nursery fic additions - Noble/Vaz Te and Adam/David
Two addendums to the fic where Mata and Torres open a nursery for two of my favourite girls. Merry Christmas darlings, this indulgence is all for you <3
Santa! I know him!
G
~1000
For the_wild_son: the nursery is holding a Christmas party, and Mark is not so much invited, as strong-armed into taking part.
"Elves?"
Mark Noble looked doubtfully at his boyfriend, Ricardo, who smiled broadly and carried on getting undressed. Mark folded his trousers absentmindedly.
"I'm not sure I'm really-"
"Matt is doing it."
"Matty is going to be an elf?" Mark sighed and threw the trousers, now folded, down on a chair. "Of course Matty is going to be an elf."
Ricardo laughed, and pulled his socks off.
"You would make a lovely elf," he said. "All the parents are joining in."
Mark looked sceptical. Ricardo laughed again. "I can't take you seriously when you're looking cross in your pants," he said, and that, for a while, was that.
---
Mark sent a text to Matt in his lunchbreak the next day.
Thanks for showing me up!
Matt called him back almost instantly. "Pipe down," he said. "We've made costumes for the panto and the Christmas play, cakes for the Christmas bake sale, and cards for everyone in Georgia's class, and you're moaning about putting on a hat with bells on?"
"That's awful. You overachiever!"
Matt laughed. "Mate, you have it all to look forward to."
Mark was outside the office, in a tiny landscaped area between the building front and the road. There was a bench, which he was sitting on, a bare tree and a small and low-filled pond. He regarded this pond with some scrutiny and said, "I'm really not the elf type."
"You're short," Matt said, "and generally pretty cheerful, and you work in manufacturing. Please tell me in what way you are not an elf."
Mark sighed and gave up.
---
A few days later, Ricardo showed up at Mark's door with a plastic bag and a delighted grin. Mark squinted at him. "This doesn't look good," he said.
Then he smiled, and laughed, and that was how they moved through the front hall and into the kitchen where Mark's daughter Honey sat, eating beans on toast.
"Hello Honey-bee," Ricardo said, high-fiving her.
"Come on then," he said, depositing the bag on the counter. "Try it on."
Mark shook his head at him, trying to look cross. He pulled out a red hat with bells on, and a little red and green collar. Honey laid her fork down, interested now. Ricardo was smiling so wide he couldn't speak, and laid across the counter instead, head propped up on his hands. Mark did his best to be disapproving. He put the hat on, and Ricardo caught Honey's eye. Mark put the collar on, and Honey laughed.
"Hey you," Mark said facing Honey and scowling at her. She laughed harder.
Ricardo had fallen so far down that his cheek rested on the countertop. He laughed helplessly. "You look adorable," he said.
“I used to be head of this house,” said Mark, turning from cross to wistful with a sigh. Ricardo leaned over to adjust his hat, making sure that Mark’s ears weren’t covered.
“Perfect,” he said. “Honey, your Daddy is going to be the best elf at Christmas.”
“My Daddy isn’t an elf,” she said, and Ricardo gasped.
“Oh no,” he said, putting his hands over Mark’s ears, and Honey laughed again.
---
The nursery Christmas party was a rousing success, with more than half the parents dressed as elves, the staff as reindeer and Juan as a very jolly, rather short Father Christmas, handing out small gifts from the nursery to each child, and small gifts from the children to each parent.
Mark, balancing Honey on one arm and a large toilet-roll Christmas tree on the other, surveyed the aftermath.
“Amazing how much mess they can make when they’re so small,” he said. Next to him, Matt laughed.
“Small people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” he said, and Mark snorted.
“Small pots shouldn’t call small kettles small,” he said back, and Matt, in the middle of drawing an aghast breath, choked on it and had a coughing fit. In the middle of it all Juan showed up. He patted Matt on the back. “Are you alright?”
Matt wheezed and waved a hand at him. “All fine,” he managed. “Just all been a bit much for me.”
Mark made a face at Juan. “Where were you Juan? You missed the whole party!”
Juan looked sad. “I know,” he said. “I was very disappointed. But it looks like you had a really good time.”
He reached over and adjusted the brim of Honey’s new bobble hat. “Cool hat,” he said, “Where did you get it?”
