#thank you to everyone who left kind comments on pt 3 🥹 reading them brings me so much happiness

[suddencolds]

Fool Me Twice [4/?]

After more than a month, I'm back with this update which is... not extremely long, but I figured I would post it before I lose confidence :')

Part 4 ft. (the aftermaths of) fake dating, a cold, and an office conversation

You can read part 1 [here]! (No additional context is needed aside from the previous 3 parts.)

—

Work resumes on the 3rd. Yves thinks of all the ways he might thank Vincent for all the trouble—a late New Year’s gift? (But he doesn’t know what Vincent would like, except presumably useful things, but if they’re useful, shouldn’t Vincent have them already?) An invitation to dinner at some nice restaurant? (But what if Vincent sees it as another inconvenient proposition—as more time outside of work which he’ll be obligated to spend with someone he doesn’t even know that well?) A gift card to a nice restaurant? (But would that not come across wrong—presumptuous at best, condescending at worst?)

Normally, Yves would ask Margot—ever the voice of reason—for advice, but it occurs to him, now, that he won’t be able to consult any of his college friends about this if he intends to keep up the lie.

And there’s that, too. If he intends on going to any future events that Margot—or any of his other college friends, at that—will host, he’ll have to tell them that he and Vincent have broken up since (which will only serve to prove Erika’s point that Yves isn’t everything he’s made himself out to be—at least, when it comes to relationships), or think of some sort of way to excuse Vincent’s continued absences.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that asking any more of Vincent than he’s already asked is entirely out of the question.

Yves drives himself to work on Tuesday morning, gets to his office earlier than most, says hi to Cara and Laurent, and gets to work. It’s easy enough to settle into work again, to a 10am meeting with the team and another couple calls with clients, to all the paperwork and data analysis he’d for himself before the winter holidays.

Vincent usually gets to work early—he’s always there when Yves gets to the office—and stays late. He’s usually at the break room at 10:15, unless he has a meeting of some sort, for his usual morning coffee. He works on the same floor, but his cubicle is far enough away that Yves can’t see him from where he sits. 

Yves doesn’t look for him. Better to catch him in the morning in the break room or at lunch in the company cafeteria, Yves thinks, as to not risk interrupting him in the middle of something important.

But Vincent—despite showing up to a morning conference with the team—is surprisingly absent from the break room at 10:15. And then Yves ends up working with Cara on an upcoming presentation until 1, and when he gets to the cafeteria, Vincent isn’t there, either.

It’s unfortunate timing, or perhaps Vincent is just unusually busy. Yves knows he does a lot of work behind the scenes, from the few times he’s asked him what he was working on and gotten an intimidating list of projects in response. When he passes Vincent’s desk in the early afternoon—more precisely, when he decides to take the long way to the break room—he finds Vincent speaking with Angelie, one of the new hires, their heads ducked together over the harsh glow of Angelie’s laptop screen. He watches as Vincent gestures to something on the screen and says something too quiet to make out from this distance, and Angelie nods, jotting something down onto a notepad she’s holding.

How formal, Yves thinks. It isn’t long ago that he was in her shoes, new and intimidated by the formality of the workplace, asking Vincent for help and tabling everything he thought might be of note.

He doesn’t think much of it—only that of course Vincent is busy; Angelie is right to think that Vincent has the kind of expertise that will really be useful to her, and the patience to walk her through it with a level of thoroughness Yves is frequently impressed by, or else she’s just gotten very lucky.

The afternoon passes quickly enough. All of a sudden, it’s 5, which is around the time when Yves usually leaves, and he still hasn’t spoken a word to Vincent all day.

Against better judgment, he takes his briefcase with him, heads toward the sector of the building that Vincent works in. Tells himself it’s just on the way to the back door exit. Tells himself a short exchange wouldn’t hurt—would it really be so wrong to invite Vincent out to dinner, or at the very least, to offer him the thank you he so unquestionably deserves?

He half expects Vincent to be gone already, considering that he’s probably been here since 7:30. But when he gets there, Vincent is at his desk, as usual, cross-checking several documents he’s printed out.

“Hard at work, as always,” Yves says, stopping just short of his cubicle.

“Yves,” Vincent says, though he doesn’t offer any further note of acknowledgment. He looks tired, Yves realizes, from the slight tension to his posture, the way he blinks hard behind his glasses, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. But of course he’s tired—he’s been here for almost ten hours already.

Yves waits for him to finish what he’s doing—to look away from the monitor screen, even just for a moment—but he doesn’t.

“Are you planning to stay much later?” Yves asks, at last, though he gets the feeling that he should leave.

“Most likely,” Vincent says. “Is there something you need me to look over?”

“No,” Yves says. “But I was wondering—”

“I’m very busy today,” Vincent cuts him off, paging through one of the documents that’s laid out over his desk. “So if it’s not work related, now’s not a good time.”

It’s then that Yves realizes—Vincent must think he’s about to drag him into another one of his fake-relationship arrangements. 

“I don’t need anything from you,” Yves says, faltering. “I’m just—it’s getting late, and you’ve been here all day.”

