Chapter Text
Edward’s phone starts ringing just before five in the morning. It rings, and it rings, and the moment it stops it starts up again. It’s on the third unanswered call that he finally figures out how to make his body move across the bedroom to his desk where it’s plugged in and lift it to his ear without so much as checking who’s calling.
“Yeah?”
“Edward, thank god you’re awake.”
“Henry,” says Edward, choosing not to correct him, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. “Can this not wait until after sunrise.”
“‘Fraid not,” says Henry. The audio quality is strange, as if he’s speaking loudly from a distance, which makes Edward fairly sure he’s calling through his car speakers on his way into the office. “We’ve got a situation here. A rather big one, it looks like.”
“Christ,” sighs Edward, unplugging the phone from the cable and returning to his bed, sinking down on the edge of it. “What’s happened?” The words are questioning, but Edward’s voice comes out entirely flat.
“Sir John has… Well, it’s not great, Ned.”
Edward is fairly sure that’s an understatement, if whatever is happening necessitates five AM phone calls, let alone going into work this early. The sun’s not even considering rising yet. “Dundy.”
“I’m sending you a link to the article now.”
“There’s articles already?”
“Article. Singular.” Henry pauses for a moment. “For now.”
“The link?” asks Edward.
“Just texted you.”
Sure enough, there’s the chime of an incoming message, and Edward pulls his phone away from his ear, hitting the speaker button as he pulls it up.
The article stares back up at him from his screen. It takes Edward three attempts to be sure he’s read the title correctly.
Erebus Editor in Chief John Franklin, Known Straight, Cis, White Man, Claims to Understand the ‘Homosexual Experience’
“Christ,” mutters Edward again.
“Article’s by a journalist called Lady Silence. Apparently she’s a well-respected—”
“Yeah, I know her,” Edward cuts him off, still staring at the article in horror. Lady Silence is well known in the publishing sphere for writing extremely thoughtful, poignant, and well researched pieces that pull no punches. She’s single handedly made a name for Tuunbaq, the small political magazine she works for, and despite having worked for them for going on five years now, has yet to make a single public appearance or tell anyone her real identity. Edward has nothing but respect for her. He knows for a fact that if she’s written something about his boss, it’s sure to be true.
It’s also, unfortunately, his job to clean up the mess.
“Can you fix this?”
Edward breathes in, as deep and as slow as he’s able to before he replies.
“I can try. I’ll be there in an hour.”
There are already several people on the office floor when Edward arrives, even though it’s barely six. Henry Le Vesconte, the head of social media to Edward’s head of PR, is waiting in their shared office at the back of the floor, his laptop open in front of him, typing so quickly his fingers are almost a blur.
“Coffee,” grunts Edward, holding out one of the cups he’d grabbed at the cafe downstairs. He would have been earlier, but it turns out that even the cafe doesn’t open until six, and he’d known for a fact that he wouldn’t be able to even consider facing this day without at least four espresso shots in him.
“You’re a godsend, Ned,” says Henry, reaching out a hand without looking up from his screen.
“Mm,” says Edward, taking a sip from his own paper cup. “Anything happen in the last hour?”
“Tuunbaq article’s at four K retweets and counting,” says Henry. “We’re getting some support, but not from the people we want supporting us.”
“How bad?”
Henry reads from his screen. “‘I stand with @SirJFranklin. Woke media is what’s killing this country.’ ‘@SirJFranklin just subscribed to Erebus, love and support in your fight against the snowflakes.’ Oh, this one’s fun, ‘as a male nurse, I totally understand @SirJFranklin’s point of view. Men are oppressed too!’”
“Alright, that’s enough,” sighs Edward, rubbing a hand over his face and lifting his coffee back to his lips to take another, longer swig. “Let me get settled for a moment and then I’ll do some proper digging.”
“We’ve got a meeting in twenty,” says Henry. “Sir John and the others are calling in.”