Honey looked a little unsure. “Santa,” she said, and regarded Juan with some suspicion.
Juan’s jaw dropped. “I missed Santa?”
“He missed Santa,” Mark cried. “How will he get his presents now, Honey?”
She frowned a little, thought about it, and said, “Santa will deliver them on his sleigh.”
Juan smiled. “Oh good,” he said. “I’m glad you know how it works.”
---
Later that evening Ricardo was lying Mark’s settee with a cup of tea. He was still smiling at Mark, hadn’t stopped all day. Mark put his own tea on the table and lifted Ricardo’s legs so that he could sit down. He picked up his tea, then put it down again and picked up the discarded elf hat instead. Sprawling across Ricardo, Mark tugged it down onto Ricardo's head. Ricardo laughed.
“You made a very nice reindeer,” Mark said.
Ricardo touched a hand to his hat. “Are you saying this doesn’t suit me?”
“Well I’m not sure it quite suits your hair.”
“Rafa had to adjust my antlers earlier to fit through my hair. I’m just not cut out for Christmas.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “You look like you’re doing just fine to me,” he said, and Ricardo smiled at him. Mark picked up his tea, resting it on Ricardo’s legs and settling into the settee.
“Merry Christmas,” Ricardo said, with his hat balanced precariously on his hair, and Mark smiled back.
Under the Mistletoe
G
~2000
For ladytelemachus: a little insight into why David Silva decided that the job in Manchester was for him.
On Monday morning Joe announced himself with a messenger bag sent skidding across David’s desk and a cheerful, “Whoops!”
David was snatching his coffee cup out of the way when Joe followed this up with a sprawling hug that had David ducking away from him.
“What are you so happy for?”
Joe retrieved his bag and threw himself down at his desk. He turned his computer on and swivelled his chair to face Silva. “Two weeks to go,” he sang, throwing his arms in the air.
“Do you know how much there is to do in two weeks?”
“Oh you,” Joe said, and David was just glad to be beyond cheek-pinching distance. His team, if he could call them that, were the least respectful team he had ever worked with and he frequently couldn’t remember why he had agreed to this.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joe continued, blithely without care.
“And where is Adam?”
Joe checked his screen for signs of life. “When have you ever know Adam to show up before half nine,” he said. “What’s up with you this morning?” Then, his computer still stubbornly pulsing its Windows symbol, he stood up and said, “Coffee?”
David frowned.
---
Mid-morning, David returned from his weekly meeting with the CIO to find Adam and Joe huddled around James’ computer. He cleared his throat, and Adam at least took a moment to look a little sheepish. Joe waved him over.
“David, you’re a well-dressed man, should James go for dinner jacket or tux for the party?”
David supposed this sort of tied into good management. The three of them were looking at the Austin Reed site and David hovered on the edge.
“What is James doing?”
“The Christmas party innit,” Joe said, nudging David. David scowled at him absent-mindedly.
“Oh,” he said. “Well I think there will be a dress code, no?”
“What are you wearing?” Adam looked up at him from where he was lounging across the back of James’ chair.
“To - I don’t have a Christmas party,” David said. “You know I am self-employed?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I mean to ours.”
David wandered away to his desk. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I am not invited?”
Joe’s jaw dropped, Adam laughed, and James gave David a pitying look. David regarded them all cautiously and placed his notepad and phone back on his desk.
“You’re kidding, right?”
David shrugged.
“Mate,” Joe said, “Of course you’re invited. And your partner or whatever. The more the merrier. Can’t have a party without our intrepid leader, can we?”
---
Adam’s desk sat opposite David’s, an arrangement that David had thought might guilt Adam into working a little harder, but in fact only resulted in David being painfully aware of the times when Adam wasn’t working and getting duly distracted himself.
Adam hadn’t typed anything for a good twenty minutes. Occasionally he scrolled down whatever was on his screen, the little wheel on his mouse clicking as he went. His chin was propped up on his hand like if you had swiped out his arm from under him he would have collapsed to the floor entirely. And every few minutes, he glanced across at David.
It was disconcerting, and David couldn’t take it any longer.
“Is something wrong?”
Adam looked surprised, like David was the one being weird. “What? No.”
He went back to his screen, and then went back to David and asked, casually, “So, are you coming?”
David blinked at him and Adam clarified, “To the party?”
