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greg spent a lot of time studying tom from two steps behind. it was the safest vantage point, watching the sharp, tailored line of tom’s shoulders move through the executive floors, a physical boundary that greg was never supposed to cross.
tom moved through the building like he owned the air, but greg noticed the subtle stiffness in his posture, the slight tremor in his hand when he reached for his phone after a brutal meeting.
it was an exercise in hyper-vigilance that greg had perfected over months of tracking the shifts in tom’s atmospheric pressure.
he knew the exact angle of tom's head that signaled an impending outburst, and he knew the slight, almost imperceptible drop of his chin that meant tom was feeling small, hollowed out by the family or the board or the crushing weight of his own ambient terror.
lately, greg’s mind had become a chaotic, exhausting place to inhabit. it was a constant, dizzying loop of psychological vertigo, an endless game of calculating variables that refused to stay still.
tom would lean in entirely too close during a briefing, his breath warm against greg's ear, his voice dropping to a low, intense murmur that felt less like corporate strategy and more like a confession whispered in the dark.
he would rest a heavy hand on greg’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the muscle with a desperate, possessive strength, leaving a phantom imprint of warmth that lasted for hours after the touch was gone.
and greg would go home to his silent, overly expensive apartment, sit on the edge of his bed in the dark, and completely lose his mind wondering what any of it meant.
with the crazed looping of his thoughts came a nauseating, heavy weight of guilt.
it felt deeply wrong, pathetic even, to sit in the dark and twist a few desperate gestures from his boss into a sordid romantic fantasy.
he was supposed to be building a career, establishing himself as a serious person in a family of killers, but instead, he was letting himself get completely unhinged by a man who was married to his cousin.
the sheer shame of his own compliance sat like lead in his stomach. he was a grown man, yet he was allowing himself to be slowly rewired by tom’s unpredictable moods, constantly seeking approval like an eager pet, completely disgusted by how easily he let his boundaries be eroded for a shred of attention.
it was a specific kind of craze, a slow-burning madness that centered entirely around the question of intent.
did he like me? does he want me? or am i just the only object in his line of sight that won't immediately explode if he kicks it?
greg would spend hours picking apart every syllable, every heavy glance, every lingering touch, trying to find the line between a weird, corporate power play and something genuinely romantic. but the line didn't exist. it was blurry and smeared with grease and blood and expensive scotch.
“you're my anchor, gregory,”
tom had told him once, late at night when the office was empty and the city lights were blinking through the floor-to-ceiling glass like a millions of tiny, uncaring eyes. tom had been nursing a glass of scotch, looking older and softer than usual, his tie completely undone and his eyes dark with a strange, heavy intensity that made greg want to step backward and step closer at the exact same time.
“you're my boy. even when you're a little monster. even when you're slipping a knife between my ribs, at least i know exactly whose hand is on the hilt.”
the phrase my boy had rooted itself deep in greg's chest, a stubborn, thorny weed he couldn't pull out no matter how hard he tried.
it was a tangled, messy thing between them, this history of mutual damage.
greg had betrayed him before—he had kept the papers, he had played both sides, he had looked out for his own skin because that was what you did to survive in this family.
he had shopped around for better offers, had whispered to gerri, had tried to secure his own future at tom's expense. and tom knew it. tom had choked him against a wall in a storage room, had pelted him with water bottles during a panic attack, had raged and cursed his name and promised to destroy him.
yet, every single time the dust settled, they were still right here. intertwined. locked in a bizarre, parasitic orbit that neither of them could break.
tom had never wanted a saint, he wanted the specific, clumsy brand of disloyalty that only greg provided, because even when they were hurting each other, they were doing it together.
it was a sick kind of comfort, knowing that their betrayals didn't separate them, but just welded them closer together, creating a private language of scars and leverage that no one else in the world could speak.
