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“Francis, I'm dying,” James declared.
“I hope no more than usual,” Francis replied, not looking up from his paper. This was certainly not the reaction James had been going for. He stepped away from the office windows and braced his hands on Francis’ desk.
“It's Little and Jopson,” he said, after a dramatic pause. Hopefully, the mention of Francis’ assistant would rouse him to more emotion.
“What about them?” Ah HA. Precisely the point he should pursue!
“I can’t watch them anymore!”
“So stop looking at them, if they’re so offensive.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Francis sighed. “What do you mean, then?”
“This silly little dance they’re doing! Why don’t they just - they’re both so into each other and watching them not do anything about it is literal agony.”
“Just leave them to it.”
James frowned. Why wasn’t Francis taking this seriously?
“It’s been going on for months, Francis.”
“They’re shy.”
Shy? Shy?! Shy was waiting a day or two to text someone back! Shy was asking to hold hands instead of just going for it (not that James would know anything about that.) Shy was not making eyes at each other for weeks and months and sitting together at every office outing chit chatting and then not going home together and moping about the break room and doodling fucking hearts on the quarterly reports and bringing endless cups of tea without ever just asking someone out for a drink!
“This goes way beyond shy, Francis!”
“Not everyone is you, James. Not everyone goes around wearing their feelings on their sleeve and swanning about.”
“It took a year of swanning for you to finally get the hint!” James shot back, and Francis had nothing to say to that. “But I’m quite serious. I don’t think anything will happen without someone doing something drastic.”
“That someone wouldn't happen to be you, would it?” Francis turned the paper with a particular sense of purpose.
James had moved to the office wall, and was peering through the blinds. Jopson passed in the corridor. Ned stared after him.
James was surprised the entire stack of paper in Jopson’s arms didn’t spontaneously combust.
“You know Francis, I think it just might.”
“What do you mean they’re just sitting there?” Dundy’s voice was aghast.
“As I said! I left the table when you called to give them some time to be alone and they’re just - they’re just fiddling with the silverware - wait… wait… no, nevermind. I thought they were actually about to have a conversation but it was just Jopson calling for a waiter to bring Ned some more water.”
Dundy had played his part perfectly, calling James in the middle of the “work meeting” he had organized for himself, Jopson, and Little (that just happened to be at one of the coziest little Italian places the city had to offer) in order for James to leave the table and give the two some time alone. (This is why polyamory worked, because when your handsome, morally upstanding husband refused to participate in a caper, there was your equally handsome, morally ambiguous boyfriend who was always willing to lend a hand.)
The targets of this particular caper, however, were not cooperating in the slightest.
“Maybe - did you get it wrong, somehow?”
“Henry.”
“I know, I know, but maybe just this once -”
“I’m not wrong. I’m never wrong.”
“Clio.”
“I have been wrong once.”
“It was a very big once.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” James did not appreciate Dundy’s scoff. “We both lived to fight another day.”
“It was a close thing.”
“If you’re done criticizing my choices, I think I should get back before they both choke on their own yearning.”
“Ta, Jas.”
The remainder of the evening proceeded in an equally insufferable manner. James had seated them close together, and instead of taking advantage of such an arrangement, they had scooted their chairs as far away from each other as possible the moment they bumped elbows. (“I’m so terribly sorry,” Little said, inching his chair away and creating a horrifying screech each time that echoed through the restaurant. “No, Sir, it’s no worry at all, I was the one in your way.” It was all James could do not to scream into his risotto.)
Jopson and Little could barely look at each other without blushing, and as soon as the check was brought out James threw money on the table and left. Perhaps they would leave together? But no, of course not. From his vantage point at the cafe across the street he watched as Ned Little hailed a cab, insisted that Jopson take it, nodded furiously when Jospson insisted that it was no trouble, he would just walk, and left Little standing there with an angry cab driver and an open car door.
“I am losing my mind,” James said to Dundy the moment his boyfriend picked up the phone. “I feel like I’m insane.”
