Work Text:
Garrett Hawke loves Tuesdays.
He gets odd looks for it, raised eyebrows and raised inflection whenever someone asks why he’s so chipper, his roommate and the barista and his coworkers--the only one who seems to take it in stride is the office receptionist, Merrill, who agrees that Tuesday is the day of the week with the most “energy” and spouts a bunch of astrological mumbo-jumbo he really doesn’t understand.
Mondays, everyone still has their energy from the weekend, running on the fumes of whatever party or pastime they’ve enjoyed; Wednesday is hump day, the middle of the week, the point where they reach the downhill slope and can coast all the way to the weekend. Thursday is “one day left” day, and the bosses usually bring in donuts and fresh roasted coffee from the cafe down the street that everyone’s addicted to, and Friday, of course, is Friday, the finish line, the last day of work that ends an hour early just about every other week because management is just as relaxed as the office environment they’ve created and the staff they’ve hired, and their floor of the office has an incredible view of the park that is impossible for anyone to resist after a forty-hour-plus work week.
But Tuesday--no one likes Tuesday. Tuesday has no redeeming qualities, no recommending features; it’s the day after your weekend high has worn off and the day before the middle of the week when you still have 60% of a week to go; it’s drudgery and doldrums and too much work, because half of their clients take extended weekends and don’t come back until Tuesday with piles of paperwork and demands for time and resources that no one has the energy to give. So when Garrett nods genially and sips from his coffee mug, tie loose around his neck and cheeks flushed like he just ran the three miles from his apartment and then did a few sets of stairs just for fun, and says that, “No, really, Tuesday,” is probably his favourite day of the week, no one can really be blamed for their skepticism.
What he doesn’t tell them--what he keeps very close to his chest--is the reason why Tuesday is his favourite day of the week. It has nothing to do with clients and meetings and Merrill’s strange astrological theories, though, and honestly, if it weren’t for this one thing, Garrett would probably half to go with Wednesday because he’s emotionally a 14 year old boy and it’s called “hump” day, for God’s sake--but Tuesday is his favourite day of the week because it’s the only day he can be depended on not to work late.
He is the silver-haired executive that, if elevator buttons are to be believed, works two floors above the Theirin Firm offices in the high-rise building, two floors above Garrett’s very own desk, and who evidently comes to work early and leaves late just about every day. Garrett knows this, because he’s watched him leave the building and slide into the driver’s seat--on the right-hand side, no less--of a sleek silver European something or other on Tuesday afternoons; that car is nearly always in the carpark already when Garrett arrives to start his day, and is still there when he leaves. The car’s even been parked in the sun outside on the weekends, sometimes, when Garrett jogs by on his morning run; the man is evidently a workaholic. But despite his extravagant schedule and overwhelming working hours, for some reason or another, he never leaves late on Tuesdays. Every week, like clockwork, Garrett taps his foot outside of the elevator, and when the door dings, he’s standing there, unreadable expression and faraway eyes and calm, crisp demeanour and he’s not a little bit gorgeous.
They’ve never talked, not really, but they’ve exchanged enough pleasantries for Garrett to know that for a man with such a lithe frame and doe-like eyes and obviously well-manicured nails, he has a surprisingly resonant voice. His hair always is perfectly coiffed, every damned strand in place, swept to the side over his eyes in a cut that would never be permitted in the firm (despite the relaxed natures of their management); he always carries a briefcase in his left hand and a gym bag in his right. One week, Garrett saw the handle of some kind of sports racquet peeking out through the zipper in the top of the bag; tennis, or badminton, he thinks, and the image of this man in tight white shorts and short-sleeve tee, his hair held back by a sweatband that should look ridiculous but doesn’t, fuels no small number of his nighttime fantasies.
He’s got it timed to the second, now; months and years of working in this office building has taught him how early is too early and how late is too late, what exact time he needs to be standing outside those elevator doors in order to make sure he doesn’t miss him. It’s gotten him some strange looks, those times that he ignores the sliding doors because he’s closed down his computer and locked his office a little too early, and stands there motionless and attempting to look nonchalant while they slide shut again and continue downwards. It’s been weeks, though, since the last time he missed the car, and speaking of which…
He glances at the clock in the corner of his monitor, then hits Ctrl+s on his keyboard, saving the report he’s been working on for Alistair and quickly closing down the windows. There’s an email in his inbox, unread; he clicks the flag to remind himself to read it first thing in the morning, and shuts down the email client as well. The internal messenger pings at him, and he grins as he reads the message, hurriedly typed out by Zev, who works in the office across the hall from him:
just like clockwork ;)
He keys a winking emoticon back and shuts down the chat client as well, hitting the shutdown button on his toolbar and pushing himself out of his chair. Methodically, with the practiced movements of a man well used to his routine, he gathers his lunch bag and briefcase, slings his coat over one arm, and heads for the door--pulling his office door shut tight behind him and letting the lock click home.