“God, are they still in Canada?” mutters Edward, more to himself than to Henry, sinking down in his desk chair and staring for a moment, unblinking, at his dark computer screen. If he just doesn’t turn it on, maybe he can keep pretending this is nothing more than an unpleasant dream. It wouldn’t be the first stress dream he’s had about this job, though normally when he has those they consist of Sir John himself interviewing Edward for a front page feature. The questions would grow either more invasive as the interview went on, or would slowly turn into a strange sort of quiz, asking Edward to recall in detail facts from maths or history classes that he hasn’t thought about since university or earlier. Edward still can’t decide which had been the worst — the dream in which he’d been asked to explain the events leading up to the Battle of Trafalgar, or the one that had ended with Sir John looking him directly in the eyes and asking him, sparing no detail, to tell him the story of how he’d lost his virginity (He’d been twenty. It had lasted all of six minutes. He cried after.).
“Edward,” says Henry, and Edward squeezes his eyes shut tight for a moment before finally leaning forward to press the power button on his monitor.
“Yeah?” he grunts.
“How bad do you think this is?”
Edward stares at the spinning rainbow wheel on his screen for a few seconds before he’s able to formulate a response.
“Ask me again after the meeting,” is all he’s able to come up with.
The Zoom call goes about as well as Edward possibly could have imagined. Sir John opens with, “I simply fail to see what all the fuss is about,” and it only gets worse from there.
“Sir John,” says Edward, after several extremely painful minutes of listening to Sir John’s managing editor Graham, in the same hotel as Sir John but one room over, try to very gently explain to him what exactly was wrong with what he’d said. “Just to be clear. This quote — you did say this, yes?”
“Of course I did,” says Sir John. “It’s true. I’ve spent my entire career surrounded by women and homosexuals, I’ve always been a minority. Henry, you’re a homosexual, aren’t you?”
Edward’s stomach drops. He’s sure Sir John is going to follow this up by asking if Henry personally was offended by this, and Edward has no idea how to make it stop. He sees Henry’s mouth tighten into a thin line, bracing himself for whatever well intentioned homophobic nonsense Sir John is about to ask the one queer person in the meeting.
“Yes,” says Henry tersely. He glances at Edward, jaw tight. “But I’m not exactly their spokesman or anything.”
“Respectfully,” says Edward quickly, before Sir John can keep speaking, “regardless of what Henry’s own personal opinion might be, there are people out there who were offended, and who are going to be. We’ll want to make a public apology as soon as possible. No one this side of the pond’ll have seen this yet, but fashion week is in a month and a half, and we quite literally can’t afford to get uninvited from any events.”
Graham, bless him, continues on Edward’s heels, all of them trying to get out as many of their thoughts before Sir John can start arguing again. “I haven’t heard from the publishers yet, but I know they’re still not too pleased after that Fred Des Vouex debacle. This feels like something they may threaten to pull funding over.”
“Exactly,” says Edward. It’s been nearly six months since Fred Des Voeux, well known libertarian podcaster, had mentioned on his show how Sir John Franklin and Erebus Magazine were one of the last bastions keeping real masculinity safe, and while Edward is sure that their publishers themselves couldn’t have cared less about that being said, they certainly cared about the public outcry around it. “If we want to get ahead of this we have to move fast.”
“That’s simple then,” says Sir John. “We’ll just make a statement saying that it isn’t true. That this Silence woman was lying. No one even knows her real identity, she hardly has the ability to argue.”
“All due respect,” says Edward. He wonders how many more times in this conversation he’s going to have to imply that he respects Sir John’s opinion when he simply… doesn’t. “We can’t really just deny that you said it — it’s not going to be a good look questioning another journalist’s integrity like that, especially considering you just said yourself that she’s telling the truth. If she has proof of any kind, we’re finished.” He wants to add that it would also be ethically wrong, but he’s not sure that argument would do much here.
“What do you propose we do then, Edward?” asks Sir John.
Edward glances over at Henry, who’s looking at him directly across the room rather than through the call. He raises one eyebrow expectantly, and Edward — uncomfortable as he always is with everyone’s attention on him, even if only through a computer screen — forces himself to speak.
“The February issue isn’t due at the printers for a week if we want it out at its usual time in early January,” says Edward. “I hate to say it, but I think we need to do a full overhaul.”
“Do we have time for that?” asks Graham tentatively.
“I’m not sure it matters,” says Edward. “We don’t really have any other option. We’ll want to rewrite the letter from the Editor — Graham, you and Sir John can work on that together. Something about how he recognizes that what he said was wrong, it was a poorly phrased attempt at support, something along those lines.”
