Work Text:
“We’re going out tonight.”
Henry ignores her; ignores the clack of her nails against the open doorway of his office; ignores the waft of her perfume; ignores the clear, expectant ring of her voice.
“Hen, did you hear me? We’re going out—there’s a table free at that place you pretend not to like.”
Henry heard her well enough, but it doesn’t change anything, certainly won’t get him to look away from the dull glow of his overflowing inbox. Some fucking nerve she has prancing over here from that cushy glass walled office of hers, huffing at him impatiently like it’s actually Henry that she wants to be speaking to. Chances are, if he gives in to the whine of her voice and turns to face her, she wouldn’t even be looking at him. Why would she, when a certain office across the hall is obviously more interesting than her best friend for the better part of two decades? This is what started it, this self imposed wall of silence between the two of them; weeks of, ‘It’s nothing, Hen,’ and, ‘I don’t want to talk about it, babe,’ all the while blushing like a giggling schoolgirl any time Francis’ haunted fucking doll of an assistant even so much as glanced in her direction. So no, Henry is absolutely not going out tonight, no matter what little idea she seems to have convinced herself of while mooning over their boss in front of the whole office. She’s behaving appallingly and he doesn’t want any part of whatever game she thinks she’s playing.
“Henry, don’t sulk.”
She’s closer now, somehow toed over the threshold of his office without him noticing. He can feel the heat of her standing there, behind his desk chair, and can hear the soft pull of air into her lungs. A swish of expensive blouse and there’s a tentative hand running through the hair at his temple, “I told you I had plans this morning, it’s not my fault you ordered too many lattes.” She lolls his head back as she says it, the pointed tips of her nails scratching along his scalp in the same way he’s seen her fawn over that mass of drool and hair that Francis brings into the office on special occasions.
(He’s not paying attention for a different reason now; the slow drag of her hands through his hair lulling him into some other time as she looks down at him and waits for a response. Henry’s had a repeat calendar reminder set from the moment she decided a monthly visit to some glitzy nail salon was something that she wanted. He still remembers that first shaky appointment; how different her hand had felt against his, clasped together as they were in his lap; how he had let her pretend not to cry on some nondescript park bench until both their noses were dripping with the cold; how she had leant in with the whole, hot press of her body and asked him to take her home. He had of course, he would do anything she asked of him.)
She must’ve decided she was sick of waiting, because with a big, heaving sigh she’s letting go of her hold on his scalp and spinning him around with a firm grip on the arms of his chair. Dizzy with the sudden movement, Henry takes a moment to adjust but quickly does and there she is. All furrowed brows and eyes tired from not wearing glasses she’s adamant she doesn’t need. Her blouse is rumpled and there’s a crease cutting through the middle of her pencil skirt, like she’s been sat down for too long and the seams of her are beginning to fray. She’s been stressed recently, overworked, tiring herself out in that purposeful way of hers.
Henry tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and doesn’t think about anyone else doing it for her. He was here first. He was hers first.
(They were still young enough then, that he remembers the novel feeling of a sharp point against the sensitive flesh of his gums as she rubbed chalky powder there. Henry had felt lost that entire night, like there was a stranger’s hand in hers and a stranger’s hand in his own. Like anything with James it had happened all at once; like jumping into a cold bath; or the last shot of tequila before a night of bad decisions; or the type of orgasm that leaves you with spots behind your eyes and a wet patch on the front of your designer skinny jeans. He blinked and then she was someone new.)
“Okay, okay,” he gives in because of course he does, “stop whining and let me get my coat.” Henry’s already grinning as he watches it land. How her face drops so quickly into a petulant scowl from its practiced pout, he can’t even begin to understand but it’s amusing to watch at least. He catches her slender wrist in his hand before the slap against his chest can land. Predictable, lovely James. Her hand is so warm in his own.
They end up at that bar of hers in Soho because of course they do. Henry is adamant that he hates it, this sort of place that's loud and dimly lit with some young bartender’s jazzy weekly round up heavy in the air. It’s the sort of place that twenty years ago would’ve been thick with cigarette smoke and sticky floors and surreptitious nods towards the lavatories. Now it’s just for looks, all velvet upholstery and pretence.
