Work Text:
David spends his morning hiding behind his laptop, feeling shitty. At least its shitty in the emotional sense, he thinks to himself, recalling the time he'd eaten week-old tomato soup from his fridge for lunch and had to leave work early. The early days of the divorce had usually been hard like that. Today, however, he feels bad in less of a physical sense and more of an I-fucked-up sense, the kind he'd become somewhat accustomed to after making so many missteps in his career up to this point. He was known to do stupid things by most of his colleagues, but it still didn't help the shame he had felt when he'd ran into the doorway and spilled hot coffee all over himself this morning, purely because he'd been so surprised to see Brad already at his desk that he hadn't been watching where he was going.
To be fair, David hasn't seen Brad in weeks.
In the many years they'd worked together, and the almost-as-many that they'd shared an office space, David hadn't seen Brad take any sick days. Ever. In fact, he usually would only ever take one week-long vacation a year, but David never knew where he went because anytime he asked, Brad would just reply, "your mom didn't mention me?" But then all the sudden he had been gone, and David got notice from Carol that Brad had opted for taking his sick days, vacation days, and mental health days all at once. David hadn't really been aware they could even do that, but he was not about to argue with his free therapist, and figured Brad's job wasn't important enough on a day-to-day basis to care. In fact, he thought they should probably give to as many charities as possible while he was gone, because this might be the only chance they got.
So it was safe to say it had been about a month since David had even laid eyes on Brad, and he had been expecting some sort of announcement of his coworker's return beforehand, so he could at least have gotten a cake or something. Instead, Brad had just been sitting there, doing work, acting like everything was normal, and after embarrassing himself so much on his entry David had just decided to let it slide, figuring he'd get his chance to ask questions eventually.
It was around noon that David had his second big shock of the day, as he was returning to the office after reheating his lunch. He was balancing his pyrex container of food in one hand and a fresh cup of coffee in the other as he walked into the office, sending a smile and nod Brad's way as he crossed the room to his desk and set everything down. The smile was ignored, as he expected, but what he hadn't expected was a plastic container sitting open on Brad's desk, with what looked like salad inside. David had shared an office with Brad long enough to know he never brought lunch, one of the many other normal things he'd never seen Brad partake in. There had been a time when he'd bothered the other man about it, back when he had more motivation to spark friendship between them, when Brad's annoyance had been a little more subtle. Brad had always had the same excuse- no time.
"Business runs on money, David," he'd say, sipping one of those frozen coffee drinks he seemed to love so much. "I control the money, so I control the business. And business is too important to be wasting valuable work time for lunch."
David had hated this response enough that he eventually just stopped asking, partially because he knew Brad thought he ran the business more than David did, which was clearly a ridiculous notion, but also because he feared that if he argued, Brad would begin to argue back that none of the employees should get to eat during work hours. David didn't think legally Brad would actually be able to implement that, but he also didn't trust Ian enough to understand what was so wrong with it, and David didn't need to deal with hundreds of employee lawsuits when he could just eat cold pizza in silence. (Again, the divorce had been rough).
So suffice to say David was pretty excited to see Brad's apparent new routine, and felt inclined to mention so as he began to cut into his chicken. "Whatcha got there? Caesar?"
Brad stiffened a little, and David watched as his eyes swung up from the laptop to meet David's, before dropping to the container of food that sat next to him, untouched. "What?"
"Your salad. Smells like caesar, but I could be wrong. I don't know my dressings nearly as well as I know my wines," David joked, but Brad didn't look amused. If anything, he looked concerned in a way that made David uncomfortable. It was just a simple question...
"Uh, no. It's a vinaigrette. Just something I put together at home, nothing special." He said with a light shrug, expression morphing back into his usual, apathetic self as he began typing on his laptop again, going back to work.
"Hey, hey, not so fast there. C'mon Brad, take a break, will you? And don't start on your whole time is money rant- if you really believed that, you wouldn't have taken all those days off." He said pointedly when he noticed Brad begin to open his mouth to respond. He only felt a little bad when Brad winced at the comment, figuring if it just got his eyes off his work for a few seconds it was worth it. "You're not supposed to work while eating anyway, it's a choking hazard," he continued, and Brad didn't look convinced, but he did close his laptop with a dramatic sigh and pick up his fork. Considering this the closest he'd ever gotten to a winning streak, David decided to continue. "Great! Look, now we're acting like real colleagues, eating lunch together. We just need to find something to talk about..."