Graham nods — while taking notes, too. Edward could kiss him if he weren’t an ocean away.
“Harry,” Graham says, and Harry Goodsir, Graham’s editorial assistant, on his own computer but clearly in the same room as Graham, looks a bit surprised to be addressed directly. “Can you look into how Lady Silence might have gotten this quote? If it was overheard directly or if it got leaked to her somehow? We’re not trying to out her identity here, just to see if there’s someone spreading people’s private conversations around.”
Goodsir nods, and Graham turns back to his laptop. “Keep going, Ned.”
“Thank you,” says Edward, before he turns to Henry. “We need a new cover model. Henry’s close with James Fitzjames — do you think he’d be interested, Henry?”
“Probably,” says Henry.
“Edward,” Sir John finally cuts in. If Edward’s being entirely honest, he’s surprised it’s taken this long.
“Yes, Sir?”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, I really do,” Sir John starts, and Edward forces himself not to look over, even though he can feel Henry’s eyes on him again, “but again, I really don’t think all this fuss is worth it. And this… this model of yours, I don’t understand what putting him on the cover is going to do, particularly not when we already have a completed — and lovely, might I add — February shoot.”
“James is trans,” says Henry. “And a fairly famous drag queen. Even if this is, like you said, not that big of a deal — which I can assure you based on our twitter mentions, it is — having a trans male model on our cover could be incredible publicity. People are still buying and selling the Elliot Page Esquire issue.
”Plus February’s LGBT History month,” Edward adds. “It’d be nice to have a queer cover model for that.”
“This could also be a good opportunity to just— er— move forward, as it were,” says Graham, and Edward breathes a silent sigh of relief. It’s a solid 50/50 whether Sir John will take his or Henry’s advice on any given day, but if Graham is behind them they have a much higher chance. “You took Erebus over more than three years ago now, you’ve established yourself, it’d be a good time for you to start speaking up a bit more, finding our political and social footing.”
“You kids these days with your politics,” says Sir John, but he doesn’t protest any further, which Edward is fairly sure he can take a win.
“Shall I call James, then?” asks Henry, and Sir John, finally, bends.
“Oh, alright then,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “If you all really think it’s necessary. Now I’m going to get some sleep, our first meeting tomorrow is in—” he checks his watch “—seven hours, it appears. I trust you’ll all keep me updated here.”
“Of course, Sir,” says Edward, and he waits until Sir John has formally left the call to let his shoulders collapse.
“Well this is a proper fucking mess, isn’t it?” asks Graham with a wry chuckle, and the other three all offer him weak smiles.
“I don’t think this is going to be enough,” says Edward. “It feels like pandering — it is pandering, really. I just don’t know what else we should do.”
“Edward,” says Graham gently. “You heard about this — what, two hours ago? You’ve already put together far more of a plan than any of us managed.”
“Could we make a donation of some kind?” asks Goodsir tentatively.
“Erebus or Sir John?” asks Edward. “I’m sure Sir John’s got the money but you’ve seen the state of Erebus’ finances since John Barrow retired. If Admiralty pull our funding we’re fucked, and I can’t quite see them wanting to make a donation just to clean up our mess.”
“I can start brainstorming on that,” says Henry. “I’m sure there’s something we can do. We don’t exactly have the time to focus on it right now with this February overhaul, but we can put something together after this and fashion week.”
“That should be fine,” says Edward. “We’ve got our hands more than full here anyway. Speaking of— Henry, you should get in touch with James as soon as possible. Get him in tomorrow if we can. I know it’s not exactly your job, but—”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I had to do three people’s jobs here,” Henry says with a laugh that only sounds a little forced. “I’ll find a director who likes a challenge.”
“Thank you,” says Edward. “I suppose I’ll get started on my inbox then, I’m sure it’s a nightmare in there. Graham, Harry, you two get some sleep. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You’re a saint, Ned,” says Graham with a sleepy smile. “And hey,” he adds, “I’m sure it doesn’t mean much right now but— happy birthday.”
Edward snorts. He’d completely forgotten. Happy birthday indeed.
