off his black hoodie so he could put it back on.

“Who did it?” Alex demanded as he came level with Sebastian, pointing at his hoodie.

“It doesn’t matter.” Sebastian said, smiling up at his friend.

“Yes it does matter.” Alex said, putting a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder as he looked around the schoolyard. “Who did it?”

“They didn’t even touch it. It’s fine.”

Alex looked down at the hoodie in Sebastian’s hands that was still half covered in dead grass and a couple of boot prints. Then he met Sebastian’s eyes with a look of obvious doubt.

“Okay, well, they barely touched it.” Sebastian said, tilting his head as he looked up at Alex and smiled a little crookedly. “I deserved it anyway.”

Sebastian went back to shaking off his hoodie while Alex brooded silently next to him for a couple of minutes.

“How do you figure you deserve someone taking your things and stomping them in the dirt?”

Sebastian looked up at Alex again, then smirked before turning his eyes down. “Brock told me I was creeping everyone out because I only dress in black. So I told him what was really creeping everyone out was the way his mom let him come to school without a paper bag over his head. His friends laughed at him and he got super pissed.”

Sebastian watched as a grin twitched onto Alex’s face, erasing the almost murderous sort of look that had been there before.

“That doesn’t mean someone should take your stuff.”

“I know.” Sebastian sighed, pulling his hoodie on and zipping it up the front. “But it really was my own fault for saying something back. If I’d kept my mouth shut, then Brock likely would have just kept walking and left me alone.”

“He shouldn’t have said you were creeping everyone out. I still want to kick his ass.” Alex put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder again and glanced around them purposefully. Sebastian followed his gaze when Alex’s eyes narrowed and he saw Brock hovering over to one side near the school wall, glancing their way every so often rather nervously.

“It’d be funnier if you just spent the day looking at him like you’re going to kick his ass and not actually do it. He’ll spend the whole day scared about what you might do.”

Alex snorted and then looked down at Sebastian and grinned. “That’s so mean. And perfect.”

“I know.” Sebastian smiled up at him warmly. “Not everyone gets their own bodyguard at recess.”

Alex straightened himself up, pretending to look very serious and important before he started laughing a second later. “Recess is only half over. What do you want to do now?”

“Sam and Abigail are waiting for me over by the slide. Do you want to come with me?”

“I think I better.” Alex said, pointing a black look over at Brock again.

They walked across the playground toward the slide with Alex’s hand still on Sebastian’s shoulder. When they got to Sam and Abigail, Sebastian smiled at them apologetically. “Sorry. Brock took my hoodie and I had to clean it off.”

Sam made a face, scowling as he got to his feet to look around. “Where is he?”

“Down by the doors, but don’t worry about it. He already thinks Alex is going to beat him up.” Sebastian looked up at Alex and smiled before lowering his eyes back to Sam, who now looked sulky. “What?”

“Nothing.” Sam said, sitting down on the edge of the play structure again.

“Don’t just say ‘nothing’, Sam, you know I hate that.”

“You used to let us stand up for you.” Abigail said, speaking to Sebastian but looking at Alex. “Now Alex always seems to be there first.”

Alex took in a breath next to Sebastian and moved back a step.

Sebastian frowned and stepped back with him, grabbing the edge of his sleeve. “So?” He said, looking from Abigail to Sam and back again. “He was there. He could have ignored me, but he didn’t. Which is nice.”

“He’s always there.” Abigail said, glaring at Sebastian. “You’re hardly ever without him at recess or after school now. It’s never just the three of us anymore.”

“I’ll go.” Alex said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Alex, don’t…” Sebastian trailed off and then sighed when he saw the look on Alex’s face. He let go of his sleeve and watched as he turned and trudged away with his hands in his pockets.

He looked back at Abigail, his brow furrowed deeply. “That was mean.”

Sebastian had known this was coming. He’d been more than aware of the growing tension between Sam and Abigail with Alex. He’d just been hoping that when they finally did bring it up, they wouldn’t do it in front of Alex. That they’d at least have the decency to talk to him privately because he knew how hard Alex would take it.

“I was just telling the truth.” Abigail said, shrugging and looking sort of pleased with herself.

“You know there was a time that it was just me and Sam. Before it was ‘the three of us’ it was just the two of us.” Sebastian said curtly, feeling anger curl up inside of him.

“So..?” Abigail said the word like she didn’t care, but her face made it clear she was a little uncertain.

“So when Sam started bringing you everywhere we went, and it stopped being just him and me, did I act mean to you? Did I complain that it used to just be the two of us and now you were always there? Did I get mad when Sam told you things first instead of me or shared candy and games and stuff with you instead of just me?”

Abigail bit her lip and looked down at the ground.

“And you…” Sebastian turned his head to look over at Sam, who was just sitting there trying to act like none of this had anything to do with him. “If you’ve got a problem, I want to hear it from you. Not from your spokesperson.”

Sebastian jerked his head towards Abigail, glaring at them both. “Speak for yourself because I’m tired of hearing Abigail speak for you. Alex has been nothing but nice to both of you and to me over the last year. But from here on out no one is allowed to stand up for me anymore, including Alex, and I’ll tell him so. I never asked anyone to do it in the first place and it’s so stupid that you’re going to fight with him over it.”

Sam’s eyes were still on his feet, still sulky faced as well, but it looked like he was thinking. Abigail was giving him a dirty look, though, and he returned it just as pointedly, staring her down until she was the first to look away from him.

Then he turned and went to find Alex.

Sam and Abigail had each other and could shit talk him all they wanted until they eventually got over it and came to talk to him again. But Alex, he knew, wouldn’t talk to any of his other friends about hurt feelings or being upset because they’d laugh at him. He didn’t have anyone except Sebastian for that, and Sebastian sure wasn’t going to let him suffer this slight alone.

Enough was enough... If Sam and Abigail were going to act like he had to choose between them and Alex… He could make that really easy for them.

Chapter Text

The morning after a horrible storm always felt quiet and a little bit uncertain. You never knew what sort of world you were going to be waking up to. It could be one that was coated in ice and snow, one that had trees down all over the place, or one- like this one was- that ripped the last of the leaves off the trees and plunged the world into a very soggy looking early winter.

Sebastian had woken early and knew he wasn’t going to go back to sleep. He was itching to leave, to go fucking home and get some space between him and Alex so he could actually breathe.

He’d gotten up and gone to the bathroom, quietly changing out of the t-shirt Alex had given him in favour of his button down. He left it untucked as he walked silently back to the living room, wondering how long he should wait for Alex to wake up before he just left on his own.

He folded up the duvet and set it on the couch along with the pillows, then he went out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette as he took stock of the world.

There were plenty of cars on the streets, all of them moving at a normal pace. The world was soaked to its bones but didn’t look any worse for wear, which was good. If there had been ice, it had already melted, and the rain was now just a steady sort of drizzle.

Sebastian leaned against the balcony, inhaling a breath of smoke and holding it for a few moments before tilting his head back to exhale it straight up. As he did, the balcony door opened and Alex stepped out to join him.

“Good morning.” Alex said, smiling at him a bit uncertainly.

“Morning.” Sebastian said in return, his eyes moving over Alex, taking in the t-shirt and the dark pyjama pants he had on.

Hating that he looked so casual and so calm.

“How does everything look?” Alex asked, walking to the railing and looking out over the city.

“Just fine. Wet, but nothing seems to be treacherous anymore.”

“The power came back on in the middle of the night, so I think it must have just been rain.” Alex said, turning toward Sebastian and leaning his hip against the side of the railing. “I’ll be going into the office mid-morning, but you should take the day off.”

Sebastian shook his head, turning to breathe a stream of smoke away from Alex. “You have a meeting this afternoon.”

Alex didn’t say anything, and when Sebastian looked back at him he found him looking a bit torn. “What?”

“I want to tell you to not bother about it. Because you shouldn’t have to bother about it, this isn’t part of your job.”

“But?” Sebastian asked, because he could easily sense a ‘but’ in there.

“But I… I do potentially need you there.”

Sebastian nodded a couple of times, then stubbed his cigarette out on the underside of the metal railing. He held onto it so he could throw it away inside even though he could see a standing ashtray off in one corner of the balcony. “Okay. So, I appreciate that you don’t want me to have to do this, but I decided for myself I was coming to all your meetings. I’ll go home and have a breather and then be back at the office in time for your meeting.”

“Okay.” Alex said, letting out a long breath. “I won’t argue.”

Alex turned to go back inside and Sebastian followed him. He threw away his cigarette butt, then shoved his wallet, keys and phone into his pockets. He picked up his belt and the t-shirt of Alex’s that he had worn to sleep in.

“I’ll take this home and wash it.” He said, holding the shirt up for Alex to see.

“Uh… No.” Alex looked at him funny and shook his head as he held a hand out. “It’s one t-shirt, Sebastian. I can handle having one extra shirt to wash.”

He wanted to protest, but… It didn’t really matter. It was Alex’s shirt, after all. So he put it into Alex’s outstretched hand and nodded. “I’ll see you at the office around 2.”

“See you then.”

Sebastian didn’t look back when Alex spoke. He just walked to the door and shoved his feet into his shoes. He was out the door practically before his feet were properly in the shoes, and headed for the elevator.