"How about your divorce trial?" Brad suggested dryly, eyes down as he pushed lettuce around the perimeter of his container. David rolled his own.
"Be mean all you want, but we're making progress. This is a big change, I expected you to run out and eat alone in your car before ever sitting in here and potentially subjecting yourself to lunch with me."
That comment seemed to strike a nerve, and David watched carefully as Brad's eyes seemed to unfocus and then refocus on the desk in front of him. Before David could amend his words, though, Brad was looking up again with a smirk. "Was that an option?"
The conversation built itself up from there, always hovering around the same slightly awkward space but ending with some decent laughs and not too many insults towards David's manliness, which David always considered a win. By the end of a solid 45 minutes of talking, David was finishing last sips of his coffee and Brad was putting the lid back on a half-empty container with a half-formed smile on his face, and David felt something shift in him, but couldn't put his finger on what.
The next day, a similar routine was followed. David had to lightly nudge Brad into the idea again, as the other man seemed content to forget all about the previous day and work through lunch as usual, but David didn't want to see it happen. There had been nothing he could say when Brad didn't even bring a lunch, but with his new daily salads, David could latch onto the idea that he had to break away from work to eat at some point. He was mainly just doing it to be able to talk to someone, as Poppy and Ian had done nothing but bicker lately and Carol had started locking her office door, but surprisingly it hadn't been as hard to talk to Brad as David had previously thought. He never seemed particularly pleased about the interactions, but would usually engage in conversation if David said something dumb or outlandish enough.
By the sixth day of their new routine, Brad was even shutting his laptop and angling his chair towards David's desk as soon as David would walk in from reheating his food. David felt something loosen in his chest from the small action, but stayed quiet about it as not to risk their tentative friendship. On the ninth day, Brad brought a different type of salad and spent twenty minutes explaining to David a new recipe he'd found using balsamic vinegar in the dressing. On the twelfth day, Brad's salad had strawberries in it.
On the twenty-third day of eating lunch together, Brad finished an entire salad.
David wasn't exactly sure when he'd began to keep track of these things, but they were easy to notice if you were looking for them. He'd always been finishing his meal later than the other man, so most days he'd watch as Brad would pack up the rest of his salad in his bag, muttering something about finishing it for dinner later. David had never understood how Brad stayed full off of basically half a container of lettuce, until he began to understand that he didn't.
David watched a little closer every day after that.
One week, he offered Brad a chocolate chip cookie from a batch he'd baked for a sickly neighbor, having kept two with the specific intention of bringing them to work for lunch. At the time, he'd simply felt it would be rude to eat a cookie without also offering Brad one, but after seeing Brad set it down on a napkin and never pick it up again, David felt something click in his head. He made bringing lunch-dessert a routine after that, and every day would offer Brad some, very causally. It became a sort of game, trying to pick something he might actually eat and enjoy. Unfortunately the combination of unhealthy food and the fact that they were being gifted to him seemed just a little too far outside Brad's comfort zone to ever accept, so David adapted and began bringing him coffee instead. Well, as much coffee as was in those ridiculous mochaccino's he liked to drink anyway. David had never really been a fan of sugary coffee drinks before, especially when they were cold, (it was like taking half the joy out of the drink for God's sake), but went ahead and ordered himself an iced caramel latte just to curb the suspicion in Brad's eyes as David handed him the drink.
"What?" He had said, hoping for once Brad wouldn't be able to read right through him. "I was already there, and figured I might as well grab you a little something so you'll stop complaining about the expense reports I'm making you redo." The answer had seemed to placate Brad for the time being, and by the eighth or ninth time David had bought them both coffee, he realized he was actually starting to like caramel lattes a lot.
Some days were still better than others. David had always been an optimist and thus had trouble understanding this at first, so the first time Brad disappeared from the office for the hour that they usually had lunch together, he was confused. Disappointed, too, but mostly confused. When it happened again the next two days after that, he went to Carol about it, trying not to sound as hurt as he felt. He told her his plans of confronting Brad, thinking she'd help him develop a professional strategy for it- David could sometimes respond more emotionally than he thought a boss probably should- and was surprised when Carol, who usually at least tried to entertain a compromise, was blunt with him.