Sometimes Edward struggles to remember the last time he didn’t have a headache. After the disaster that had been his birthday, he spends two weeks crammed into a guest bedroom at his parents’ house, working eight to twelve hour long remote days, trying his hardest to ignore siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews bustling around, babies shrieking, his mother pushing cup after cup of tea at him as if that will fix the fact that he’s stuck working a job that he hates through the holidays. It’s almost funny, the way his parents had pushed for him to take this job and are now the ones complaining about how much he works, as if they hadn’t assured him when he’d applied for it that this kind of a salary would be worth it — and how much work could PR for a magazine really be, anyway?
Edward’s still not sure his dad even knows what PR is. Sometimes he’s not even sure he knows what PR is, and he has a degree in it.
Then there’s his grandmother, who still asks him if he has a girlfriend every time she sees him, and that’s it’s whole own can of worms, considering he hasn’t had so much as a date since uni and how even if he wanted one, he certainly wouldn’t have the time for it.
And of course there’s the Lady Silence of it all. It would be easier to be angry with her if Edward didn’t have so much respect for her, but immediately after the Fitzjames issue comes out she releases another frankly scathing piece in the middle of January about the dangers of rainbow capitalism and corporate pandering that does not once namedrop them but leaves no doubt as to what precisely it’s addressing. It’s fantastic. It also makes Edward’s job a hell of a lot harder.
“Put your money where your mouth is,” the article says, so Edward and Henry and Graham had sat down together to make a plan to figure it out. Even with the new Silence article the Fitzjames shoot had been enough to get them through to Fashion Week without any sponsors dropping or parties uninviting them, but if they really want to move forward they have to come up with another plan — one that is not, as Lady Silence had phrased it, an “act of pandering, that while well intentioned at first glance, does nothing more than uplift the voices and experiences of marginalised but still deeply privileged people, while letting the disenfranchised and overlooked members of our society slip under the radar as these large corporations are wont to do.”
Admiralty, their publishing company, had, as they had suspected, no interest in offering them money to make a donation; this was Sir John’s mess, they had said in all but those words, and it was up to him (so Edward and Henry, really), to fix it. Sir John had made a cryptic comment about how he didn’t have enough liquid assets at the moment when they’d brought the issue to him, and it is Henry, finally, who figures out a plan for them.
“What if we donate a percentage of an issue’s proceeds?” he asks, at what feels like their millionth meeting discussing this. “Could be a good way to get more sales too, if it’s to a charity that people care about. They’ll feel like they’re doing something good by buying the magazine, and we can do a little spotlight in the issue on whatever charity we settle on.”
“That’s… not a bad idea,” Edward says. “That way the only upfront capital we have to spend is on the spotlight article itself. It could work.”
“May does always sell a bit slower, after the Fashion Week focus of the April issue,” says Graham. “This could help that too.”
Sir John hums. “Do you see this bump in sales and the donation amount balancing?”
Edward and Graham exchange a glance. Nearly two months of this, and still Sir John hasn’t seemed to process the consequences of Lady Silence’s words. It is not just going to be the post-Fashion Week lull that’s affecting their sales. If things continue the way they’re going, they’re on track for the May issue to be their lowest selling issue of all time.
“Yes,” says Edward, keeping his voice as steady and confident as he can. “I do.”
Convincing Sir John is progress, but it only ends up shoving Edward into another wave of overworking himself, trying to balance the regular magazine publicity with picking the right charity. It’s two weeks of research, of assuring Sir John (more than once) that Stonewall and The Trevor Project don’t need any help from them, and that there is no world in which giving money to LBG Alliance would do anything to help them, nor is there one in which Edward would ever agree to sign off on it, before Edward finally stumbles across Discovery. It starts with an Instagram post, which leads him to a news article from 2020, which leads him in turn to the nonprofit’s website.
‘Discovery is a charity dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ teens and young adults who have at any time been in the foster system or experienced homelessness,’ the website says, and Edward sends the link to Graham and Henry before he even keeps reading.
By the end of the day that Friday, Edward finally, finally, gets the email sent and shuts his laptop with a decisive snap.
“I’m going home,” he announces to Henry, who’s got his chin in his hand, staring at his computer screen with eyes clearly unfocused.
Henry jolts back to awareness, blinking several times and rubbing a hand over his face, reaching out to shut his own computer as well. “Think I’ll join you,” he says. “Going for drinks with James later, if you’d like to join.”