He’d had enough of the storm and enough of the anxiety, and was ready to just go home and have a shower and lie down for a nap in his own bed.

Before he got into the shower, he sent a text to Sam, just to say he was home but was going to take a nap before he went back to work for the afternoon, but he’d call him later. Then he got under the hot water and stayed there for a very long time, trying to wash away the feel of Alex’s shirt and the smell of his apartment and the generally overwhelming feeling of everything that had happened.

He’d slept well, though…

It had been hard to fall asleep so he hadn’t slept long, but he knew that the time he had spent asleep had been deep. Which was a change for him. Normally he was someone who woke up fifty times a night.

Sam had sent back seven thumbs up emojis as a response, and Sebastian smiled as he set his alarm for noon and crawled into bed. So grateful to be pulling his own blankets up around himself and resting his head on his own pillows.

~~~~~~~~~~

The sleep did him good, and Sebastian felt a little more grounded when he walked into work that afternoon just before 2. There weren’t a lot of people in the IT department, probably not in any department since it was likely a lot of people went home when the storm had let up and it was safe to travel.

He set his things on his desk and sat down at the computer, logging in and having a look at Alex’s calendar to make sure nothing had changed. Two requests popped up immediately, one from Finance and one from Reid’s office for first thing the next morning.

Sebastian filled in the time Reid was requesting with another fake event, then accepted the meeting from the Finance department and put it into the calendar. With that done, he picked up his tablet and then went to Alex’s office.

“Reid sent another meeting request.” He said after he had knocked and let himself in. “It was for first thing tomorrow morning. I blocked the time off with something else, but let me know if you do want to accept it. There was also a request for a meeting with Finance late this week. I did accept that one.”

“Thank you.” Alex said, getting up from his chair. “I definitely don’t want to meet with Reid in any capacity tomorrow morning. Things are going to be kind of hairy getting back on track after the storm threw things into chaos. Ready to go?”

Sebastian nodded, then followed Alex out of his office and to the elevators. They rode up in silence, but when they arrived, Sebastian told Alex to go ahead. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

Alex went ahead, and Sebastian ducked into the bathroom. He realized as he walked out again that he had no idea what this meeting was for and it was too late now to ask Alex. Not that it really mattered, it would just help him to know what direction the conversation might go.

He slid into his seat next to Alex and was immediately treated to a look of surprise from Reid that shifted into something hard and nasty almost immediately. It was obvious that Reid had thought Alex was there alone. Too fucking bad for him that he was wrong. Sebastian ignored him and just set up his tablet and opened a blank document that he titled with the date of the meeting.

“Alex, why do you need your PA here?”

Reid’s voice carried loudly around the room, silencing the rest of the group. Sebastian glanced around covertly and saw that there were no other PAs there besides himself. Reid didn’t even have Ewen with him.

“There’s a lot going on right now in IT. I want someone to take notes for me in all of my meetings in case I miss something.”

Alex’s voice was calm, just as it always was, and his response was innocuous and simple, which made it perfectly believable. The IT project right now was huge. It was totally plausible that, with so much happening, Alex would want to make extra sure that he was covering all bases and keeping track of everything.

Reid clearly didn’t have a comeback for that. He settled for giving Sebastian another black look and then angrily turned his attention to his laptop.

Shawn came in last, looking harried and rumpled and exhausted. Clearly he hadn’t left the night before and had stayed right through without going home.

“Let’s go.” He said, sitting down and setting a mug of coffee on the table. “This is the last thing I have to do before I can actually go home, I’d like to get through it quickly.”

Anthony from Project Management led off, talking about some issues they were facing, and Sebastian fell into the routine of typing without really thinking much about it or what was really being said.

Shawn, looking more and more exhausted and frustrated by the second, worked his way around the table to each person that was there. When he got to Reid, Sebastian brought his attention sharply back to what was going on, ready for whatever bullshit Reid might throw that day.

“I’m on track. Nothing that I need to bring to the table.” Reid said, closing his laptop and folding his hands on top of it.

Shawn didn’t say anything for a second, then he leaned over a bit and squinted at Reid. “Are you joking?”

Reid looked back at him and shook his head before speaking slowly as though he thought Shawn needed help to understand. “No, Shawn. I’m on track, and there isn’t anything I need to discuss.”

Shawn narrowed his eyes slightly, then made a very low noise before he shook his head and looked at Alex. “IT. Let’s go.” He said, rubbing his fingers into his temples with his eyes closed.

Alex started speaking and Sebastian kept typing. Midway through, without even thinking about it and without looking up from his tablet screen, Sebastian picked up a pen that was next to him and held it out to Alex, who took it and started writing while he was still talking.

It was about thirty seconds after he’d done it that Sebastian realized that Alex hadn’t actually asked him for the pen. Or had even been really making any sort of obvious motions that he needed one.

Perplexed and slightly knocked off kilter, he raised his head and immediately his eyes connected with Reid’s across the table. Hard and hot with obvious anger.

This was a weird fucking day. And it was made even weirder as they all left the meeting room and Sebastian overheard Shawn lay into Reid for insisting that this meeting had to go forward when he didn’t even have anything to say. Up to that point he’d never seen Shawn be anything but strangely and overly ingratiating to Reid.

Sebastian stepped into an elevator with Alex, then sighed involuntarily when the doors shut. Alex glanced down at him and smiled. “It’s been a day. Again.”

“Mm…” Sebastian nodded, glad that he was going home after this to have a normal night. Tomorrow everything would be back to business as usual for the most part.

He walked behind Alex out of the elevator and up through the almost empty IT department.

“You’re leaving, right?” Alex said, pausing where they normally split off to their own offices.

“I am. Unless you need something?”

Alex shook his head. “No, I just wanted to make sure you actually were leaving and not going to try to stick around. Thanks for coming in this afternoon.”

“I get the distinct impression that Reid hadn’t banked on my being there.” Sebastian said, smirking faintly.

“Same.” Alex sighed out a short breath, then shifted his own tablet to his other hand, holding out the pen Sebastian had handed to him in the meeting. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Sebastian took it, then nodded to Alex. “Have a good night.”

“You too.”

Sebastian went back to his office and put his tablet into the lower desk drawer. He took out his personal phone, which he stowed in there regularly, then locked it before he leaned over his desk to log out of his computer. But when he woke the screen he saw he had a message sent through the company IM system just a few minutes earlier.

Clicking on it popped up a small box and he sat down to read it-

You and I need to talk, PA. Privately.

-Reid

Sebastian raised one eyebrow and then rolled his eyes.

“No…” He said quietly, deleting the message and logging out of the system. “We definitely don’t.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The rest of the week passed without further incident. Sebastian did his job. He shopped for Alex and ran his errands. He went to all of his meetings with him and typed his notes into reports.

“You really don’t have to do reports on everything.” Alex said on Friday morning when Sebastian set down another one he had just completed on his desk. “You wouldn’t even be attending these meetings under any other circumstances. You can just do the ones that you would normally go to.”

Sebastian shook his head, rubbing his hands against the sides of his hips. “We told Reid that I was there to take notes on everything for you. It’s best to cover all our tracks by having the reports done. It doesn’t take that long anyway.”

Alex tipped his head back and forth a bit, then nodded. “I guess you’re right. But I feel like you should be getting paid extra for this.”

Sebastian raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “I still get everything done in the normal work hours, so I can’t complain about the workload.”

He had a sneaking suspicion that Alex had cut down on the number of errands he got him to do for him, though. He shopped regularly as before and got his dry cleaning the same, but it was rare for there to be any other errands on his list. It was like Alex didn’t change the things Sebastian did most frequently so he wouldn’t catch on that the extra ones were suddenly so much fewer in number.

He couldn’t prove it, though. So he didn’t bring it up.

“The only meeting today is with Finance, right? And they’re coming here. You don’t need to come to that one if you want to shop earlier than normal and go right home afterwards.” Alex said, resting his hands on the report Sebastian had given him.

“Are you sure?” It would be nice to be done early, but he also didn’t want to potentially make Alex a target.

“I’m sure.” Alex nodded, smiling at him.

“Okay.” Sebastian smiled back at him, then quickly leaned over to grab Alex’s coffee cup, lifting it out of the way just as Alex’s elbow was about to knock into it. “I swear to Yoba, Alex…”

Alex laughed, thunking his elbows on the desk and putting his face in his hands as his cheeks turned red. “I should just keep half my wardrobe here so I always have clean clothes at this rate.”

“You’re a menace.” Sebastian set the cup back down again in a safer place, then smiled a bit more at Alex before he shook his head and turned to leave again.

“You look happy.” Noah said when he dropped lunch off that day. He plunked down on the edge of Sebastian’s desk next to him to talk for a few minutes as he always did.

“I’m… Well I was going to say I’m not unhappy… But that would just be me saying something contrary for the sake of it. I suppose I am kind of happy. Despite circumstances.”

“Mm.” Noah glanced towards Alex’s office, then back to Sebastian again. “How are things going?”

“They’re going.” Sebastian shrugged, tilting his head to the side. “It’s fine. We’re falling into something of a routine, which makes things easier.”