“Oh.” David was not, as it happened, planning on it. He had hoped that if he just stayed quiet about it then no one would say anything until the day of the party, at which point it would be too late. It wasn’t that David didn’t like parties now and then, he just didn’t like work parties. Corporate affairs where he was forced to eat dubious canapés and make awkward small-talk. He would inevitably have one too many glasses of wine and then have to work through a hangover the next day, wondering if he had said anything foolish to anyone important, and all in all it just wasn’t worth it.
“Well,” he said, “I am not sure-”
Adam visibly drooped.
“Come on David,” he said. “It’ll be fun. We’ll have a drink, have a dance. You can let your hair down. Everyone’s going.”
David stared determinedly at his keyboard.
“Well it is just-”
He could feel Adam staring at him. Then,
“Joe, David says he’s not coming to the party.”
David sighed.
---
Adam badgered him on Tuesday and again on Wednesday about what he was wearing. David did not have a tux in Manchester, so Wednesday evening he called Juan.
“Yeah no problem,” Juan said when David asked him to go to his flat, retrieve his tux and courier it to Manchester. “How’s it going up there?”
“Fine,” David said, then left a long pause.
“Yes it sounds it,” Juan said, and he laughed.
“I just don’t think I’m cut out to lead a team,” David said. “There’s a reason I’m self-employed, you know.”
“What’s the problem?”
David sighed. “No, there’s no problem. It’s just - I just feel like there’s so much more potential, but -
“No," he said. "Forget it. Thank you for doing that for me.”
“Even though you wanted me to say no so you had an excuse for not going?”
David laughed. “Yes, even then.”
---
Two glasses in and David felt a little blurry already. He wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and working late to review the weekly report before he was too hungover on Friday he had skipped supper as well.
“Weird possibly-fish canapé thingy?”
Joe stuck a small bit of unidentifiable pastry under David’s nose and David shied away, straight into Adam who had just arrived with more wine. "Woah," Joe said, and, "Watch it," Adam cried. David considered leaving. Then Adam deposited one glass in Joe's waiting hand, another on the ledge by David's arm, and took a swig from the third. His free hand came to rest lightly on David's back before he stepped around him and joined the conversation.
"Adam," Joe said, "Maybe you would care to try some of this-"
"No thanks," Adam said. "Looks a bit rank."
David smiled into his glass.
There was a half-hearted speech from the CEO and then a livelier one from the COO, and David drank two more glasses from the free bar. The room was starting to take on a pleasant glow, or perhaps that was the lights dimming as people moved towards the dancefloor.
David took a few determined steps to the seating area.
"Have a dance," Joe cried at him, and in the middle of David's firm declining Joe's girlfriend appeared, blissfully, to remove him from arm-grabbing distance. David sank gratefully onto an abandoned chair.
"Not a dancer then?"
Adam deposited himself onto the chair next to David.
"Ah, no," David said. "Joe's girlfriend, she is the best for me."
Adam laughed, and they took a moment to watch Vinnie, the HR manager, throwing his arms in the air to Mariah.
"So," Adam said.
David looked at him.
"You ah -" he took a drink. "Didn't want to bring anyone?"
David shook his head at his wine glass and glanced up at Adam. "No, too embarrassing, you know? For me, to show my friends at work to someone."
"What!" Adam gaped at David, who gave up on the act straight away and laughed at Adam.
"You cheeky fucker," Adam said. "That's going on my manager review that is."
David kept laughing, and Adam elbowed him.
"Sorry," David said. "No, I am joking, I don't have someone to bring."
"Oh." Adam glanced away. "Right."
"And you?"
"Erm, no." He fiddled with his cuffs and his glass. "No, you know." He glanced up at David, smiling a little. "So busy with work and that."
David laughed. "Ha, okay, and I must work you less, no?"
"Well." Adam grinned, shrugged at him. Then Joe appeared in front of them.
"Enough," he said, "You losers. You are dancing."
---
David didn't dance. Joe danced, and Adam got caught up in his enthusiasm. Joe's girlfriend danced rock and roll with their CEO. Even James started a short-lived but strangely successful dance-off with Joe's friend Gaz.
David stood at the side, halfway behind a pillar, and mourned his wine glass which sat waiting for him back at their table. He was congratulating himself on a task well done when someone shouted his name and bounded into view.