“Are you heading home?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I'm on my way over. What's say I help you forget all about it?” Francis was out with Sophia (Thursday was their standing date night) and they would have the house to themselves.
“Bring me a bottle of champagne, won’t you?”
“I’ll bring three.”
The next morning, Sophia stepped briskly around the kitchen making breakfast for the four of them while James and Dundy (in matching silk bathrobes) nursed mimosas and Francis sat across the table laughing every time he cast his eye their way.
“I hate you,” James mumbled into the table.
“No, you don't,” Francis said. “You hate yourself.”
“Love, don't be so cruel to him.” Sophia put a plate of eggs and sausage down in front of Francis. “He's feeling bad enough.” Dundy, who was feeling left out, let out a groan which was instantly stifled the moment Sophia patted him on the head and put a full plate down in front of him as well.
“It's their own fault. I told him not to get involved.”
“I think it's sweet!” Sophia placed a plate in front of James and then sat down herself. “Tom and Ned deserve some happiness.”
“It would have been sweeter if it had worked.” James set aside his mimosa to have a go at breakfast.
“I wonder,” Sophia began.
“Oh no,” Francis said.
“I wonder,” she continued, “if they might need a gentler hand. No offense James, but you can be a little…”
“Don’t say it -” Francis began.
“A little intimidating.” Dundy immediately gulped back the last of his mimosa.
“Intimidating!” James’ hangover was getting in the way of how shrill he wanted to be, but the sentiment still stood.
“Yes,” said Sophia, placidly. “And perhaps someone should go along with you.”
“Someone like who?” Francis asked.
“Someone like me, of course,” Sophia replied. Francis and James’ eyes met across the table. Neither of them would say it.
“I thought you said someone less intimidating,” Dundy mumbled.
Francis and James suddenly remembered an urgent matter that required their immediate attention in the sitting room and abandoned Henry to his fate.
A week later, Sophia, James, Tom, and Ned were at the park, on the premise of helping Sophia shoot some new promo photos for the proposal the company would be making for a new outerwear line in the next quarter.
“Ned, could you maybe stand a little closer to Tom?” Sophia asked.
“I’m so sorry,” Little said, moving exactly three inches closer. James sighed.
“Tom, can you put your arm around him? Yes, just like that -” Jopson’s arm was actually hovering over Little’s shoulder.
This was ridiculous.
“Um - could the two of you stop trying to smile?” The tightness in Sophia’s voice was now palpable. “It’ll look more… more natural that way.” The grimaces on both their faces vanished instantly, and between Jopson’s subsequent impression of a haunted victorian doll and Ned’s looking like someone told him he would have to come in on the weekends to clear out all the emails in his inbox, James thought Sophia might ask them to smile again.
She did not. She took exactly three more photos and then declared it was time for lunch.
(The fact that lunch was an extravagant picnic happening at eleven in the morning on a Saturday seemed to be lost on Little, who was tearing up blades of grass in between shooting looks at Jopson.) Jopson, too, seemed to be unbothered by the unusual course the day had taken and, instead of engaging with Ned, was pestering Sophia with a series of questions about lighting and technique so filled with technical terms that James quickly grew bored.
“Well,” said Sophia, standing up after about twenty minutes of this, “it’s time for me to visit the loo. James, be a dear and escort me, won’t you?” James scrambled up from the blanket and caught up to Sophia, who was already walking away.
“You weren’t kidding,” she muttered as they passed out of earshot.
“Did you think I was lying?”
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
“That’s fair.”
“And if we leave them alone they’ll just…”
“Sit there and do absolutely nothing even though it's obvious that what they both want to do is lay down on that blanket and -”
They passed a family with three children, and gave the sort of nod that adults of a certain age are always giving to strangers in passing.
“I don’t understand!” Sophia exclaimed.
“That’s what I said! Francis just said to leave it and they would work it out on their own, but how exactly they’re going to do that when they can’t even look at each other is lost on me.”