“Happy with whatever, Hen?”
She’s crowding him against the cold wood of the bar, pressed against him front to back as he tries to wave down a bartender clearly more interested in whatever young thing is flitting in front of them. Her hands are in the pockets of his trousers as he leans against the bar top, and she’s fiddling with the outline of his wallet, like she’s thinking about taking it. She’s playing pretend as she always does. Tonight she must have chosen the role of over-attentive girlfriend, all demure glances and pouted lips. As if she doesn’t already have an order on her tongue and her own card in hand. Acting like it wasn’t her that dragged him out on a Thursday when he’s got a full calendar to contend with in the morning.
It’s all striking the wrong nerve tonight, he’s too melancholy to play along. Everything’s been turned inside out and upside down. Henry feels like he’s walked backwards into the evening.
For as long as Henry can remember it was just the two of them; it was flip phones and bad haircuts and polo shirts; it was being too scared to hold her hand in public and doing it anyway. They are the only constant he knows, through all of her changes and all of his tantrums and all of her moods it's been the two of them. But whether he’ll admit it or not something is different this time. She’s had fancies before; boyfriends and girlfriends that last a week, maybe a month at most; those aggrandising crushes she knows are out of her grasp but chases anyway just for the thrill. Never this, not once has it been blushing avoidance and sneaking around behind closed doors. Something must’ve already happened. She’s leaving him behind.
Quicker than he can respond she’s got a sweating bottle and a pair of fragile glasses are being shoved towards him. It’s packed in the bar, busier than he’d prefer it but its impossible to escape the glittering influencer ramble of a Thursday in the West End. There’s a table for them at least, a little corner that gives them something like privacy. They’re both still in their work clothes and have no excuse being out this late in the middle of the week. Henry knows she’s got client meetings and deadlines to meet, and she knows Henry hates being out on a weekday, but still here they are. She must’ve slipped up, or said something too vulnerable, let on that she actually has feelings and wants. That has to be why she’s here now, in this cloying bar with him—instead of them.
She has a glass of something tart and white held loftily in her hand as the shiny leather toe of her heel nudges against the bone of his ankle. Henry feels like he’s sinking into the velvet armchair beneath him, like someone’s put the heating on in the middle of summer. Under this light her blouse is almost see through, he can see the shifting impression of lace every time she moves to make her point about whatever it is that she’s complaining about. She must’ve slipped off the singlet she was wearing somewhere between the office and here. Henry can’t really decide why she would’ve done that. His palms are itching. He knows how it would feel to get a warm hand under the fabric of her top, how the delicate heft of her would feel in his hands. Henry is getting distracted and there’s a sharp point toeing up the inside of his thigh.
The conversation hasn’t paused once. She hasn’t faltered through all her client complaints and, ‘my niece is doing this,’ ‘my cousin is doing that’. Not once has she stopped to acknowledge the slow crawl of her heel from his ankle to the vulnerable space between the heat of his legs. She’s not pressing down, not yet, but Henry can see something in flash of her eyes that means it won’t be long. He knows how to read her, he knows what she wants out of a night like this. He’s not paying attention. He can’t seem to tear his gaze away from the delicate bones shifting in her wrist with every gesture.
How many times have they done this now? He can’t really begin to count. It doesn’t seem right to itemise the amount of times he’s been pinned under her like this. It’s always felt like practice with her, like they’ve been playing pretend just waiting around for something better to come along. There’s no better for Henry. He thinks there might be something better for her. He doesn’t even know if she’s allowed to be here, or if Henry is complicit in the destruction of some sort of unsaid agreement. He wouldn’t complain if he was, would prefer it even—if he could know that she was choosing him over anything else, if he could know he was her first choice.
How long is she going to keep this up? She can’t ask Henry out for drinks and a tumble whenever she’s upset with whatever’s happening with that freak and their fucking boss. She’s going to have to sort it out eventually— she needs to have a long hard look at herself in the mirror and decide whether she wants to be chasing after the same things she was at twenty. Forty is at both their doors and yet still here they are. Maybe their clothes are better and the wine is more expensive now, but they’re playing the same game.
