![[ANIMATED TEASER]](https://i.ibb.co/8mqs2bC/Exercises-In-Relativity.gif){kind=link}
Work Text:
Greg’s of the firm opinion that, on the whole, December is vastly overrated.
There are arguments to be had for it as a month certainly, but they all rather prove the point to begin with. You don’t jam that much tinsel and cheer up something unless you’re desperate to make it in any way palatable, and sliding his car into a frosted, darkened car park at 8AM makes that fact abundantly clear.
The streetlamps spill tidy pools of light in a precise array across the lot and up the path towards the entrance. The sun’s starting to come up by now, but with the weather and the car park on the western side of the hulking obelisk of this office building you’d never know it. Dark on his way in, and it will certainly be dark on the way out. It feels like a good two weeks since he’s seen the sun properly, what with this grey soup of overcast that pissed down a pestering, cold rain since the weekend.
Won’t be forever, he reminds himself, just another two months or so and the sun will be hanging around long enough he’ll actually get a chance to see it when he clocks off. Which, scratch that, putting it in terms of months makes the whole prospect sound even more fucking dismal.
Greg groans as he shifts and unbuckles his seatbelt, chucking his empty coffee cup into the back seat and grabbing his phone to slide it into his pocket. There’s a text from Roisin he should answer that he’s not going to. Not now anyways. Texting before 9AM feels like the behaviour of someone who drinks shakes that look like swamp water and goes for runs hours before dawn to “meet the day” so he’ll be leaving it until after work thanks very much.
He pushes out into the cold before he can think the better of it, breath catching in the air as he shuts the car door behind him. Cars fill nearly every space as usual, and, as usual, there’s not a person in sight. He ran into someone once. A shorter, balding man with a blinking but clever expression who’d just said “oh!” like it was some sort of miracle, then turned directly around and gotten into his car. Greg had tried not to be too disappointed.
He pulls his coat closer as he follows the salt-stained sidewalk up to the entrance of the building. The door gives a welcoming chime as he scans his entry-pass, sliding open to reveal the interior in all its undying fluorescent clamour.
Greg gives a “hullo” to the woman at the front desk (whose name he’s never learned despite asking twice) and it actually feels halfway genuine on its way out which cheers him up a bit.
She smiles back, polite and nameless, waiting for a reply on the other end of her phone line.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asks.
It takes Greg a moment to realise she’s actually speaking to him and not into the phone.
“Pardon?”
“Without a hat. It’s cold.”
“What? Oh no. Got enough hot air in here to keep me toasty,” he grins.
Her smile doesn’t shift. “They say it’s going to snow.”
There’s a soft sound on the other end of the line and her attention pivots. After a moment she waves him through.
He winds down the familiar halls and corridors, tinted windows and darkened weather replacing the outside world with an infinite mirror of the interior only with slightly more shit lighting but it’s not long until he’s into the part of the building that hasn’t got any windows at all.
The door to the locker room slides open with the same familiar sound as soon as he reaches it.
As always, Greg walks to his locker and unlocks it. As always, inside the drawer is a blue security pass and a set of dark square rimmed glasses.
Greg stares at the glasses. He wonders, not for the first time, what the other him thinks he leaves behind before starting each day. Wedding ring? The keys to some house out on a country lane? A phone, the background image a few kids roughhousing with some mutt of a terrier while he and a faceless partner watch on behind them, sated and merry on that precious sort of ordinary happiness? Maybe other him thinks he doesn’t leave anything behind at all.
Greg puts his phone into the locker. It doesn’t matter what other him thinks might be in the drawer. Other him doesn’t even know it’s December. Other him might not even know what December is at all.
Greg swaps the pass on his neck, hangs up his jacket, and removes a pair of exceptionally shiny, large black shoes, putting them on in pace of his salt-stained sneakers. He unfolds the glasses from the drawer, puts them on, and swings the locker shut before his stomach can twist too strangely.
“Alright, Dave?” he asks as he steps up to the desk beside the elevator.
“Can’t complain,” Dave says. The bits of metal on his uniform gleam dully under the fluorescent lights as he stands. “How’s your morning, Greg?”
Greg shrugs as Dave starts to pass over him with the security wand. “Unremarkably shit?”
Dave looks up at him from where he’s stopped scanning his legs, brow forming a small furrow of concern.
“Kidding,” Greg manages, trying to pivot as naturally as he can. “Supposed to snow later on.”
“That’s what they say,” Dave says, returning to his scan as Greg spreads out his arms.
“Who’s that They anyway, do you think?” Greg muses.
“Authorities,” Dave says, not missing a beat.
“There a badge for joining the meteorological collective consciousness, you think?”
Dave looks at him. There’s nothing in his expression at all. “No.”
“Right,” Greg manages, that tiny part of himself withering that always does when someone misses what he’s trying for. He steps back as Dave puts the wand away. “Course not.”
Dave gives him one more look before settling back behind his desk. Greg returns it with a tight smile, turning to scan his pass at the elevator door. The elevator dings instantly.
The doors slide open. Greg steps inside.
He turns back to the front, trying to put his hands in a place that doesn’t make him look like a psychopath. “See you then.”
Dave hums into his desk without looking up.
The doors slide shut.
The light in the elevator is cold and white, like the light you get before a snow.
Greg stares back at the closed elevator doors. He can’t quite see his reflection, just a vague shape in the brushed steel: an echo of a man who’s taller than he should be and wider than he could be, a man whose posture represents a final lacklustre bastion, a fading facade of the confidence he knows he ought to have. There’s a dark suit in the shape, a hint of glasses – just a smear in the pink blob of his head that melds into a pale shock of hair.
He wonders, as always, just how much this ghost of a reflection has changed since he started looking back at it. He thinks probably more and less than he’d like.
The feeling starts in the back of his stomach and, as always, it’s over before he gets a chance to name it at all.
There’s a ding as the elevator reaches the designated floor. The doors open. Greg strides out, heading down the green carpeted hallway with easy confidence. He slides one hand into his pocket, realising with a dull itching sensation he’s vaguely irritated already.
As soon as he steps over the break in the carpet that marks where the foyer changes into the hall, he begins to count.
One. Two. Three...
Twelve today, he thinks. Seems right. It was eighteen yesterday, but he’s got a prickle of a headache which probably means he’s a tad later than usual.
Four. Five.
The brutal mundanity of the hallways unfolds under the solid pace of his steps. He frowns down at his cuff, adjusting it slightly so it's straight, aligned where his jacket hits his sleeve. He checks his reflection in a pane of glass.
Six. Seven. Eight.
He seems to fill the hall entirely, posture sharp and straight, the dark of his suit in the reflection contrasting the white of the walls like some great bloody obelisk, glasses strict and professional, the stubble on his cheeks just there enough to be interesting.
Nine. Ten–
“Good morning!”
Ah. Well. Close enough.
Greg doesn’t look, even as he feels the meek, eager posture fall into step just behind his elbow.
“Is it?” Greg asks with mild disdain, checking the cuff on his other sleeve.
“Well. Suppose. Rather a relative term, isn’t it?”
“Good?”
“No, Morning.”
Greg’s smiling down at his sleeve before he can stop himself.
“Morning’s really whatever we want to call it. Time in general, actually.”
“So might as well be when I come in like the sun, eh?”
“Oh, yes. You’re very—”
“Round?”
He can hear the frown even if he doesn’t look at him to see it. “I was going to say radiant.”
“Oh yes, like a bride?”
“No,” the voice at his elbow notes. “More like an emperor. Maybe a tzar?”
“So bit more fascist than? How very flattering.”
Greg can almost see him wrinkling his nose. “I don’t think all brides aren’t fascists...” the voice says.
Greg lets the smile catch him up this time. He stops, he turns, and he lets himself look.
Alex looks back. And it’s funny isn’t it? Because he always looks the same after all.
It’s been years. Presumably. They’re not really supposed to count the days. Greg used to. He stopped when… well, he stopped when he stopped. So it’s been years. Ostensibly. And yet, every time he looks at Alex, there's a moment, just a moment, where he’s afraid.
It’s so strange, he’s not even sure you can properly call it fear. Just a shadow. A shimmer of a worry he can’t name. But, every time, Alex looks back, and he’s always the same. Even if he isn’t. Even if his beard has a bit more grey than it did on the day they got trapped in the Tertiary Redundance lab, even if he’s got a few more crows-feet when he smiles than when he brought Greg that first cup of coffee all those not-years ago. His ears still stick out. His cheeks are still red at the top. His mouth still hangs open in a way that might make him seem a bit dense if it weren’t for the vibrant intelligence in his expression, an intelligence that might make him seem a bit pretentious if it weren’t for the staggering kindness in his eyes. Eyes you might call blue, but Greg’s always thought of them as a blue that’s trying, unsuccessfully, to get away with an unassuming grey.
“Resplendent,” Greg says.
Alex blinks back up at him. “What about it?”
“I think that’s the word you're looking for. Not radiant.”
“Oh,” Alex’s mouth twitches towards a smile before catching itself. “Yes. That’s the one.”
“Say it then.”
“Resplendent.”
“The whole thing.”
This time Alex doesn’t catch his smile. “You’re very resplendent this morning, Greg.”
Greg smirks down at him. “Terrible.” He shakes his head turning back towards the door to their department. “Come on then, let’s get cracking.”
“Um,” Alex starts meekly, staying put a few feet behind him.
Greg stops walking, turning back.
“Management wants to speak to you.”
Alex’s voice hardly changes at all. Greg’s not sure anyone besides him would notice.
“Fernsdale?”
“Yes.”
Funny. What Alex is good at hiding and what he isn’t. Hell, maybe he’s good at hiding it all. Maybe Greg will never know.
“Alright,” Greg says, doing his best to keep his tone as managed as Alex’s is. “Now?”
“That was the implication.”
“Right,” Greg adjusts his jacket, giving his neck a quick crack. “Well, better get it over with then.”
He turns towards management’s office. Alex hasn’t moved, in fact he’s managed, in the most unobtrusive, annoying way, to be directly in Greg’s path.
“Need something?” Greg says, unable to help salting a bit of a sneer over it. He wishes, sometimes, he’d just say exactly what it is he fucking wants. He wishes, sometimes, he wasn’t so very good at getting exactly what he wants without asking for it.
“Are you…” Alex twists his face in that absurdly childish way he gets sometimes. “Is everything alright?”
Greg wants to hold onto his irritation, but it’s a bit hard when there’s a rather large (and probably less secret than he imagines) part of him that wants to fold that pathetic, concerned little expression up and stash it in his pocket for safe-keeping.
“I’d put good money on everything being not alright,” he answers, pushing forward past Alex. “But I’ll be fine.” He leaves him behind, alone in the hall with his clipboard clutched in his hands.
He makes his way down the corridors, taking a few quick turns around Process Filtering, and cutting through the on-hold Categorization offices to avoid a bit of extra distance. There was a time when he used to get lost so easily in here, but that was before Alex, before the Task Department, before so much, and now it’s quite likely he knows the accessible parts of the building better than anyone. Well, almost anyone…
Mr. Fernsdale’s door looms ahead, long fogged glass panes on either side, nameplate unadorned and steel cut.
Greg raises his hand to knock. “Come in,” says the monotone voice on the other side before he gets the chance.
Greg hesitates, hand hovering above the door handle. He lets his eyes close and takes one deep breath before pushing in.
The office is cool and bright; one wall a faux window filled only with gentle luminance. The desk is long and looks heavier than Greg thinks it is, dark wood with a simple sculpture of a duck and a tidy set of pens on one side.
Mr. Fernsdale is looking through a tidily arranged stack of papers on his desk, leaving Greg staring at the slicked back dark hair on top of his head as his long fingers delicately shift the pages in front of him. He doesn’t flinch as Greg shuts the door behind him. He never does.
“You can sit,” Fernsdale notes.
Greg doesn’t want to sit. He does anyways.