Noah smiled at him, nodding a couple of times. “Routine always helps. And… I’m really glad you decided to stay. Which is purely selfish on my part, but true all the same.”

“I’m glad to be here.” Sebastian patted a hand against Noah’s thigh, sliding it towards the soft inside to squeeze for just a second before he let him go again.

Noah smirked at him as he got up to leave. A dark little smile that sent heat into Sebastian’s belly and did, in fact, make him happier to be there in that moment.

He brought Alex in his lunch, setting it down on his desk so he wouldn’t interrupt the phone call he was on, then he went to eat his own.

Once he was finished, he stuck a note on his monitor saying he was going to do Alex’s shopping and to text him if he needed anything.

He may have gotten out of the office to start shopping earlier than normal, but it really didn’t seem to matter in the long run. Everything was busy as hell, and it wasn’t until he circled the grocery store parking lot twice trying to find a spot that he remembered that it was a long weekend. Which meant he got a long weekend, but also that seemingly everyone in the world was out getting things done that day in preparation.

He eventually found a spot and made his way inside, but even with a list that didn’t stray far off the norm that he shopped for, it took him ages to get around the store and out again.

The roads were just as bad when he left the grocery store and started to cross the city to get to Alex’s building, and by the time he actually stepped through the door to his apartment, he was actually happy to be in it for no other reason than it was quiet.

He took his time putting things in the fridge and cupboards, then hesitated for a second before he sent Alex a text asking if there was anything he wanted while he was there. Not because he thought Alex actually would need anything, but because it gave him a reason to go and sit down on the couch in his living room and wait for him to text back.

He sat and scrolled on his phone for half an hour before he got a reply from Alex saying he was good and leaving shortly. Then a second text right afterwards to tell him to have a nice long weekend.

Sebastian glanced at the time and realized that it was already close to 6, so he sent Alex back a smiley face, then reluctantly got up and left to go back out into the world and make his way home.

It wasn’t as bad on the roads as it had been when he left the office, but Sebastian still made a noise of relief as he closed his apartment door behind himself and immediately made a beeline for his bedroom to change.

He had band practice on Sunday afternoon, but aside from that he had an entire three days to do absolutely nothing in. That seemed like bliss after how absolutely fucking weird the whole week had been with the storm and everything.

It was in the middle of pulling on a pair of pyjama pants, while contemplating if he should maybe text Noah sometime that weekend to meet up, that he realized he had forgotten to log out of the network on his work computer. He’d put a note on his screen for Alex and then left. Which... Wasn’t good. He really shouldn’t leave himself logged in like that.

He hesitated, thinking, and wavered back and forth on whether or not it truly mattered at this point.

It shouldn’t matter. There was probably no one there by now, and there probably wouldn’t be anyone there until Tuesday morning. The chances of someone who did just happen to be in the IT department over the weekend finding his computer logged in and doing something nefarious with that access were slim to practically none.

He continued pulling on his pyjama pants and grabbed his work clothes to put into his dirty laundry basket…

Then made a noise of frustration and yanked off the pyjama pants again.

Because slim to practically none was not actually none, and he could already tell that he would think about this all weekend. And he didn’t want to be plagued with anything to do with work this weekend. The closest he wanted to get to work was potentially seeing Noah.

Grumbling and swearing, he pulled on a pair of jeans and ran his hands through his hair before scooping up his keys and heading back out again.

Traffic was still busy, but it wasn’t as bad as earlier, so at least there was that going for him. And when he got to Melendy the temporary lot was empty, so he parked close to the doors and went inside.

As he thought, the main floor of the building was practically deserted, and when he went upstairs IT was dark and empty.

Almost.

Sebastian slowed his steps and frowned a bit as he walked between the rows of cubicles, realizing that there actually wasone person who was still there. And that they were in his office. He could see them over the half wall as he walked closer, leaned down and writing something on a piece of paper on his desk.

“Can I help you?” He asked, then immediately startled when the person straightened up and looked over at him.

“Huh… Guess this is my lucky night. Hi, PA.” Reid smiled at him lazily, shifting the way he stood so one of his hips jutted slightly to the side. “What are you doing back here so late? I was going to leave you a note for Tuesday morning since you didn’t get my inter-office message.”

“I got your message.” Sebastian said, eyeing Reid warily.

“And you just ignored it? That’s so rude.”

“What do you want, Reid?” Sebastian walked into his office, since it was his office after all, and leaned over to shake his mouse. Once the display popped up, he logged out of the network and then stepped back again.

“To talk to you, PA. Obviously.” Reid sat down on Sebastian’s desk, resting his hands on the edge on either side of his thighs.

“I have a name.”

“I know you have a fucking name. But I’ve heard enough of the name Sebastian to last me a Yoba damned lifetime.”

Reid’s tone turned from something that had been coy and teasing to something decidedly vicious in one fell swoop, catching Sebastian more than a little bit off guard.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Reid worked his jaw for a few seconds without looking at Sebastian, then cut his eyes back to him with a hard and almost dangerous look. “You’re the Sebastian, aren’t you. The one he grew up with.”

Sebastian startled and took a step back as he looked at Reid in surprise. He wasn’t sure if he should answer that, but it didn’t seem to matter. The look on his face must have given Reid his confirmation because he made a very low noise and his eyes grew even harder.

“Yeah. I fucking thought so. I tried to tell myself there was no way after I met you. That it was just a fluke and a really fucking weird one at that. But the more I saw of you, the more I knew it had to be you. Watching you and Alex in meetings this week just cemented it.”

“Either catch me up or get out of my office and leave me alone.” Sebastian said irritably. Reid was talking in circles around him, and his heart was racing in panic and confusion. He was in no mood for this shit.

“You’re the love of his fucking life. The one he’ll never get over. He told me about you... All that sappy shit that Alex seems to think is so important to find in life and relationships but doesn’t really exist.”

Reid pushed himself up off the desk and walked over to Sebastian, standing close enough that Sebastian could smell the slightly floral scent he wore mixed with the underlying smell of cigarette smoke.

“But it was real with you two, apparently. All week you both have been acting like you can fucking read each other’s minds. I can see it… There is no fucking way you aren’t the Sebastian. The one and fucking only.”

Sebastian wanted to say something. He wanted to stop Reid and tell him that he was wrong. That whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t like that. But his mouth wouldn’t move. Nothing in him would fucking move.

“Now knowing it is you, I can see exactly why he was interested in me. Small guy. Sharp and nasty edge. Dark hair. And a fucking programmer.” Reid snorted, rolling his eyes. “To say he has a type is clearly an understatement.”

“I’m not interested.” Sebastian said, finally unsticking his tongue. “In him. I’m not interested. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

“I know you aren’t interested. He told me all about how he fucked things up with you. How he trashed something so perfect and so fucking real because he somehow let a bunch of fucking jock bros convince him that his image was more important than the one person who had truly and completely loved him.”

That hurt. Oh fuck did that hurt so badly. Hearing someone else say it and put it so incredibly bluntly. Knowing that someone else knew about it all. That they’d loved each other so fucking much and no one else would ever compare, but Alex had just thrown it away.

Sebastian didn’t want to think about this. He didn’t like the way it squeezed his heart and dragged fingernails over all the places that were already raw just from being around Alex for the past month.

Reid took another half step closer until he was practically pressing into Sebastian, then he leaned the very short way down to whisper in his ear. “It’s crystal fucking clear that you’re doing this job because it’s a job. But he looks at you with stars in his eyes… And your saving him from my questions last week just seemed to make it worse. He stomped all over you and your perfect magical connection. So I don’t know why you’re staying...”

One of Reid’s hands slid onto Sebastian’s side, then closed into him so brutally and so tightly Sebastian knew he’d have a bruise.

“Let go of me...” Sebastian twisted, trying to get away from the squeeze of Reid’s hand. His breath hitched with pain as Reid’s grip on him tightened further, forcing a gasping and sharp noise from him before he stopped struggling and just waited. Breathless and in pain in so many more ways than just the hand on his side.

“Why are you helping him?” Reid asked quietly, grabbing his other hand into the side of Sebastian’s hip. “Why would you fucking bother when he absolutely crushed you… He’s not even close to fucking worth it.”

Sebastian didn’t have an answer to that, but once again it didn’t seem like Reid really wanted one. He pulled harder against Sebastian’s side and hip, pressing them together almost lewdly as his eyes skimmed over Sebastian’s face and down to his mouth. They lingered there, and Reid’s breath got a bit quicker and catching…

For a second Sebastian really thought Reid might kiss him...

But then he let go, shoving Sebastian away entirely with a low noise of frustration, like he had reached some sort of internal limit.

Reid walked out of his office and across to the door for the stairs without looking back, leaving Sebastian utterly and completely fucking freaked out.

He moved on autopilot, walking back through the IT department and to the elevators. His legs felt a little unsteady, and every step he took felt like he was rubbing those raw and sore places inside of him that had gotten exponentially worse after that encounter with Reid.

It was like he had dug his fingers into more than just Sebastian’s side. It was like Reid had grabbed right into all those tender places that he had spent years trying to patch up and hide. Like he had ripped them all open and then just walked away while Sebastian was bleeding out onto the floor.