Sergio, the guileless and charming receptionist who flirted with David every morning when he walked past the front desk, held his hand to David and, with a wide smile, said, "Dance with me."
Which was how David found himself in the middle of the dancefloor, waving his arms to Rihanna and feeling hugely outdone by Sergio's hips.
"You have a good rhythm," Sergio said, shouting into David's ear. David looked over his shoulder and hoped desperately for Joe not to turn around. As if on cue, Joe twirled; he caught sight of David, and his face lit up.
“David!” he cried, and half the dancefloor looked over.
Sergio laughed. “No way,” he said, “I got him on the dancefloor, wait your turn.”
David squinted at him, and Sergio smiled.
“Oi oi,” Joe said, looming over them and winking disconcertingly. Adam hovered behind him, frowning slightly, and David felt rather in over his head.
“I think,” he said, “I think Joe would maybe like a dance. I am just going-” and he gestured over his shoulder in what he hoped was an assertive manner.
In the quiet of the bathroom, and under the unforgiving mirror lights, it occurred to David that perhaps his night had reached its rightful conclusion.
The attendant was fetching his coat when Adam showed up.
“Alright,” Adam said when David looked at him.
“Oh,” David said. “I am - it is late. You are going home also?”
Adam agreed, after a pause, and gave his coat ticket to the attendant.
“Okay,” David said, outside in the cold night. “Well. I am going that way.”
Adam nodded. “I’m that way,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction. He paused on the step beside David, lingering, and David waited, trying not to shiver.
“You looked good,” Adam said suddenly. “Dancing, I mean.” He laughed, nervously. “You could have shown Joe a thing or too.”
David ducked his head and laughed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Nah, you did.”
David looked at Adam, who was staring straight ahead. He leaned into Adam a little, deliberately, and Adam gave him a surprised smile.
“Thanks,” David said, and Adam smiled wider.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Okay I am cold.” David rubbed his arms a little. “But - I will see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Adam said again. “Okay. Yeah.”
David nodded and smiled. “Okay, bye Adam.”
“Bye David.”
David pulled his coat more firmly around himself and turned away, smiling. When he reached the end of the street, he turned around to see Adam still standing there. He raised a hand in a wave, and Adam returned it.
Santa! I know him!
G
~1000
For the_wild_son: the nursery is holding a Christmas party, and Mark is not so much invited, as strong-armed into taking part.
"Elves?"
Mark Noble looked doubtfully at his boyfriend, Ricardo, who smiled broadly and carried on getting undressed. Mark folded his trousers absentmindedly.
"I'm not sure I'm really-"
"Matt is doing it."
"Matty is going to be an elf?" Mark sighed and threw the trousers, now folded, down on a chair. "Of course Matty is going to be an elf."
Ricardo laughed, and pulled his socks off.
"You would make a lovely elf," he said. "All the parents are joining in."
Mark looked sceptical. Ricardo laughed again. "I can't take you seriously when you're looking cross in your pants," he said, and that, for a while, was that.
---
Mark sent a text to Matt in his lunchbreak the next day.
Thanks for showing me up!
Matt called him back almost instantly. "Pipe down," he said. "We've made costumes for the panto and the Christmas play, cakes for the Christmas bake sale, and cards for everyone in Georgia's class, and you're moaning about putting on a hat with bells on?"
"That's awful. You overachiever!"
Matt laughed. "Mate, you have it all to look forward to."
Mark was outside the office, in a tiny landscaped area between the building front and the road. There was a bench, which he was sitting on, a bare tree and a small and low-filled pond. He regarded this pond with some scrutiny and said, "I'm really not the elf type."
"You're short," Matt said, "and generally pretty cheerful, and you work in manufacturing. Please tell me in what way you are not an elf."
Mark sighed and gave up.
---
A few days later, Ricardo showed up at Mark's door with a plastic bag and a delighted grin. Mark squinted at him. "This doesn't look good," he said.
Then he smiled, and laughed, and that was how they moved through the front hall and into the kitchen where Mark's daughter Honey sat, eating beans on toast.
"Hello Honey-bee," Ricardo said, high-fiving her.
"Come on then," he said, depositing the bag on the counter. "Try it on."