“There’s a concerning trend recently we need to address,” Fernsdale continues, still focused on his desk, “the productivity numbers for one member of your team.”
Greg’s teeth catch the side of his tongue, that low roiling anger starting to churn that always does in this room, with this man and that voice pushing over him without even the decency to look him in the face.
“We’ve exceeded quota for the past six quarters,” Greg says, keeping his voice level.
“Mm, as a unit, but there’s individual performance concerns.”
That shouldn’t matter. Maybe if he can get his voice just right, it won’t matter. “We have a highly collaborative department. We work as a team, we—”
“Rose M.” Fernsdale looks up. He’s younger than Greg, the grey of his hair just starting to catch up with the rest. He has a rounded face, sharp nose, cold, clear eyes and might even be someone Greg found handsome if he didn’t look as though he considered joy to be a distraction that one must, unfortunately, tolerate from time to time in others.
“We’re seeing trends,” Fernsdale continues. “We’d like them to cease before they dig a rut in your… highly collaborative department.”
“If you’d like me to change something,” Greg feels his tone getting tight, “you’re going to have to be quite a bit more specific.”
“She’s underperforming.”
“In what way?”
“Her departures and arrivals are off schedule by a 15% factor on an increasing average. Her task completion rates are down since last quarter, a full 25% behind the rest of your team in the past two weeks when considering the medians.”
“Everyone excels in some things and struggles with others,” Greg insists. “It’s why the team based approach is appropriate for the department, why we—”
“I’m the one, Greg, who sold this experimental workflow to the board, if you recall. It is thanks to my patronage your department exists at all. You needn’t patronise me with an explanation.”
Greg drops his eyes down to the desk in front of him, tightening his fist in his lap before he says something he’ll regret.
“If you are as strong as your collective,” Fernsdale continues, “then you are as vulnerable as any individual component. She’s a risk. Fix it. Or we’ll have to make a change.”
Greg looks up. “What sort of change?”
“The board has been very pleased with your department. It’s created a level of redundancy that has increased outputs notably, not just for this level but in a way that has been felt across the organisation as a whole. You should be very proud of that, Greg. You and Alex both. There’s discussion of expanding the program, potentially creating several departments in this model. This would be a notable achievement. Not just for you and for your team, but for all of us.”
“For you.” It’s out before he can stop it.
The smile is barely there. Like someone’s dragged a finger through dough. He holds Greg’s eye for a moment longer, then drops his head back to his papers.
“You’ve created something notable. There’s notice. Don’t squander it.”
Greg stares back at the shining top of his head, at the longer fingers flicking one paper up and moving onto the next. In his gut the anger is steadily rolling over from a simmer into a boil.
Fernsdale doesn’t look up. “You may go.”
It doesn’t take Greg long to make his way back to their department. The white edges of the anger are starting to fade, they always do, but the conversation is still stuck in nooks and crannies, like some particularly shit toffee caught in his teeth.
Alex is waiting by the door. Because of course he is. He’s probably been waiting there the whole damned time and that sparks Greg’s mood off all over again.
Alex opens his mouth. Greg pushes the door open and heads in before he can get the words out.
“Morning!” Greg barks as he strides into the wide room, shoes shining across the tiled floor.
The room’s far bigger than they need for just the seven of them, but the walls are lined with different consoles, workstations, not to mention the deeper storage closets at the back. He remembers when it was just a set of five rotating desks and now look at them, supplies to complete nearly every job in every department on the floor.
“Morning, Greg,” Bob M. calls from where he and Nish K. are busy at his desk taking apart a pen or putting it back together.
“Late start?” Sarah K. asks, her feet up on her desk, mass of hair chucked over one shoulder as she taps away at her console.
“Wouldn’t sound too smug, you’re the ones who’ll be making up for it,” Greg notes. He chucks a nod in Asim’s direction where he’s busy refilling his coffee. He shoots him back a beaming smile.
Greg grabs the stack of tidy printed cards that wait in his Department Chief inbox, leafing through them and allowing himself to surreptitiously glance in the direction of Rose’s desk. She’s there at least, even if she’s staring out into some middle distance and doesn’t seem to have registered him arriving at all. Her dark-purple nails are spinning a binder clip over and over again between them.
Alex has caught up to him by now, standing with his clipboard at the ready. He waits for Greg to ask, like he always does. Greg makes him wait, like he always does.
“What’s the lineup?” he says finally.
“Bit trickier today,” Alex answers, unfastening a piece of paper from the clipboard and handing it over. “Not exceptionally, but notable.”
“Apparently,” Greg says. He adjusts his glasses, leaning back a bit to take in the list, lining it up with his new set of oversight cards.
“A few new areas, we haven’t done Archival Redundancy before. And then there’s melons over in Culture and Morale again.”
Greg hums as he considers, letting his eyes skate down the tidy list. It’ll be a tight shift but they can make it with hopefully a bit of room to spare.
“Interesting though,” Alex notes hopefully
“You think so, do you?”
“It’s always interesting. It’s a very interesting job.”
“What a very good boy you are.” Greg shakes his head.
“Suppose we’ll see won’t we,” Alex says.
Greg does look at him then. Alex’s expression doesn’t give a single thing away. Just that blue trying its best to get away with grey. Like a blank page, one that with the right light over that invisible ink you might just be able to read.
Greg holds his eye, even as his voice raises for the rest of the room. “Right! Listen up!”
The rest of them perk up to attention. Nish reaches for the pen but Bob puts it in his pocket before he can get it. Sarah cranes her neck to look over her shoulder. Asim chokes a bit on his coffee. Rose blinks, glancing over in his direction.
“We’ve got a full docket today,” Greg says, smacking the sheet against his hand. “So let’s see just how much efficiency we can scrape off the bottom of this barrel, shall we? What have you got for us, Alex?”
Alex picks himself up a little bit taller, voice raising a little bit louder. “Teams to start today. We’ll do the first three rotations in those for the understaffed departments, then we can rotate back here for individual tasks before the end of the day.”
“I’m not going with Nish again,” Asim says.
“Oh come on, mate, that was an honest mistake!” Nish shouts.
“Tell that to the rabbits, yeah? We’ll be lucky if we see that grey one again! Poor Kettles…”
“And you weren’t supposed to name them!”
“Pipe down,” Greg mutters into his list. They both fall instantly silent. “It’ll be Bob, Rose, and Nish over in Culture and Morale since you’re so pressed about it. Sarah and Asim can do what they can about the increased workload down in Resource Mediation.”
Asim does a little fist pump. Sarah holds out a hand over her shoulder and he slaps it as Bob gives Nish a wink.
“And whoever gets done first,” Greg continues, as he lays five of his cards down on his desk at the front of the room “can have their pick of these individuals to wrap the day. First and well mind you – none of this jamming the extra paperwork into the potted plants like we had in Risk Assessment last month. I’ll even throw in a gold star to go on top.”
“What?” Bob asks. “Really?”
“No, not fucking really. Now get going, before we have to add the Delusions and Farce to the list.”
Alex has his clipboard under his arm, the small timer ready in his hands. He waits for Greg's nod before twisting it to one side with a click-click-click. “And your time starts…” He lets it go. “Now!”
The department scatters, diving for supply cabinets and reference cards, chatting quickly as they put together what they need, eager to be the first out the door.
Greg sorts through his management cards, getting them in the order he’d like to rotate through the departments. Alex is running his eyes down his clipboard in the way Greg knows he does when he’s not actually paying attention to its contents at all.
“Did–” Alex starts finally, voice soft in the space between them as Nish shouts at Bob something about regulation spanners. “Did he ask about Rose?”
Greg doesn’t answer.
Alex takes that for exactly what he ought to.
“We’ll do well today,” Alex says after a moment.
Greg’s tone is steady and monotone as concrete. “I should fucking hope we will.”
The department scatters into the various annals of the building as it always does. They’re spread across the entire severed floor more often than they’re shut up in their own headquarters these days, and Greg has to admit he’ll take it over the old monotony of one set of walls all day long. There’s a number of departmental protocols and supplies requests Greg has to complete himself, so he spends the first part of the morning bogged down with that nonsense while Alex goes off to lead on task oversight. It’s a bit before lunch by the time Greg’s able to extract himself from the minutia, rotating into Morale to see how the first team is getting on.
When he opens the door Bob, Nish, and Rose have devised a sort of melon bucket chain, the rest of the department hunkered over with scoopers and a paper cutter someone’s modified to cut the things in half. Alex is running rapidly between them all, checking his timer, making notes, catching a stray melon and tossing it back into the mix every now and again when one tries to roll off.
“Alright, Sally?” Greg nods as the Department Chief strolls towards him, heels clicking on the tiles, arms crossed loosely over an indigo blouse tucked neatly into a tweed skirt that ends a good three inches above her knees.
She leans back against the wall, ignoring his question entirely. “He’s a marvel, isn’t he?”
Greg follows her gaze to where Alex is scuttling across the floor. He almost slips on some melon juice, just managing to catch himself without falling straight into the dispenser.
Greg huffs out a chuckle. “He’s a wretched little tin soldier desperate to be loved.”
“Exactly. Marvelous.”
Nish screams as the dispenser suddenly shoots out three melons at once. Alex catches one in midair, gets a second with his foot, and manages to stop Nish from crashing to the ground as he pivots them back into rotation.
“Your department changes out rather frequently, doesn’t it?” Sally asks, still watching Alex with the unsettling energy of a predatory bird.
“Fairly often,” Greg says noncommittally. “People build skills. They’re valuable to other departments. They come and they go.”
“Never him, though.”
“This is his department,” Greg says aloud, letting “it will never, ever be him” come through just from his tone.
Sally looks at him then, smooth smile on her face, gaze sharp with understanding. “You’re very lucky you know.”
Greg looks back at her. “Is that so?”
“Oh yes,” she hums, “very.” Her gaze slips back to Alex across the floor. “I wish I had that sort of reliable support around here. He seems ready to do anything. Just like that.” She snaps, dark purple nails bright under the fluorescent light. “You bark and he jumps. I’m quite jealous actually, but you must get that a lot.”
Greg watches Alex scramble on his terrible velcro shoes with his drab tie and just this side of ill-fitting suit. “Oh yes. Everyone’s practically verdant with envy.”
“You must get the question a lot too,” Sally says.
Greg lets her words hang for a moment between them. He doesn’t want to ask. “What question’s that?” he asks all the same, expression level as he watches Alex pass Rose another bucket.
“Oh come on, Greg,” Sally’s smile widens, almost as if she might laugh. She doesn’t. “You must know the rumours.”
“Right. Rumours.” Greg’s posture has shifted, straightened against the wall, one hand still casually dipped into his pocket. “You know, I often find that rumours tend to be a whole lot duller than the truth.”
“I see,” Sally notes, not giving an inch. “It’s not true then?”
“Bit hard to say when I don’t know what you’re alluding to,” Greg knows he’s starting to sound a bit more irritated than he should but he can’t help it. It’s been a long day already and it’s barely noon.
Sally stares right back at him, utterly undeterred. “Is it true that he’s been here forever?”
Greg snorts. “What? You mean did he come with the carpeting?”
“Come on,” Sally presses, “you know what I mean.”
“I actually don’t,” the sharp edge is sneaking back into his tone. “He’s younger than you, and especially younger than me, and he doesn't actually run on batteries and the occasional biscuits as far as I'm aware. Staggering as this is, he's just a bloke and I’m sure he’s been here just as long as any of us have.”
“Was he here when you started?” Sally asks.
Greg doesn’t want to answer her. It’s not the first time he’s been asked. It’s not even the tenth. But it’s been a long stretch since the last time and he’d been enjoying not feeling the odd hollow spot behind his stomach this question always summons.
He feels his gaze darkening as he keeps it firmly locked across the room. “Lots of people were here when I started.”
“But you must—”
“You could ask,” Greg says, suddenly turning to face her.
She’s surprised, blinking up at him, a slight flush to her cheeks. She schools it quicker than he would have expected. Her voice is sweet and level when she pushes back again. “Have you ever asked?”
