Work Text:
The meeting was beginning to drone on.
“I’m just saying that this ‘smarter way of working’ is not going to work for the front facing members of staff…”
Aaaaaand Tim zoned out again. Scratch beginning to drone on. The thing had crossed dragging and gone firmly into the realm of limping, dying, crawling thirty minutes ago.
Tim frowned at the graph on the screen in front of the long black meeting table. Bruce was opposite, not even pretending to not be asleep.
Lucky bastard. Of all the public images Tim had cultivated for himself; gregarious, well meaning, earnest, sharp as a whip… Well, it wasn’t as much of a lie as Bruce’s. But it still felt constraining. Some days Tim didn’t feel like smiling. Or being touched. Or listening.
His phone vibrated, deep in his pants pocket. He ignored it. This wasn’t the kind of meeting where he could start texting people.
“How about,” Bruce’s voice boomed, showing that, no, as a matter of fact, he had not been asleep the past hour, “we take a ten minute break? Considering we’re not even halfway through the agenda yet.”
The older men and women checked their watches, displaying surprise at the time in the most insincere of ways. Thankfully, the chairman conceded.
Bruce made his typical hmm noise, eyes remaining shut, and continued to snooze.
Oh good. Bathroom break.
Tim stood up, straight as a bean, and rushed out the office. He may have been in a position way above his natural pay grade due to nepotism, but he was still a young adult. Needed to check his phone.
Walking along the corridor to the bathroom, he unlocked his cell and opened up the messages he missed.
“Holy -”
Nearly dropping his phone, Tim opened the nearest door he could find, which happened to be a stationary cupboard. Leaving the light off, and hyperventilating, Tim dialed for Stephanie.
She picked up soon enough, chipper as always.
“Oh hey! I thought you were in a meeting all morning. Did you get the photos?”
“Are you insane?”
She sounded very taken aback. “Woah! Were they that bad?”
“Tell me you’re not making fun of me. Tell me you’re not this stupid.”
“No? What?” Her next breath was unsteady. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
The hot anger drained away with his shock. No, Stephanie was not that stupid. He lowered his voice, cautious of anyone walking by.
“You…sent me pictures of you naked while I was in a work meeting…”
“…What?” she laughed, incredulous. “No. No. I sent you the photos of the new dining table and chairs. I spent all…”
Tim could hear her pulling her phone back, flipping through messages.
Despite the phone not being on speakerphone, Tim had to pull it away from his ear from the resounding wail.
“Oh my God I’m sorry!”
“You didn’t mean to?” Tim frowned.
“No! I sent the wrong ones! Oh my - I can’t believe - I’m sorry! Did anyone see? You’re gonna get in trouble and it’s my fault! They weren’t for… They weren’t for anyone!”
“No, no,” Tim struggled with the complete switch around in emotions. Gone was his anger, misplaced and unwanted, and instead he was struggling to calm down a crying girlfriend on the other end of the phone who was probably feeling very violated at that moment. “No-one saw but me. I’ll delete them. Listen? See?”
He made a show of doing so, verbalizing all the steps he took to pressing delete and erasing the temporary files in his phone. Stephanie’s unsteady breathing down the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” Tim said.
“I would never -”
Tim laughed unwisely, “Well. You know what they say. Never say…”
“Don’t try and flirt with me!” she shrieked. “I’m upset!”
“Right. Yes.”
“I can’t believe this. I just wanted to show you the new furniture and instead I went and sent you nudes!”
It was terrible timing that she said this, still screaming down the phone line, because there and then Bruce opened the door.
Tim froze. A toddler caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Bruce’s eyes widened, then narrowed them exponentially.
“Break’s over,” he said simply.
There was a terrible pause, then Stephanie’s voice, still audible through the phone, whispered, “Bruce?”
Bruce sucked on his tongue, face looking like he’d just drank pickle juice.
“Good morning Stephanie,” he ground out.
“No!”
Tim dropped his phone at the resulting screech.