Mark shook his head at him, trying to look cross. He pulled out a red hat with bells on, and a little red and green collar. Honey laid her fork down, interested now. Ricardo was smiling so wide he couldn't speak, and laid across the counter instead, head propped up on his hands. Mark did his best to be disapproving. He put the hat on, and Ricardo caught Honey's eye. Mark put the collar on, and Honey laughed.
"Hey you," Mark said facing Honey and scowling at her. She laughed harder.
Ricardo had fallen so far down that his cheek rested on the countertop. He laughed helplessly. "You look adorable," he said.
“I used to be head of this house,” said Mark, turning from cross to wistful with a sigh. Ricardo leaned over to adjust his hat, making sure that Mark’s ears weren’t covered.
“Perfect,” he said. “Honey, your Daddy is going to be the best elf at Christmas.”
“My Daddy isn’t an elf,” she said, and Ricardo gasped.
“Oh no,” he said, putting his hands over Mark’s ears, and Honey laughed again.
---
The nursery Christmas party was a rousing success, with more than half the parents dressed as elves, the staff as reindeer and Juan as a very jolly, rather short Father Christmas, handing out small gifts from the nursery to each child, and small gifts from the children to each parent.
Mark, balancing Honey on one arm and a large toilet-roll Christmas tree on the other, surveyed the aftermath.
“Amazing how much mess they can make when they’re so small,” he said. Next to him, Matt laughed.
“Small people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” he said, and Mark snorted.
“Small pots shouldn’t call small kettles small,” he said back, and Matt, in the middle of drawing an aghast breath, choked on it and had a coughing fit. In the middle of it all Juan showed up. He patted Matt on the back. “Are you alright?”
Matt wheezed and waved a hand at him. “All fine,” he managed. “Just all been a bit much for me.”
Mark made a face at Juan. “Where were you Juan? You missed the whole party!”
Juan looked sad. “I know,” he said. “I was very disappointed. But it looks like you had a really good time.”
He reached over and adjusted the brim of Honey’s new bobble hat. “Cool hat,” he said, “Where did you get it?”
Honey looked a little unsure. “Santa,” she said, and regarded Juan with some suspicion.
Juan’s jaw dropped. “I missed Santa?”
“He missed Santa,” Mark cried. “How will he get his presents now, Honey?”
She frowned a little, thought about it, and said, “Santa will deliver them on his sleigh.”
Juan smiled. “Oh good,” he said. “I’m glad you know how it works.”
---
Later that evening Ricardo was lying Mark’s settee with a cup of tea. He was still smiling at Mark, hadn’t stopped all day. Mark put his own tea on the table and lifted Ricardo’s legs so that he could sit down. He picked up his tea, then put it down again and picked up the discarded elf hat instead. Sprawling across Ricardo, Mark tugged it down onto Ricardo's head. Ricardo laughed.
“You made a very nice reindeer,” Mark said.
Ricardo touched a hand to his hat. “Are you saying this doesn’t suit me?”
“Well I’m not sure it quite suits your hair.”
“Rafa had to adjust my antlers earlier to fit through my hair. I’m just not cut out for Christmas.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “You look like you’re doing just fine to me,” he said, and Ricardo smiled at him. Mark picked up his tea, resting it on Ricardo’s legs and settling into the settee.
“Merry Christmas,” Ricardo said, with his hat balanced precariously on his hair, and Mark smiled back.
Under the Mistletoe
G
~2000
For ladytelemachus: a little insight into why David Silva decided that the job in Manchester was for him.
On Monday morning Joe announced himself with a messenger bag sent skidding across David’s desk and a cheerful, “Whoops!”
David was snatching his coffee cup out of the way when Joe followed this up with a sprawling hug that had David ducking away from him.
“What are you so happy for?”
Joe retrieved his bag and threw himself down at his desk. He turned his computer on and swivelled his chair to face Silva. “Two weeks to go,” he sang, throwing his arms in the air.
“Do you know how much there is to do in two weeks?”
“Oh you,” Joe said, and David was just glad to be beyond cheek-pinching distance. His team, if he could call them that, were the least respectful team he had ever worked with and he frequently couldn’t remember why he had agreed to this.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joe continued, blithely without care.
“And where is Adam?”
Joe checked his screen for signs of life. “When have you ever know Adam to show up before half nine,” he said. “What’s up with you this morning?” Then, his computer still stubbornly pulsing its Windows symbol, he stood up and said, “Coffee?”