“I’ve stopped the clock!” Alex calls, chipper voice carrying easily across the room. Around him the team breaks into cheers. Nish is high fiving some older man with exceptionally thick glasses, a tall woman with a sharp fringe is sticking her hand out for Rose to shake, Bob is popping one sphere of melon into his mouth.
Greg peels himself off the wall, striding towards the centre of the room. “Sorry Sally,” he glances back at her over his shoulder, “but he’s just not interesting enough for me to care.”
He turns back to face the others. Alex is looking back at him. Alex smiles. The fake one. The one he does thinking he can get away with just violently showing all his teeth for a half second and no one will question it. Greg shakes his head, gets a hand on his shoulder and shoves him back towards the door.
Nish and Bob are already half way down the hallway shouting back and forth by the time Greg steps out, Alex scurrying to keep up with them. Greg knows he should probably pivot, circle around down to see how Sarah and Asim are getting on, but Rose is hanging back, staring at nothing whatsoever as she starts to make her way down the corridor and he’s nudging her shoulder lightly before he can stop himself.
“Let’s get a snack,” Greg says, tone softer, easier — already feeling his posture settle into something more comfortable without the attention of the rest of the department on him.
Rose blinks back. “I don’t have the tokens left.”
“I have plenty,” Greg smiles, “come on.”
She gets a grape soda and peanuts in the end, sitting across from him in one corner of their department’s refreshment area. Greg always feels massive at this table, but at least his legs do fit under it, even if just. Rose scoots her seat in a little closer. She’s wearing a burgundy turtleneck today, tucked into her navy a-line skirt. Her hands cup the can of soda where it rests on the white of the table. She hasn’t even opened it. Greg frowns at them.
“Things alright?” he asks. It’s a stupid question, and it feels even more idiotic when it’s out, but he learned what feels like a very long time ago that it’s better to start somewhere then to not start at all.
Rose’s eyes meet his. She pulls a deeply sardonic smile, but there’s enough humour in her, even hollowed out like this, that Greg can’t help but smile back.
“I know, I know” he manages. “But, I don’t know – more so I suppose. Especially. Lately.”
Rose considers him for a moment before she speaks. “That’s the thing though, isn’t it? I don’t even know what lately really is.”
Her hands adjust on the can, attention slipping off of him and down towards it. She presses her knuckles to one cool side.
“Time’s a flexible thing. I remember learning that somewhere… Relativity. That’s the word. Remember that? Like how on a great day, a real stunner, time hardly seems to exist at all. And on a bad one… well, you know what I mean.”
Greg wraps a hand around his tea. “Right.” The taste of it is still stale and familiar on his tongue. “Relativity.”
She looks up at him. Right at him. “Do you think we ever really leave?”
Greg can’t help the way his gaze shifts, instantly pivoting like a reflex to the small camera over her shoulder, nestled just into the corner of two white walls. He knows it’s there, just as well as he knows she knows it’s there, but Rose doesn’t seem to care. She’s just looking back at him, the bright, buoyant curls of her hair framing her face.
Greg holds her gaze firmly. “Of course we leave, Rose.” He does his best to get all the gentle comfort into his tone that he doesn’t feel. “Where else would we go?”
“Don’t know,” she says. Her lipstick’s bright, the same colour it is everyday. “A pod or some shit like that? They might recharge us. Like little batteries. Hell, maybe we’re just shipped off to another floor. Maybe we just start all over again.”
Greg’s cup feels warm in his hand. He should drink it before it gets cold. He doesn’t want to drink it. “I don’t know,” he manages, forcing a smile “must go out eventually. How else have I managed to maintain this striking tan and envious physique?”
Rose doesn’t laugh. There was a time when she would have laughed.
“Do you think you have a life out there?” she asks. “A real life.”
And christ, it’s too early for this, or too late, or god he doesn’t even know. “Oh yes,” he says, sarcasm slipping in before he can help it, “I’m sure I’m very happy as a competitive horse auctioneer on the weekends, or some pretentious woodworker hobbyist, or if I’m very lucky maybe just a lazy, rich bastard–”
“It’s a dream,” Rose says, hardly seeming to have heard him at all. “Do you think it matters?” The dark of her nails press just into the metal sides of the can. “Does a dream matter at all if you never remember having it?”
Greg lets out a deep breath, leaning back in his chair and peeling his glasses off his face. Rose looks away, dropping her head down towards her gently clenched hands.
“Look, Rose,” Greg tries, leaning forward once again. He places his hand closer to hers on the table and when she doesn’t seem bothered he moves it to her arm, squeezing just enough for her to know he’s there. “I know,” his voice is softer between them, “I know it’s… there’s a million things fucked about the way we live. But maybe – and I don’t mean for this to make things feel a thousand times worse – maybe that’s just life.”
Rose frowns down at the can. She’s started to spin it slowly on the surface of the table. She hasn’t touched the little blue box of peanuts.
“Maybe we don’t have control,” Greg says, “maybe we can’t be certain of any of it. Because maybe time is relative and maybe anything beyond this is just a dream and christ– maybe we do just get flopped into some tank full of electric seltzer at the end of the day like a bunch of unconscious eels – but we’re here. Now. And there’s one thing that I’m certain of.”
He waits until she looks back at him. And she does. Dark eyes bright and clear and so cold it almost hurts, but he pushes past it, hand tightening on her arm once more. “You’re not alone.”
She stares back at him. She feels so still under his hand. “Is that really all you need?”
The joke swells reflexively in his chest. He doesn’t let it out. He pulls his hand back, closing it around his tea instead, making himself take a sip. “I don’t know,” he isn’t looking at her any longer. He isn’t looking at much of anything at all. “I can’t think of anything more terrifying than truly being all alone.”
He can feel her attention on his face so he looks at her, forcing half a smile. She gazes back. There’s something deeper still turning in her eyes, something that he hasn’t managed to shake. But did he really fucking expect to?
“You’re a nice man Greg.” She doesn’t say it like it’s meant to be kind. She says it’s like an unfortunate diagnosis.
He wants to say he’s not. Because he isn’t. Not really. He doesn’t spend his days feeling like he’s a nice man. He spends his days knowing he’s a coward.
“I wonder if you’ve always been,” she says before he gets a chance to answer. Voice quiet, almost as if speaking to herself. “I wonder if you always will be.”
Greg opens his mouth to say something. Rose pushes her chair loudly back from the table.
“Thanks for the snack,” she smiles, a ghost of the one that used to come so easily.
Greg blinks down at her unopened soda, at the little bright blue box of peanuts she hasn’t touched on the desk. “You haven’t had much.”
“Oh,” she says, frowning, as if she’s only not noticing.
“Take them,” Greg forces a smile, landing a hand on his stomach. “More than enough snacks on board in this department.”
“You shouldn’t do that you know,” Rose says suddenly. “I know why you do, but you shouldn’t.”
Greg blinks. “What?”
“You’re beautiful.” She looks back at him firmly, her tone so clear and so simple that he can’t help feeling suddenly stuck in place by it. “And it's not as funny as you think it is to pretend you’re not.”
Greg stares. He opens his mouth to say something but nothing falls out.
Rose smiles shortly. She reaches forward, snagging the little blue box with “PEANUTS” printed clearly on one side, leaving the soda behind. “I’ll take these. Bob can have that. He loves a soda.”
She heads for the door.
“Oh, um,” Greg manages, voice odd in his mouth, still feeling rather like he’s slipped on something and knocked his head. “You’re not really supposed to take those out of here.”
She stops, leans back, shoots him a wink, and for a moment she’s her old self again. “Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of practice cleaning up my own messes.” She vanishes out the door.
Greg stares at the empty doorframe. He lets himself sit there for a few moments longer. Finally he sighs, slipping his glasses back onto his face. He stands, draining his cold tea in one, and heads back into the drone of his day.
It’s nearly evening by the time they’re all back in their own department.
Sarah and Asim are telling some story to Nish over a pile of freshly sorted binders while he cackles. Bob is adding to the paperclip chain he’s got draped around his desk. The work surfaces are tidied, all evidence of their hodgepodge of assignments filed out of view.
Alex keeps looking at him, like he knows something’s wrong. Which of course he does, because he always does, and Greg always fucking wishes he didn’t.
Rose is still seated at her desk, still staring out at not much at all. But Bob calls out to her, bouncing over carrying a new array of paperclips and chatting with such a vibrant, easy happiness that she can’t seem to help smiling back at him.
Greg lets his eyes glide down the output results for the day. She’s hit her targets. It’s not a knockout performance by any means, but it’s at threshold. He feels something in his chest loosen, even if it’s just a little.
Asim leaves first today, tossing his goodbyes back as he waves enthusiastically on his way out the door. Sarah starts to gather her things next, shutting down her work station, glancing at the clock over the door.
Greg follows her gaze, the dull chatter in the space fading out as he looks at the hands of the clock. The second hand ticks and hangs, ticks and hangs. He wonders, not for the first time, if it really keeps time at all.
“Alex.” It’s out of him before he hears it.
Alex perks up instantly. He’s not holding his clipboard any longer, and seems to suddenly feel a bit lost without it. “Yes, Greg?”
“Think we’re due for a supply check,” Greg says, standing from his desk, straightening his jacket. “Don’t you? Busy day.”
“Oh.” Instantly. Greg knows he has him instantly. It’s written all over his face, in the way his eyes go just a bit wide, in the slight flush that hits the tops of his cheeks. “Uhrm, yes,” Alex manages. “Yes, good idea.”
“I know it’s a good idea, I said it,” Greg notes, eyes fixed on the button he’s done up again on his jacket. “Come on,” he nudges his head in the direction of the supply closets. “I’ll check your work. I know you nick the pencils. Lord knows what you’re doing with them. Shifty little graphite squirrel.”
Sarah’s chuckling at her desk, grinning at them for just a moment as she completes her logouts.
Alex’s blush deepens, steps moving him quickly towards the closet on the far wall. He passes Greg’s desk on the way.
Greg whistles sharply just as he does, making him jump. “Go on, mush!”
Bob lets out one of his absurdly endearing little tee-hees, giggling into his paperclips as he unwinds even more for Rose to see.
Greg falls into line behind Alex, just kicking at the back of his shoes. Alex jumps again, nervous smile flickering across his face as he steps very quickly the rest of the way, finally reaching the back wall where a series of tall doors loom behind the row of worktables.
Alex’s hands hit the door handle, fiddling with the lock for just a moment. Greg feels his pulse picking up faster, the laughter and chat behind them already starting to fade into nothing.
Alex unlocks the door. He turns the handle. He pushes the closet open, and – god fucking love him – he turns to Greg, wide eyes locking right onto his, the door held just ajar between them. A question. An unspoken uncertainty. As if he’s still not convinced Greg will follow him in at all.
Greg grabs his shoulder, spinning him and shoving him firmly inside. He shuts the door behind them.
The world narrows instantly. All that makes it up now are dim shapes in the dark and the sound of Alex’s breath.
Alex shifts, moving to reach the wall, to turn the lights on.
Greg steps forward and covers the lightswitch with his hand. “Don’t.”
“They—” Alex starts, his voice so low and so soft and it can feel so infuriatingly meek sometimes Greg wants to wrap his teeth around it and tear it out of his throat. “They might see that the light isn’t on under the door.”
“They won’t see that the light isn’t on under the door.”
It never ceases to amaze him how much this electrifies and settles him all at once. It’s fluttering and confusing, odd vibrant instincts welling up inside him he doesn’t understand, and yet, everything feels so much simpler, in this close space where the only thing he can see he is the shadowed features of Alex’s face, where the only thing he can hear is the whispered edge of Alex’s voice – a world just between the two of them, a world he can hold between his hands.
He wonders, as he always does, if Alex feels the same way. He’s afraid, as he always is, that he might not feel anything like this at all. And so he asks, as he always does, before he can stop himself.
“Is this where you want to be?”
