Work Text:
The office still doesn’t feel like it belongs to Josh.
For one, it’s about double the size, designed for someone who spends most of the day behind their desk rather than on their feet in an operating. The new chair, ordered at the hospital’s expense, has lumbar support and is perfectly height-adjusted for Josh’s long legs. The desk itself is grand, far grander than anything Josh has been given before, with the goal of impressing the investors and shareholders and God-knows-who-else that he’s now expected to entertain. There’s book shelves, and storage space, and windows that look out over the grass at the front of the hospital.
His last office felt like a shoebox in comparison.
There’s more to it than just the physical differences, though.
This was Muriel’s office for so long. She had already been the chief for several years before Josh arrived at Bronx General, and she’d held it for a good number of years afterwards as well. The whole corridor that it sits on had been dominated by her presence here. Interns were always trying not to walk by the chief’s office, ducking past the windows to try and avoid her attention; nurses preferred to stay out of her sight completely; even the attendings liked to prepare themselves before going into a meeting with Muriel. She wasn’t unfair, which the interns always learned quickly enough, but she didn’t put up with time-wasting either. She was a good chief.
Bronx General is going to miss her.
…Josh is going to miss her, too.
He’s not quite sure how he’s supposed to fill her shoes.
Of course, there’s also the Oliver Wolf of it all.
Unlike most of the other senior doctors, who are circling their fresh new chief like they’ve smelt blood in the water and have been knocking on his door at all hours with research proposals and requests for tenure and a hundred other things, Wolf has made a very pointed effort to stay as far away from Josh’s new office as he possibly can.
Josh wants to pretend it doesn’t hurt.
He’s not fooling anyone.
His new role means a lot more time sitting around, and a lot less time in scrubs, and while he’s trying to get his head around all of the paperwork – who came up with having a weekly requisition form for new hypodermic needles? In a hospital? – he has a lot of time to think.
Olive Wolf has crawled his way inside of Josh’s brain and he won’t get out.
And—Josh has never been good at the big declarations, or putting himself out there, or taking a risk on someone wanting him as much as he wants them.
He thinks that he needs to do something now, though.
Josh put the ball in Wolf’s court, and it hasn’t worked. Wolf keeps on making half a move, like he wants to try, but bailing on it halfway; he keeps on saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, and when Josh pushes, he stutters. Pulls away.
I won’t wait forever, he’d told Wolf weeks ago. He can admit, to himself at least, that he has less pride than he wants Wolf to think. If he thought Wolf was okay, if he thought Wolf was doing anything other than clawing for the one piece of stable ground in the middle of his world falling apart, then he’d accept him in an instant. Self-respect and dignity be damned. He’s holding onto it by only his fingernails, anyway.
He just—he wants Wolf back. He wants the casual domesticity, and the place to go home to at the end of a long shift, and the way he used to close up on a surgery and know that someone was there, waiting for him.
It’s been a long time since he’s had any of that.
And he misses it.
Josh pinches the bridge of his nose and groans – out loud, because there’s no one to overhear him in this ridiculously over-sized office – as he sags back in his absurdly comfortable chair.
There’s paperwork on the desk in front of him, requisition forms and medical study submissions and patient complaints and a million other things that are handled by the relevant department but need his sign off anyway, for some reason. Not his sign off – the chief’s sign off. A role that he now fills.
Maybe the reason he still doesn’t feel at home in this office is that he doesn’t feel at home in the role.
Sighing, louder this time, Josh takes the hand away from his eyes to frown down at the pile of papers. All of them were handed to him today, and the part of him that still, after all these years, functions on military efficiency says that means they all need to go out today too. In reality, though, that’s simply not true. Most can wait until the morning. Josh can skip his usual five mile run and get in early to finish it all up, even if it’ll leave him feeling a little off-kilter for the rest of the day.
It’s a new life, he reminds himself. Being the chief is a new life.