He made it back to his car, then just sat there for a while, pretending like he wasn’t shaking. Pretending like every breath wasn’t a labour.

He took out his phone and unlocked it. He started going through the motions of calling Sam, but his thumb hovered over the call button without pressing it. Then, after a minute of just sitting there, he tossed his phone onto the passenger seat and started his car.

He left Melendy and drove through the darkening city to Alex’s building. He parked in one of the visitor spaces like he always did, then grabbed his phone and got out.

His legs were still unsteady as he walked through the lobby, but he smiled at the doorman who greeted him without questioning why he was there at that time of evening to go to Alex’s apartment, and got into the elevator.

Sebastian made it all the way to Alex’s door and even knocked on it before he felt uncertainty creep into him.

Because what was he doing? Why hadn’t he called Sam? Why was he looking for Alex?

Sure, Alex had more to do with this than Sam. Alex was his direct supervisor, and he’d just had an encounter with someone in the office that should not have happened. Alex had a history with Reid, he would know more about what to do than Sebastian did and certainly more than Sam.

All of these were logical and very real justifications for his being there.

But it could have been a text.

A phone call.

It could have waited until Tuesday while Sebastian went and curled up with Sam for comfort over the weekend.

The real reason, and one that became practically blindingly clear when Alex opened the door and Sebastian actually saw him, was that he just... wanted Alex right then. And not on the phone. And not in the office on Tuesday morning where they’d be wearing work clothes and surrounded by other people and responsibilities. He wanted to talk to Alex.

“Sebastian..?” Alex said, looking at him in obvious surprise. “Did you forget something? Are you… Are you okay? Shit… Come in, what’s wrong?”

The second question and then obvious realization came when Sebastian raised his head and met Alex’s eyes. Alex clearly knew just by looking at him that something wasn’t right.

“I had to go back to the office.” He said as he walked through Alex’s door, then followed him around into the kitchen. “Reid was in my office. I… didn’t tell you, but after the meeting on Tuesday I got a message from Reid saying that he and I needed to talk privately. I ignored it… But he was there tonight to leave me a note, so when he saw me…”

Sebastian paused there and rubbed his face for a second, then dropped his hand down. Then he explained what had happened with Reid.

“I’ll fucking kill him.” Alex said when Sebastian finished.

“You will not.”

Alex stopped where he was pacing back and forth to look at Sebastian who was standing to one side of the kitchen island.

“Then I’ll call HR. That… What he’s doing, what he did… It’s not okay.”

“You’re not calling HR either.” Sebastian watched as Alex started pacing again, his eyes following him back and forth.

“He can’t just… Be allowed to get away with this sort of thing!” Alex stopped pacing and looked at Sebastian almost plaintively. “You’re just… You don’t want to do anything?”

He hadn’t told Alex everything that had happened. Just that Reid figured out that he and Alex had known each other growing up. And that he had been pretty menacing about it.

He’d also skipped telling him what Reid had divulged about his relationship with Alex. Why he thought Alex had been into him personally now that he had seen Sebastian.

And he left out how Reid had grabbed him like he was truly trying to hurt him and how Reid had pressed hard and tight into him and looked like he was going to kiss him.

Mostly because he didn’t know how to fucking explain that, and he wasn’t entirely sure he had read that situation right, anyway.

But even the scant amount he had told Alex seemed like more than enough for him to blow up over anyway, and he had started pacing back and forth before Sebastian had even gotten to the end.

“I’ll do something then.” Alex said when Sebastian didn’t reply to him, resting his hands on the island and leaning forward while looking absolutely fucking murderous.

“You’re not allowed to stand up for me.” Sebastian said very quietly, speaking before he even thought about it.

Alex tilted his head as he looked over at him. Confusion for a few moments, then dawning realization.

Sebastian had told him that when they were still in middle school. After the first fight with Abigail and Sam about how much time and presence Alex had in his life. He’d told all of them, Alex included, that they weren’t allowed to stand up for him anymore and made them promise they wouldn’t do it ever again.

For a long time Alex and Sebastian just looked at each other.

Because this callback was so much more direct than anything else that either of them had said. It was unguarded. It was very direct.

And Sebastian didn’t find that it hurt to say it or to look into Alex’s eyes while they both wrestled with whatever inner thoughts they were having about it.

“This isn’t some schoolyard fight.” Alex eventually said quietly, taking a couple of steps closer to Sebastian.

“No, it’s not. But we aren’t kids anymore, Alex. Messy shit like this happens all the time when you’re an adult. And what Reid did was not okay, and it wasn’t right. I know that it wasn’t. But doing something rash about it right now is not going to make anything better.”

Alex took in a breath and held it. He closed his eyes and let it back out again slowly. Seeming to try to ground himself and re-centre himself before he opened his eyes and looked at Sebastian and shook his head.

“I’m so sorry… Sebastian. This is such a mess. Maybe it would be best for you if you quit. This is more than enough grounds for it. I can’t in good conscience ask you to continue… No matter how much I might want you to.”

Sebastian nodded a couple of times, looking down at the pattern of stone that made up the surface of the island.

It would be easiest to quit. To just walk away from the problem entirely, because honestly that would fix things. Just removing himself from the situation would solve everything.

But…

“Reid’s going to get you fired. He’s not going to stop until you’re gone.” Sebastian said quietly, raising his head to meet Alex’s eyes.

If he left then he left Alex on his own. To face this alone, and probably end up losing a job that even Sebastian knew he deserved and was incredibly fucking good at.

“You don’t have to fight that battle for me, Sebastian. Or with me.”

“You never made me promise I wouldn’t stand up for you.”

The look on Alex’s face almost made all of this worth it. Surprise mixed with confusion mixed with something that was almost a buoyant sort of happiness.

Sebastian used to see that expression all the time.

Alex half laughed and half choked as he shook his head. “That isn’t fair.”

“You know that I don’t play fair.” Sebastian let out a long breath as he slid his hands onto the island and leaned down onto his forearms. “I’m already in this, Alex. If I leave then we both know Reid will win. I can’t walk away knowing that.”

“I could just fire you.” Alex said, raising his eyebrows a bit as he looked at Sebastian.

“You can’t take that hit to your professional reputation.” Sebastian quipped Alex’s own words from the very first day back at him and smiled when Alex laughed.

“Fuck… I really have forgotten what it’s like to deal with you. You’re way too sharp and quick.”

Alex smiled as he said it, but there was still reservation in his eyes. He didn’t want Sebastian to stay through this. That was obvious. He wanted him to leave. He wanted him out of Reid’s sight so he wouldn’t potentially be caught in whatever came next.

Alex clearly wanted to put protecting him above even the security of his own job. And that alone made Sebastian more resolved to stay and help him.

“If you’re not busy tonight we should talk about--”

“I was going to order a pizza if you can stay and--”

Alex and Sebastian both spoke at the same time and both abruptly stopped in the middle.

All week you both have been acting like you can fucking read each other’s minds.

Reid’s words, sharp and angry, filtered back into his head. That connection that even Sebastian had noticed… It still seemed to exist between them and had been grating on him painfully every time it happened...

But this time it just made him smile.

Sebastian chuckled softly, leaning a little further onto the island and towards Alex. “Pizza would be great.”

Chapter Text

“Don’t you think it’s weird that everyone gets together to make a giant pot of hot soup in the middle of summer?”

Sebastian turned his head to look at Alex sitting next to him and laughed. “I’ve been saying that forever. Soup and summer is really dumb, but no one wants to hear it.”

Alex leaned over enough to nudge his shoulder against Sebastian’s, then got to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

“Kay.”

Sebastian watched him jog across the beach and disappear up the path to town. Once Alex was gone, he pulled his legs up close to his chest and wound his arms around them as he moved his eyes from the ocean to the group of adults who were finishing cleaning up the beach after the Luau.

His mom and Demetrius were there, working side by side as they always did at events. Doing their part and helping out while Sebastian always slithered away. He helped, of course. He just did it after everyone else left.

He hadn’t gone far to wait. He and Alex had just wandered up the beach and sat down away from the crowd. But now that Alex had left, and he was waiting for him to come back, Sebastian felt like maybe they hadn’t gone far enough. At least judging by the fact that he was still within range of Demetrius’ dirty looks sent his way.

Sebastian pressed his lips together and looked back toward the water instead of at the adults. He hoped that Alex would come back before Demetrius got mad enough to come over to him and say something.

Demetrius always wanted Sebastian to do more. He was always talking about expectations and standards and stuff that just didn’t matter to Sebastian. He had his own standards and his own personal expectations. He had also learned that you never actually achieved anything fully with Demetrius. You could do exactly what he asked of you, meet the ‘expectations’ he set, and then he’d raise the bar and you were right back where you started.

Sebastian had figured that out about him by the time he was ten. Now he was halfway to thirteen and he didn’t even bother trying anymore.

But unfortunately, Demetrius hadn’t given up trying to force him.

“Sebastian! Come and help out!”

Case in point.

Demetrius wouldn’t have bothered him if Alex had still been sitting with him. Despite the fact that Alex was the same age as him, there was something about his presence that seemed to curb Demetrius’ desire to interrupt and try to talk down to Sebastian.

He wished he knew what it was so he could possibly try to do it himself…

He pretended not to hear Demetrius or see him standing and looking at him. He looked out at the water instead. The setting sun was turning everything this weird mix of gold and purple, and he wanted Alex to come back and see it with him.