“Yes.”
Alex says it exactly the same. Every time. Instantly. Readily. As if it’s been held back, strapped down somewhere with elastic and someone has just cut it free. As if it’s been in the back of his throat every minute of every hour of every day for whatever that’s worth, for whatever a day even means buried here in this place, but he’s not thinking about that, not here, not in the dark where he’s looking at Alex and Alex is looking at him with eyes that are so wide and so kind and so dangerously sharp that sometimes Greg thinks he’ll never know if they’ve cut Greg clean open. And that doesn’t matter either. He rather hopes he has. Because sometimes, more than sometimes, Greg thinks Alex looking at him is the only thing left in this world that makes him feel as if he really is alive, so he touches him.
Two knuckles. That’s all. He raises his hand and lets two knuckles graze the side of Alex’s cheek.
It’s barely anything. And yet it’s everything.
The truth is, he’s never more angry than he is standing right here. In these moments – when he considers, when he knows – that somewhere far closer than it seems, there’s a him that knows exactly what it is to touch and be touched.
But that isn’t him. That’s a man in a dream. So Greg lets the anger slide down his throat, and pushes a bit of Alex’s short hair back into place behind his ear.
Alex’s eyes fall shut. Instantly. As though the weight of all the universe has suddenly fallen against them. His mouth slips open, just a touch, just enough, and god Greg can never stop looking at his mouth. Even when he knows he shouldn’t. Especially when he knows he shouldn’t. When it barely opens, exactly like this – when Alex looks at him as though, at any moment, that “yes” might just slip free.
Greg lets his hand fall back to his side and just like that Alex’s eyes are open again.
He’s looking at Greg. He’s looking at Greg like Greg holds every breath he’ll ever need to breathe in the hollow of his chest.
“Push your sleeve up,” Greg says into the space between them
Alex’s face does something interesting, something that Greg can’t quite track in the dark. He raises his right hand.
“The other one,” Greg corrects.
Alex hesitates, dropping his right hand and lifting his left before realising he’s still holding his clipboard. He looks suddenly flustered, oddly lost. Greg takes his clipboard out of his hand, placing it to one side.
Alex’s breathing has gotten heavier, just enough to notice. He pushes his sleeve up a bit. The jacket goes more readily, half a foot or so up his forearm, but the buttoned sleeve of his dress shirt catches on the width of his arm. An inch or so of pale skin is just visible in the dark, pale skin and the bones of his wrist and the dark hair on his arm and something inside of Greg is suddenly roaring behind his ears.
“Undo that,” Greg says. His voice sounds level, commanding. He has no idea how.
Alex moves to undo the button. His hands are shaking a bit. He gets it on the second try. He pushes his shirt a few inches higher; more pale skin, like a stone in a river, the hair of his arm pushed around out of place, a bracken, some wild alive thing wrapped around a hidden place. Bracken. It’s a strange word from a place he knows and doesn't know, full of the smell of wet earth he both remembers and can’t imagine.
“More,” Greg says.
Alex gets both his jacket and his shirt about six inches up his arm.
“Good,” Greg manages. “Stop.”
Alex stops. His eyes are so wide and heavy at once, this thick strange uncertainty to him that Greg knows he’d have a better word for in another life. Alex moves to drop his hand back to his side. Greg catches his arm. He gets his hand on his skin harder than he means to and Alex makes a sound just louder than it should be.
Greg puts his hand over Alex’s mouth.
Alex's entire body shivers so hard and so suddenly that for a moment Greg’s afraid he’s going to fall. But he doesn’t fall and, with two steps, Greg’s backed him up against the door.
Alex’s breath is hot and wet in the curve of his palm. He can hear Alex’s hand not in his own flex against the metal of the door. Every facet of Greg’s brain has fallen into a jumbled noise that’s so loud it feels like a swallowing silence.
He tries to keep his breathing steady, lifting Alex’s hand into the space between them. Greg moves his hand up his arm, cupping the back of his hand in his, pressing his thumb firmly into the warm hollow of Alex’s palm. The pressure urges Alex’s hand to open, his fingers to lengthen, all those warm tendons held in Greg’s hand to stretch and press and relax.
Greg looks at him. Once. Just once, then drops his mouth to the inside of Alex’s wrist.
Alex makes another sound. This one is louder – more shocked, more bright – and Greg shoves his hand closer to the heat of Alex’s mouth.
He lets his own mouth open, not much, just enough to breathe into him as he drags it against this hidden place, this impossibly smooth, warm secret. He smells like laundry and a bit of ink and under it all something that reminds him of the sound of crunching leaves. He wonders if this is what his home smells like.
He wonders if Alex goes back to some little flat at the end of the day, something nestled in an anonymous apartment building, a tidy and sterile place with mail neatly sorted on the counter. He wonders if he sits down alone every evening, settling into some dull grey sofa to eat leftover take-away, flicking through some sport or other on TV, tie off, shirt untucked. Just a man. A man who doesn’t know who Greg is at all.
He can feel the bones of Alex’s wrist under his mouth. Smooth and hard. Like rocks on some hillside, beaten by a rain he doesn’t get to feel, lashed by a wind he doesn’t get to know and Greg opens his mouth. He digs his teeth into Alex’s skin, hard enough that he knows it will leave a mark.
Alex gasps. It’s soft and shocked and pulled open, and there’s a strange memory suddenly stumbling across Greg’s mind. A fish, held in smaller hands – a fish and a knife and the sound the inside of the fish had made when it spilled to the outside. He’s not sure why he thinks of that. It’s a terrible thing to think. But he shouldn’t be surprised. He thinks, more often than not, that he might be a terrible person. Maybe that’s why he’s here at all.
He feels his eyes shut tighter, his hand press deeper into Alex’s, flexing the tendons under the line of his mouth. He bites him again, kisses him again, open and warm and mindless. He lets his teeth drag along him, presses his tongue – thoughtlessly, madly – to where he’s bitten him only to bite him again, to kiss him again, and again. Alex’ breath is so fast against the palm of his hand and it’s been ten seconds, maybe even less, and yet somehow each second feels larger than the whole past week put together.
Time’s a flexible thing. He remembers hearing that somewhere.
There’s a sound under his hand suddenly. A sound like Alex is trying to talk. Greg drops his hand instantly.
He pulls back, blinking. His heart is beating so hard and he tries to swallow the hot weight of it filling his head. “What did you say?” he asks Alex. His voice feels like boiling honey in his mouth.
“I—” Alex stares back at him. He looks… he looks like so much more than Greg can untangle. There’s concern there and need and honesty and that other part, the bright thing in his eyes that’s always there no matter what. A knot of cleverness that Greg knows he’ll never be bright enough to unwind.
Alex frowns, blinking into the middle distance for just a moment. “I’m… I don’t know.”
Greg swallows. He lets go of Alex’s hand. It falls silently back to Alex’s side.
“Alright,” he manages. Firmly, but not unkindly. “We’re done. Go on.”
Alex stares back at him. His mouth falls open a bit, the clever thing in his eyes twisting, like he might say something. Greg grabs his clipboard and pushes it into his hands before he gets the chance.
Alex frowns. He turns to the door. He glances at Greg once more over his shoulder, then he opens the door and steps back out.
Greg instantly pulls the door closed again behind him. He drops his head to the cool metal weight of it, just his breath filling the space now. He closes his eyes, trying for a few seconds, to resist what he knows he won’t.
“Fuck–” he mutters into the weight of the door. His hand snaps to his belt. He’s got one hand half way down his trousers with a gasp catching hard between his teeth before he even manages to shakily snap shut the lock on the door.
He leaves the supply closet what he hopes is just a few minutes later.
The room is emptier than it was when they went in. Bob is working away at his desk. Alex is nowhere to be seen. Greg looks at Rose’s desk. It’s empty.
“Alright Bob?” Greg asks, doing his best to pull apathetic authority back around his voice.
“Mhm, just finishing things up,” Bob notes. “Oh!” He looks up from his console. “Alex says you should go home before me tonight, since you left last yesterday.”
He should say that Alex doesn’t give the orders in this department. He should ask how the hell Alex even knows he was the last one to leave yesterday at all. But he’s suddenly so thoroughly exhausted he can’t manage it. Ready for the pod, or the next floor rotation, or just some ordinary life where he doesn’t know an Alex H. exists. Maybe Alex is already in a life like that. With a bruise on the wrist that Greg suddenly finds himself wishing he’d put on his dominant hand after all.
It’s colder in the car park than it was this morning. And dark. As expected. He’ll take that one to the bank.
The road is quiet on his drive home, just his headlights pooling on the salt-stained road, catching pale and ghostly against the few trees and fences that line the highway before he turns in towards the sleepy area that holds his apartment building.
He takes a longer shower than usual letting the hot water ease the cold and any scurrying stray thoughts out of him. The cold at least is easy to get rid of.
His hair’s still drying by the time the microwave is beeping at him. He makes himself dump the leftover takeaway onto a plate rather than just eating it out of the little folded cardboard box.
He’s just settling in on the couch when his phone buzzes in his pocket.
He pulls it out, glancing down to see the blurry photo of a grinning blonde woman in a vibrant jumper, his arm wrapped around her miming eating the bobble off her hat, both of them half-falling over in the corner of some beer garden he forgets the name of on a rainy afternoon.
Greg picks up the phone. “Shit day?”
“What?” Roisin baulks in surprise. “I mean… Yes. But, rude of you to assume.”
“You always call around dinner if you’ve had a shit one.”
“That’s not true. Sometimes I call if I can’t think of what to eat.”
“Do you know what you’re going to eat?”
“No.” There’s a pause, he can practically see her: feet kicked up on her sofa, glass in her other hand, open bottle of wine nestled into the cushions. “And yeah alright it was pretty shit today actually.”
“Alright, come on then,” he says, leaning back himself – dinner will keep. “Lily again?”
“She really thinks it’s charming to just pepper French into her sentences. It’s like she thinks it’s doing us all a favour. ‘Care for a café, Roisin?’ ‘À demain Roisin!’ I’m gonna snap.”
“Oh come on, she’s probably just compensating for having the name of a prissy goose from a children’s novel.”
Roisin snorts into the phone. “Yeah, alright. How about you then, good day?”
“No idea,” he says.
“God, right, fuck. Sorry. Can’t believe I’m still doing that.”
“Yes, how dare you ask me about my day, you complete demon.”
“Well, least it’s Wednesday, yeah? HumpDaaay! ” she says in the absurd tone that always makes him laugh despite himself. “Excited about the party Friday?”
“What party?” Greg frowns.
“Greg! Come on, I've told you three times at least! Mike invited us. That friend of his, from his kid’s school or whatever.”
“Right, christ,” Greg leans forward with a groan, drilling the heel of his hand into his eye. “It’s so fucking weird.”
“It’s not weird! It’s a holiday party!”
“Who throws a party and lets some other dad from school bring two lost weirdos along with him? Fucking insane behavior. Desperate. Concerning frankly.”
“It’s nice . It’s the Christmas Spirit.”
“It’s a bit predatory is what it is, probably going to end up going to help in the kitchen and getting inadvertently roped into some passive aggressive sex game.”
Roisin is doing that snorting laugh again. “Least it would be interesting! Come on Mike says they’re fun people.”
“Why does that sound like a threat?”
“Please. You’ve got better plans for Friday? You are going to come with me, right? It can’t just be me and Mike. We look like he’s been assigned to me through the government when it’s just the two of us. You have to buffer!”
“I don’t know, Rosh…” he groans, letting his eyes fall shut. He feels so exhausted suddenly, even more so than usual. “What if it’s awful.”
“How dare you. I’ll be there. It’s impossible for it to be awful.”
“Yeah,” Greg says. “You and your government assigned responsible adult.”
“Exactly. And if it’s shit we’ll just fuck off to the pub and leave Mike to get too drunk and do his weird dancing at all the confused parents.”
“That does actually sound worth seeing.”
“See,” Roisin says, with the decisive tone of someone who knows she’s already won.