(They’ve done it before. Henry has let her hang all over him in front of some meaningless boyfriend of the month. He’s let her use him to get rid of something she doesn’t want anymore without needing to have the sort of uncomfortable conversation she hates to have. It’s different now. What sort of performance is it when it’s just the two of them? Who is she trying to make jealous when it’s just him and the weight of her sole against his cock?)
The hard press of shiny heel against sensitive flesh, and the waxy red smirk of her lips turns one bottle into two and the cloying din of the bar around them into some sort of private party she heard about from a friend of a friend. He doesn’t really know where they are or how they got here and for a moment it’s like he’s twenty and stupid all over again—pulled along the endless string of her. Henry goes where he’s told and drinks what’s put in front of him. He keeps her hand firmly gripped in his and dances in clothes not made for dancing with a body that’ll complain about it all in the morning. She has her arms strung around his neck and the hot line of her body pressed against his. He presses his face against the sweaty line of her temple and wishes they could be closer; wishes he could press against her head to toe; wishes they could get close enough to be one body, one whole person, rather than two halves.
Single glasses of seltzer held in two hands turn into a darkly tiled bathroom with even dimmer lights. It’s all gold rimmed mirrors and those expensive hand towels that feel like soft cotton, like a gaudy hotel that even they couldn’t justify forking out the money for. Something about closing the door feels final, the heavy thunk of the lock sending them somewhere other than where they are. Somewhere outside of time entirely. The thrum of the bass is pulsing in his ears even through soundproofing and their heaving lungs. She’s preening herself in front of the mirror, wiping away any remnants of lipstick and fussing with her hair, and Henry has never been more in love. Catching his breath, he’s pressed wholly against the cooling ceramic of the wall and he can’t seem to think of any place he would rather be.
He makes eye contact with her in the mirror and Henry is every age he’s ever been. It’s years worth of memories matching up to form the one image, James with her hair tousled, sweat gleaming over the high points of her cheeks and pooling in her collarbones; shorter skirt and a sparkly top and they’d be in their twenties sneaking into a party neither of them were invited to; nothing on at all and she would be curled up in the soft cotton of his sheets, a hand brushing through the greys that seem to multiply by the day. But she’s here now and her chest is heaving. He wants to put his tongue on her; he wants to get on his knees and find the fluttering pulse between her hip and thigh; he wants to take her home.
What he really wants is to have a conversation. A proper sit down feelings-and-expectations sort of conversation. Over a flat white at that cafe she likes; in those kitschy armchairs in the warm glow of her flat; even just while sharing a fag in some dirty alleyway. He’s tried to have it before, this conversation about the two of them, about directions and intentions, what they mean to each other and what that means for everything else. He felt like it was a conversation they were supposed to have, like it was the logical progression of twenty years of fooling around and reading each other’s minds. It’s not like he hasn’t tried, half hearted attempts that pull a laugh out of her chest. But every time it was that perfect smile of hers and a squeeze of his arm. A gentle shut down, conversation over. No need to try again for another half a decade.
(Henry tried even earlier still, when they were younger and dumber, when nights never seemed to end. He tried to have it in some club, messier and less private than this, high on someone else’s coke and drunk beyond remembering. He tried in as many words as he could manage at twenty and more in love than was good for him. He tried when it was the just the two of them, when it was Henry and James attached at the hip. A full mouthful with no pause between. He can feel the breath between their names now. A purposeful pull of air into lungs. Henry—and—James)
He breaths through that pause now as she sidles closer and places manicured hands on his shoulders. For a moment he thinks she’s going to push him down onto cold tile. They’ve done that before, in grosser bathrooms, in empty alleyways, in the privacy of either of their flats, and he’d be happy to do it again if that’s what she wants. They always do what she wants. But she doesn’t. Instead she trails down to the lapels of his jacket and takes them in hand, shucking it down his arms as she goes. She doesn’t ask before she does it and in turn he doesn’t ask what she’s doing. That’s not how they do it. She never asks what he wants, and he doesn’t want to be asked.