sometimes greg thought about how tom had explicitly offered to castrate him and marry him, comparing them to an emperor and a boy made to live as a bride. it was a joke, obviously, except tom never really joked about things like that without wanting them, and greg felt a hot, humiliating shiver at the thought of being molded into tom's exact shape of desires, brought to fruition just to fit perfectly into the hollow space tom kept hidden inside his chest.
along with the guilt, a bitter sliver of resentment had begun to take root.
greg hated him for it. he hated the way tom always kept his hands strictly above the waist, digging fingers into his shoulder blades, grasping the back of his neck, or clutching his coat like greg was a life raft in a storm.
there was a sharp, angry frustration in wishing tom would just touch something else, wishing he would let his hand slide lower, to the small of his back, to his waist, to anywhere that felt less like a master commanding a subordinate and more like a man desperate for a lover.
it made greg feel agonizingly incomplete, reduced to a functional tool for tom's stress management while his actual body was left starved and ignored.
but the whiplash was what kept greg in a state of constant, twitching paranoia. the morning after that late-night confession, tom had treated him like an annoying, subhuman errand boy, snapping at him over a misplaced dry cleaning receipt, mocking the scuff marks on his shoes in front of three senior vice presidents, and demanding a fresh cup of coffee with the cold, unblinking authority of a man who had never looked at greg with wet eyes.
the spiral would start all over again, a frantic internal monologue that grew louder with every hour greg spent sitting at his tiny, exposed desk outside tom's office.
did tom actually look at him and see something worth keeping? or was greg just overestimating his own relevance, a pathetic kid from canada inflating a few weird comments because he was too desperate for someone to look at him?
it seemed far more likely that he was just a convenient shadow,
a tall and malleable entity tom used to absorb his excess panic because his wife treated him like an appliance and his bosses treated him like a joke.
greg told himself that thinking there was something genuine, something tender, between them was a delusion born of pure isolation.
he was just a stray dog mistaking a heavy grip for affection because at least a grip meant someone was holding onto him, even if they were holding him over a ledge.
so greg practiced his blank face. he spent hours in front of his bathroom mirror, relaxing his jaw, letting his eyes go slightly vacant, perfecting the art of the loose, non-committal shrug. he mastered the art of the stuttering, meaningless agreement, the “uh, well, you know, tom, it's just one of those things” that signaled total ignorance of whatever suffocating subtext was crackling in the air between them.
he pretended he didn't feel the electricity that made the hairs on his arms stand up when they were jammed together in the back of a town car, their thighs pressed flat against each other because tom refused to sit on the other side of the seat.
he pretended his heart didn't do a sickening, thrilling flip every time tom looked at him across a crowded boardroom, a secret, heavy gaze that felt like a rope tied around greg's neck.
he pretended he didn't care. he told himself he was playing the game to survive, that keeping his distance was the only way to ensure he didn't end up as a casualty in whatever war the roys were fighting this week.
but the truth was a humiliating, heavy ache in his chest. he cared so much it made him feel physically sick. he didn't want to just be tom’s secret-keeper or his verbal punching bag or his strategic backup plan. he wanted the terrifying, total attention.
he wanted tom to stop teasing the edge of the line they always walked and just drag him over it, consequences be damned. greg wanted to be ruined by him, if it meant he actually got to keep him. he wanted to be the one tom came home to, the one who got to see the softness without the sharp, defensive shell of corporate cruelty.
the afternoon had dragged on in a blur of endless, soul-crushing meetings about digital optimization and cost-cutting measures that essentially meant firing hundreds of people greg would never meet.
tom had been on edge all day, his voice sharp and brittle as he tore through assistants and managers alike, trying to prove his worth to a family that never quite looked him in the eye.
greg had stood in the corner of every room, a tall, silent notebook, absorbing the anger, the tension, the sheer, exhausting weight of tom's desperation.
by the time they were finally walking down the long, quiet hallway toward the elevators, the sun had set completely, leaving the corridors washed in a cold, blue corporate twilight. the cleaning crews were already moving through the cubicles like ghosts, empty trash cans rattling in the distance.