“Sebastian! Response required!”

No. No there wasn’t any response required. He fucking hated it when he said that. He called it to Maru all the time, and Maru always responded, but saying it to Sebastian just made him far less likely to even acknowledge his presence.

“Last chance you get before I come over there!”

He was starting to sound angry, and Sebastian was getting uncomfortable in his supposed defiance, even though he knew he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Sebastian turned his head after a couple of minutes just in time to see Demetrius start walking over. But behind him he could see Alex returning to the beach carrying a bag and relief flooded him.

“I told you to come and help clean up.” Demetrius said, stopping close enough to Sebastian that some sand flew against his legs from Demetrius’ shoes.

“I don’t have to go and help clean up just because you told me to.” Sebastian turned his head to look up at Demetrius. “You know that once everyone is done I always go over and sift through the sand to see if there’s anything that got missed. That’s how I help.”

“This is about doing as you're told, not helping.”

“Why would doing as he’s told be more important than helping?”

Alex spoke from behind Demetrius, his voice so calm and casual despite it being obvious he was angry.

Demetrius turned around and frowned at Alex. He likely didn’t enjoy having an almost thirteen-year-old talk back to him like that, but he didn’t say that directly.

“I don’t think this is any of your concern, Alex. Shouldn’t you be helping out as well?”

Alex shrugged, then brushed past Demetrius and sat down on the sand next to Sebastian. He actually forced Demetrius to back up a couple of steps as he wedged himself down onto the sand between Sebastian and his step-father’s legs. “You said it wasn’t about helping.”

Sebastian bit the inside of his lower lip, having to work not to giggle because the way Alex trapped him at his own game was awfully funny. Demetrius was smart as hell when it came to science, but not so much when it came to other things.

Demetrius glared at Alex, but then leaned around to look at Sebastian again. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Sebastian didn’t say anything, he just looked at him until Demetrius turned and walked away, then he leaned into Alex and curled his arms around him. He pressed his face into Alex’s shoulder as he squeezed him and inhaled against him deeply before letting his breath out in a rush. “Thank you.”

“He’s just being a bully.”

“I know. But I just can’t do things the way you do… You just always seem to get the better of him somehow…”

Alex shifted so he could curl his arms around Sebastian in return, hugging him tight and warm against him. “You want me to come spend the night so he doesn’t try to bug you? He’ll probably forget about this by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes please. But not just because of him.”

Alex hugged him for a while longer, one hand slowly rubbing up and down his back before he let him go and picked up the bag he had been carrying.

“I went to the Saloon and talked Gus into giving me this…”

Sebastian watched as Alex opened the bag and took out two small ice cream cups and wooden spoons. He took the lid off one of the cups and tilted it so Sebastian could see inside.

“Stardrop sorbet?? Really??” He happily took the cup from Alex along with one of the little wooden spoons.

It wasn’t always easy to come by, but it was a treat that he and Alex both absolutely loved, and they had eaten more of it together in the past year and a half than Sebastian had consumed in his life before that. They’d eaten a whole container of it once in an afternoon and felt so sick afterwards they thought they’d never eat it again. But it had been so much fun to just sit with the container, eating directly from it with spoons while they sat in Sebastian’s bedroom watching movies.

And their distaste for it lasted maybe a week, but that was all.

Sebastian tucked a spoonful of the sorbet into his mouth, pressing it directly on his tongue and holding it there to let it melt as he leaned against Alex’s side.

“Why is Demetrius always after you so much?” Alex asked after they’d been quiet for a while.

Sebastian sighed and slid the spoon out of his mouth. He swallowed before he spoke. “We’re not the same sort of people, and he thinks that the way I’m different is wrong. He thinks I should change who I am, or…. Pretend to be someone else. It’s… Kinda complicated… I’m not explaining it well.”

“I think I understand.”

Alex turned his head so he could look at Sebastian. He smiled after a few moments, his eyes soft and warm. “I don’t think you should ever change who you are, even just to pretend. I love who you are.”

It made Sebastian’s breath catch. The words and the way Alex was looking at him as he said it.

Sebastian loved all of his friends. All of them. And he knew that Sam and Abigail loved him and they liked who he was.

But somehow it was different to hear Alex actually say it. Or maybe it was how he said it and the purple light of near dark and the Stardrop sorbet and how he had just stood up for him.

Maybe it was everything. Or maybe it was just Alex.

Sebastian shifted closer to him and threaded one arm through Alex’s so they could be linked up but still eat.

“I love who you are, too, Alex.” He said quietly, tilting his head back to look up at him.

Alex took a spoonful of sorbet, then held it to Sebastian’s mouth. He leaned in as he opened his mouth and Alex tucked the spoon between his lips sorbet side down against his tongue and held it there to let it melt the way he always did for himself.

The adults had left, and they were on the beach alone now. They’d have to get up before the light was completely gone and sift through the sand, but for the moment they stayed exactly where they were and saw nothing but each other.

Chapter Text

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… Back up a second…” Sam gave his head a shake, waving his hand at Sebastian and looking at him incredulously.

“Alex’s ex boyfriend knows who you are? Or like who you were, I guess, would be more accurate. He knows about you and Alex?”

Sebastian nodded, shifting a bit where he was sitting on the floor with Sam after band practice. Everyone else had left, and Sebastian was just catching him up on what had happened on Friday with Reid.

“And he told you that you’re the ‘love of his life’. Present tense. Like you still are. And that you’re ‘the one Alex will never get over’.

“Yes. So?” Sebastian tilted his head, then shook it when Sam looked at him wide eyed and rather pointedly. “What?”

“You have no reaction to that? At all?”

Sebastian sighed, putting his hands behind him to lean back on. “I think he was being overdramatic. I don’t know a lot about him, but he’s certainly been very dramatic about everything that I’ve seen.”

“Sebastian. Dude. Is this some sort of self protection thing? Because the guy basically told you that the ghost of YOU is what fucked up his relationship with Alex. And you’re acting like he told you bees make honey.”

Sebastian shifted a bit, getting an uncomfortable squirm in his stomach. He couldn’t help thinking about the letter written to Alex from Reid that had been in the box of his stuff. He’d said something about ‘always being in someone else’s shadow’. And that, coupled with everything that he had said on Friday, made it seem like...

He shook his head, brushing it all off again as he sighed and looked at Sam. “It was over a decade ago, Sam. It’s ancient history.”

Sam looked at him pointedly and skeptically. Clearly not believing a fucking word he said.

After a bit Sam rolled his eyes and seemed to give up on that train of thought. “So you told Alex about this?”

“I told him some.” Sebastian said, leaning back a little more. “I didn’t tell him any of what I just told you. It didn’t seem important.”

Sam groaned, not even trying to hide his obvious frustration over Sebastian and his lack of ability to deal with anything involving emotions. “So you told him that Reid cornered you.”

“I told him Reid came to talk to me, and that he had figured out that Alex and I knew each other and grew up together, and he seemed really angry about it.”

Sebastian stopped talking and Sam looked at him… Then leaned his head in again as if waiting for Sebastian to continue and tell him what else he’d told Alex. Then he rubbed a hand over his face when it became clear that Sebastian had nothing else to say.

“Okay, alright, so what did Alex say about it?”

“He said he’d kill him.”

Sam snorted, then grinned. “Fuck. He always was a guard dog with you…”

Something squeezed Sebastian’s heart painfully for a second hearing Sam reference their past. The way Alex had always been about protecting Sebastian. Because it was true, and Sam had been there and he had seen it…

“I told him he wasn’t allowed to stand up for me anymore.” Sebastian said quietly, letting out a low breath to try to ease the pain in his chest.

“I’m sure he took that well.” Sam chuckled, raising his eyebrows. “What did he say?”

“We went back and forth a bit… He told me that maybe I should quit because he couldn’t in good conscience ask me to continue after this.”

No matter how much I might want you to.

Alex’s words after telling him he should quit circled through his head. Sebastian had let them skim over him when they happened, and it was easy with so much else going on. But now they settled into him properly, and he felt that they did actually have weight to them.

“I’m guessing you said no.”

“Reid isn’t going to stop until he gets Alex fired, and that isn’t fucking fair. If I leave then Alex is on his own. I’m not… I can’t...”

Sebastian took in a breath, pushing himself to sit up again. He grabbed his cigarettes from where he’d tossed them on the floor next to him and lit one to give himself something to do as well as a few moments to try and settle again.

“I’m not leaving him to deal with this on his own, knowing that he’s ultimately going to lose his job if I do.”

Sam nodded slowly, his eyes moving over Sebastian like he was trying to digest everything he had just said. “So you’re staying.”

“Is that going to piss you off?”

Sam smirked, tilting his head a bit as he looked over at Sebastian. “For someone who doesn’t care what people think, you sure care a lot about whether or not the shit you do is going to piss me off.”

“I care what you think.” Sebastian said, exhaling a breath of smoke from his lungs as a sigh.

“I just want you to be okay.” Sam spoke a little more quietly, smiling at Sebastian instead of smirking at him. “Are you okay?”

Sebastian paused for a second, actually thinking about everything that had happened and if he was okay.

Sitting on Alex’s couch and having pizza with him while they talked about what they were going to do and what they needed to be aware of had been nice. It had even gotten kind of silly when they diverged away from the actual professional talk about it into coming up with code words and silly spy techniques they could use to talk to each other without anyone knowing what they were saying.