“Alright,” Greg sighs. “Fine then.”
“Good,” she grins through the phone.
It’s just started snowing outside the window of his apartment. Not much, but a few flakes. Probably all they’ll get before it switches back over to freezing rain.
“How are you doing, though?” Roisin asks. “I mean… like really.”
Greg stares out the window. Then again, it is getting colder out there. Maybe it will keep snowing after all.
He crosses an arm over his chest, voice close against the phone in his other hand. “Not sure I even really know anymore, honestly.”
“Well,” Roisin’s voice echoes through the receiver. “What do you feel like?”
“Animated oatmeal?”
She pushes right past that. “I mean, do you feel happy?”
He should answer her. It’s nice of her to ask. She cares; she really, actually does, which is its own small kind of miracle. And he cares that she cares. But any sort of answer feels odd, stuck at the edges of his throat, and he can’t quite seem to manage it.
“When’s the party again?” he asks instead.
He knows she knows what he’s doing. He loves her for not saying so. “Friday.”
“Alright then,” he picks up his fork, looking down at his now cold food. “Friday.”
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
“Morning!”
Greg keeps his pace moving down the hall, adjusting his suit jacket over his waistcoat. “Presumably.”
“Plausibly. Maybe even Probably,” Alex notes.
Greg shakes his head, half a smile catching him up. “You’re chipper this morning.”
“Oh?” Alex blinks. “You think so?”
“Oh yes, proper little ray of sunshine,” Greg drips sarcastically.
“Hm,” Alex frowns. “Doubt it. I think it’s raining outside. My hair was wet when I came in.”
“Bold assumption. Maybe they just rode you out of your stall and hosed you down for the day like a proper little show pony.”
“That’s a nice idea,” Alex says plainly. “Makes two of us then?” He nods at Greg’s head.
Greg frowns. He runs a hand through his hair. It’s cold and just a bit wet.
Greg stops walking. “Give me your jacket.”
Alex scuffs to a stop at his side. “I– Really?”
Greg turns to look at him. Alex’s face is lit up, gap showing in that stunned little smile, blue-grey eyes holding that edge of a dare that always settles into the back of Greg’s stomach like a very warm stone.
Greg glares down with all the bored languor he wishes he was controlled enough to genuinely feel. “Are you going to make me ask again?”
The tips of Alex’s ears go red. He clumsily shrugs off his jacket, revealing a rather ill-fitting dress shirt with clip-on suspenders underneath.
Greg shakes his head, muttering “jesus christ” as he snags the jacket out of Alex’s hands.
With a brusque movement he flips it inside out, running the thing quick and rough over his head a few times. It smells like him. Because of course it does. What an exceptionally mundane thing to notice.
Greg chucks the jacket back into Alex’s hands. Alex is looking up at him, that wild joy so tightly held at the edges of his face. Greg can’t stop himself from reaching out and snapping one of his suspenders against his chest. Alex gasps, a rush of breath falling into a giddy half laugh as Greg starts to move back down the hall. Alex rushes to catch up, shrugging his jacket back on over his shoulders.
Greg reaches the department door and comes to a stop, glancing inside. “How’s the line-up today?”
“Oh,” Alex jogs to a stop behind him, pulling his clipboard back to the front, “um, not bad. A bit lighter than yesterday.”
“Good.”
Greg glances back inside. Rose is at her desk. Her attention is focused on her console, large glasses picking up the greenish glow of the screen.
“She was a bit late.” Alex notes into the close space between them. “But less so than yesterday.”
Greg nods to himself. He clears his throat, straightens his jacket, and pushes open the door, the boom of his voice instantly filling the space.
As it turns out, it is a lighter day but not an easier one. There’s a shortage over in Technology Repurposing, a staggering three out sick and a new set of departments due to come online at the end of the week on top of that, which leaves Asim and Rose hauling the heavy pound consoles in rapid succession to a workstation where Sarah cracks them open, Bob snaps in the new protocol chips, and Nish seals them up again, rushing each prepped machine over to the rattled remaining members of the department doing their best to get everything packaged for roll-out, all of which is not being helped one bit by their sweat-dampened department chief.
He’s practically falling over himself buzzing behind every single shoulder, critiquing and nitpicking with each breath, pressing Alex every ten minutes to see if he’s completed just the right set of forms.
“Idiot!” he suddenly exclaims, fringe falling into his face as he darts forward, “–you’ll snap it clean off doing it like that.” He grabs Sarah’s wrist, pulling her hand away from the console.
Greg’s hand comes down hard on his shoulder.
The man turns, blinking in baffled fury up at him. He lets Sarah’s hand go.
Greg pushes his mouth into his coldest smile. “Problem?”
“It’s–” The man’s face is stumbling quickly between nerves and indignant anger. “It’s, there’s a system here for a reason, and your department–”
“My Department. That’s come here to help you. In an emergency,” Greg says mildly.
“Your department,” the man pushes on undeterred, “seems to have no respect whatsoever for the protocols that we have painstakingly established over the past eleven quarters!”
“Oh I see. We are doing it a bit differently I suppose…”
“You’re mercenaries,” he growls, stepping a bit more into Greg’s space. “I know what you’re used to – swanning into departments all over the floor and thinking you can improve on what hard-working groups like mine have been doing for years.”
“Knowing.”
The man stumbles. “What?”
“Not thinking. Knowing.”
“I– how dare–!”
Greg interrupts him before he can get the rest out. “Output numbers Alex,” he asks, eyes never leaving the department chief’s face.
“Sixty-one percent increase per quarter hour from last week, Greg.”
The man’s face goes an even deeper shade of red.
Greg takes a step closer, voice lowering enough that it falls just between them amidst the hum of the team churning through one console after another. “I don’t need a Thank you from you or anyone else, but if you touch anyone from my team again, I will separate your skin from the rest of your body and install your stuffed husk into the Remembrance Hall myself. So instead of that Thank You, I’ll take an Understood.”
A complicated set of motions takes place across the face in front of him. The man’s jaw twitches like he’s chewing against his tongue, he looks down, clears his throat. “Understood.”
Greg slaps his shoulder harder than he needs to, beaming down at him. “Good.”
When he looks back up Alex is hiding a smile behind his clipboard.
They’re all spent by the time lunch comes around. Everyone’s flagging despite Alex’s attempts to perk them up with a few of his truly terrible puns. Sarah’s swearing up a storm as they file back into their own department, comparing welts with Bob as Asim tries to cheer Nish up wrapping an arm around his shoulders and giving him a big wiggle. Greg watches them all file in. He stops in the department doorway as they make their way over to the refreshment area. He looks down the hall behind him. There’s no one there.
He turns back. “Where’s Rose?”
Alex looks back at him; the rest of them have already vanished into the kitchen. “She’s not–? She wasn’t– maybe back in Technology? Must be…”
Greg turns instantly, trying to ignore the way his chest already feels tighter than it did a moment ago. “I’ll go back.”
He moves as quickly as he can without breaking into a run back down the white of the hallways. It’s not a short walk; Tech and Repo is one of the further out departments, but he reaches the door finally, pushing it open and stepping back inside.
The lights overhead flicker back to life. There’s isn’t a single person left in the room.
“Shit,” Greg mutters, turning back out into the hall.
There’s a soft sound to his left. He turns. Nothing’s there but a corner in the hall. He moves towards it, trying to swallow the creeping panic already stealing up his limbs.
He turns the corner. There’s a woman at the end of the hallway. A woman standing in front of a closed door.
“Rose?” Greg says.
The woman in the hall turns. The bounce of her hair wobbles as she looks back at him over her shoulder. Just around the edge of her arm, Greg can see the heavy, rectangular shape of a console.
“Rose–” Greg steps forward.
Rose turns back to the door. She raises the console over her head. Greg starts to run. “Wait!”
She slams the console onto the handle of the door.
Every light in the hallway snaps into red.
“Rose!” Greg shouts, moving towards her.
She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t hesitate, hefting the console even higher. A shout punches out of her as she brings it down again.
The metal of the door handle shatters. The sirens start. Rose drops the console to the floor. She shoves the door the rest of the way open. She starts to run.
“Fuck,” Greg gasps, running after her. “ROSE!” His voice barely carries over the blare of the sirens. She doesn’t look back at him. She kicks her shoes off, running even faster.
She beats him to the next corner, and the next, a vanishing shadow in the jarring red light. His dress shoes slide on the tiled floor. He can hear his heart thudding in his ears, feel his breath turning to fire in his lungs. He catches himself against the wall around the next turn. It’s a long corridor ahead. Rose is running down it, running towards a metal door with a small rectangular window.
“ROSE!” He yells as loud as he can.
She slams into the door at the end of the hallway. She’s fumbling, searching for something, anything, and Greg realises, with a sinking sensation, there isn’t even a handle on the door.
Rose makes a sound, a sound trapped between a roar and a scream.
She slams her palm into the door, letting out another shout tangled with a sob. She raises her fist, aiming for the glass–
Greg catches her arm.
“Hold it there,” another voice calls.
The red lights snap off, flooding the hallway once again with fluorescent white.
The sirens have stopped, leaving just the sound of approaching steps behind.
Fernsdale glares down the hall, two members of the security team pushing past him to close in around them.
“What exactly is going on here?” Fernsdale calls, voice just shaken out of its usual apathy.
Rose’s wrist is warm in Greg’s hand. Through the window on the door there’s sunlight on the stairs.
Fernsdale’s shoes slap against the tiled floor as he closes the rest of the distance to them. The security team has already circled on either side. “I don’t remember seeing destruction of critical infrastructure in your assignments today Rose M., unless I’m grossly mistaken.”
Greg barely hears him. Rose’s pulse is thudding in his hand. The sound she’d made before nearly breaking her hand against the window still is still thudding through his head.
“Come on,” Fernsdale snaps, “get her out of here.”
The Security team moves towards her. Greg pushes her behind him. “No, it’s– this is my fault. I’m responsible.”
The team stops. Fernsdale narrows his eyes. Rose opens her mouth, brows furrowing. Greg gives her arm a small squeeze. She shuts her mouth again, dropping her glare to the ground, angry tears bright in her eyes.
Fernsdale slowly looks him up and down. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
After a moment Fernsdale gives a tight sigh. “Well Greg, I will admit I am quite fascinated to hear how that might possibly be the case.” He nods to the security team. “Greg D. can escort Rose M. back to their department. One of you two go with them. The other can seal the door they’ve broken.”
Greg nods tightly, allowing himself to let go of Rose’s arm.
“ But, ” Fernsdale continues, “your team will work from their ancillary office for the rest of the day. And you’ll be limited to tasks you can complete on the consoles in that location only . Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Greg says instantly.
Fernsdale glares back at him, raising an eyebrow with expectation.
Greg swallows the bile at the back of his throat. “Yes, Sir.”
They don’t speak on the walk back. The security member follows them just a step behind, a shadow in their wake.
Rose has her hands clasped in front of her. She’s running a thumb over the knuckles of one hand. Greg glances down. Her knuckles are scraped, bleeding, but not too much. Probably from slamming the console into the door.
When they push open the door to the ancillary office everyone inside is instantly on their feet.
“What happened?” Nish asks.
“Is everything alright?” Sarah says.
Bob steps around his desk. Asim stands at the back, face set with worry.
Alex is nowhere to be seen.
The security team member steps in behind Greg and Rose. The room goes quiet.
“Go on, back to work,” Greg says, tone firm and cold.
Slowly, everyone melts back to their desks, eyes still fixed on the small group at the door. Rose pushes away from them, sitting down firmly behind the desk closest.
“Rose has hurt her hand,” Greg says, “someone get the kit and get it addressed.”
“I’m fine,” Rose says. She isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t blame her.
Across the room the far door opens. Alex steps back inside.
“Get the kit, and get it addressed.” Greg repeats trying to manage the anger that’s starting to swell up inside him as he walks across the room.