He nods and waves and offers perfunctory “g’night”s to the office’s various employees as he makes his way to the elevator bay, signing out on the office registry at Merrill’s desk while she snaps her gum and regards him enigmatically, quickly popping his head in to wish his boss, Alistair a good night and promise him the report by noon tomorrow. When he reaches the elevator, he hits the down arrow, watching it illuminate in rows of tiny green LEDs, and waits. He does his best to quell his nerves and stop the tapping of his toe.
Every week, as he waits for the elevator to make its sluggish way down to the 9th floor, he considers what he might say. An idle question about the sport he plays, he’s thought on numerous occasions, or even an observation about the man’s car--with a model like that, he’s sure the man could expound on its varied and sundry features and specs until kingdom come. But he doesn’t actually know all that much about tennis except that he uses its balls to play fetch with his dog, and a conversation to cars might quickly either reveal him for, at best, an over observant casual acquaintance. At worst, he might find himself stammering out something horrifying and embarrassing about the thoughts he’s entertained regarding himself, the man, and the leather seats in the back of that very elegant car--or be asked the incredibly awkward question, “What do you drive?” to which he would have to own up that he drives a damned Pontiac Aztec and there’s not a single thing that’s sexy about that.
(It’s not like he bought it for its sex appeal; he enjoys camping, and there are few SUVs better suited, but he imagines the thought of camping in a tent would likely scandalize the man, and that’s the last thing he wants.)
Invariably, by the time the doors have opened and he’s nodding to the object of his casual crush (‘obsession,’ his brain helpfully supplies), he’s thought of nothing to say, and today is no different. Their eyes meet, there is an exchange of nods, and he tries very hard not to let his gaze slide over the other man’s body in curious appreciation as he steps inside and hits the button for the lobby for no reason at all. It’s already illuminated; what other floor is someone going to at 5 pm on a Tuesday evening?
It’s all so normal and familiar and routine, and comfortable, even in the stiff silence. The man glances over at him once; Garrett meets the gaze with a quick, casual smile, and gets a brief upturned mouth in response before the face settles back into it’s usual neutral expression and they each face forward again. Once or twice, Garrett opens his mouth to speak, but he always seems to forget his thoughts or lose his nerve.
And then the lights go out.
There is a loud noise, a heavy grinding that accompanies the sudden jerk that is the elevator ceasing its movement, and Garrett stumbles sideways into the mirrored wall, his hip connecting painfully with the rail that serves absolutely no purpose for a man of his height. He bites out a loud curse, hand going to his bruised hip; and then there is silence.
Well, fuck.
“What the hell was that?” he asks the blackness around him--and there really is no light at all, inside the elevator, everything completely pitch to the point that he has to blink his eyes a few times to just make sure he hasn’t accidentally closed them. He tries not to think about that, about the crushing darkness around him, or the way the faint strains of E-Z-Rock radio have been cut off, or the way that the air suddenly feels choking and stagnant around him; but its difficult, and he feels his heart rate going up. Still--the last thing he needs to do in front of--or in the proximity of, he supposes, given that neither of them can actually see anything--dream guy is to have a full blown panic attack.
“It sounds like the elevator’s broken down,” comes the calm, disconnected response, and Garrett clings to it, clings to that voice because it is oil and honey and delicious. It’s the most words that he’s heard the other man string together at once, and it makes his spine tingle. His traitorous brain immediately imagines all the other things that voice could say, and makes him shiver with delight--but his voice is the more traitorous still.
“H-how long do you think…?”
And oh, he’s quavering, and the fear and tension is obvious in his words even while the dark hides him from the man’s gaze. He hates the dark, hates being in pitch black nothingness, without air moving around his head and the faint ambient sounds of life--of day or night or life, in general--buzzing through his ears. It feels like the walls are closing in, and he flings out an arm to ward off the advancing glass panels--feels his fingers brush the glass exactly where it should be, and is only faintly relieved.
“Likely an hour or so,” the man says, with a beleaguered sigh, but there’s a curious intonation at the end, like he’s heard Garrett’s waver and isn’t sure whether or not to question it. “We’re--perfectly safe, you know. This happens all the time, in old buildings like this one. We’re just stalled for a bit; it’s not like we’re going to suddenly plummet to our deaths.”
And maybe it’s all the imagined conversations that have tricked his brain into forgetting that he does not know this man, and they are not intimately acquainted and, by all rights, he probably doesn’t even care, but Garrett finds himself confiding nonetheless. “I know that, actually, I just--I have a problem with the dark.”
The man gives an amused-sounding huff of breath, and Garrett feels his brows draw down, offended. “Big man like you? I find that hard to believe.”