“greg,”
tom said, his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the hallway, breaking the silence so suddenly that greg actually jumped a little.
“are you completely lost in your own skull today, or is there a chance of retrieval?”
greg blinked, pulling his eyes away from the pattern on the carpet.
“uh, yeah. yes, tom. totally here. just... tracking things. mentally. the numbers, you know. the whole, uh, data landscape.”
“well, try to keep a foot on the ground,”
tom sighed, though his tone lacked its usual bite. it sounded almost fond, weary but soft, the protective shell cracking just enough for greg to see the exhaustion underneath.
“you look like you're about to evaporate. you're too tall to just disappear, gregory. it's distracting.”
“right. sorry. i'll stay, you know, solid. heavy. planted,”
greg mumbled, pulling his arms tight against his sides as they reached the elevator bank.
tom pressed the button, the little arrow glowing a sharp, clinical white. they stood side by side, their reflections mirrored in the polished metal doors. greg looked at them—tom, perfectly put together, every line of his suit engineered to project power, but his mouth turned down in a thin, tired line, and greg, slouching instinctively to avoid taking up too much space, his tie slightly crooked, looking like a teenager who had snuck into his father's wardrobe.
the silence between them in the elevator felt massive as the doors slid open and they stepped inside. it was the same mirrored box they traveled in every day, but tonight the air felt thick, heavy with everything greg was too terrified to say, heavy with the memory of every time they had stood like this and said nothing at all. the elevator chimed, the doors closing with a soft, final click, cutting them off from the rest of the world.
tom stood very still, his eyes fixed on the digital floor numbers ticking down. twenty-four. twenty-three. twenty-two.
then, without warning, tom’s hand moved. it wasn't a grand gesture. his arm stayed at his side, hidden in the deep shadow between their wool coats, but his fingers drifted sideways until they brushed against greg’s knuckles.
it was a brief, hesitant contact, a soft and trembling touch that felt completely at odds with the loud, bullying man tom pretended to be during the day. it was a question asked in the only way tom knew how, without words, without witnesses, completely deniable if greg chose to pull away.
greg froze, his breath catching in his throat, his whole body going rigid with the sheer, agonizing weight of the choice before him. his mind erupted into a frantic, deafening scream.
feeling like a little child picking off flower petals,
he likes me. he likes me not. he's playing. he's desperate. pull away. stay. tell him to stop. tell him to never stop.
it was the craze, hitting him all at once, a tidal wave of doubt and desire that threatened to drown him he could pull his hand back, slip it into his pocket, make a stupid joke about the transit schedule, and keep his wall up. he could stay safe. he could protect his little piece of the world.
or he could let himself fall entirely into the madness.
greg didn't move his hand away. he didn't look up, either, too terrified that if he met tom’s gaze, the reality of it would vanish like smoke. instead, he uncurled his fingers just a fraction, letting his hand relax against tom's, his skin tingling where their knuckles met. it was an admission, a silent
i'm here, i'm always here,
and he felt tom's fingers twitch in response, pressing just a little harder against his hand. his entire universe narrowed down to that agonizingly small, hidden space between their coats, the heat of tom's skin burning through the cold fabric.
“it's cold out there tonight,”
tom murmured, his voice so quiet it was almost swallowed by the hum of the elevator shaft.
“yeah,”
greg whispered, his throat tight, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
“brutal.”
the elevator reached the lobby with a soft, cheerful chime that felt like an insult to the darkness inside the car. the doors slid open, revealing the bright, marble expanse of the ground floor, the security guards standing at attention, the late-night executives rushing toward the revolving doors.
greg expected tom to pull away instantly, to smooth his coat and step out into the light with his corporate mask firmly back in place. but tom didn't move. his fingers lingered against greg's for one more long, agonizing second, a silent pressure that felt like a promise or a plea, before he finally broke the contact and stepped out into the lobby.