It was the kind of conversation they definitely would have had when they were kids.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” Sebastian said, looking over at Sam and smiling at him in gratitude. “I’m purposely not saying I’ll be good. Because no, none of this is good. But I’ll be fine.”

Sam seemed satisfied with that, and he smiled as he stretched his arms over his head. “You ready for the live next Friday?”

“Mm.” Sebastian nodded as he took another drag from his cigarette, waiting until he’d exhaled to respond. “Noah’s probably coming again.”

“Ooo… Anything happening there?”

“He came home with me last Friday night and stayed over.” Sebastian said, purposefully casual just to get a reaction from Sam.

“What?? When were you going to tell me this!?”

“I’m telling you now!” Sebastian laughed at the look on Sam’s face, shaking his head a bit.

“Introduce me this time. I want to meet him if he’s rating actually staying over at your place.”

They packed up not long afterwards and both went home. Sebastian had debated about texting Noah and asking him if he wanted to come over since they both had the next day off, but after he had showered and gotten changed he really just wanted to flop on the couch and alternate between looking at his phone and looking at the TV.

So he grabbed a box of crackers and a bottle of water from the kitchen, then settled himself on the couch, stretching out with a sigh of contentment. He took his time finding something to put on the tv, then unlocked his phone.

A couple of texts had come in while he was in the shower, one from Sam asking something about the set list for next week.

And one from Alex. Which made Sebastian’s heart skip a beat for a second as he opened it.

Alex- Hey. I know this is your personal phone and you can tell me to fuck off if you don’t want me to text you here for ANY reason, but I thought that maybe if we needed to talk about the stuff with Reid and other work-but-not-work related things this might be better. For now, anyway, since my ACTUAL point in texting you now is that I want to have a look at your work phone on Tuesday if you don’t mind. I’d like to see what’s running in the background and if there’s anything logging conversations or any other company related tracking ‘stuff’ that we should know about.

Sebastian frowned at that. Not because he was upset Alex had texted him on his personal phone, or because he wanted to look at his work phone, but because it hadn’t even for a second occurred to him that there could be stuff on that phone that was watching him and watching what he was doing. That was uncomfortable to think about… That was actually really uncomfortable to think about. Not because he did anything on it that was remotely questionable, but just the concept was kind of gross.

That someone could potentially be keeping track of the text conversations he had with Alex. Or tracking his location and everywhere he went with it.

Including his apartment.

He knew the company had his home address, of course, but it felt weirder thinking that they might open some application and look to see where the phone was and have his building marked as its location.

He shivered a bit as his skin started to crawl, and he made a face before he texted Alex back, trying not to get totally weirded out by the whole idea.

Sebastian- I don’t mind you texting me here. And I also don’t mind you looking at the phone. I’m kind of weirded out thinking about it now… Can I just turn it off until you can look at it? Or could you look at it before Tuesday?

Alex- Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause panic. You can turn it off if you want to. Or I can look at it before Tuesday. It actually would be better to look at it off property, but I didn’t want to impose on your personal time.

Sebastian- No, it’s okay. Even if I’m weirded out, I’m happier knowing you said something. You’re not imposing, this is important.

Alex- Is it too late tonight? You can come over tomorrow morning if not.

Sebastian- I’ll come tonight. Leaving shortly.

Sebastian got up and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and his hair. His hair was still damp from the shower, but it was fine. He changed into a nicer t-shirt and jeans, then put on his shoes and his coat before heading out.

He was actually very grateful that Alex had thought of this. It hadn’t crossed his mind that the company issue phone may come with ‘extras’ that the user didn’t know about, but it did make sense that it probably would.

The doorman at Alex’s building didn’t know him, but it was Sunday night and he’d never been there on the weekend before. He called up to Alex’s apartment to make sure Sebastian could go up, nodding as Alex spoke to him before he hung up and smiled at Sebastian.

“Sorry. I actually didn’t even know he had a new assistant.”

Sebastian shook his head and smiled back. “I don’t imagine that you see much of it on the weekends, don’t apologize.”

“Not from Mr Mullner.” The doorman said, smiling as he leaned on the standing desk he was stationed at. “Other people have their PAs here at all hours, but he never really seems to bother his on the weekends. Nice gig, I’d say.”

“Sure. Yeah, it is.” Sebastian said neutrally as he headed for the elevator.

Alex was standing with the door open when he walked up, smiling at him a bit. “Sorry you got stopped. I forgot that I hadn’t passed on to the weekend crew that I had someone new working for me.”

“They’re doing their job. It’s fine.” Sebastian said, shrugging out of his coat as he stepped on the backs of his shoes to get them off as well.

He followed Alex into the living room and sat down on the couch, holding the company phone out to him.

“Are you sure you don’t mind if I look at this? I feel like it’s kind of crossing into invasion of privacy.” Alex said as he took it, then just sat and held it as he looked at Sebastian.

“It’s fine. The only apps I’ve used on there are the calendar, text, the company email and maps. The only text conversation is with you. I barely touch it unless I’m out doing errands for you. There’s nothing personal of mine on it. All the information and contacts are yours.”

“I just wanted to double check.” Alex said, then smiled at him a bit before turning his attention to the phone. “Is there a passcode?”

“65892,” Sebastian said, watching as Alex unlocked the screen and immediately went to the settings in the phone to start whatever search he was going to do.

Sebastian watched him for a bit, but eventually slid himself into the corner of the big sectional couch and settled there with his personal phone. He alternated between scrolling and looking at Alex, but eventually got sucked into the scrolling side and got very comfortable where he was.

When he looked up again, he found that Alex’s eyes were already on him. Watching him with an odd sort of expression that seemed caught between uncertain and happy.

It made something in Sebastian’s stomach flip-flop, and he tilted his head to look at Alex in question.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you.” Alex said, dragging his eyes away. “You looked comfortable.”

“Your couch is very comfortable.” Sebastian said, brushing off the flip-flop and pushing himself up a bit so he could look more attentive. “Anything?”

Alex made a face and tapped the side of the phone against his palm. “A lot, actually. Which, because you don’t use this for much at all, doesn’t have a huge impact. But there are a few things I’d like to try to change just to give you more privacy overall.”

Sebastian moved so he was sitting closer to Alex, looking at the phone warily. “Should I just start using my personal phone instead? Do I really need that one?”

“That’s entirely up to you, but I think I’d rather change how it’s tracking stuff and just have you use it less. I don’t want you to have to put the company email app and all my calendar stuff onto your personal phone.”

That would kinda suck. The first few days he was there and had Alex’s calendar events merged with his own had been confusing and overwhelming.

“You’re right that we should probably make sure if we want to talk about anything that isn’t about work or your errands we use my personal phone.” Sebastian said, looking up at Alex’s face. “I don’t mind that. I’d rather no one else know any personal conversations we have, anyway.”

“Okay. I’ll go ahead and start working on the changes I want to make to the work one if you want to stick around?”

Sebastian nodded, not really wanting to leave with things the way they were now that he was aware of it. “Sure, that’s fine.”

Alex smiled at him, then leaned over and grabbed the TV remote, handing it to him before he got up. “I’ll work on this at my desk since I need to plug the phone into my laptop. Watch TV, get anything you want from the kitchen.”

“Thanks.” Sebastian smiled back at him, then moved back to the corner of the couch where he had been before, curling up rather comfortably as he turned the TV on and found something to watch.

Just as he had at home, he half watched the TV and half scrolled on his phone. But what he hadn’t banked on was just how tired he was after a full band practice… And as time wore on, he sank deeper into the cushions of Alex’s couch.

At some point he pulled one of the pillows close against his chest, curling up around it as he scrolled on his phone.

Or at least, that’s what he thought he was doing. It wasn’t until a soft touch to the side of his leg roused him that he realized he’d fallen asleep.

“I wasn’t sure if I should wake you up or just let you sleep.” Alex said quietly when Sebastian’s half awake eyes found his face.

“Sorry. I had band practice this afternoon… I was more tired than I thought.”

He pushed himself to sit up, making a low noise as he rubbed a hand over his face.

“Do you just want to sleep here? It’s past 11. I didn’t realize how late it was until I’d finished with your phone.”

Sebastian took in a breath and let it out again slowly. It was pretty late, and he was not really awake enough to drive across the city, but... He waited for that gut punch negative reaction to the idea of sleeping at Alex’s house to come again like it had on Monday when he’d had to stay over because of the storm…

But it didn’t happen this time. Maybe because he was already tired and really just wanted to fall asleep again. Probably because of that, which was fine. So he nodded his head and rubbed a hand over his face again. “If you don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind at all.”

Alex smiled at him, then shifted to get up. “Do you want a t-shirt to sleep in? At least you aren’t in work clothes this time.”

Sebastian smiled, pushing himself up and getting to his feet. “I’d appreciate that, actually.”

He followed Alex down the hall and into his bedroom, not fully awake enough to think twice about standing in there with him this time.

Alex went through his drawers and came up with another black t-shirt that he held out to him. “Not as small as the other one, but since you just need it to sleep in... It’ll be comfortable?”

