Work Text:
WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU
The human suit got itchy sometimes.
People like Don … they didn’t get it. Don was more comfortable in a false identity than Pete had ever felt in his real one. Pete was to the manor born, the etiquette as deep in his bones as the steps to the Charleston. But that effortless charm, the “natural gentleman” thing—he lacked it. He knew this. His mother knew this.
Was it—really, this sounded so much more arrogant than he meant it to—was it because he was too intelligent? Was he just thinking too much, instead of “going with the flow”? Roger Sterling was a natural gentleman, a real “natural” in the Shakespearean sense (Pete didn’t exactly remember what that was, but it wasn’t complimentary of a man’s intelligence). Not dumb, but never really thought about much. Shallow. Don was smart, but maintaining the “Don Draper act” took up enough of his energy.
Pete was too self-conscious. Especially now—Jesus, the separation, his mother slowly losing her mind, all this business with the merger—every move Pete made, he thought about. He had to. His place in the world—the place of men like him—was changing, and he was keeping up with that in a way very few people in the agency were. (No, he wouldn’t want to be a woman, or a Negro, but he did sort of envy the sense these people had that they were the wave of the future. Like Peggy. They didn’t have to work to stay ahead of the curve—they just were.)
Being called a lowlife by his father-in-law, who still knew he’d “do the right thing.” How do you live with that?
He wanted to be a king.
***
Why Pete?
Bob wondered that himself. He’d picked up the slightest hint of … receptivity, shall we say. But that wasn’t all. Even if every man at the agency were homosexual—what a thought! Bob chuckled at the idea of that smorgasbord—Pete would be the one for him. Never mind Don’s matinee-idol looks, Ken’s unpredictable edge, Stan’s emotional openness, Roger’s whole “silver fox” thing. He wanted Pete. But why?
Bob’s inner workings had always been fascinating to him. Why did people do what they did? Why did he? He was a keen observer of human nature, his own included. It was a necessity in his line of work—both the one he’d been in, and the one he was trying to get into.
Pete was a keen observer, too, which surprised Bob a little. Rich people generally weren’t, because they didn’t have to be. It wasn’t a survival skill for them. Men from families like Pete’s didn’t have to watch people for signs of favor or disfavor and adjust their own behavior accordingly. They didn’t have to learn to figure out how people wanted to be seen, and to reflect that image back to them. They didn’t have to work hard, either, but Pete did that, too.
“No man is a hero to his valet,” the saying goes, and as a former valet, Bob knew this all too well. Few enough of the men he’d served were even men, let alone heroes—they were man-children, playing with the world itself like a spinning top. He’d savored his contempt for them, delighted in his ability to hide it. They were all so impressed with themselves, it was almost too easy to make them believe he was, too.
Pete wasn’t like that. There was some arrogance, sure—it took a healthy ego not to let the advertising business grind you down. But somehow, Pete just wasn’t the whole package, and he knew that. He couldn’t sail through life on charisma as Don and Roger did, and it ate at him. It made him needy. And there was something about that need, that dissatisfaction, that self-doubt that called to Bob. That made Bob wonder if he wasn’t what Pete needed, if he couldn’t somehow fill in that missing piece that would allow the man to be truly great.
He wanted to be a kingmaker.
***
Pete thought about the knee thing. He thought about the knee thing a lot. Could it—no! He wasn’t a degenerate, his testicles had descended normally and he’d slept with plenty of women. And yet. He’d brushed off homosexual advances before—if nothing else, an elite education at a private all-boys school taught you that—but he’d always put the incidents firmly from his mind afterward. But not this one. (“If you don’t like Bob, we can find someone who does,” Jim Cutler had said. Pete snorted to himself imagining Cutler’s reaction if he’d known the truth.)
So for that and a host of other reasons—including that he strongly suspected Bob might be after his job as well—he called Duck. And oh, my my, what a stone that had unturned! Bob had always looked at him as though he knew something about Pete that he didn’t know about himself. Pete wanted to be able to look at Bob the same way. (He did find himself looking at Bob a lot.)
And when Duck said Bob had been a manservant … well. That rang an unlisted number in Pete’s soul. And it certainly explained the man’s manic drive for self-improvement, his unctuous charm (such a perfect word that Pete murmured “he’s unctuous” to himself several times, not even aware he was doing so), the way he anticipated people’s needs, the odd way he could take charge and yet seem subservient at the same time. The idea was … arousing.
It was also Don Draper all over again. Pete tossed and turned all night, his thoughts more of a jumble than the twisted sheets. Was Bob gunning for his job? Why had he set the predatory Manolo on Pete’s mother? What was his end goal? And—constantly—how could these fucking imposters seem so much more comfortable in their skin than Pete was in his? He was angry. He wanted to take that anger out on someone.
And so, the next morning, he went to Bob’s office to have it out. He’d had a moment of clarity the night before (after several moments of self-pleasure, and never mind what he was thinking of when he did it) and realized that there was no getting rid of Bob. There was only managing the problem.
“… and I’m off-limits.” The two men stood there for a silent moment, an electric charge between them. Pete cleared his throat. “That is, my job is off limits.”
Bob raised his eyebrows. “Does that imply …?”
Pete stalked to the door. “My place. 7pm.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Do you have a uniform?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Bring it.”
***
By mutual agreement, they took separate cabs to the office the next morning. Arriving at the same time was fine, in the same car was another matter. They exchanged pleasantries in the lobby, eyes twinkling at the secret they now shared.
They stepped into the elevator together. Without a word, Bob handed a cup of coffee in a blue cup with WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU written around its Greek-key border. Pete took a sip. Of course Bob would know how Pete took his coffee without ever asking.
The elevator doors closed.
“So how are you feeling this morning?”
“Pretty great, Bob.”