“I think if I tried to drink right now I’d pass out halfway through my pint,” says Edward, shrugging into his jacket. He wraps his scarf around his neck, even that action serving to exhaust him, and Henry shoots him a look that is equal parts pity and commiseration. “Think I can make it 48 hours without something new catching on fire here?”
“Wouldn’t count on it,” says Henry. “I’ll try to only call you if someone dies.”
“You’d better,” says Edward, picking up his bag. “Tell James hello for me.”
Henry nods, and Edward leaves the office as quietly as he’s able, managing to keep his head down and avoid eye contact with any of the last few people still left out on the main office floor. His mind is on nothing but getting home, setting his phone to do not disturb, and taking a bath so long that his entire body turns into a raisin. Maybe he’ll even have a nice pathetic wank in the tub, he muses as he stands in the lift. Really complete his general, miserable vibe of the past few months. If Sol’s home, Edward bets he could even steal a few hits from one of his spliffs first. If he ends up falling asleep in there and drowning, he’s sure there are worse ways to go.
Thomas is already exhausted when the email comes in. It’s been a long day (a long week, for that matter), and at eight o’clock on Friday evening he’s more than ready to go home and spend the weekend trying and failing not to think about work or his volunteering anyway.
He stares at it for a few minutes before he can even quite process it, and once he finally does it’s all he can do to not start laughing in the middle of the office.
“Billie,” he says. “C’mere a moment and look at this.”
Billie doesn’t bother standing up, just pushes herself over to him in her desk chair as Thomas tilts the monitor towards her.
“Erebus?” asks Billie, frowning at the screen. “They’re the ones who just did that James Fitzjames cover, right?”
“The blatant pandering, you mean?” asks Thomas.
“Had they done something?” asks Billie. “Other than being a men’s magazine,” she adds with a little curl of her lip.
“God, did you not hear about that?” asks Thomas, pushing his chair back and stretching his arms high over his head, trying to work out the tension in his shoulders that’s been lingering all day. “The Editor in Chief is that suit designer, John Franklin? He just got quoted saying something about how he understands what queer people go through because he’s a man in the fashion industry.”
Billie shoots Thomas a look of such pure revulsion that Thomas has to force back another laugh.
“Yeah, that’s been about the response.”
“So this is them still trying to overcorrect, then,” says Billie. “If the first try didn’t work.”
Thomas hums affirmatively.
Billie stares at the email a moment longer, confusion making way for her usual go-to expression of general disdain. “We’re not going to do it, right?”
Thomas hums again. “It’d be good publicity. No telling if Francis will go for it though.”
“He will if you tell him he should,” says Billie with a roll of her eyes, pushing away from Thomas’ desk and back towards her own.
“That’s not—” Thomas starts to say, before he’s cut off by Tommy at the desk across from them, leaning forward to interrupt.
“That’s exactly what he would do,” they say, resting their chin in their hand. “What’s the email?”
“Erebus wants to do a feature on our work,” says Thomas, choosing to ignore their pointed comments about their boss. Thomas would be the first to admit that the way they feel for each other is a step above boss and employee, but outside of a brief hero-worship type crush he’d had when he started working for Francis years ago, it’s never skewed in that direction. “And donate some proceeds from the issue.”
“We should do it then, shouldn’t we?” asks Tommy. “Dickhead CEO notwithstanding, that could be great for funding.”
“It is a bit impressive they reached out to us specifically,” hums Thomas, glancing around at their slightly sad office floor. Francis has his own office at one end, as does Thomas Blanky, Francis’ second in command, but besides that there is only the three of them, a tiny kitchenette with a kettle and a microwave that barely works, and the single empty desk that Francis has been trying to fill ever since Ned Genge moved to Scotland back in September. “Could’ve just sent some money to Stonewall and moved on the way most companies do. Someone at least did some research.”
“Can’t imagine it was Franklin,” hums Billie, leaning back in her chair, kicking one long, pantyhose clad leg over the other. She’s pulled a photo of John Franklin up on her own computer — Sir John Franklin, his wikipedia article states, though Thomas has no idea what a fashion designer turned magazine editor could possibly have been knighted for. “He looks the type to give the money to the LGB Alliance and think he was doing something good.”
“Eugh,” mutters Tommy. “Let’s see.”