That’s what he wanted when he went for the job. It’s what he still wants, he thinks.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it, sometimes.
Josh collects up all of the papers, from where they’re spread out across his desk, and dumps it all back into his ‘incoming’ tray.
It’s dark outside. The clock struck six several hours ago. The day shift have all gone home, and the skeleton crew of the night shift are now on duty, leaving the hospital feeling eerily empty. There’s no reason for Josh to stay here.
“Tomorrow,” he tells himself. “I’ll deal with those tomorrow.”
“Talking to yourself already?” someone says. “That’s not a good sign. It took my mother three years to start that habit.”
He knows that voice.
When he looks up, it’s to find Oliver Wolf stood in his doorway.
The light is low in Josh’s office, the only source his yellowing desk lamp, making the fluorescents of the hospital corridor behind paint Wolf in stark relief. His silhouette is achingly familiar; it makes something in Josh’s chest hurt.
“Do you compare your mother to all your exes?” Josh says. “Freud would have a field day.”
That makes Oliver scoff. “Freud,” he says, “was a fool suffering from both an Oedipus Complex and an over-inflated ego that made him think everyone else was too.” He shifts just a fraction, readjusting his weight, but it’s enough to bring the light onto his face.
Distantly, Josh thinks that he looks like a painting. A beautiful dream.
One of Wolf’s eyebrows flicks up, a gesture that he definitely picked up from Carol at some point in their two decades of friendship. “Or are you going to start telling me about penis envy next?”
Josh can’t help his quiet laugh.
It makes something soften in Wolf’s eyes; not quite a smile, but perhaps something close to it.
Then Wolf’s brows come down, drawing together, as another thought seems to register with him. “‘Exes’?” he says.
Something in Josh’s chest sinks. He hadn’t even realized that was what he’d said; hadn’t thought about it until it was already out of his mouth.
“…Is that what we are?”
“I—” don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to ask because I’m scared of what the answer might be. Josh can’t say any of that, though; can’t be any more vulnerable than he’s already been with this impossible man, at least not until he knows it’s not going to be thrown back in his face. “Uh,” he says instead.
Mild, Wolf says, “Eloquent.”
Annoyance tugs at Josh’s chest. He shoots Wolf a look. “I’ve spent the day dealing with a hundred and one people who all seem to want nothing but to waste my time. Do you think you’d be up for several rounds of verbal sparring after that?”
“I,” Wolf says, his tone so delicate that it’s pointed, “wouldn’t choose to do a job where I had to deal with a hundred and one people.”
“Yeah, well.” Josh huffs, leaning back in his chair again. The desk and half his office stretches out between them, and it feels like both protection and heartache all at the same time. He wants Wolf to leave; he wants Wolf to stay forever. He wants—something. “Someone had to.”
“And that someone had to be you?”
Josh holds up a hand. “I don’t want to do this with you, Wolf. I really don’t. Not tonight.”
That, at last, has Wolf pausing before he says whatever he was planning to next; his lips part, words on his tongue, but nothing comes out. Then, his mouth clicks shut, and Josh watches the lump of his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.
Josh wants him so much that it hurts.
Then Wolf’s gaze drops, finding the floor, and he says, “Right.”
Josh fights the urge to ask Wolf to come closer; bites down on the desire to coax Wolf out from his doorway, and into his office proper. That would be inappropriate to an extreme, and go against the promise he made himself to boot.
It’s just that every time he sees Wolf these days, it’s like finding a new crack in a porcelain sculpture. And it feels like if he doesn’t do something soon, he’ll look at Wolf one day and see nothing but shattered pieces.
Josh doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
In the absence of what he’s supposed to do, he usually does nothing. It was drilled into him in basic training, and for a long time, he found that life is easier that way.
Does he really want life to be easy, though?
Sometimes, he really hates the man he’s turned into.
Josh lowers his gaze too, looking at the empty space where his paperwork had been. Clears his throat. “So, uh,” he says, instead of any of what he wants to say or he should say, “what is it you came to talk to me about?”