Asim is already moving towards the kitchen where the first-aid-kit is kept. Nish is frowning down at his console. Greg reaches the opposite door, stopping just beside Alex. “I’ll be back soon. Maybe a bit longer.”
“Alright,” Alex says. There’s something strange in his voice and, like so many things, Greg has no idea how to make sense of it. He pushes past him before frustration makes him say something he’ll regret.
Security follows him all the way to Fernsdale’s office.
“Alright then,” Fernsdale says as Greg shuts the door behind him. “Let’s have it.”
And Christ, he has no idea how he’s going to manage this. But it’s at least worth a try.
“I’m Department Chief; it’s my responsibility.”
“That is certainly true,” Fernsdale says, looking immensely unconvinced.
“I wanted our numbers up,” Greg tries again, fitting his tone into a colder shape. “She was struggling, slowing down the team. I pushed her into tasks on her own so our numbers wouldn’t suffer. She lacked the oversight necessary. This was the result. So it is my responsibility.”
Fernsdale’s expression narrows. He taps his pen against the smooth surface of his desk once, twice. Greg holds his posture still in his chair.
“It’s admirable – if idiotic – for you to try and take responsibility for this Greg, but Alex H. has already let us know exactly what happened.”
Something behind Greg’s stomach goes suddenly cold. “He’s done what?”
“He’s informed us that this is a new initiative he’s been exploring. We all know he’s quite inventive, but it seems in this case he’s gotten ahead of himself. He has that tendency. It’s frankly why we don’t let him take on a department chief role.”
There’s a jumble of feelings scrambling around Greg’s gut and anger is starting to push the others to the background.
“It’s not a bad idea, honestly,” Fernsdale continues, more to himself than Greg. “Testing the security of the floor through random improvised egress attempts. Interesting. Certainly. I do think management should have been notified, his argument that such notice would compromise the integrity of the exercise notwithstanding.”
“Right,” Greg manages. There’s a dull buzzing that’s filling his head.
“In any case, he’s been fully candid about the whole thing and has assured me that any such… experiment will be properly reviewed for approval in the future.”
Greg stares at the middle distance between himself and the desk. “Then what happens now?”
“Oh he’ll have to be disciplined of course. I’m sure they’ve already begun.”
There’s so many things he wants to say, needs to say, but all of them are squirming about like too many fish in a tank and nothing comes out at all.
“All this being said,” Fernsdale sniffs, looking back down at his paperwork. “I believe you and I understand each other.”
Greg stares at the gleam of the hair smoothed back over the top of his head.
Fernsdale doesn’t look up. “We’re done.”
By the time Greg gets back to the auxiliary office everyone’s well into their console tasks. It doesn’t stop every one of them from staring at him as he steps back across the room.
Asim is knelt down next to Rose’s desk, applying a bandage to the back of her scuffed knuckles. Greg can feel Rose’s gaze against him but he can’t quite manage to look back at her, not now, not with this much fresh jumbled anger filling his chest.
Alex’s clipboard sits alone on the edge of an empty desk.
Greg sits at the desk furthest away from it and pulls open his most mind numbing set of paperwork approvals. He tells himself not to look at the clock. He does almost every minute all the same.
The day starts to wind down, crawling its way towards evening, or whatever the hell time it actually is out there.
Asim starts to clear his desk for the day. Sarah takes another stack of assignments, apparently determined to see just to see how many she can get through. Rose stares down at her console.
Greg lets out a tight sigh, pushing himself up and heading for a tea. There’s always a chance it provides some sort of distraction from the clock clicking monotonously forward, from Alex’s empty desk and the office doors that remain persistently shut.
Bob’s already at the sink. He hands Greg a cup. Greg takes it with a mutter of thanks.
“He’ll be alright, you know?” Bob says gently. “He’s very good at it.”
Greg’s jaw tightens, attention focused on filling up the cup in his hands. “It’s not the sort of shit anyone should be good at.”
“He is though,” Bob notes, leaning back against the counter and taking a sip from his own cup. “Miles better than you and me anyways…”
That much was true at least. Greg always fancied himself a good liar. No, that’s not exactly right is it? Greg knows that he’s a very good liar. But it seems being a good liar doesn’t make you good at what happens in that terrible dark little room. In fact, he’s fairly sure it makes what happens there much worse.
“He’s done it in ten minutes before, you know?” Bob notes.
“That’s bullshit,” Greg mutters into his tea as he adds milk, “just another fucking rumour, another one of those things people love to say about him.”
“It’s not,” Bob says, face open. “I saw him do it. I mean I didn’t see. But I saw him go in, and just like that,” he snaps, “fifteen minutes later and he was back at his desk.”
Greg stares down. The milk spins in whorls and spirals, vanishing into the monotone of the tea. “It’s been more than fifteen minutes.”
Bob puts a warm hand on his shoulder. He squeezes once before shuffling back to his desk.
Asim and Nish have already left when the door at the opposite end of the room opens. Alex steps back into the office.
Greg doesn’t stop himself from staring at him. None of them do.
Rose has looked up from her desk for the first time in hours. Something complicated is unwinding in her expression as she looks back at Alex.
He starts to walk towards the desk where he left his clipboard.
“Alright there, Alex?” Bob asks.
“What? Oh yes. Everything’s fine,” Alex says. He picks up his clipboard off the desk. He smiles as he looks out at them all. That kind, dazed smile. Like everything actually is fine, like things aren’t the completed fucking opposite of fine and Greg is on his feet before he realizes it.
He crosses the room in four steps, ignoring how Alex’s eyes go wide with surprise as he closes in on him. He gets a hand under his arm, probably a bit too hard, but he’s fully beyond caring.
Greg pushes him out into the hallway, letting the door swing shut behind them. He turns on him, positioning himself so he’s between Alex and the camera that sits in the far right corner of the corridor.
“I’m sorry,” Alex says.
Greg blinks down at him, caught out despite himself. “For what?”
“I– I don’t really know honestly. But you’re obviously angry with me so I wanted to head it off.”
“God, Christ, stop!” Greg brings a hand to his face, shoving his glasses up to pinch the bridge of nose. “You have to stop. Doing that. Doing this.”
“Doing–?” Alex starts again, face scrunching in confusion.
Greg takes a step forward, forcing Alex to stumble right back into the wall. “You’re never going to do that. Ever again. Do you hear me?”
Alex just stares back up at him and christ Greg’s angry - he’s so angry the rage feels like some terrible new organ inside his body. He hates how Alex blinks up at him like he doesn’t understand, he hates how there’s a set to his jaw that says he very certainly does, and he hates how at the edges of that gaze, in the corners of that blue trying to get away with grey, he can see something dimmed inside him, as though all that dazzling, unending, impossible sharpness inside has been dulled just enough to notice.
“Do I make myself clear?” Greg asks.
Something flickers in Alex’s gaze and he must really be exhausted because when he looks back at Greg something in him has hardened. “You were going to do it for her.”
“That’s different.”
“It's not different at all.”
Greg lets out a long breath, his eyes falling shut. He’s too tired for this. Every single part of it. He can’t argue with him when he can see whatever they did still clinging to his edges.
“I want you to tell me you understand,” he says, voice going softer in the space between them.
Alex’s face can’t seem to settle in one place. He looks as if he’s biting at the inside of his cheek. “I understand.”
“I want you to tell me you’re never going to do it again.”
Alex stares back. He opens his mouth, hesitates, gaze not budging from its determined set. “I’m never going to do it again,” he says finally.
“Fine,” Greg sighs, feeling something unwind inside him. The rage is still heavy and bright but the exhaustion is catching up. Alex is still looking at him and Greg wants to hit him or hold him or both at once and looks away before he stumbles into either.
He leans back against the wall, pushing his glasses up into his hair and running a hand down his face.
“You should leave early,” Alex’s voice says. “You’re tired.”
He wants to laugh. He wants to shout. He wants to tell him to walk out of this place and never come back again, but more than any of that, he really does want to forget, even if just for a few hours, even if he won’t remember forgetting, the way Rose had screamed in that hallway.
“Fine,” Greg growls, pushing himself off the wall, turning back to the office despite Alex’s gaze hanging onto him like gravity. “Fucking fine. I’ll leave early.”
Rose watches him as he shuts down his desk. He doesn’t look back.
It never stops being a jarring feeling. To watch the elevator doors slide shut, feeling angry or bereft or just plain exhausted, and then watch them open up again, every feeling muddled and mellowed into something completely different, an echo of whatever they had been what feels like just moments before. It’s always like some sort of emotional hangover, only without the bonus of ever having been drunk.
He can’t help feeling a bit grateful for it all the same.
“They’re saying it’s bad weather,” Alex says, trailing behind him down the halls. “That it might slow some people down getting in this morning.”
“Swarm of locusts you think this time or frogs?”
“I’d guess sleet if I had to, but sure I suppose maybe frogs.”
Greg allows himself a small smile, feeling all those tangled emotions from yesterday filtered through a few layers of gauze. The truth is he’s not actually all that good at being angry. Doesn’t have the stamina for it, or even the constitution especially, contrary to his reputation on the floor. It’s an especially hard emotion to keep up when Alex, despite how good he is at hiding it, really does seem more tired than usual. Not that that has anything to do with yesterday. Maybe he’s just been up late, maybe up there he’s a stargazer or a bat hobbyist or hell, even just an ordinary everyday pervert.
“They said Nish called and said he’d be in just a little late,” Alex notes looking at his clipboard. “Sarah’s coming in just behind you.”
Greg reaches the door, hesitating before going in. “Rose?”
Alex frowns down at his clipboard. “There’s no word yet from Rose.”
Greg peers in through the glass pane of the door. Her desk sits empty across the room. The muffled feeling in his chest rolls over, stretches out. “Right.” He pushes the door open.
As it turns out it’s another half-hour before Sarah makes it in, her hair a tangled mess from the wind or the rain or whatever the hell else is going on out there. They’re back to their usual rotations today, if a pared down docket, and Nish has to jog all the way over to Mircoprocessing in order to find them by the time he gets in. There’s still no sign of Rose and by the time midday rolls around Greg finds himself glancing at the door every few minutes. On the third time he does it, he catches Alex’s eye doing the exact same thing.
The door makes a sound. Everyone’s gaze snaps right to it.
Fernsdale walks into the room.
His glance goes immediately to Rose’s desk and Greg feels the unease that’s been hanging around inside of his chest wriggle.
“Greg, Alex,” Fernsdale says, nudging his head towards the door. “Brief word.”
Fernsdale shuts the door behind them as soon as they’re out into the hallway. He isn’t looking them in the eye and there’s that twitch to his posture he always gets when there’s something he doesn’t like happening that he can’t do anything about.
“Rose hasn’t called in this morning,” he says quietly.
Greg frowns. “What, at all?”
“She has not yet alerted the office that she will be late or that she is unable to attend work today.”
Greg feels Alex’s stance shift on the carpet next to him. A tendril of panic starts to steal up around his chest. “Oh.”
“It’s of course possible that she’s been hurt and so cannot call in. Car accident perhaps, maybe even a fall–” There’s a barely withheld note of hope in his voice that makes Greg quite want to strangle him. “But we haven’t been alerted to anything of that nature by any local emergency services or hospitals as is customary.”
“I hope she’s alright,” Alex says. His voice is as kind and honest as it always is. It calms Greg down a little.
“We all, of course, hope that she is perfectly fine,” Fernsdale recites. Greg knows he’s glaring at him harder than he should but Fernsdale just smiles coldly back at the two of them, as though he barely even sees them at all. “Your team should make any adjustments necessary for the rest of the day. I’d like this to not impact our quarter.”
“Of course,” Alex says before Greg gets a chance to push back. He’s standing closer to Greg than he was a moment ago.
Fernsdale turns away, heading back down the hallway.
“You’ll let us know,” Greg hears himself call.
Fernsdale stops, just looking over his shoulder.
“If she’s alright.” If she’s not. He doesn’t say it, even if it’s all he can think about. “You’ll let us know.” It’s not a question. He doesn’t want it to be a question.