“We could play spin the bottle?” Sophia suggested. “I could kiss one or both of them, make the other jealous?”
“We’re not thirteen, Soph. I think they’d know something was up.”
“It was just a thought.”
When the two of them returned to the picnic, Ned Little was sitting stock still, with his back to Jopson, who had stretched out on the blanket and was staring at the clouds.
After Sophia's plan failed, James knew it was time for drastic measures.
Francis absolutely refused to allow James to lock them in an elevator together, even though James pleaded and begged and annoyed him very prettily for an entire afternoon. (Although this was partially James’ fault, as all the winding up he did culminated in Francis fucking him so well he was unable to form coherent thoughts for the remainder of the day.)
“What if I - I don’t know,” James asked later that night, as he battled with the innumerable knots that plagued Francis’ upper back. “What if I organize a work trip? And then everyone cancels and it's just the two of them in a cozy airbnb somewhere?”
“They would have an argument over who would sleep on the bed and who would sleep on the sofa,” Francis slurred into the pillow.
“I could go with them? Then leave?”
“You already tried that at the restaurant.”
“I could lock them in a closet?”
“What if the airbnb doesn’t have a closet?”
“I’ll stop at the hardware store and build one if I have to.”
“You don’t know how to build a closet.”
“How would you know?”
“You wouldn’t even know which way to hold a hammer.”
James actually did know how to build a closet. And a shed. And how to frame out a house and hang sheet rock. But he had carefully cultivated the image of himself as a man who did not know how to do those sorts of things, and hence did not correct Francis further. (Besides, it was important to keep some secrets in a relationship. Perhaps one day he would build Francis a deck over a long weekend, and could relish the shocked look on his face for as long as it took Francis to recover and take him to bed.)
So James tried a few different tactics. There were early morning meetings, and last minute meetings, and sending Jopson to fetch things from Edward’s office at all hours of the day.
The meetings didn't work. The breakfasts didn't work. And just when James thought he just might have to try the closet idea, Jopson cornered him in the copy room and said he had to speak to him on an urgent matter.
“Mr. Fitzjames, I’m flattered, really, and while I’ve dabbled in polyamory before, I’m just not looking for that kind of relationship right now.”
“What?”
“I mean you have your Mr. LeVesconte, and Mr. Crozier has Ms. Cracroft, and while I won’t say I haven’t thought about it, that’s just far too many egos in one polycule for me to be comfortable at this time in my life.”
“What?”
“In fact, I have to thank you, when I was organizing my thoughts on how I wanted this conversation to go, I realized that what I’m looking for is something long term and monogamous, and I just think that -”
“It’s not me!” James exclaimed. “I would never - I mean you’re truly just not my type -”
“What are you saying, sir?”
“Oh my god, it’s Edward! Edward is the one who wants you, not me!” Jopson’s expression of patient firmness melted into something more like acute distress.
“Ed-Edward?” he sputtered. “I don’t - he doesn’t - the very idea that -”
“Stop it!” James was at the end of his rope. “Just stop it. Of course he does! And you like him too!”
“Mr. Little has never operated in anything but a professional capacity and if you’re implying either of us have done anything to merit a dismissal, I -”
“I’m not trying to get anyone fired, I'm trying to get you both laid! With each other! Because if I have to watch the two of you pine and yearn and keep not kissing each other for another year I swear I’ll -”
At that very moment, James was struck in the back of the head when Ned Little burst into the room, and the last thing James remembered was a furious voice asking just what the fuck was going on in here.
“James?”
His head throbbed, and the light was bright even behind his closed eyelids.
“James, wake up now, there’s a lad, come on.”
In any other circumstance James would have happily sunk back down into the dark void of sleep, but Francis was calling him, and he couldn’t ignore that.
“What?” he asked.
“There you are, love.”
James opened his eyes. He was lying on the couch in the breakroom, his head cradled in Francis’ lap. Francis was petting his hair and there was something very cold being pressed to the side of his head.