Now that he’s free of his coat, she cradles his cheek in one hand and he can’t help but lean into it. Henry is burning up against frigid tiles, the splay of her fingers against his face feels as hot as a brand. She seems to come to some sort of conclusion in this gasp of a moment, before she’s nodding to herself and placing a kiss just beside his mouth.
Henry’s breath is knocked out of his chest as in one, insolent movement she flings his coat down onto the tiles before his shiny oxfords and follows it with her knees. There’s sweat beading at his temple and his heart is rabbiting under his shirt. Henry can’t seem to get his lungs under control. He reaches out in a mirror of a movement, stretching to cup her cheek or fix her hair or just touch her but she stops him before he can, taking his wrists in her grasp and forcing his palms flat against the wall. He doesn’t know if the thrum he feels under his clammy hands is the pulse of the music they left behind or the racketing of his own heart.
(Before everything, before shared rental agreements and late night dinners and bottles of Tesco wine with no glasses, it was the first day of classes at some ridiculously posh uni that he would never have to see the bills for. Old schoolmates had taken him out the night before for some stupid fucking ‘last hurrah,’ and he was gritting his teeth through the worst hangover of his life when she walked in. Even back then, she was all perfect hair and a blinding grin he would find out she practiced in the mirror every morning. Henry doesn’t remember anything about that class, or really even that whole year of school but he remembers this; remembers his bag slung over her shoulder as he threw up into the rose bushes; remembers the gentle squeeze of her hand against his own as she watched out for any blustering professors; remembers the feeling of looking at someone new and seeing himself reflected back.)
The slide of his belt out of its buckle is the only sound in the room as she sets about ridding him of his trousers. He regrets choosing the pair with those fiddly vintage buttons as she struggles his fly open. All looks and no convenience. He doesn’t help her because he knows better than that. Helping her would mean a foul look and a swat on the meat of his thigh. Henry doesn’t feel like playing that game tonight. So, he lets her struggle and complain until finally she has his cock in one hand and the other placed hot on his leg.
“You’ll let me stay the night, won’t you?” Her head is cocked when she looks up at him, subtly like she’s just asked him what he wants to drink. Not at all like he’s pulsing in the grip of her hand, completely ignorant to the glistening stream sticking to her knuckles. His hips are kicking out from where she’s placed him against the wall of the bathroom. He wants her mouth on him; he wants to run his hands through her hair; he wants to take her home and curl into each other under his cotton sheets.
“Fuck— Of course, James. Whatever you want just—”
He must’ve said the right thing because she puts her mouth on him then and he is set adrift. This is something familiar, more than familiar, even. It almost feels practiced with how many times they’ve done this but Henry feels it no less. Everything about her is so warm, her mouth around his cock, her hand pressing hips back against the wall, setting him alight from inside out. He doesn’t look at her as shivers racket through his body and gasps fall from his lips. Henry doesn’t know what sorts of things he’d start thinking if he saw her there, perched on her knees as she is.
(Is she thinking about him? Is this where she wants to be, what she wants to be doing? Or, is she thinking about unsettling eyes, and quirked brows, and shocks of black hair, and gap-toothed smiles? Henry doesn’t want to know, he’s just thinking about her. Thinking about her and thinking about himself, thinking about them together. Whatever that means. Whatever that could mean.)
She wobbles only a little as she stands.
It’s like nothing has changed, she gets up off the ground with a heavy hand on his hip and smooths the line of her skirt. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and she’s exactly as she was ten minutes ago; an hour ago; ten years ago. She doesn’t ask him to touch her. Henry grimaces as she goes to give him back the crumpled mess of his coat, he doesn’t want it back, doesn’t need the proof of everything he feels for her set on his shoulders for the rest of the night.
“Hen, don’t be such a baby.”
She’s grinning again, clearly pleased with whatever putting his coat all over the bathroom floor was supposed to accomplish. He groans as she shoves it in his face with her eyes sparkling and her nose wrinkling, but he can’t really bring himself to care. She wouldn’t hear anything he said anyway, she’s not listening anymore. She’s flicking open the lock and letting the world come crashing back in. Afternoon cups of tea and softly closed office doors and someone else fixing her hair rush in all at once like a big gasping breath.
Henry fills his lungs and watches her go.