“Perfect. Thanks.” Sebastian said, nodding at Alex before he carried the shirt down the hall and into the bathroom. He stripped out of his jeans and t-shirt and put Alex’s on, smoothing the fabric down a bit and smiling again for no particular reason.

Alex was in the living room when he walked out again and he set his clothes down on the end of the couch then sat down next to him.

“I turned your phone off for now.” Alex said, handing it over to him. “And changed the last location it would send to a random coffee place a block from here. It will stay like that until you turn it on again. If you don’t want it logging what I’m guessing is your apartment building based on where the tracking ended up every evening, just turn it on when you get to Melendy and turn it off before you leave.”

“Fuck. Someone was actually watching all of that?”

Alex shook his head, smiling a bit. “Not actively. It’s just taking all the information and storing it against ever needing it for some reason. I can’t turn off all the tracking it was doing without it flagging openly as malfunctioning, which would result in Shawn sending a new one to us for you to use, but it won’t be nearly so accurate with its locations now, and I’ve changed how often it sweeps things from every hour to twice a day.”

“And that won’t get it marked as malfunctioning?” Sebastian asked, turning the phone over in his hands.

“No, it will still be doing what it’s supposed to do. Just not quite the way it’s supposed to. The location tracking suddenly going off kilter won’t register because it will still look like it’s tracking you. It just won’t be the locations that you’re actually going to. And if anyone ever comes and talks to us about it, we just pretend we had no idea it wasn’t working because we, of course, had no idea that it was tracking you.”

Alex tilted his head a bit, raising his eyebrows as he smiled at Sebastian.

Sebastian chuckled, then nodded as he set the phone down on the coffee table. “Thank you. I don’t know a ton about how to do phone stuff like that. Computers, sure, but phones are just something I use and tend to ignore the function of.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think to check it sooner.”

Sebastian shook his head and reflexively patted a hand on the side of Alex’s arm. “Not a big deal. It’s fixed now, and we know that if we need to talk about anything past you needing another shirt because you spilled your fucking coffee again, we can use my phone.”

Alex laughed, then nudged Sebastian lightly. “I made it through the whole week without a wardrobe change, you know.”

“Only because I grabbed your coffee cup away from you at least a dozen times.”

“Ah, you’re a good assistant.” Alex said, smiling a little more. “You want to sleep on the couch again?”

“Yes please. It really is comfortable, and I can hog your TV as well since the power isn’t out this time.”

“Be my guest.”

Alex got up and went down the hall, returning a couple of minutes later with the giant duvet and pillows for Sebastian.

“I’m down the hall if you need me.” Alex said after setting down the duvet and pillows.

“Thanks. … Wait, should we be doing something different with your calendar now that we know people are logging the information from my phone?”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, looking down at Sebastian with a frown.

“I’m making things up all the time to block out Reid’s meeting requests. Just… Literally making up meetings you have with completely made up people. Should we keep doing that knowing that the phone is watching all the changes and the events and everything?”

Alex sat down on the couch next to him again, huffing out a short breath. “Good thought. Offhand, I’m not sure…”

“Not something we have to solve tonight, but think about it.”

Alex nodded, then smiled at Sebastian. “You really are an exceptionally good assistant.”

Sebastian smiled, something odd curling in his belly at the praise. “Are you actually going to bed now? You don’t look tired.”

Alex hesitated for a second too long, and Sebastian snorted softly. “Stay up and watch TV then. I’ll probably fall asleep with it on anyway. It doesn’t matter if you’re out here or not. Go to bed when you normally would. It’s your apartment.”

Sebastian didn’t wait for Alex to answer him. He just grabbed the pillows and the duvet, tucking himself back into the corner of the sectional couch, half propped up and half lying down comfortably.

“You choose what to watch.” Alex said, handing the remote to him as he shifted back to sit comfortably on the couch.

Sebastian took the remote and then pushed the bottom of the duvet towards Alex with his feet in invitation to share it since it was absolutely massive.

Nerves prickled in him a bit as he watched Alex pull the duvet over himself, even though he was the one to initiate them it... He was wearing one of Alex’s t-shirts. He was sleeping on his couch again.

But these weren’t the same sort of nerves he’d had before. They weren’t uncomfortable so much as…

Anticipatory?

But that didn’t seem like it should be right…

It didn’t matter. He told himself it didn’t matter, and he scrolled through Alex’s streaming services until he found ‘The Office’ and started it at the beginning.

“I love this show.” Alex said, glancing over at Sebastian.

“Same.” Sebastian said, meeting Alex’s eyes for a second as he settled himself in the pillows and under the cushy duvet.

He watched all of the first episode, but started drifting during the second. He heard Michael say something about signing a document as ‘Daffy Duck’ and he heard Alex laugh softly and Sebastian smiled a bit as he really did drift off into proper sleep.

He woke once, making a low noise and raising his head a bit. The TV was off, and he saw Alex getting to his feet.

“Go back to sleep… I’m just going to bed.” Alex said softly when he saw Sebastian raise his head and look at him.

“Mmmph…” Was all Sebastian offered before dropping his head back down against the pillow again with a deep sigh.

He didn’t wake up again, sleeping right through until a hard, and very long, irritated knock on the door resounded through the apartment and woke him up with a start.

Sebastian sat up, confused for a few seconds about where he was. He blinked sleep out of his eyes as he remembered he was at Alex’s apartment, sleeping on his couch... There was sun streaming through the balcony door, so it was late enough that whoever was knocking on the door wasn’t there at a necessarily inappropriate hour, but it felt very inappropriate.

“Fuck… What the hell…”

Sebastian turned and watched Alex walk down the hall in boxers and a t-shirt as he went to the door and unlocked it before he opened it. He dropped his head when Alex went out of view so he could rub his eyes and try to wake up a bit more.

“You CHANGED the FUCKING LOCKS!?”

Sebastian’s head whipped around again when he heard the voice coming from the entryway, recognizing it immediately as Reid’s.

“You wouldn’t give back my keys, so of course I changed the locks.” Alex said irritably. “What the hell do you want, Reid?”

“I’m missing a necklace that should have been in my box of stuff that Ewen got from you. I know it’s here, so I came to get it.”

Sebastian heard footsteps and realized then that he should have hidden. That having Reid see him there was a really fucking bad idea.

But it was too late.

Reid came around the corner, seeming like he was heading for the hall to go down to the bedrooms, but he stopped dead when his eyes landed on Sebastian sitting on the couch, half buried in the duvet and probably looking incredibly dishevelled.

Reid looked at him and Sebastian saw his jaw tighten before he turned to look at Alex. “Having fucking sleepovers with your PA, Alex? Really??”

Alex looked at Sebastian for a moment, seeming just as stricken by the circumstances as he was.

Neither of them said anything.

Reid looked between both of them, anger seeming to grow in him by the second. “As fucking expected...”

He continued on his way up the hall, and Alex shot Sebastian an incredibly apologetic look before he followed him.

Sebastian exhaled a very long and slightly shaky breath when they both disappeared, his heart still jack hammering in his chest. He considered the little Reid had said to be getting off lightly...

He could hear angry voices up the hall as Alex and Reid argued. At first he couldn’t really make out what they were saying, but as it continued, Reid’s voice got louder and louder until Sebastian had absolutely no trouble hearing it, and he realized there really wasn’t any ‘getting off lightly’ in this. At all.

“How many fucking times did you tell me you were over him, huh? Because that would be a start in calculating how many lies you told me. ALL of them about him.”

Sebastian closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, wanting to sink down into the floor. He heard the deeper tone of Alex’s voice reply, but he was speaking more quietly so he didn’t hear the actual words.

“Are you going to lie to him too? Are you going to feed him a bunch of bullshit about me? I think you already HAVE given how much he clearly doesn’t like me. Go ahead and try to put that shitstorm back together with him. Just go ahead and see how far you actually get.”

Alex’s voice replied, a little louder but still not enough for Sebastian to hear properly.

“Oh come off it, Alex! The only reason I didn’t walk in here and find you buried balls deep inside of him is because he’s too fucking smart to ever get back with you. You trashed everything you had with him, and he walked. Which is what I should have done the very second you told me about him the first time!”

“SHUT. UP. For fuck’s sake, you could at least have the decency to rail on me in private. You don’t always need to have a fucking audience!”

Sebastian looked up, surprised to hear Alex’s voice rise enough for him to hear very clearly. Up to that point, Sebastian had never heard Alex be anything but as calm and neutral as possible when talking to Reid.

He could hear the sound of drawers opening and then slamming shut again and Sebastian assumed Reid was looking for the necklace he was missing.

“Worried about your little PA hearing all the shit I know about the two of you? He already knows, Alex! Did he not tell you that we had just the nicest talk on Friday? He looked so shocked when I called him the love of your fucking life. Absolutely fucking gobsmacked when I said you look at him with stars in your eyes, like you believe all your fucking ridiculous romantic fantasies are coming back to life.”

Sebastian cringed at that, wondering if he should just pull his jeans on and leave.

There was a resounding slam of a drawer, and then footsteps in the hall. Reid walked into the living room and crossed one end of it to go back towards the hall to the door. He did look at Sebastian murderously as he went past. He didn’t say anything, but he did glare at him.

Then he turned and stormed out of the apartment entirely, slamming the door behind himself.

Alex had been behind Reid, and he had made it halfway to the door when it slammed. For a few seconds he just stood there, looking at the closed door. Then he turned and walked into the living room and turned his eyes to Sebastian.

He looked absolutely... fucking... terrified.