“Well--not the dark, specifically, but--dark, enclosed spaces. Pitch black. Stagnant air.” He tries to explain, to make himself sound something less pathetic, but his heart surges because the man’s reference to his size sounded vaguely admiring. It’s likely just his brain playing tricks, but Garrett allows himself the brief fancy that maybe the stranger has spent as much time checking him out as he’s done in return. Still, the idle thought isn’t enough to keep his breaths from moving rapidly in and out through his nose, pace slowly increasing as the closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on counting backwards from fifty.
“Traumatizing childhood?” he man asks, voice measured and careful and calm, and Garrett loses track somewhere around 29, 27, somewhere around there.
“Used to go spelunking with my dad,” he finds himself saying. “Had a bad cave-in, broke my leg, he got knocked out for a few hours--you could call it traumatizing.” There’s a soft noise of sympathy from the other side of the carriage. “Nothing like being in a tiny enclosed space, alone, for an extended period of time to give you a healthy dose of panic whenever shit like this happens. My apartment--there’s no A/C, so on the hot summer days, sometimes the power just cuts out, and it ends up like this. I usually end up sleeping in my car in the parkade; it’s lit, down there.”
He’s rambling, and he knows it, but the other man isn’t interrupting. He lets Garrett finish talking, and is quiet but for the sounds of his even breaths; Garrett tries to restart his count, breathing the numbers out quietly, but he’s interrupted again.
“Tell me about your dad.”
The conversation carries on, the other man quiet and attentive while Garrett talks, always leaping in with a question whenever Garrett finds himself losing words and trying to return to his coping mechanisms, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize that the man is trying to distract him, keep him thinking and talking about anything except for the way the air isn’t moving around them and the darkness seems to continually be pressing in. He finds himself talking about his dad, his mother, his twin siblings; his roommate and his dog, his car (it turns out the other man is actually quite interested in camping, contrary to what Garrett had assumed, and appreciates the function of the Aztec even if he admittedly turns his nose up at its form), his job. He is interested and engaged, animated, asking Garrett questions that he knows are designed to keep him distracted but which show attention nonetheless, picking out bit and pieces of Garrett’s stories and asking him to expand.
At one point--he’s just finished telling the story about how he broke his brother Carver’s nose playing basketball--Garrett thinks to ask the other man about his interests, which is how he finds out that the raquet he keeps glimpsing in the gym bag is for something called squash, that Fenris plays regularly at the sports complex down the block and time in the courts is evidently so in-demand that they have to be booked. He finds out that the man actually hates the car he drives, but he does it to snub his old employer; he worked for the man for over ten years, overseas, practically slaving for him, and when he’d finally got up the nerve to cut ties with the company, he’d demanded the expensive company car in exchange for his silence on the less-than-legal business practices they’d employed. He had, he tells Garrett with a mirthless little laugh, snitched on the company the instant he’d touched American soil. He learns that the company on the eleventh floor, where the man works, is actually the head office of a non-profit that he had started to fight against child- and slave-labour overseas, one which is quickly and steadily gaining recognition for the work they do.
The tables are quickly turned, and Garrett learns that finally, finally getting answers to all the questions he has about the mysterious man is even more distracting than being grilled on his own life. It’s hypnotic listening to him speak, the cadence of his voice speaking of a tongue that has had to learn English by rote rather than by right, but which speaks it fluently. He loses track of time, as the other man tells him stories of his own and describes his own life.
He’s found himself on the floor of the elevator, now, tie loosened around his neck in a bid for more oxygen and feet aching from the uncomfortable dress shoes he’s wearing, and a few minutes ago he heard the other man fold himself to the floor as well. Their legs are extended across the carriage, and there’s a spot on his shin where he can feel them pressed together; it’s warm and electric and there’s a cramp in his hip from the awkward sprawl, but he can’t bear to move it. He feels the other man shift, and there’s more contact, suddenly, and he wouldn’t be surprised if his gulp were audible.
The man is telling him about his business partner, a woman named Isabela who he apparently knew from his days in Europe and who manages the non-profit’s finances from a bank downtown. She’s evidently his squash partner, and Garrett feels a crushing weight against his chest at the man’s casual use of that term, until he mentions that she’s married.
“Marian doesn’t like that I keep her out so late on Tuesday nights,” he remarks with a dry laugh, and Garrett, feeling bold and a bit heady with relief that Isabela is apparently not only married, but also gay, nudges against the man’s leg with his own.
“Why’s that?” he asks curiously.
“Marian’s got a thing for Kitchen Nightmares, apparently, and she hates having to wait for Isabela to get home to watch it,” the man chuckles, and Garrett laughs easily in return and marvels at how natural it feels. He doesn’t think it’s his overactive imagination; he’s always been a bit stilted, a bit awkward, making bad jokes in ill-favoured attempts to break the ice. Yet somehow, conversation with this man is easy, smooth and balanced and perfect, and he feels a little thrill at the idea that their elevator rides together might no longer be spent in complete, if comfortable, silence.