Fernsdale turns back to the hall, already walking away. “You’ll know anything that you need to know.”
It’s a wretched remainder to the day. Alex is doing his best to keep everyone on task, but they’re all distracted and it’s clear they won’t be breaking any records today. Greg tries to focus on one admin requirement or another but he keeps seeing the look on her face when she turned on him in the red of the security lights, keeps hearing the hollowness in her tone when spoke to him in the kitchen–
Does a dream matter at all if you never remember having it?
He wonders what she’s like in that dream. Does she wear the same lipstick, the same clothes? Does she smile up there as much as she used to?
“Times up,” Alex calls, snapping Greg out of his reverie for what feels like the sixth time today. “Feel free to wrap any remaining backlog on your consoles, but we’ll call that a day.”
Greg gets to his feet, adjusting his jacket. Sarah groans, stretching in her chair as Asim snaps his console off with a flourish.
“Shit,” Nish suddenly swears, slamming a hand against his breast pocket.
“What?” Sarah asks.
“The nobby twisty.”
“Pardon?” Alex blinks.
“The – you know, the thing for closing up the casings and the binders and all that – that snappy twisty thing?”
Alex blinks. “The screwdriver.”
Nish snaps. “Yes! That!”
“What about it?”
Nish’s face stumbles into fear all over again. “I– it’s not here. I think I… I think I left it over in Microprocessing…”
“Oh…” Alex says, genuine concern stumbling onto his face.
Asim groans. “We’re going to have to start tying things to you, mate!”
“I know, I know!” Nish insist, “I’m sorry I– and after that equipment stuff yesterday, I’m a fucking moron. Should I go back, or tell security, or–?”
“I’ll get it,” Greg says, already walking for the door. “You can take my spot and head out– I’ll go find it, get it stowed away properly.”
Nish looks guilty but immensely relieved. “Thanks, Greg. If you’re sure–”
“I can–” Alex starts.
“No you fucking will not,” Greg snaps, pushing past him to the door. “I’m going to go and no one is going to wait up. You’re all going to get home and get some rest and you’re going to get there safe. Yes? Enjoy your weekends properly.”
It’s a stupid thing to ask but he doesn’t care. It’s been a tangle of a day and if he’s still knotted up in it so who fucking cares. There’s a gentle ripple of agreement through the room, mutters of “Yes, Greg”s and “Thanks Greg”s.
Alex says nothing. Greg stops at the door, looking directly back at him. He wants to protest, Greg can tell, but he lets it go, giving one tight nod down into his clipboard.
“Good,” Greg says, pushing out the door.
There’s something especially unnerving about the floor after hours. Oddly, he feels that’s when this place feels the most full. The hollowed departments, the lights turned down to their minimum – when no one is here it feels like something else is, something unseen and vast filling all the darkened corners instead.
He tries to push the feeling aside, to circle back as quickly as he can towards Microprocessing. It doesn’t take long to get there. They’ve done him a favour and left the screwdriver out on a centre table just by the door. He snatches it, stowing it in a pocket and flicking the lights off again as he leaves.
He starts to make his way back, around Data Storage and Code Conduct, circling past Technology Repurposing. He feels his steps start to slow. He stops in the hallway, black shoes shining in the dim light against the tiles. He looks back over his shoulder.
There’s a corner in the hallway behind him, just past the department door.
He turns. He walks around it.
They’ve pulled plastic over the door that Rose broke. Just a thin film of translucent sheeting. Doesn’t seem like much trouble’s been gone to, which is odd. But maybe the weather today put a dent in everyone’s plans, maybe they just shifted the nearby staff into other offices for the day, waiting until they get the chance for a repair.
Greg hesitates for a moment. The plastic looms ghostly and stark in the hallway. He starts walking towards it.
It’s easy to push it aside, to press open the door that’s still hanging ajar behind it. The hallway beyond looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. His feet seem to remember the way on their own, carrying him down the winding corridors, curling him past one corner, then another.
He turns one last time. There’s a door at the end of the hallway. A door with a small rectangular window and no handle.
The lights in the hallway are mostly out. Just through the window he can see into the stairwell; an emergency light, or maybe an exit sign shedding some luminance onto the concrete steps.
Greg walks forward. His steps click on the tiles, muffled in the quiet.
He reaches the door.
It looks exactly the same. Because of course it does. What else was he expecting? The glass isn’t broken, the door isn’t covered in red tape or warning signs. It’s just a door in a hallway, a door that looks out into a sliver of palely-lit stairwell.
Dark. It must be dark outside. There’s no hint of sunlight on the steps.
Greg sighs, shaking his head at himself. He moves to turn, but suddenly, something catches his eye.
He stops. He turns back, stepping closer. He narrows his eyes to peer through the window on the door.
There’s something at the bottom of the stairs. Hidden. Half obscured under the corner of them.
It’s a pale blue box. A box that’s fallen open. One or two peanuts have spilled onto the concrete floor.
Greg steps back from the window.
He stares at the door. His breath catches and he turns, making his way, slightly quicker, back down the halls.
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS!”
Greg stumbles back from his apartment door as an unhinged mass of tinsel and wool that could only be Roisin hurls herself into his arms.
“It’s not Christmas yet, you muppet,” he says into a mouthful of the fur on her jacket.
“Don’t bother, won’t do any good,” Mike smiles, standing just outside the door, nose red from the cold, looking unfairly charming under his big wool hat. “She’s ill with it now.”
“Powerful isn’t she for someone so unwell,” Greg notes. Roisin’s got her arms wrapped around him like a constrictor, doing that hop and wiggle side-to-side as she gives him a good squeeze.
“Come on,” Mike insists, clapping his hands together, “let’s get after it, before the roads go to shit again.”
They all jam into his little practical electric vehicle that hums and chirps as it makes its way down the road like a robotic tortoise. Greg complains about his knees as he always does, Mike ignores him as he always does, Roisin crawls halfway up into the front seat to get the radio playing something bright and seasonal and only mildly cloying.
It’s not a long ride thank god, just under twenty minutes with the weather, and with Roisin listing all the animals she thinks genuinely understand that Christmas (“Dogs. That’s obvious. But the sparrows too - all the little birds. Everyone leaving their bacon fat and extra seeds out for them and all that. They must know.”) and Mike persistently shooting down each and every one (“Consuming bacon when offered doesn’t exactly denote a sense of time Rosh.”) he finds that despite the weather being awful, and being carted off to some place he didn’t even want to go to begin with, he’s already starting to have a good night.
The sky is starting to clear by the time they stumble out of the car. It smells sharply of ice and fireplaces and winter all over.
The house is set back, a bit into the woods on a longer driveway. It’s a nice house if a bit eccentric – not pretentious like other houses Greg’s seen in this style, rather like someone just dropped a box of wooden blocks onto a patch of woods then added windows. It’s also, frankly, distractingly merry – rainbow lights cover almost everything and silly little sculptures are scattered through the garden like toys gone feral.
Greg takes the wine, Roisin the cake, and Mike complains about bringing both but having nothing as they make their way up the front steps. The music and chatter’s loud enough that knocking is quite apparently not worth it so they go ahead and push inside .
Warmth and brilliance smacks him right between the eyes clean as a sniper shot. It’s so utterly overflowing with holiday energy that he finds himself almost stepping back just from sheer shock, but Roisin and Mike are behind him and before he knows it he’s been bundled the rest of the way in.
Cheers and laughter come from at least three different directions and the music feels like it’s coming from everywhere (including from quite possibly an actual trumpet in the direction of the living room). Two children go squealing past his legs, smacking into an end table on their way and Greg just manages to catch the vase on it before it slips off.
“Oh thank god,” a beautiful blonde woman gasps as she peels around the corner. She has big, bright eyes and an easy, dazzling smile. “Look at you! Two seconds in the door and already hero of the evening.”
“And I’ve got wine on top of that,” Greg smiles, proffering the bottle.
“Champion. Oh Mike!” she exclaims seeing him, immediately wrapping him up in a rush of joy to kiss both his cheeks. “Gosh you’re cold,” she presses her hands to his face, “is it really that bitter out there again already? These must be your friends!”
“Yes!” Mike shoulders the rest of the way inside, shrugging off his coat. “Greg, Roisin: Rachel. Rachel: Greg, Roisin.”
They both chime in with their nice-to-meet-yous and thank-you-for-having-uss. As soon as Rachel’s back is turned for a split-second Roisin gives Greg the face she always pulls when she’s met a woman she’s about to become obsessed with.
“Alex will be so glad you’ve made it – Alex! ” she cries. Somewhere lost in the chaos of the house there’s an answering call that’s fully unintelligible. “Mike’s here!” Rachel adds. “He’s brought friends! They’ve got good reflexes and booze!”
There’s a peel of delight from a child then a crash in the direction of the anonymous voice.
“Ah well,” Rachel sighs, “Going to leave that one to him I think. Come on, let’s get you drinks.”
She ushers them deeper into the house, the place unfolding like a kaleidoscope around them. There’s colours everywhere: toys and trinkets and patterned upholstery. Bookcases line the walls, loaded with well loved paperbacks and board games, scattered with photos from so many corners of the world, all of which, combined with the eclectic furniture and the bustle of guests (a number of whom keep picking up instruments every now and again to join in with the music) gives the whole place the energy of a somehow not unwelcome children’s show setting.
Rachel serves them up a mulled cider with a twirl of lemon, leaning back against the jolly fireplace to chat and Greg’s not surprised at all that they get on instantly. She’s clever and engaging and the sort of easy company that seems to make anyone feel at home, which works quite well with his brand of easy, honest chatter. He’s fully convinced Roisin is at best four drinks away from asking to be adopted.
There’s mistletoe hung up under a nearby door frame and people keep getting caught out to cheers and whoops from the room at large. He finds himself glancing over the bookcases again as Rosh and Rachel go off on a tangent about different coloured wool and it really is a hilarious plethora. A rainbow of spines showing everything from poetry and plays to falling apart things he can’t read in latin and greek that are stacked right up with travel guides and mushroom spotting handbooks. It’s all like some barely categorised chaotic mind but a very cheery one, and he realises quite suddenly that with the music and the setting and the company he’s actually having an exceptionally good time.
“Oh Greg!” Rachel calls over Roisin’s head. “Would you do me a favour? Could you find Alex and tell him we ought to bring the gingerbread house out soon, before the kids fully transform into demons.”
“Of course I can,” Greg says without missing a beat. “Who’s Alex?”
Rachel lets out a burst of laughter. “Christ! I forgot we haven’t known you for years. How did that happen?” Her thin fingers are warm on the arm of Greg’s jumper. “He’s in the kitchen still futzing with it I think. Can’t imagine what else would be holding him up. He’s the one wearing the incredibly stupid shirt.”
Greg feels himself smiling already. “Think I can manage that. And if I can’t then I’ll just insult a stranger.”
She laughs, squeezes his arm, melts back into the crowd and he pressed through towards the kitchen just as someone by the tree is picking up a saxophone to a general cheer.
Greg can hear Mike’s low amused voice before he even gets into the kitchen.
“‘Nog’ is not a festive word,” he says, “it sounds like a gremlin’s aunt – is ‘snog’ related? Is that some terrible root? Maybe it’s– Greg!” Mike pulls his face out of a cup of eggnog, arms going up in one of his gangly bursts of excitement, narrowly missing an erratically constructed gingerbread house covering the kitchen counter.
“You’ve got nog in your stache, Wozniak,” Greg grins.
Mike grins back, wiping it away with the back of his hand. “Nevermind that, nevermind – Alex! Here Alex, look: it’s Greg!”
“Is it?” A man emerges blinking from the pantry carrying a massive bag of gumdrops.
“It is.” Greg can’t help smiling. It is a very stupid shirt.
Two children come screaming through the kitchen and the man hoists up his bag of sweets just in time to avoid them. He pivots forward, dropping it with an exaggerated exhale on the counter between them.