Wolf’s answer too quickly to be anything but real. He was never very good at being anyone but who he is; the few times he tried, Josh had been able to see right through him. “A patient,” he says.
“Of course,” Josh says. He ignores the sinking feeling in his chest. Why else would Wolf be here? “A patient.”
Brow creasing, Wolf says, “She’s in desperate need of help.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Well, given we’re a hospital and all…”
“Right, right.” Josh waves a hand, even as he feels his face heat. That was too bitter, even for him; even for them. If anyone else had heard that, they would have seen each and every one of his cards, his needy, helpless little core laid bare. He can only hope that Wolf is too focused on his patient to have noticed. “Go on.”
Wolf doesn’t comment on it. Clearly, he is too absorbed in the patient – in anyone but Josh, a less charitable part of him mutters. “She needs scans,” he says. “A lot of them.”
That has Josh frowning. “Which ones?”
“CT, echo, ECG. MRI. Angio. Ultrasound, if gynecology will let me use one of their Volusons.”
Josh says, “And you’re coming to me…because…” and waits for an answer.
It doesn’t take long for Wolf to cross his arms and jut his chin out, defiant. Of course he is. “The techs won’t put my patient on the list.”
Josh would be very, very surprised if that were the case. “You mean, they won’t let you jump to the front of the queue.”
“My patient needs help, and she needs it fast.”
“Clearly the technicians don’t agree.”
That makes Wolf snort. “Right, because a technician knows as much about the brain as a neurologist.”
And there’s that blinding ego. It’s attractive, Josh thinks, as much as it is infuriating. Wolf is an excellent doctor, one of the best he’s ever seen, and Wolf knows it. “Maybe your attitude is why they won’t do what you tell them.”
“It’s my patient,” Wolf says. “She needs this.” He hesitates; takes a breath. Braces himself, like he already knows what he’s about to say. “Please, Josh.”
Josh should refuse; should tell Wolf that there are procedures in place for this kind of situation, and that the chief can’t just overrule the technicians without following them. He should definitely remind Wolf that all they are is colleagues – that Josh is technically his superior, now. That this request is completely out of order.
It’s been such a long day, though.
And Josh has never been very good at telling Oliver Wolf no.
He grimaces, kneading the heel of his hand into the side of his sore neck, and says, “Convince me.”
Too late, he realizes how his words could be taken. Would be taken, by a man who always liked it when Josh got authoritative and when Josh pushed.
Something in the air shifts.
Wolf’s eyes go dark. He licks his lips.
Josh should take it back; he should rephrase, and explain what he meant; he should say what he was supposed to say along, that Wolf shouldn’t even be here. When he opens his mouth, though, to say—something, nothing comes out.
Wolf seems to take it as permission.
(Not that he’s ever needed permission.)
The first step into Josh’s office shakes the very ground he’s standing on.
As Wolf stalks across the space, past the chairs, and around the desk to where Josh is sitting, all he can do is stare, and stare, and stare.
His body is so hungry for this.
It’s been more than a month since the last time he got to touch Wolf. He’s tried to make it work, to satisfy himself elsewhere – hell, he’s even thrown it in Wolf’s face with that little quip about the Hamptons – but it didn’t work. It worked, in that they fucked and he got off and he got the other guy off, but it was like something fundamental was just missing.
Josh needs Wolf so much that it hurts.
Wolf comes to a stop just a foot away from his chair and stays there. If Josh were to reach out, he could touch him. Trace the planes of his stomach and kiss the swell of his biceps and re-learn everything that he could have forgotten in the weeks that Wolf has been—gone.
He tilts his head to one side, almost predatory. His eyes are locked on Josh, holding his gaze like he’s forgotten what blinking is, staring at him in that way he only ever does when he wants something. “How,” Wolf says, and his voice is low, low, low, “would you like convincing?”