David frowned.
---
Mid-morning, David returned from his weekly meeting with the CIO to find Adam and Joe huddled around James’ computer. He cleared his throat, and Adam at least took a moment to look a little sheepish. Joe waved him over.
“David, you’re a well-dressed man, should James go for dinner jacket or tux for the party?”
David supposed this sort of tied into good management. The three of them were looking at the Austin Reed site and David hovered on the edge.
“What is James doing?”
“The Christmas party innit,” Joe said, nudging David. David scowled at him absent-mindedly.
“Oh,” he said. “Well I think there will be a dress code, no?”
“What are you wearing?” Adam looked up at him from where he was lounging across the back of James’ chair.
“To - I don’t have a Christmas party,” David said. “You know I am self-employed?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I mean to ours.”
David wandered away to his desk. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I am not invited?”
Joe’s jaw dropped, Adam laughed, and James gave David a pitying look. David regarded them all cautiously and placed his notepad and phone back on his desk.
“You’re kidding, right?”
David shrugged.
“Mate,” Joe said, “Of course you’re invited. And your partner or whatever. The more the merrier. Can’t have a party without our intrepid leader, can we?”
---
Adam’s desk sat opposite David’s, an arrangement that David had thought might guilt Adam into working a little harder, but in fact only resulted in David being painfully aware of the times when Adam wasn’t working and getting duly distracted himself.
Adam hadn’t typed anything for a good twenty minutes. Occasionally he scrolled down whatever was on his screen, the little wheel on his mouse clicking as he went. His chin was propped up on his hand like if you had swiped out his arm from under him he would have collapsed to the floor entirely. And every few minutes, he glanced across at David.
It was disconcerting, and David couldn’t take it any longer.
“Is something wrong?”
Adam looked surprised, like David was the one being weird. “What? No.”
He went back to his screen, and then went back to David and asked, casually, “So, are you coming?”
David blinked at him and Adam clarified, “To the party?”
“Oh.” David was not, as it happened, planning on it. He had hoped that if he just stayed quiet about it then no one would say anything until the day of the party, at which point it would be too late. It wasn’t that David didn’t like parties now and then, he just didn’t like work parties. Corporate affairs where he was forced to eat dubious canapés and make awkward small-talk. He would inevitably have one too many glasses of wine and then have to work through a hangover the next day, wondering if he had said anything foolish to anyone important, and all in all it just wasn’t worth it.
“Well,” he said, “I am not sure-”
Adam visibly drooped.
“Come on David,” he said. “It’ll be fun. We’ll have a drink, have a dance. You can let your hair down. Everyone’s going.”
David stared determinedly at his keyboard.
“Well it is just-”
He could feel Adam staring at him. Then,
“Joe, David says he’s not coming to the party.”
David sighed.
---
Adam badgered him on Tuesday and again on Wednesday about what he was wearing. David did not have a tux in Manchester, so Wednesday evening he called Juan.
“Yeah no problem,” Juan said when David asked him to go to his flat, retrieve his tux and courier it to Manchester. “How’s it going up there?”
“Fine,” David said, then left a long pause.
“Yes it sounds it,” Juan said, and he laughed.
“I just don’t think I’m cut out to lead a team,” David said. “There’s a reason I’m self-employed, you know.”
“What’s the problem?”
David sighed. “No, there’s no problem. It’s just - I just feel like there’s so much more potential, but -
“No," he said. "Forget it. Thank you for doing that for me.”
“Even though you wanted me to say no so you had an excuse for not going?”
David laughed. “Yes, even then.”
---
Two glasses in and David felt a little blurry already. He wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and working late to review the weekly report before he was too hungover on Friday he had skipped supper as well.
“Weird possibly-fish canapé thingy?”
Joe stuck a small bit of unidentifiable pastry under David’s nose and David shied away, straight into Adam who had just arrived with more wine. "Woah," Joe said, and, "Watch it," Adam cried. David considered leaving. Then Adam deposited one glass in Joe's waiting hand, another on the ledge by David's arm, and took a swig from the third. His free hand came to rest lightly on David's back before he stepped around him and joined the conversation.
"Adam," Joe said, "Maybe you would care to try some of this-"
"No thanks," Adam said. "Looks a bit rank."
