Chapter Fourteen

Julian 

Monday arrives with a headache and a strange sense of guilt Julian couldn't fully account for since he technically hadn't done anything wrong. He'd had dinner with a man, well one of the publishers of his book in progress. He'd had more than dinner in fact, with the man and had left before things went further than a kiss. Thinking about how that  went made him blush slightly.

That was by any reasonable doubt an uneventful weekend. He kept reminding himself of that fact as he got dressed for work.

It also didn't help that he'd barely slept yesterday. 

He spent most of his Sunday dilly-dallying with Maya and the rest rewriting the surrender scene in his book from scratch, throwing away five different drafts before landing on something so raw he needed to walk around his apartment to shake off the effect of what his writing had caused.

It really didn't help the moment he stepped off the elevator at Cross Media, Sarah cornered him with coffee and an expression that meant gossip before she'd even begun speaking.

“Okay, don’t panic,” she said, which was, historically, the worst possible way to start a sentence.

“That’s an excellent opener.”

“There’s nothing bad, I promise. It’s just.. You went on a date! 

“Uhh, how'd you know that”? He asked, puzzled.

“Well you went out with Richard Harrington.” she winced sympathetically. “Someone from this  office mentioned it to someone here, and you know how this building is.”

Julian felt his stomach drop anyway, despite there being, genuinely, nothing to hide. “It was just dinner.”

“I believe you. I’m just warning you before you walk into a room full of people who’ve already decided otherwise.” She squeezed his arm and headed off toward the bullpen room, leaving Julian standing in the hallway with the distinct, familiar feeling of being a character in a story other people were writing for him.

He kept his head down for most of the morning, working through notes at his desk, refusing to give the whispers anything to feed on. It was almost peaceful, in a strange way, the manuscript in front of him, coffee going cold beside his laptop, the low hum of the office outside his door. 

He was three pages into a scene when Lena knocked and told him Ethan wanted to see him.

Nothing unusual there. It happened most days.

Except when he stepped into the office, Ethan didn’t look up right away, which was unusual. He was standing by the window with his back to the room, jacket off, sleeves rolled, the posture of a man working through something he didn’t want witnessed.

“You wanted to see me?”

“The revisions.” Ethan finally turned, and his expression was doing that thing it did when he was being deliberately unreadable, smooth, composed, like a door closed and locked from the inside. “They’re good. The surrender scene especially. Whatever you did this weekend clearly helped.”

There was something underneath the words, some faint edge Julian couldn’t quite place, and it took him a moment to realize what it was.

He was being taunted.

“I had a productive weekend,” Julian said carefully, taking the seat across from the desk without being asked, mostly to see what Ethan would do about it.

“So I heard.” Ethan sat as well, folding his hands on the desk with the kind of exactness that meant he was concentrating very hard on appearing casual. “Dinner with Richard Harrington.”

Julian’s pulse ticked up. “It was just  dinner. Not that it’s relevant to the manuscript, that's why I didn't inform you. I just…”

“I don't care”. Ethan cut him off. “It wasn’t a question or an opening for you to explain yourself, I genuinely don’t care about who you have dinner with or fuck.” The words came out clipped. 

The office went very quiet.

“It’s not my business,” Ethan continued, voice flat, the mask sliding neatly back into place. “Forget I said anything. Let’s discuss the manuscript.”

Julian should have let it go. He knew, rationally, that pushing would only make things worse, would only give the office more to whisper about, and would only complicate a situation that was already complicated enough. He pushed anyway.

“Are you jealous, Mr. Cross?”

The silence that followed was long enough that Julian almost regretted asking. Ethan’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking there, gray eyes sharp and unreadable across the desk.

“That would require me to have a claim on you,” Ethan said, each word measured, and somehow all the more telling for how carefully controlled they were. “I don’t.”

“No,” Julian agreed slowly. “You don’t.”

Neither of them moved. The tension in the room had increased to something that made the air thinner and for a moment Julian thought, hoped that Ethan might say something else. Instead Ethan reached for the folder on his desk and slid it across the gesture businesslike signaling the end of that topic.

“The next chapter needs work,” Ethan said. “The protagonist keeps going around the truth instead of saying it. Fix that.”

Julian took the folder, aware of how close their fingers came without quite touching, aware of Ethan noticing it too. “I’ll have it done by tonight.”

“Good.”

He left the office mouthing a what the fuck with his pulse still elevated, the conversation replaying in a loop he couldn't shut off.

“That would require me to have a claim on you” It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t even close to one. But it wasn’t nothing, either, and Julian spent the rest of the walk back to his own desk trying to decide which was more dangerous, hoping it meant something, or telling himself it didn’t.

He texted Maya on his lunch break, more out of habit than any real need to talk it through.

Julian: I think I made Ethan jealous today. Possibly by accident. Possibly not.

She responded immediately.

Maya: What? How'd he take it? 

Julian thought about the tight jaw, the careful, clipped denial, the flicker of something raw before the mask came back down. He thought about the fact that Ethan had noticed, had cared enough to bring it up at all, had sat there controlling every word out of his own mouth like the truth might slip out if he wasn’t careful.

Julian: badly. Which is somehow encouraging.

Maya: you two are a disaster. I say this with love.

Julian: noted.

He put the phone away and went back to work, but the encounter stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon, a low hum underneath everything else he did, reviewing pages, answering emails, half-listening to Sarah recount some office drama during lunch. 

Every so often he caught himself glancing toward Ethan’s office down the hall, the door shut, the blinds drawn in a way they usually weren’t.

By six, most of the floor had cleared out. Julian was gathering his things when Lena stopped by his desk, tablet in hand.

“Mr. Cross wants one more session before you go. He said it’s about the ending.”

Julian’s stomach flipped. “Now?” 

“Now.” Lena’s expression gave nothing away, though there was something almost sympathetic in the set of her mouth, like she’d seen enough late nights between the two of them to have formed an opinion she wasn’t going to share. “He’s waiting.”

Julian smoothed down his shirt, told himself it was nothing, and walked down the hallway toward the closed door, very aware that his heart was beating faster than the situation strictly called for.

He knocked once and let himself in.

Ethan was standing by the window again, the city lights just beginning to flicker on behind him, jacket tossed over the back of his chair, tie loosened at the collar. He turned when the door opened, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.

Julian almost let out a moan at how majestic Ethan looked. 

He cleared his throat, “You wanted to talk about the ending,” Julian said, when the silence stretched too long to bear. “Isn't it a bit too early for that? Don't get me wrong, I k…”

“Yes.” Ethan interrupted him. His voice had lost some of its earlier control, roughened at the edges in a way that made the back of Julian’s neck prickle. “I’ve just been thinking about it all day. I can’t get it to work, I want it to work else I won't be satisfied.”

“Which part?”

“The part where he stops fighting it.” Ethan finally crossed the room, slower than usual, his eyes never quite leaving Julian’s face. “I keep trying to wrap my hand around it. Your draft, you have him find some clever way to avoid the moment. 

Some excuse, some reason to walk away instead of just…”

He stopped.

Julian’s mouth had gone dry. “Instead of just what?”

Ethan was close now, close enough that Julian could see the war happening behind his eyes, the same one that had been there in the hotel hallway, the same one Julian had spent the better part of two weeks convincing himself he’d imagined.

“I don’t know, you’re the writer here.” Ethan said quietly.

The office was silent except for the faint hum of the city outside the glass. Julian didn’t move. He wasn’t entirely sure he was breathing.

“Maybe,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “I'm not supposed to write it yet. Maybe I'm supposed to just let it happen.”

Ethan’s gaze dropped to his mouth, and this time, he didn’t pull away.