“Wha’ happened?” he asked.
“You got in the head with a door, that’s all. Stumbled around a bit. Little and Jospon made you sit down here and called me over.
“Why can’t I always work from here?”
“I’m not sure I could let you lie on my lap when we meet with clients,” Francis chuckled. James nodded.
“Wouldn’t want to make them jealous.”
Francis smiled at him, and James knew he was smiling like a lovesick idiot back at him, which, of course, he was.
But there were two other lovesick idiots sitting at the battered breakroom table, and James thought it might finally be time to pay attention to whatever Ned Little was repeating over and over again.
“Oh my god, I killed him.” Ned was running his hands through his hair again and again. “I killed him. I’m going to jail. I always knew something like this would happen. I used to see this sort of thing in the movies and I knew one day it would happen to me.”
“He’ll be fine, don’t be silly,” Jopson hovered at his elbow with a cup of tea that Little refused to take. “Mr. Crozier is here, he’ll take care of him -”
“I just - I heard the two of you shouting and I just - I didn’t - He’s been acting so goddamn weird lately and I was worried…” Little stopped, seemingly appalled at what he had said, while a small smile crept over Jopson’s face.
“Mr. Edward Little, were you worried about me?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Ned lamented, burying his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry, I won’t bother you again, I’ll just -” He made to get up, and James locked eyes with Jopson the moment he did.
“Wait -” Ned froze at the sound of Jopson’s voice. “Mr. Little, were you… were you planning on fighting Mr. Fitzjames for me?”
Little’s face crumpled.
“I don’t - God, you must think I’m a complete brute- overstepping your boundaries and… and forcing myself into a situation I had no place being. I promise I’m walking to Mr. Franklin’s office right now, I’ll turn in my resignation, I won’t keep hanging around you anymore -”
“Edward,” Jopson said, and Little went from looking like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole to looking like he was about to pass out from all the blood rushing to his head. James thought he should sit down. Such a rapid change from pale to beet red couldn’t possibly be good for him.
It seemed Jopson was of a similar mind, and when he took Little’s hand to guide him back to the chair, James truly feared he might collapse then and there.
“Edward,” Jopson said again, and Little was mortified at the shiver that came over him at the sound. “I think the both of us may have been operating under some misapprehension.”
“We - we have?”
Jopson looked over, to James and Francis, and before James could tell him to fucking get on with it already, Francis nodded.
“Go on then,” Francis said, gently. “I think this has gone on for long enough.”
“Edward Little, I’m very fond of you,” Tom said in a great rush.
“Oh - I’m - I’m fond of you too,” Edward replied. “Not - not in any way that you might think - I mean -”
“What I mean is,” Jopson continued, after a significant look from both Francis and James, “what I mean is that I am quite fond of you.” Little still looked at him like he had three heads. “I want you to take me home.”
“Of course,” Edward was nodding. “You’ve had a hard day, I’m sure you want to get some rest only I don’t know where you -”
“I want you to take me back to your home,” Tom said, and Little let out a tiny squeak that would have been adorable if James wasn’t so anxious that they finally have it out. Jopson took Edward’s hand again, and laced their fingers together. “And I’d like to stay there for as long as it takes for us to clear up this misunderstanding.”
Something like dawn broke over Little’s face, and he nodded again and again as his eyes bounced from their joined hands back to Jopson’s face.
“Mr. Crozier?” Tom asked, without looking away from Ned. “I think I need the rest of the day off.”
“Take as much time as you need.” Francis waved him off. “And don’t come back until you’ve worked it all out.”
Tom nodded.
Edward nodded.
And then they left the office together and no one saw them for the next three days.
James thought the entire enterprise had gone very well indeed. After all, he was able to add another story to his repertoire. He tentatively titled it “The Time I Made the Perfect Match and All it Took Was Some Mild Head Trauma.”
It went over very well at parties.