"Don't bring it up," she'd said, an edge to her tone and intensity in her expression that made David's stomach knot. He was used to tired Carol, annoyed Carol, even tipsy-off-one-shot-at-a-holiday-party-happy Carol, but this? This was foreign to him, and not in the way that encouraged questions. As if able to tell how much her tone has disquieted him, Carol let out a sigh that softened her entire face. She looked tired again, and David let out a silent breath of relief. "Just leave it alone, David, and it'll work itself out. I know you don't like to do that, but trust me on this one, alright?"
David swallowed, and then nodded. "Alright." For once, he didn't let himself read farther into the situation.
When David returned to his office with takeout food the day after that, Brad was setting a coffee down on David's desk. He looked up, face guilty as if he'd been caught, eyes tired as if... David didn't let himself think about it too hard.
"Hey. Sticking around for lunch today?" He asked, crossing the room as Brad retreated back to his own desk, eyes lowered.
"I'll be here, yeah, but I have to work. Deadlines approaching and all that... I don't want to stay too late tonight." Brad said easily, like he'd rehearsed it ahead of time. David just nodded and sat, taking a sip of the coffee Brad had previously set down. He wrinkled his nose.
"Black?"
Brad raised an eyebrow. "Thought you drank it black?"
"Well yeah but I-" David paused, noticing the cup on Brad's desk was identical to his. It was kind of funny, he thought. He'd never actually seen Brad drink his coffee hot before. "Never mind. I'll let you get back to work."
It didn't last forever. Brad brought a salad in the next day and David tried not to think about how uncomfortable he looked as he ate it and let David talk at him, just like he always tried not to think about how he never saw Brad look in the mirror when they were in the bathroom. He tried to focus only on the positives, noticing the days when Brad's eyes looked brighter and his face a little less hollow. Days when he got on everyone's case or played his little office pranks no longer bothered David, as he tried not to think about how Brad had gotten quieter through the years. He even found himself counting the days in a row that they ate lunch together, silently celebrating every new high streak and telling himself he was just happy for the camaraderie and nothing else. David wasn't stupid and he wasn't naive- he knew Brad was dealing with something serious and David's actions would do little if anything to help him in the long run. But every meal they ate together was a meal Brad was eating, and David felt like that had to count for something.
So, he continued to celebrate small victories, even if only to himself. Like when he found a tipsy Brad Bakshi on a seasonally decorated couch at the office Christmas party, eating one of David's famous snowflake sugar cookies and arguing with a tester about God knows what money grab in the game.
"Enjoying the party?" David asked as he came to stand in front of the arm Brad was perched on, smiling lazily, eyes shining and unguarded for once.
"Yeah, actually, I think I am. Which is weird, I usually hate these things."
"Parties? Or my cookies?" David teased, and Brad paused to glance down at the half-finished cookie in his hand.
"Yours?"
"Yep. You'd probably know that if you'd ever actually eaten the cookies I've offered you in the last year we've been eating lunch together." David hadn't thought about possibly striking a nerve until he said it, and was entirely ready to take the entire statement back, but Brad just laughed.
"I was suspicious, and who can blame me? A grown man should not be baking on that regular of a basis unless he's like... an undercover grandma, or something." He said, and David grinned, amused.
"An undercover grandma, hm?"
"It could happen!"
David rolled his eyes as he let himself fall into the couch to watch the party buzz on, resisting the urge to glance over when Brad sank down from the arm to sit a few inches from him. He was content to let silence swallow them for a few seconds until Brad spoke up again, sounding more grounded this time.
"I've been meaning to say thanks, by the way."
David could hear the nervous shake of his voice and allowed himself to look at the other man curiously, tilting his head a few degrees to the side. "For what?"
"For... for this past year, I guess. The coffees and conversations and shit. And for, uh... being cool about something, probably for like the first time in your entire life," he said with a small laugh at the end, elbowing David lightly. David smiled, then rolled his eyes after a few seconds.
"I can be cool, you know."
Brad scoffed in a way that made David laugh again, pretending to be offended when the tipsy man sat up straighter to argue his point about David's apparent uncool-ness, though he really didn't care. All David could think about was the carefree smile on Brad's face, the snowman on his thick, blue sweater, the nearly finished cookie in his hand. Maybe for anyone else it wasn't much, but for Brad it was huge, and for once, David didn't feel so bad not letting himself read any further into the situation. In this moment, for the rest of this night, he knew everything was going to be okay, and maybe that was enough.