Billie turns her monitor for Tommy to look, just as the door to Francis’ office opens.
“Is this what you all do when I’m not around?” he asks, though his tone is more teasing than upset. “Sit out here looking at photos of… Is that John Franklin?”
“Do you know him?” asks Tommy. “That would make this make more sense.”
“Not personally,” says Francis, taking a few steps towards them. He’s got his jacket on and his bag over his shoulder, and Thomas can see Billie eyeing him, no doubt hoping he’ll tell the rest of them to go home for the day as well. “He and Jim and Ann have some mutual friends. What’s he done?”
“Emailed Thomas,” says Billie, nodding at Thomas’ computer.
“Not him directly,” says Thomas. “An… Edward Little. Interested in featuring us in Erebus and donating some money. I can forward it to you.”
“What do you think of it?” asks Francis, and Billie shoots Thomas a look that Thomas has known her long enough to know says ‘I told you so.’
“Can’t say I think much of the magazine itself,” says Thomas, “but we could do a lot with that funding.”
“Maybe you could start paying us,” says Billie, giving Francis a pointed look.
“You know I would if I could,” says Francis, and Billie sniffs disappointedly, as if she hasn’t been volunteering with Discovery for going on four years now, and Thomas has no doubt she’ll keep volunteering with them no matter how long it takes for Francis to hire them on as official employees.
Thomas really would love to be able to quit his day job and focus on the organisation full time though.
“I can do some more research into the magazine this weekend if you’d like,” he says, like he hasn't worked more than fifty hours already this week. “Can’t imagine they’re expecting a response before Monday anyway.”
“Only if it wouldn’t be putting you out,” says Francis, leaning down and placing a hand on Thomas’ shoulder as he looks at the email. “I’m sure you three all have big plans this weekend.”
Billie makes only the most perfunctory of attempts at hiding her snort as a cough, and Thomas replies before she can say something about his lack of a social life.
“It’s no problem,” he says. “I’ll send you a write-up some time tomorrow.”
“Perfect,” says Francis. “I’m heading home, Ann’s got something planned for dinner. If you’re all done with your work for the week you can go too.”
“Have a good weekend,” chirps Tommy, and Thomas and Billie echo the sentiment.
The office door has barely closed behind Francis when Billie turns to Thomas.
“Thomas,” she says, voice dripping with false concern. “How are you going to find time to do that research with all your other important weekend plans?”
“Just because you have a horrible little boyfriend to fuck loudly all weekend—”
“No, I’m serious,” says Billie. “When are you going to find your time to wank over that shoulder touch?”
“Isn’t that what Sunday is for?” asks Tommy, and Thomas turns to look at them. He expects this from Billie, but Tommy, who’s just as perpetually single as he is?
“Et tu, Tommy?” he asks, but Tommy just offers a vaguely apologetic shrug, already logged out of their computer and packing up their things.
“Does seem like something you’d do,” they say, “considering… well.” They shrug again, and Thomas rolls his eyes.
“I’m not trying to fuck Francis,” he says, for what feels like the millionth time.
“I would hope not,” says Thomas Blanky, exiting his own office. “Considering he’s married. Twice.”
“Thomas,” says Thomas, sitting up straight.
“Thomas,” says Blanky with a laugh. “You have your key?”
“Yes,” says Thomas quickly, ears burning hot. “Yes, I can—” He fumbles for his messenger bag, sitting underneath his desk.
“Don’t need you to lock up now, lad,” says Blanky, still grinning. “Just making sure you can.”
“Right,” says Thomas. “Yes, I can.”
“I’ll see you all on Monday then,” says Blanky, throwing them a lazy salute on his way out the door.
Billie and Tommy at least have the decency to wait until he’s gone before they start cackling.
There are only two seats next to each other on the tube home, and Thomas lets Tommy and Billie take them, standing facing them with one hand up on the bar above him. Billie stretches her long legs out in front of her as she slowly rotates her ankles in the outrageous heels she wears to work every day (“It’s a power move, Thomas darling,” she had told him once when he had asked her about it, more than familiar with all the ins and outs of her joint pain and arthritis after the going on fifteen years of knowing each other. “If everyone already knows when they look at me that I’m a tranny, my options are being a tranny they don’t want to fuck with or a tranny that they want to fuck. And I’ve decided to be both.”). Thomas lets his mind drift, thinking fondly of the cuppa he’s going to have before bed. If he can make his eyes focus for more than a few seconds at a time he might even try to get some paperwork done before bed so he has less of it to do this weekend. The farmer’s market is tomorrow morning, and there’s very little he likes more than a winter morning spent wandering around with a paper cup of fresh hot apple cider. Maybe he’ll even treat himself to an expensive jar of jam.