“Hullo,” he says to Greg.
“Hullo,” Greg smiles at him.
“Thank you for coming even though no one asked you to.”
Greg laughs, genuinely and suddenly and the man’s face breaks into a nervous smile.
He’s rather tall, with ears that stick out and a gap between his front teeth. He smiles like he doesn’t care that there is one. It’s obnoxiously charming. Like the beard that’s a mess but still suits him and the fact that he’s wearing a jumper that’s got dinosaurs drinking hot chocolate in Father Christmas hats on it.
“That’s awful,” Greg says, pointing at it.
“Thank you,” Alex says sincerely.
It’s interesting. He’d really be quite an ordinary looking bloke if it weren’t for the vibrant intelligence in his expression, an intelligence that might make him seem a bit pretentious if it weren’t for the staggering kindness there as well. Greg’s a bit taken aback if he’s being honest. It’s not often you meet someone and within ten seconds get the impression they might be one of the few actually good people wandering the earth.
“Rachel asked me to tell you that your children will devolve if you don’t bring that out soon,” Greg nods down at the gingerbread house.
“I am trying,” Alex sighs. He looks up again at Greg. “Are you good at gumdrops?”
“Oh devastatingly.”
“Good. Because he’s useless”
“Hey!” Mike protests.
“You almost knocked it off the table. Twice.”
“Well I know when I’m not appreciated,” Mike spins, throwing his hands up. “Anyways I’m due to Nog Up.”
“Maybe not in the family home, Mike,” Greg notes, “don’t want the police getting involved again.”
Mike throws him a mild, but decidedly rude hand gesture as he meanders out of the kitchen like a puppet made of pencils.
“Well that’s a help at least,” Alex notes, dropping a few more bags of sweets down on the counter. “Come here, please,” he calls to one of the children tearing back through the kitchen. “Can you deliver a message?”
The child nods emphatically.
“Alright go tell the pretty woman dressed like a blonde green beetle that we’re on track even if over budget and we’ll have the project done soon. Got that?”
“Yes!” the child chirps.
He gives a mock salute and the child sprints off in the direction of the living room.
Greg realises he’s been grinning like a bit of an idiot but he doesn’t particularly care. “Those all yours then?”
“What? Oh no. We keep finding them on walks in the woods and they follow us home. Bit of a curse actually.”
“Could be an opportunity. Could start a business.”
“Ooh, interesting. Maybe some sort of labour service?”
“Getting things out of tight spaces with those little hands. Minute machinery work...”
“Coal mines. Cotton mills. That sort of thing?”
“Exactly,” Greg laughs.
Alex has handed Greg one of the bags of sweets and not given him even the slightest instruction, but it seems easy enough so Greg just starts cementing the bright circles along the slapdash line of the roof. It feels bizarrely warm in this moment, to be trusted with Smarties shingling by a complete stranger. He’s a bit worried that his big paws will fuck it up but the work Alex is doing on the otherside is far from tidy so maybe it’s alright that their efforts all told echo the messy joy the rest of this house has.
“I mean it about joining,” Alex says, attention darting from his work to glance up at Greg with those playful, bright eyes. “Don’t think I’d ever be brave enough to come to a stranger’s house for a Christmas party.”
“Brave’s strong. It’s much easier to not give a shit about making an ass out of yourself when you don’t know anyone. And I wouldn’t be grateful yet. Night’s not over. I might end up falling into the fire or taking a shit in a stocking.”
Alex laughs. It’s a funny sound that makes Greg smile. He likes that he doesn’t seem to care at all that his laugh sounds a bit like a frightened goose. He likes that he seems to like making Greg smile.
“It’s a lovely house and a very nice time,” Greg says sincerely. “I feel quite welcome.”
“Oh well that is good. Sometimes I feel a bit dazzled in here myself. I know it can be a bit much.”
“Alright, yeah well, the saxophone is a bit much—”
“Oh god he has started already hasn’t he? I thought we had at least another two sherries to go.”
Greg smirks, fixing a jelly baby into a window. “He’s actually very good.”
“He’s a glutton for attention. All saxophonists are. They just want to hold a big shiny J and cover it with too many moving parts. Absurd thing to spend time on.”
Greg’s grinning. And he’s doing rather a lot of that tonight isn’t he? The booze feels bright and warm in his stomach and the house feels buoyant with music and laughter and he’s glad that instead of spending the night stumbling around his lonely apartment he’s here with his friends, this strange little man, his extremely charming wife, and their pack of feral children.
Alex hands him a new bag of sweets with all the sincerity of someone assisting on a fresco. Greg smiles as he takes them. Alex’s eyes twinkle back. They’re not quite blue are they? They’re a bit more like a blue that’s trying to get away with an unassuming grey.
“Do you have children?” Alex asks.
“Christ no,” Greg says, then, catching himself, “Shit, sorry. I mean no. Just no. Like in a more normal, less terrible way of saying that.”
But Alex is laughing again. “Oh no don’t apologise. I love them so much it’s concerning. But they are terrible.”
“They seem lovely,” Greg smiles.
“Yes? Want one?”
“Tell you what,” Greg leans in a bit closer to fix a gummy hat on the top of a snowman on Alex’s side. “Slip me a tenner and I’ll try to lure one back out into the woods where they came from on my way out.”
“Mm, tempting.” Alex nudges the snowman so it won’t fall over as Greg adjusts it. “Do you get lonely at Christmas?”
Greg looks at him.
“Ah. Sorry,” Alex starts, frowning down at their hands on the gingerbread. “That’s one of those things you’re not supposed to just say to people you don’t know, isn’t it? … Or the ones you do know. Actually.”
He’s looking up at Greg now, and there’s something like a dare under that clever, honest look in his eyes, a dare that Greg can’t help but want to meet, want to win, want to turn back around and double down on just to see what will happen. That feels a bit dangerous, come to think of it. Which is an absurd thing to think about a man in a jumper with dinosaurs on it who’s got a bit of icing in his beard.
Greg holds his look. “I do actually, yeah.”
“Mm,” Alex hums. He’s dropped his gaze again, watching his hands as he adjusts a line of strawberry rope on the roof. “Do you like being lonely?”
It’s such a strange question that Greg finds himself actually putting down the bag of sweets and just staring back at him. Alex just looks up. Simple. Honest. And christ, he really is unexpectedly interesting.
“No,” Greg says, staring right back at him. “I actually deeply fucking hate it.”
“Oh.” Alex shrugs. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I like feeling a bit lonely. Just a little bit though.”
“What? Why?”
“Dunno. Suppose it reminds me that people are good to be around. I do like being around people. But I appreciate the contrast. Sometimes.”
Greg feels himself start to smile again. He shakes his head, picking up the sweets again. “You’re a bit of a strange man. Has anyone told you this?”
“Yes.” Alex reaches over to get a fizzy snake out of the bag in Greg’s hand. He smiles, cheeks a little flushed, the dare is still bright in his eyes. “Do you like it?”
Greg actually laughs, shaking his head. He takes another sip of his drink to stop himself from doing what he wants to do, which bizarrely is to shove Alex’s shoulder hard enough to get him off balance or knock the sweets out of his hands onto the floor just to see what he’ll do.
“Well,” Greg notes after a moment, lowering his drink, “could be worse.”
“How?”
“Better strange than boring.”
Alex makes that face again, the one where he wrinkles his nose apparently without realising it. “I don’t know… I don’t think anyone is actually really boring. It seems like a bit of a terrible thing to think of anybody. ”
And it seems like he genuinely does. Like he truly thinks there might be something to anyone that’s worth considering interesting. There’s that feeling again. Like he might actually be a good person. The kind of good person that Greg’s always been quite certain he’ll never be.
“What’d you do there then?” Greg asks, trying to pivot before he feels like too much of a bastard.
“What?”
“Just there,” Greg asks, gesturing on his way to affix another smartie. “Attacked by an octopus?”
There’s a series of small bruises on the inside of Alex’s left wrist.
“Oh,” Alex twists his wrist around, frowning down at it. “Work probably.”
“Probably?”
“Don’t remember,” he shrugs, a twitch of that smile coming back. “You know how it is.”
Greg resists saying that he actually knows exactly how it is. “Does it hurt?”
“Hm? Oh no. Only if I press on it. Oh that looks quite good, doesn’t it?” Alex says suddenly, as if noticing the gingerbread house for the first time.
“Never really saw the point of gingerbread houses,” Greg notes. “It’s rather depressing isn’t it? How they’re just whittled away at. Make you feel torn between ruining them and enjoying them.”
“Oh not here. We always smash them right off.”
Greg laughs. “What just right away?”
“Right away!”
“Any sort of implement involved?”
“Just the originals,” Alex holds up his hands. “You could do it this year. You’ve got great smashers.”
“Thank you,” Greg’s chuckles into his drink. Alex’s eyes are bright, like he’s quite pleased he’s making him laugh, which Greg likes seeing in someone else for a change. “So you’ve had me putting in all this fine craftsmanship just for an impending act of wanton destruction?”
“Oh well,” Alex shrugs, grinning, “nothing matters, does it?”
And now Greg’s laughing even more. “That’s what we say at Christmas, is it?”
“Sure,” Alex’s eyes dance. “Why not? Nice isn’t it?”
“What? Nothing mattering?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, suppose it is a bit nice when you put it like that. Thanks for the terrible existential metaphor covered in icing. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” Alex cheers. They’re both laughing enough it’s difficult to get words out properly, that breathless, soft, giggly laughter that comes when you’ve found something bright and absurd that’s suddenly so golden held between two people in one simple moment.
“God,” Alex sighs, catching his breath. “She’ll be alright by the way.”
Greg’s brow furrows, smile still there as he pulls his drink in for another sip. “Who?”
“Rose.”
Greg’s drink stops before it reaches his mouth. In the living room the room breaks into applause as a piano joins in with the saxophone. Alex’s hand has stopped at the edge of the bag of sweets. He’s looking back at Greg. Something’s changed in his face. Afraid. He suddenly looks afraid.
Greg frowns. “Who’s Rose?”
For just a moment, Alex’s face goes completely blank. Then the fear is gone. Like fingers snapping. He’s back to that bright, strange man with an eager smile and clever eyes and Greg’s left wondering if he even saw anything different at all.
“What? Did you ask me something?” Alex says, taking another sip of his drink.
“I– who’s Rose?” Greg repeats, feeling a bit out of his mind.
“What? Oh! One of the kids. Plausibly. Maybe even Probably. I think we’re done! What do you think?” He steps back from the gingerbread house with a grin, appraising it with his hands on his hips.
Greg blinks. There’s a strange feeling in his chest. Like panic buried under a foot of snow. But he’s in a nice house with a lovely family and that feeling doesn’t make sense here at all. So he does his best to push it aside. “Sure,” he agrees. “I suppose it will do. For an existential crisis.”
“I think you should smash it.” Alex says, looking at their creation as if he’s just deciding. “I think you’d do it very well.”
Greg swallows. The feeling is still there. So deep in his chest he can’t even get his hands around it properly. He wishes he could, just to shake it back to its senses. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
“You won’t,” Alex says confidently, already moving to scoop the thing up.
It’s fucking massive so Greg puts his drink down, stepping in to help him. His shoulder brushes Alex’s as he gets an arm under the thing. He smells like laundry and a bit of ink and under it all something that reminds him of the sound of crunching leaves. Alex adjusts his grip and Greg realises that he’s moved his own to compensate without even thinking about it.
“Got it,” Alex notes, looking up at him. He’s quite close now. Voice warm and kind. “Alright? Ready? ”
“Yes,” Greg manages. It ought to feel like a lie, because the feeling behind his chest is bleeding dark and muddled into the rest of him, because he genuinely hasn’t been sure for one moment in the past five years if he really is alright. But looking back at him, at that gaze that seems, inexplicably, suddenly, to believe he can do anything, it simply isn’t.
“Yeah,” Greg smiles. “I’m ready.”