“Yes,” Vincent says. “Like I said, I’m very busy.” He pauses to highlight a line of numbers, scribble something into the margins. How he can concentrate on his work and the conversation simultaneously, Yves doesn’t know. “If you have work for me, feel free to leave it on my desk, I’ll get to it tonight. Otherwise, I’d appreciate it if we had this conversation later.”

“Noted,” Yves says. He tables the dinner conversation for later, sets his briefcase down on the floor so that it leans up against the wall. “Let me help.”

Vincent frowns, his eyebrows furrowing. “It would take longer for me to explain this to you.”

“You don’t need to explain anything,” Yves says. “I can look over the documents myself.” He takes a step closer, peers down at the papers strewn across Vincent’s desk—earnings reports and expense reports, mostly, and a couple marketing proposals.

Vincent reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “That would require you to know the context.”

“I’ve dealt with a hundred of these in my life. I promise you I know what I’m doing.”

“Then you’ll have to spend more time telling me your findings,” Vincent says. “Better to not split up the work at all.”

“It would still be faster than going through them yourself.” 

“Hardly.”

Perhaps Vincent doesn’t trust Yves to get things done to the standard that he expects, then. Yves thinks he’s worked here long enough to consider himself decently qualified, but they haven’t worked together closely on anything since Yves’s first couple months at Evertech, and so he doesn’t fault Vincent for being wary.

Still, Yves thinks he can be useful here. And maybe there is something selfish to it, too—to wanting to be as useful to Vincent as Vincent had been to him, to wanting to prove that he is capable of helping in the first place, of offering something of value—but even aside from that, he’s worried that if he doesn’t step in, Vincent might be here all night. It doesn’t seem like much of an impossibility, considering who he’s talking to.

“You’ve been here for hours,” Yves tries. “It’s only our first day back.” He looks around—perhaps there’s someone else here that could help, someone who’s worked here longer than Yves, who Vincent trusts. “You don’t have to let me help. But at least hand some of it off to someone you actually trust, or tell Charlene that she’s given you too much work this week, or both.”

“It’s no more work than usual,” Vincent says, with a sigh.

“And yet, you’re planning on staying late.”

Vincent looks up at him, at last, his expression unreadable. “I’m capable of doing my own job, Yves.” His voice is curt, almost snappish. “I really don’t have time to argue with you right now.”

Yves wants to say, of course I know that. Vincent is nothing if not qualified—Yves has never doubted that for a moment. He wants to say, I want to help you regardless.

But that would only be presumptuous. He doesn’t know Vincent that well. Besides, it’s really none of his business—they’re coworkers, not friends. Vincent knows what’s best for himself. The best thing Yves can do right now is to stay out of his way.

“Okay,” Yves says, a little defeated. “Good luck on your work. Make sure you get some sleep.”

There’s no response to that—no acknowledgement that Vincent has heard him at all, even though it’s quiet enough in the room that he must have. Yves turns to get his briefcase. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vincent jerk forward suddenly, his shoulders tensing with a near-silent—

“HhH’Gkt-!”

Yves bites back a reflexive bless you. It’s just one sneeze. It doesn’t have to mean anything. But Vincent sniffles, pressing his knuckles up to the underside of his nose, to stifle another—

“HhH’NgkT-!”His breath hitches again, his eyebrows drawing together as he jerks forward again, with a quiet but painfully forceful, “Hh… hEH’NGXt!”, crushed into his fist.

He sniffles again, reaching across the desk to snag a tissue from the tissue box that, Yves realizes with a jolt, is usually not present on his desk. He sighs quietly—the sort of tired, drawn out exhale that leaves no question about how tired he is—and reaches up with a hand to gingerly massage his temples. The slight grimace that follows is almost certainly indicative of a headache. 

Yves considers asking Vincent how he’s feeling for all of two seconds before he remembers the almost-hostility with which he was just faced. Perhaps it would be better if he pretends to not have heard. Briefcase in hand, he quickens his pace, ducks out of the exit, and heads down the stairs. 

Vincent spent his New Year’s Eve with him, at a party surrounded by strangers—even though Vincent dislikes parties and probably dislikes strangers—he’d put up an immaculate act, played along even through Yves’s slight intoxication, and driven him home—and in turn, Yves has repaid him by... 

God. Yves shouldn’t have asked to kiss him. The guilt settles heavy in his stomach.

Yves really, really owes him.

He heads down several flights of stairs and ducks outside to the parking garage. It’s even colder today than it had been on New Year’s—perhaps indicative of a colder winter to come—and though the parking garage is sealed off, when he’d looked out from the office windows upstairs, it had been starting to snow.

The cafeteria at their workplace is closed for dinner, and it’s a half hour drive home from here through rush hour traffic—maybe a little longer in the snow, and longer still if he stops to get something to eat.

He’s in the process of unlocking the car, setting his briefcase at his feet, and inserting the keys into the ignition when the idea occurs to him.

It’s an irrational idea, probably.

[Part 5]