David smiled into his glass.
There was a half-hearted speech from the CEO and then a livelier one from the COO, and David drank two more glasses from the free bar. The room was starting to take on a pleasant glow, or perhaps that was the lights dimming as people moved towards the dancefloor.
David took a few determined steps to the seating area.
"Have a dance," Joe cried at him, and in the middle of David's firm declining Joe's girlfriend appeared, blissfully, to remove him from arm-grabbing distance. David sank gratefully onto an abandoned chair.
"Not a dancer then?"
Adam deposited himself onto the chair next to David.
"Ah, no," David said. "Joe's girlfriend, she is the best for me."
Adam laughed, and they took a moment to watch Vinnie, the HR manager, throwing his arms in the air to Mariah.
"So," Adam said.
David looked at him.
"You ah -" he took a drink. "Didn't want to bring anyone?"
David shook his head at his wine glass and glanced up at Adam. "No, too embarrassing, you know? For me, to show my friends at work to someone."
"What!" Adam gaped at David, who gave up on the act straight away and laughed at Adam.
"You cheeky fucker," Adam said. "That's going on my manager review that is."
David kept laughing, and Adam elbowed him.
"Sorry," David said. "No, I am joking, I don't have someone to bring."
"Oh." Adam glanced away. "Right."
"And you?"
"Erm, no." He fiddled with his cuffs and his glass. "No, you know." He glanced up at David, smiling a little. "So busy with work and that."
David laughed. "Ha, okay, and I must work you less, no?"
"Well." Adam grinned, shrugged at him. Then Joe appeared in front of them.
"Enough," he said, "You losers. You are dancing."
---
David didn't dance. Joe danced, and Adam got caught up in his enthusiasm. Joe's girlfriend danced rock and roll with their CEO. Even James started a short-lived but strangely successful dance-off with Joe's friend Gaz.
David stood at the side, halfway behind a pillar, and mourned his wine glass which sat waiting for him back at their table. He was congratulating himself on a task well done when someone shouted his name and bounded into view.
Sergio, the guileless and charming receptionist who flirted with David every morning when he walked past the front desk, held his hand to David and, with a wide smile, said, "Dance with me."
Which was how David found himself in the middle of the dancefloor, waving his arms to Rihanna and feeling hugely outdone by Sergio's hips.
"You have a good rhythm," Sergio said, shouting into David's ear. David looked over his shoulder and hoped desperately for Joe not to turn around. As if on cue, Joe twirled; he caught sight of David, and his face lit up.
“David!” he cried, and half the dancefloor looked over.
Sergio laughed. “No way,” he said, “I got him on the dancefloor, wait your turn.”
David squinted at him, and Sergio smiled.
“Oi oi,” Joe said, looming over them and winking disconcertingly. Adam hovered behind him, frowning slightly, and David felt rather in over his head.
“I think,” he said, “I think Joe would maybe like a dance. I am just going-” and he gestured over his shoulder in what he hoped was an assertive manner.
In the quiet of the bathroom, and under the unforgiving mirror lights, it occurred to David that perhaps his night had reached its rightful conclusion.
The attendant was fetching his coat when Adam showed up.
“Alright,” Adam said when David looked at him.
“Oh,” David said. “I am - it is late. You are going home also?”
Adam agreed, after a pause, and gave his coat ticket to the attendant.
“Okay,” David said, outside in the cold night. “Well. I am going that way.”
Adam nodded. “I’m that way,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction. He paused on the step beside David, lingering, and David waited, trying not to shiver.
“You looked good,” Adam said suddenly. “Dancing, I mean.” He laughed, nervously. “You could have shown Joe a thing or too.”
David ducked his head and laughed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Nah, you did.”
David looked at Adam, who was staring straight ahead. He leaned into Adam a little, deliberately, and Adam gave him a surprised smile.
“Thanks,” David said, and Adam smiled wider.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Okay I am cold.” David rubbed his arms a little. “But - I will see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Adam said again. “Okay. Yeah.”
David nodded and smiled. “Okay, bye Adam.”
“Bye David.”
David pulled his coat more firmly around himself and turned away, smiling. When he reached the end of the street, he turned around to see Adam still standing there. He raised a hand in a wave, and Adam returned it.