“my car is outside,”
tom said over his shoulder, his voice returning to its normal, public volume, though there was a slight roughness to it that hadn't been there before.
“come on, gregory. let's get you out of the cold before you freeze into a giant ice sculpture.”
greg followed him, his hand still tingling, his mind spinning so fast he could barely feel his own feet hitting the polished stone floor. they walked out through the revolving doors into the sharp, freezing city air. the wind caught greg's coat, but he barely felt it. he was still trapped in the private, suffocating heat of the elevator.
the black town car was waiting at the curb, its exhaust pluming in the cold night. the driver stood by the door, opening it as they approached. tom slid in first, disappearing into the dark leather interior, and greg followed, his long legs awkward as he climbed in and pulled the door shut behind him.
the car pulled away from the curb, merging into the slow, glittering stream of city traffic. inside, the noise of the street was instantly cut off, replaced by the soft leather smell and the quiet purr of the engine. the streetlights flickered across tom's face as they moved, illuminating the sharp line of his jaw, the dark hollows of his eyes, then plunging him back into shadow.
they sat in silence for several blocks, the distance between them on the seat entirely too small. greg could feel the weight of tom's leg against his own, a long, steady line of contact from hip to knee. every bump in the road pushed them closer together, and greg found himself holding his breath, trying to preserve the exact alignment of their bodies, terrified to move and break the spell.
“you look like you're waiting for an execution, greg,”
tom said suddenly, his head tilted back against the leather headrest, his eyes closed.
“relax. the day is over. the bad men have gone home.”
“i am relaxed,”
greg lied, his voice a little too high, his fingers twisting together in his lap.
“totally relaxed. just... decompressing. you know. letting the, uh, the tension drain out.”
tom let out a soft, huffing laugh, but he didn't open his eyes.
“you don't know how to decompress. you're like a spring that's been wound too tight. one of these days you're just going to snap, gregory, and there'll be little gears and screws flying all over the office.”
greg looked out the window, watching the gray buildings roll past, the storefronts blurred by the speed of the car. i am snapping, he thought, the honesty of it bitter on his tongue.
i'm snapping right now because of you. because you touch me and then you don't, and you call me your boy and then you treat me like trash, and i don't know how to live in the middle of it anymore.
“maybe,”
greg said aloud, his voice dropping into that quiet, unadorned register he usually kept hidden.
“maybe i'm already snapped. maybe we both are.”
tom opened his eyes then. he turned his head slowly, looking at greg through the dim, flickering light of the car. there was no mockery in his face now, no corporate arrogance, just a deep, uncovered tiredness that made him look human in a way he never allowed himself to look under the fluorescent lights of the office.
“we probably are,”
tom said softly, his hand moving across the leather seat between them. he didn't reach for greg's hand this time; instead, he just rested his palm face up on the dark leather, an open, empty space waiting to be filled.
“it's a high-stress environment, greg. it does things to people. it makes them... strange.”
greg looked down at tom's open hand. the crazed loop in his head started up again, a frantic checklist of warnings and fears.
if you touch him here, you can't pretend anymore. you can't go back to the stutters and the shrugs. you'll be completely bare.
but as he looked at the lines on tom's palm, the slight redness of his knuckles, the sheer vulnerability of the gesture, greg realized the wall he had built was already gone. it had been crumbling for months, stone by stone, every time tom called him his anchor, every time they shared a secret in a dark corner.
greg reached out, his long, thin fingers sliding into tom's hand, closing around his palm. tom didn't hesitate. his fingers tightened instantly, locking their hands together with a firm, desperate grip that felt like a man drowning, a man grabbing onto the only solid thing left in the world.
greg let out a long, shaky breath, leaning his head back against the seat, his shoulder pressing against tom's. the car moved through the dark streets, the city outside cold and uncaring,
but inside the dark box of the car, the silence finally felt quiet.