Tommy and Billie talk quietly, but Thomas doesn’t pay them much attention until the third or fourth stop, when Billie elbows Tommy sharply, cutting them off in the middle of their sentence.
”Look,” she hisses, nodding towards the door. “Your boyfriend’s here.”
The sandy-haired man in the doorway to the train has been the topic of more than one conversation in their house. He lives across the street from them, and it’s a far from uncommon occurrence to see Tommy sitting in the living room, pretending they’re being subtle as they glance through the front window whenever the man leaves for or returns from his morning runs, dressed in sport shorts and tank tops even in the middle of winter.
“Fuck,” whispers Tommy. “Don’t look at him.”
“He’s in front of us, Tommy, where am I meant to look?”
“Just— just be normal,” hisses Tommy, as if they’re not the one that’s blushing bright red and furiously looking anywhere except for the man entering the train.
He doesn’t notice them anyway. He seems to catch someone’s eye a bit further down in the traincar and makes a beeline for them, hand raised in greeting. Tommy breathes a sigh of relief and slides down in their seat, long legs splaying out in front of them. It’s only Thomas, from where he’s standing, who still has a view of the man as he sits down.
The man he’s sitting with, Thomas recognises too.
Perhaps it’s selfish, allowing Tommy to receive the brunt of Billie’s teasing over having a crush on the neighbour they’ve never even spoken to when, if Thomas is being honest, he’s just as far gone over the sandy haired man’s housemate. Perhaps it’s selfish, and yet this is something Thomas is more than happy to keep to himself. Billie teases him enough about Francis, Thomas has no interest in letting this slip. The man is simply a neighbourhood entertainment, something pretty to keep his mind occupied on the rare occasions he’s actually able to occupy it with anything besides work.
He’s on the shorter side, perhaps of a height with Thomas, with softly waving dark brown hair and big brown eyes, an intense brow, a straight and noble nose and a short, neat beard. In Thomas’ mind he has an old fashioned, Victorian sounding name — Oliver, perhaps, or Charles. He’s a writer, Thomas likes to imagine, or some kind of academic, with his knit cardigans and the horned-rimmed glasses Thomas sees him wearing occasionally. He would be quiet, serious, but intense and focused. A great listener, but always with something interesting to say when he did speak.
Thomas has, in fact, built him up so well in his own mind that he’s not sure he wants to ever meet him and risk shattering the illusion of the perfect boyfriend he’s created for himself. He’s far too busy to try to find a real boyfriend anyway, so he sees no problem in allowing this handsome stranger to become the face of his fantasy of one.
At the other end of the train, the sandy haired man throws his arm around the darker haired one, pulling him into his chest and pressing a messy kiss to the side of his head, and the dark haired man laughs, pushing him away. His eyes crinkle at the corners, his whole face shifting into something bright and almost painfully beautiful in his mirth, and Thomas is, for several long seconds, unable to tear his eyes away. He wonders how the two of them know each other. He wonders if they’re together. It would be a shame, he thinks — for Tommy, of course.
”Thomas,” hisses Tommy, reaching out to slap at Thomas’ thigh, “stop staring.”
“I’m not staring,” Thomas lies, finally looking away.
“He’ll think we’re weird.”
“He didn’t even notice us,” says Thomas.
”Cornelius is coming over,” says Billie, looking up from where she’s been texting.
“Doesn’t he have his own home?” asks Tommy, wrinkling their nose in distaste.
“You want me to willingly spend time with Fred Des Voeux?” asks Billie disgustedly. As if the fact that her boyfriend lives with a libertarian podcaster shouldn’t have been her first red flag when she started dating him. Why a trans man would want to live with a libertarian, Thomas has no idea, but as far as he knows dating Billie is the only smart thing Cornelius has ever done, so he doesn't try to read too far into it.