And Sebastian’s heart surged in his chest in a way he hadn’t felt in so fucking long.

“I’m so sorry.” Alex said the words breathily, They wavered with obvious fear. “All I seem to be doing lately is apologizing to you for one thing or another. Every time I turn around there’s something else that you’re being dragged through that you shouldn’t be.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” Alex said, his voice catching a bit as he looked at Sebastian. Scared and desperate and so many things that made Sebastian’s heart swell to the point he thought it might burst.

“This wasn’t your fault, Alex. You know that I understand what’s going on between you and him. He’s the one making this terrible. You’ve done nothing but be professional and calm with him.” Saving the outburst just now, but honestly Sebastian didn’t blame Alex for that one.

“But he told you… He said…”

Alex could barely speak, and he looked like he was about to fucking lose it and Sebastian couldn’t do it. He couldn’t watch that happen and not do something and help him and just…

“Alex…”

Sebastian said his name very quietly, shifting over a bit where he was sitting in the corner of his couch. He tugged the duvet back a bit, then patted the space next to him.

Alex just looked at him for a few seconds, disoriented and scared and looking so fucking defeated.

“Alex, just come here...”

He moved hesitantly when Sebastian spoke the second time, walking toward the couch and pausing as if he wanted to make sure that Sebastian was sure about what he was offering. But eventually he slid onto the couch with Sebastian, right in the corner of the sectional.

Sebastian tucked the duvet around him, and then sat with his legs curled next to him and pulled Alex in against him as best he could.

For a couple of minutes they were both stiff and awkward. But then Alex shifted as he let out a very deep breath. He turned so he could curl his arms around Sebastian in return. The second he did that, it was like they both thawed, they both melted, and they both pressed together the way they knew they could and knew they fit, even though it had been over a decade since they’d done it.

Sebastian sighed, closing his eyes as Alex slid down the couch a bit and rested his head against the front of Sebastian’s shoulder. His arms were curled loosely around his waist, and Sebastian’s looped around his shoulders as he tilted his head down to press his face into Alex’s hair.

Alex was bigger than he had been at 17, the last time Sebastian would have held him like this. Broader and far more solid when he had already been a big guy...

But they fit. Weirdly and oddly, given that Sebastian was so much smaller than Alex...

But they fit like this and always had. They fit in so many different ways, and Sebastian still knew all of them even if he didn’t want to remember...

He ignored the parts of him that were screaming in fucking terror at this situation. The parts that were trying to remind him of the way Alex had levelled the entirety of their relationship in one conversation. The parts that built walls around him to stop him from ever letting someone in that deeply again.

But they really didn’t matter right then...

Instead, he focused on thinking about the actual last time they saw each other before Sebastian turned up in his office a month ago. Because Alex destroying everything wasn’t the last time they spoke. It was the second to last… And the last time had been... very, very different…

“You shouldn’t be nice to me.” Alex said very quietly.

“Just don’t talk, Alex.”

“But you-”

“Alex…” Sebastian tilted his head down a bit and curled his arms a little further around him. “Just don’t talk yet.”

He didn’t know why he was doing this. He should be horrified, really, thinking about Alex and Reid and how fucking messed up all of it was. And it was insanely messed up in so many ways…

The way Reid had doubled down on this ‘love of his life’ business with Alex. The stars in his eyes. The romantic fantasies... All of that... it wasn’t good. Sebastian had brushed it off when Reid said it to him and again when Sam tried to push into it...

But listening to the way Reid tore into Alex so fucking viciously. Knowing that he was blazing a trail towards trying to get Alex fired. And seeing how… how scared Alex had looked just now.

In the space of a little less than a week Sebastian had gone from needing to get the fuck away from Alex so he could breathe properly, to voluntarily staying over at his house and now curling up on his couch with him to try and calm him down and comfort him.

I just want you to be okay. Are you okay?

Sam had asked him that the day before. And he wasn’t okay right then. He was really, really not fucking okay at the moment.

But he still held onto Alex, curling his arms tighter around his shoulders and resting his cheek against the top of his head. And after a while he found that his heart had slowed down, and Alex’s breathing had settled as well.

“Now you can talk.” Sebastian said quietly after another ten minutes had passed.

Alex chuckled very softly, then exhaled another very deep breath. “You didn’t tell me everything about your conversation with Reid.”

Sebastian shook his head a bit against the top of Alex’s. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t think you needed to hear all his bullshit. He’s so dramatic about everything already...”

He was brushing it all off again. Sliding it conveniently under the rug so neither of them had to deal with it.

“Is there anything else that you didn’t tell me? I’m... I’m going to end up finding out, Sebastian. You told me about a violation that happened in the office, it’s my own due diligence to pull the security footage from when it happened so that we have record of it. I wasn’t going to do anything with it, but I have to have it saved.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, fuck.

“Mmm… Can you just not watch it?”

“So that’s a yes.”

Alex shifted and sat up, pulling Sebastian in a bit closer as he did. Alex’s hand smoothed over his side and down to the slight swell of his hip as he looked at him expectantly.

Sebastian didn’t want to tell him. But he was going to have to, because it would be better to have this conversation now instead of at the office after he had seen everything.

“He grabbed me pretty hard. And yanked me right up against him and held me there.” Sebastian said, not looking at Alex when he said it.

There was silence for a minute, then Alex made a low noise and spoke with what seemed to be a great amount of exercised restraint. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not… really…”

“Sebastian.”

Sebastian raised his head, turning his eyes to Alex’s just for a moment before he looked away again. “He bruised my side from holding onto me too hard, but it’s not like I required medical attention or anything.”

“You could press charges for something like that. You know that, right?”

Sebastian turned his head to look at Alex again, then shook his head. “Not happening.”

“I’m just making sure I do everything I’m supposed to as your boss and manager of the department before I react far more personally. I have to tell you that you’re free to press charges in this situation.”

Sebastian nodded his head slowly, swallowing a little roughly. “I understand. I won’t be, but I understand.”

“Okay. Now personally I’m going to tell you that it’s extremely unfair that you’re holding a promise I made to you when we were eleven fucking years old over my head so that I don’t go track Reid down right now and pummel him into the ground…”

Sebastian laughed, he couldn’t help it. It was so fucking funny to hear Alex say it like that. And after a second Alex laughed as well, and the tension seemed to break a bit.

“Did Reid find his necklace?” Sebastian asked, shifting both the conversation and himself a bit to sit with a fraction more space between him and Alex.

But he felt it when Alex’s hands slid away from him. Clearly. Acutely.

“No. He didn’t really seem to be looking, though. He was just opening drawers and slamming them again.”

“Weird.” Sebastian sighed out a low breath, then looked over at Alex. “I should head home.”

For a minute they just looked at each other and Sebastian knew without asking that they were both thinking about the way they had just curled together. Muscle memory and some driving understanding of what they needed… Both of them strung out in what had just happened and needing comfort and finding it so fucking easily in each other.

Because Sebastian had to admit that while he had been thinking about calming Alex down... He had needed it, too. He had needed that. Needed Alex.

It had been wonderful. And horrible.

Alex eventually shifted down the couch and moved to get to his feet. Sebastian followed him, picking up his clothes and walking down the hall to the bathroom.

He changed, folding Alex’s shirt back up again, and took the time to wet his hands and rub them through his hair so that it didn’t look quite so messy.

When he walked back down the hall, Alex was dressed and waiting for him. “I’m coming downstairs with you. I want to make sure Reid is gone, and I want to talk to the doorman about making sure he isn’t allowed up here anymore.”

Sebastian wanted to protest, but if he was honest he preferred the idea of Alex going down with him. Besides, he needed to talk to the doorman, so... Alex wasn’t going downstairs just for his sake. That made it more okay.

They rode the elevator in silence, and stepped out together. Alex walked out into the parking lot with him, scanning the area a couple of times before he looked down at Sebastian and smiled. “Thank you for calming me down.”

“You’re welcome.” Sebastian said, feeling colour come to his cheeks. Away from the moment and the extremely charged situation, his actions no longer made sense.

In the moment it had been perfectly natural and easy and seemed totally logical.

But now…

“Have a good day.” Sebastian said as he opened his car door, smiling at Alex. “And thank you for messing around with the work phone.”

“No problem. See you in the morning.”

Sebastian got in and did up his seat belt. He started the car and pulled out, raising one hand to wave to Alex before he turned to drive out of the parking lot.

He felt so… Strange.

Disjointed and out of place and utterly, utterly confused.

He needed…

Fuck, he didn’t even know what he needed right then. He needed something that was nebulous and seemed impossible to name and he spent the drive home trying to brush it off and push it away even though it seemed stuck to him.

His phone chimed as he was closing his car door after parking in his spot at home. He took it out and opened it to read the text that had just come in.

Noah- Sooooo… This is really rude and normally I wouldn’t do this but I am so fucking horny I want to DIE and I feel juuuust comfortable enough with you to admit it. And basically proposition you. Are you busy today? We have work tomorrow so like... Just for the afternoon, obviously. ;)

Sebastian leaned the side of his hip against his car, smirking at the message and reading it twice before he wrote back.

Sebastian- I’ll come pick you up right now.

That was what he needed. That was absolutely what he fucking needed right then...