greg still didn't know what tomorrow would bring, he knew there would be more meetings, more yelling, more corporate cruelty, and probably more moments where tom would pretend they were nothing more than a boss and his assistant. he knew the craze would probably return the second the sun came up.
but right now, in the shadow between their coats, with tom's hand holding his so tightly it almost hurt, greg allowed himself to stop calculating. he let himself believe, just for the length of the ride home, that he wasn't overestimating anything at all.
the car crept further into the grid of the city, the rhythm of the brakes and the soft hum of the tires acting like a quiet anesthesia for greg's frayed nerves. tom didn't say another word, and greg didn't offer one.
they simply sat there, hands bound together in the narrow gap between them, a small, quiet conspiracy against the rest of the world.
greg watched the reflections of the streetlights dance across the ceiling of the car, thinking about how bizarre it was that he had spent so long trying to run from this exact feeling, trying to build a defense mechanism out of awkwardness and feigned ignorance.
he had been so afraid of being a casualty, so terrified that tom was just using him as an emotional landfill for his own corporate misery. and maybe part of that was true. maybe tom was broken in ways that meant he could never offer a normal, clean kind of affection.
but as the car turned onto greg's street, the tires crunching over the dirty slush near the curb, greg realized he didn't care about clean. clean didn't exist in their world anyway.
everyone was dirty, everyone had blood on their hands or a knife in their pocket. if he was going to be tied to someone in this place, he wanted it to be the man whose grip was currently keeping his own hands from shaking.
the car came to a smooth stop outside greg's apartment building. the driver didn't move immediately, giving them a brief, professional window of privacy before he would inevitably get out to open the door.
tom's grip loosened slightly, his fingers sliding against greg's skin as if he were preparing to let go, but he didn't pull away entirely. he turned his head to look at greg, his eyes searching greg's face in the dim light of the streetlamp outside the window.
“go on then, gregory,”
tom murmured, his voice thick with that familiar, heavy exhaustion.
“get some sleep. don't let the thoughts eat you alive before tomorrow morning.”
greg looked at tom's mouth, then back up to his eyes. for the first time in months, the frantic does he or doesn't he in his head felt quieted, replaced by a dull, aching certainty.
“i'll try,”
greg said, his voice barely a whisper.
“you too, tom. don't... don't stay up all night looking at the spreadsheets.”
“never,”
tom said, a faint, ghost of a smile touching the corners of his lips.
greg slowly pulled his hand away, the cold air of the car immediately rushing into the space where tom's palm had been. it felt like a physical deprivation, a sudden drop in temperature that made him want to reach right back out and grab tom by the lapels of his expensive coat.
but he didn't. he kept his movements controlled, tucking his hands into his pockets as he pushed the car door open himself, saving the driver the walk.
he stepped out into the freezing night, the wind biting at his face, and turned back for one last look. tom was already receding into the shadows of the backseat, his face obscured by the tinted glass, the mask of the distant, powerful executive sliding back into place before the door was even fully shut.
“see you tomorrow, tom,”
greg said to the closed window.
the car pulled away, its red taillights disappearing into the dark city traffic, leaving greg standing alone on the sidewalk.
he stood there for a long time, the cold seeping through the soles of his shoes, his hand still tingling with the phantom weight of tom's fingers. he knew what tomorrow would look like.
he knew the whiplash would be brutal. he knew tom would probably look right through him in the morning lobby, or yell at him about a late report, or make some cruel joke to shiv at his expense. the craze would come back, the agonizing doubt would reset itself like a clock at midnight.
but as greg turned and walked into the lobby of his building, his long shadow stretching out across the tile floor, he knew the wall was gone for good. he didn't want to be safe anymore. he just wanted tom, in whatever broken, chaotic way he could get him, and for the first time, that felt like enough to survive the night.