“Why not just change your squash dates?” he asks, curious as to the reason for this strict adherence to a schedule; and evidently, it was the wrong thing to say. The other man coughs, and is quiet, and Garrett suddenly gets the sinking feeling that he’s done something very wrong; crossed a line he should never have crossed.
In the awkward silence, the darkness starts to crowd him again; but the feel of the other man’s leg pressed to his keeps it somewhat at bay, even though he does find himself, reflexively, begin the backwards count. He’s almost expecting the other man to interrupt before he can hit twenty, to retaliate with another question designed to keep Garrett’s focus on anything but his fears; but he makes it all the way to zero without a peep.
“I’m--sorry,” he ventures, when it’s obvious that there is no answer forthcoming. There’s a rustling from the other corner, but no words. “None of my business, obviously.”
There’s a heavy sigh, breathy and with a bit of voicing to it that makes the hairs on the back of Garrett’s neck tingle pleasantly. “It’s not that. It’s just--my reasons are difficult to--”
He’s cut off by the sudden flicker-hum of fluorescent lights, and the blessed, blessed sound of the elevator moving once more. Garrett lets out a whoop, and turns to grin at his companion.
The man is much closer than Garrett had anticipated, and his heart leaps somewhere into his throat as he sees the wide-eyed, deer in the headlights expression the man is wearing. His hand hovers in midair above where Garrett’s rests on the elevator floor, and if Garrett didn’t know better, his hyperactive, over-romantic brain would have thought that he was reaching out for Garrett’s hand.
He clears his throat and scrambles to his feet as the lights slowly ding their way down the shaft, flushing a bit as he catches sight of himself in the mirror--hair dishevelled from running nervous hands through it, tie akimbo, shirt wrinkled. Still, he holds a hand down to the other man, offering to help him to his feet. The man takes it, his palm warm and dry against Garrett’s.
“You saved my life,” Garrett tells him seriously, eager to move on from the awkward lull, not wanting to lose this camaraderie they’ve managed to build between them. “Seriously--I’d have had a panic attack ten minutes in, if it weren’t for you.” The other man stands, and Garrett realizes that, while shorter, they are closer in height than he would have thought.
“You’re--supposed to keep talking,” the other man says, his eyes drifting away from Garrett’s gaze, and Garrett feels the wall beginning to rise between them again. No, no, no! he wants to say, but just takes his hand back and rakes it through his hair.
“Well--thanks. It helped, a lot,” he admits. The other man nods, looking terribly uncomfortable, and Garrett wonders if he’s overstepped a line somewhere that he didn’t realize existed. “Can I at least have the name of my rescuer? I mean--we just spent over an hour chatting in a pitch-black elevator, and we do see each other every Tuesday…”
He trails off as the other man clears his throat, this time visibly avoiding Garrett’s gaze, and his heart begins to race uncontrollably. Perhaps its the relief, the rush of adrenaline, that makes him bold, but he finds himself asking in a quiet voice as the car passes the third floor-- ”..Is that why?”
The man looks up at him sharply, the dusky skin flushed all the way to the tips of his ears, and Garrett’s eyes widen. “Wh-what do you mean?” he asks, and Garrett knows that cagey look, recognizes the tremor in that voice, because he’d sounded much the same when Merrill had one day asked if the handsome man on the elevator was the reason Garrett was in too much of a rush on Tuesday nights to listen to his horoscope.
Garrett shakes his head, a grin spreading over his face as the doors open and he steps just a bit closer to let a few people from the second floor onto the elevator, chatting loudly about the Fall Collection or something similar--he thinks it’s a publishing office. He uses the din to give them some privacy as he leans closer and mutters to the man, “My name’s Garrett Hawke, I work on the ninth floor, and you’re the reason Tuesdays are my favourite day of the week.”
The doors open again on the lobby floor, and the occupants of the elevator pour out, with Garrett and the mystery man bringing up the rear. As it begins it’s return trip back up the building, the man looks at Garrett consideringly, then holds out his hand. There’s a slow, almost disbelieving smile spreading across his face as he looks up into Garrett’s eyes, and Garrett simply cannot believe his luck.
“It’s nice to meet you, Garrett. I’m Fenris, and I haven’t played a game of squash in five weeks--I’ve just been using the gym bag as an excuse to get out of the office on time.”
Garrett laughs, the name ringing in his ears, and gives the other man a smirk as he takes his hand, shakes it firmly, and lets it linger just a little before pulling away. “Well, then, if you don’t have a squash appointment to keep, do you think I could interest you in grabbing some dinner with me?” he asks, tilting his head in the direction of the car park. Fenris grins, and answers him sincerely:
“I’d love to.”