“I do if it means Cornelius won’t be in our home five nights a week,” says Thomas. Whatever spell the handsome neighbour’s smile had cast on him there for a moment, it’s over now, replaced by the scorn he feels for Billie’s horrible little rat of a boyfriend. He misses it.
“We’ll stay in my room, if it really bothers you that much.”
“I’d actually rather you were anywhere other than your room,” mumbles Tommy, whose bedroom is directly above Billie’s in the terrace house they all share, and who has complained to Thomas more than once about the noises they’ve heard through the floor every time Cornelius spends the night.
Thomas breathes in a long, slow breath, and lets his attention drift back to the two at the end of the train. The sandy haired man has his arm around the other’s shoulders now, their heads ducked together to look at something on the screen of his phone.
It’s fine, Thomas tells himself. He doesn’t care that everyone around him is in love. At least Tommy is just as single as he is.
Objectively, Thomas is sure that the absolute nightmare of getting the interview scheduled probably isn’t this Edward Little’s fault. Objectively, he knows that. After the third email asking to reschedule comes in, it’s become harder to believe it.
‘My most sincere apologies,’ the emails read, and ‘circumstances beyond our control,’ and worst of all, ‘I hope this email finds you well.’
‘It doesn’t!’ Thomas wants to reply. ‘It doesn’t find me well! It finds me stressed, and frustrated, and so, so, fucking tired.’ The interview is meant to be on Monday, and here Thomas is, just after six on Friday night, having spent his whole day trying to help a woman fresh out of prison reclaim custody of her daughter. She’d been forced to miss a last minute hearing after being told she’d be fired from her job if she didn’t show up that day, and Thomas is feeling far from sympathetic about a multi-million pound magazine’s inability to keep an appointment that they scheduled themselves. Multiple times. If it weren’t for the amount of money this interview could bring in, Thomas would have given up after the second rescheduling.
‘No worries!’ he replies instead. He wonders how many exclamation points he needs to use before the passive aggression is thick enough to leave no doubt that there are, in fact, worries. ‘Francis is very busy, of course, running the organisation, but he’ll be happy to move some meetings around if necessary! Considering none of the dates we offered you seem to have worked, why don’t you pick a time and date that works best and I can rearrange Francis’ schedule to accommodate it. Looking forward to your prompt response!’
“Christ, Tom,” says Billie when the email comes in on her own computer. Thomas has been BCCing her in on the entire communication, just to make sure there’s someone else witnessing the shitshow that the whole thing has been.
“Too much?” asks Thomas.
“You bitch,” says Billie fondly. “I’ve never been prouder.”
Edward Little’s response comes in within fifteen minutes. It includes at least three more apologies, and three times early in the following week, one of which is — thank god — at a time on Tuesday in which Francis doesn’t have anything scheduled yet. It’s earlier than Thomas will be able to get in, which is a shame because he’d really been looking forward to tearing the entire team a new one about professionalism and keeping promises, but at this point just getting them in has to take priority. He’s sure he can get Blanky to pass along the message for him anyway.
“Maybe it’s best I won’t be meeting them in person,” says Thomas, as he types out a confirmation for Tuesday and signs off with a ‘we’ll be looking forward to finally meeting you in person.’ “I don’t know if ‘Overworked Nonprofit Volunteer Commits Homicide over Scheduling Mishap,’ is really the type of article their readership would be interested in.”
“Course it wouldn’t be,” says Tommy. “It’d be something more like… ‘Hysterical Intern Who Identifies as Transgender Snaps on Innocent Magazine Employees.’”
Thomas snorts. “Think they could spin it into a cautionary tale about how T makes you aggressive?”
“I’ll be a character witness for you if you need,” says Tommy. “Tell everyone you were more than ready to commit homicide pre-transition too.”
“If I’m going to go to prison, everyone had better know it’s because of the way that I am, not because I’m trans,” says Thomas.
“If I ever kill someone it’ll absolutely be because I’m trans,” chimes in Billie, not looking up from her computer screen. “Barista called me sir this morning and I really considered it.”
Thomas’ computer chimes with a new email. It contains Little’s own confirmation of Tuesday, a heartfelt thank you, and two more apologies.
Thomas closes out and opens the work he’s actually meant to be getting done this evening.