Dry, Josh says, “I’m sure you can come up with something.”
Wolf’s mouth twitches. Before he even says a word, Josh already knows it’s going to be impertinent. Snarky. “Because you can’t?”
And—well.
Wolf likes to push and he likes Josh to push right back.
Josh just raises an eyebrow. “You can walk out that door,” he says, and Wolf should and Josh should make him and this should all stop right here. It never should have even gotten here. Wolf should never have set foot inside this office. He can’t stop himself, though. “It seemed to me like you wanted something, though.”
Annoyance flickers across Wolf’s face. “Well, that’s not—”
“If you don’t,” Josh adds, “then you’re more than welcome to leave.” He nods to the door, again.
Silently, he begs Wolf to do it.
Between the two of them, though, Wolf was never the one with self-control. And Josh should never have expected him to be.
Wolf falls to his knees in one smooth motion.
The door to Josh’s office is still open; the blinds are up. Anyone could walk past and see what they’re doing – what Josh is doing – right now. Anyone could catch them. It would mean the end of Josh’s career, at least as chief, and he’d be the laughing stock of the whole hospital. The story would keep the rumor mill spinning for months; years, even.
Josh can’t bring himself to care.
Then Wolf’s gaze drops to Josh’s lap.
Josh’s cock has been slowly filling since the moment that Wolf set foot in this room, and it jumps at Wolf’s attention.
His gaze feels like a brand, sending heat sparking through every inch of Josh’s body.
Wolf hasn’t looked at him like this in over a month: like he wants him. Josh didn’t realize how much he missed it until this exact moment.
“Go on, then.” His voice sounds like he’s smoked a pack of cigarettes. His throat hurts; his mouth is dry. “I thought you wanted something.”
Wolf shuffles forward and into the cradle of Josh’s knees; he takes one in each hand, his broad, heavy hands burning to the touch.
Josh shudders.
It makes something very satisfied settle on Wolf’s face, on his body. He’s always worn his emotions brightly, and it makes knowing what he’s thinking very, very easy. “I don’t know,” he says, “it seems like you’re the one who wants something.”
“That’s not what it looks like.” Again, Josh nods to the open door; to the wall of windows. Wolf’s gaze flickers across, following him for just a second. “Anyone could look in, and what they’d see is a man so desperate he’s going to suck his boss’ cock just to get what he wants.” He crooks an eyebrow. “Hm?”
The desk is too high for anyone to see Wolf from the doorway. All they’d see is their chief looking weirdly intense about something on the ground. Wolf doesn’t know that, though, and Wolf doesn’t need to know that.
A sharp breath punches out of him at the word boss. And when Josh raises his eyebrow, patronizing, it’s like Wolf’s whole body seizes.
He presses his face into Josh’s groin and just—inhales.
Josh can’t help the noise that bursts out of him at finally being touched by the one man he actually wants. It’s too loud, too likely to attract attention and make someone come running to check on him. He claps a hand over his mouth, cutting off any more sounds and forcing himself to be quiet.
Grabs Wolf’s head with the other, tangling his fingers into Wolf’s dark hair and pushing him further into his crotch.
Wolf licks at the material of Josh’s pants.
And Josh realizes that he can’t stand having Wolf two layers of clothing away from his skin at the exact same moment that Wolf seems to.
He goes for his zipper.
Wolf is already wrenching his pants down, down, down, almost pulling Josh out of his chair with the force of it, and even as Josh bites down on his own hand to muffle his shout, he’s taking Josh in his mouth and sucking him down in one go.
Josh is helpless to do anything but thrust up into the perfect heat of Wolf’s mouth.
When he comes, he forgets to warn Wolf, too engrossed in him, but it doesn’t matter because Wolf swallows every drop.
His throat works around Josh’s cock like it’s made for it, working him so perfectly that he thinks he might come again, a second orgasm nearly pulled out of him right after the first. Josh is gone, eyes squeezed shut, but he can picture the sight of Wolf swallowing him down, Adam’s apple bobbing gorgeously.
