Work Text:
“How are you doing, Boss? Everything’s wrapping up over here. I should be home soon—as soon as I get a flight, I’ll give you a real ETA.”
“Mhmm, yeah. Everything’s good here. I might clock out early today. Got everythin’ I needed done, done so…”
“The boss is letting you out early, wow.” Ha ha, very funny, Philippe.
“Yeah, well, helps that I’m sleeping with him so.”
“… Are you sure you feel okay? You sound unhappy.”
“I’m a generally unhappy person, Philippe.” Corbeau threw a stapler across the room with all the frustration inside him in it and got it farther than the scissors. “You’ve been gone a while. I’m okay, just bored.” And lonely, and pissed, and yearning and…
“Sorry about that. But that’s the price of the business.”
The intercom button on the desk phone started flipping him off. “Gotta go, Philippe. Grunts are playing ‘bug the boss before he can take a break for the first time in his life’, and I get to decide who’s gonna die.”
“Alright. Take it easy on them. I’ll give them a hard word when I get back too. I’ll see you soon.”
“I better see you soon.” He tapped the Rotom phone to hang up the call and picked up the desk phone. “What?”
“Mr. Corbeau, Boss, there’s a visitor here insisting on seeing you…”
“Get rid of them. No clients today.”
He could hear the grunt stammering on the other end, “But, Mr. Corbeau, we all lost to them. We can’t!”
Corbeau slammed his hand on the desk. “Fine, send them up! I’ll take care of them myself!”
That grunt agreed and apologized profusely. He hit the button to hang up with a fist and went to pick up everything he threw so he wouldn’t look messy in front of the person he was about to destroy with every member of his team. He leaned against the front of his desk, arms relaxed, glare sharpened to stab any person or thing that walked through that elevator door.
When the door opened, out came Philippe. His entire mood shifted, and he started belly laughing before he even fully processed Philippe’s presence there. Oh, Arceus, there he was: his love and the salt of the fuckin’ earth, Philippe.
“Come here.”
Corbeau sprinted towards him with no plan to slow down, just desperate to run into him and let Philippe catch him.
Finally, finally Philippe was home. Home wasn’t home without Philippe. The Rust Syndicate felt like work for the first time in years.
Just as he thought, Philippe snatched him up when he got close enough and lifted him. Corbeau grabbed his lapels and pulled his man into an aggressively passionate kiss. He didn’t let him go to breathe, say he missed him too—he wanted to steal Philippe’s breath forever. Drown him in this feeling.
Philippe pulled back to breathe and said to him, “Whoever said that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ must not have been in love. I love you just fine while I’m here, and being apart for so long was unbearable.”
Corbeau kissed him again, shaking from gripping him so hard. Time slipped away for a moment. His thoughts were consumed by Philippe while he greedily kept him close.
When Philippe managed to break away again, Corbeau touched his face. “Next time I’m going. You were gone too long, and calling me was nice and all, but I like you for more than just your voice.”
“It would have been the same distance, Boss. That would be just as bad.”
Philippe knelt down and let Corbeau go. He hugged Philippe and felt large hands holding him as close as possible. With his head on Corbeau’s chest, Philippe murmured, “Are you okay? You always tell me you’re okay when I’m away, but are you?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
Hands still checked him, squeezing him occasionally and checking for and wince or any reaction at all. “Let me see you.”
“What about you?” Corbeau moved his lover’s head to lock onto caring grey eyes. “You look anxious and tired. No work for you today. You need rest.”
“You’re right.”
“I know I am.”
Philippe stood up, scooped him into his arms, and forcibly brought Corbeau to the living quarters in the Rust Syndicate. Corbeau let Philippe kidnap him from work because why not? This way Philippe would actually take a break. When Philippe took off their shoes by the door, Corbeau slipped away from him. He took off the layers of his extravagant clothes and sauntered into their private quarters.
He threw on one of Philippe’s shirts and brought over a robe. “Out of those clothes. Work clothes, work brain.”
Philippe made a show of it. Unbuttoning like he had all the time in the world. Removing the Syndicate pin like it needed to be carefully placed in a sacred place. Letting fabric fall off his shoulders to reveal his perfectly sculpted body. Corbeau scanned for any new marks and felt relief at finding none.
“You wear my shirt like a robe.”
“Your clothes are comfier than mine. Besides, everything in this building is mine. This is my shirt.”
“So everything I own?”
“Is mine.”
“And mine? That makes it sound like we’re married, Boss.”
Corbeau laughed at that and turned to the living room. He meant to ask where Philippe wanted to lounge and reconnect, a fun way to say cuddle and kiss until they saw stars, but when he turned to smirk at Philippe, he saw that Philippe had stayed standing in the same spot with his robe secured and just stared at Corbeau, stuck in the last thing he said.
Corbeau stomped back over to him and looked up at his soft grey eyes again. “Listen, Philippe, we don’t have to be married to be together. I know I like labels in the business, and I always make everyone around us act as properly as possible—but that’s for transparency’s sake. We don’t need permission to be together. Like you said: everything in here is also yours already. It doesn’t need to be said legally for it to be true, and we don’t need permission to be together.”
Corbeau walked to the entryway of the bedroom. “Come here. Don’t make me wait for you anymore.”