Josh has always come a lot. It spills out of Wolf’s mouth, dribbling down his chin.
When Josh finally pulls his limp cock out from Wolf’s lips, cracking his eyes open and squinting back to the impossible man on his knees in front of him, Wolf blinks up at him.
He swipes his thumb across his lips, collecting up the cum dripping down his face in a few methodical motions. Then he cocks his head in a purely feline motion, looking at Josh with those dark, dark eyes, and licks his thumb clean.
Josh’s spent cock twitches.
“So,” Wolf says. “My patient?”
Josh squeezes his eyes tightly shut again. The aftershocks of his orgasm are still pulsing through him, the blood in his groin only just beginning to flow to his brain again, and his tongue is clumsy in his mouth.
It takes him several tries to summon the words.
“I’ll send the request through.” Then he opens his eyes again; finds Wolf still kneeling there, gazing up at him like maybe he matters. It’s far, far too easy to reach out and grab Wolf by the hands. Tug him to his feet.
Wolf is all too eager for Josh to push him up against his own desk, bracket him there with his own body, and when Josh reaches down and gets a hand on the outline of his cock, straining in his pants, he lets out a perfect breathy gasp, his whole body curving inwards as he bucks up into Josh’s touch like a starving man finding a feast in the middle of a desert.
“Thought people might see,” Wolf says into Josh’s mouth; whispers, shouts…it doesn’t matter. No one else in the whole world could hear him anyway. It’s just Josh here. “Thought you were the big boss now.”
Josh squeezes Wolf’s balls, almost cruel. It makes Wolf gasp, body folding, as he tries to press into the touch and pull away all at the same time. He buries his face in the juncture of Josh’s neck, sinking his teeth in there.
Knowing him, there’ll be a mark tomorrow.
People might see.
Josh likes that thought far more than he should.
“The only one getting bent over my desk here is you.”
Wolf keens.
Things go very quickly after that.
Josh knows Wolf’s body and knows when he’s about to come; with the hand that isn’t spoiling Wolf’s thick cock, he reaches for his tissue box. When Wolf’s body finally seizes up and he comes, Josh makes sure he doesn’t make any mess.
That would be difficult to explain to the cleaners.
It doesn’t take Wolf long to come down, but it never did. He shudders through his orgasm, thrusting up into Josh’s hand as he works him over, and then once he’s done, he only stays on Josh’s desk for a moment – back arched, throat bared as he breathes through it, and Josh tries not to think he looks like the child of some ancient god, he really does – before straightening up and tucking himself back into his jeans.
Then his gaze flickers up to Josh.
He hesitates.
Josh doesn’t know what to do, or what to say. ‘Post-nut clarity’, he’d once heard an intern tell another about a hook-up they’d regretted. And he thinks that was their orgasm, not their partners, but he doesn’t really see what the difference is.
“We, uh.” He drops the tissues that Wolf came on into his waste paper basket. Frowns to himself. “We shouldn’t have done that.” He shouldn’t have done that.
Wolf’s expression closes off. “Right,” he says. Then: “I should go.”
“Right,” Josh says, a pointless echo. “You should.”
Wolf nods once, more to himself than Josh.
Josh can only stand there.
Before Wolf leaves, he stops in the doorway and looks back over his shoulder; finds Josh.
Hope, traitorous hope, fills Josh’s chest. Wolf has always been so much better at wanting things. He was the one who kissed Josh on that street corner, and he was the one who told Josh that they shouldn’t give up on each other, and he—
“Remember those scans,” Wolf says, cold; colder than Josh ever thought him capable of.
That hope goes sour. Josh just about manages to nod, a single perfunctory up-down motion of his head. “Yes.”
Then Wolf walks away.
And Josh is left standing there in the middle of his office, with fresh memories of Oliver Wolf’s touch and yet not a single thing to show for it.