Chapter Text
“If this meeting lasts more than an hour, I’m killing everyone here, including myself,” Cassius said.
“You can’t do that. Who will suffer through Cicero bitching about who got the newest software if you’re gone?” Brutus replied, pressing the button to call the elevator.
There was a beat as they waited for the elevator.
Cassius pressed the button for the fourth floor. “Did you actually catch what this is even about? I don’t think I ever read the emails all the way through.”
“I skimmed it, something or other about the budget, maybe.”
“So you didn’t get any further than I did,” Cassius said as they walked down the hallway to the meeting room.
“No one reads those. They see the subject line and what time it’s at and don’t read on.”
“How much do you want to bet that Cicero reads the whole email every time?”
“Nothing, because I’d lose,” Brutus said, opening the door for Cassius.
The meeting turned out to be a discussion of the monthly budget, which almost no one genuinely paid attention to. Caesar had, presumably, more important things to deal with, so Antony was in charge of explaining the expenses. The presentation looked like it was thrown together a few minutes beforehand, with half the slides having a poorly chosen clip-art image on them. “This month we need to cascade memos about our interactive administrative concepts,” he said.
He doesn’t know what any of this means, does he? Cassius thought to himself. By far the most exciting part of the meeting was finding out that the Asset Management department was getting a new copy machine, after the last one had lit on fire after being around for what seemed like since the company started.
“Are you holding us here for any other purpose, or can we get back to work?” Casca asked.
“No, I guess that’s it. I don’t need anything else from you. I need those memos by Wednesday, though.” Antony finally told them, at least 10 minutes after he had finished his presentation.
Brutus and Cassius ran into Trebonius, the manager for the research division, on their way back to the elevator. “Do you think Caesar had to give the okay on Antony’s shitty slides, or do you think he came up with those without any input?” he asked.
“There’s no way he would go along with a presentation that looked like it was made by a third grader,” Cassius replied.
“I’m fairly sure that those slides did not get made before 9 am this morning, so even if Caesar wanted to go over them, I doubt he ever got to see them,” Brutus added. “What floor are you on again?”
“I’ve worked here for at least three years. I’m insulted that you don’t know what floor I work on.”
“You transferred departments a few months ago and you know how I am with change.”
“Third.”
Back on their own floor, they walked to their desks. “What’s on your agenda for the day?” Cassius asked as he pulled out his chair.
“Continuing to agonize over how to calculate percentages in Google sheets, pretty much. Ever since we switched from Excel, I haven’t been able to figure it out. I’ve been doing the math with a hand-held calculator for the past month,” Brutus said.
“You just gave up?”
“I tried to look at a tutorial but I couldn’t get it to work properly so, yeah, I gave up.”
Cassius got out of his chair and came to stand over Brutus’s shoulder at his desk, looking down at his computer. “Pull it up. I’ll show you how to do it.”
Brutus opened his latest spreadsheet, something to do with a financial report. He bent down to be at eye level with the computer, pointing at the screen, his shoulders now level with Brutus’s. The position felt disconcertingly intimate. He pointed at the screen, saying, “you’ve filled out columns A through C, so go to column D and type in ‘=C2/B2.’ Now open the menu, go to format, then number, then percent, and the percentage view should show up.”
“That was a lot simpler than I had thought it was,” Brutus said, looking up and meeting Cassius’s eyes. “What would I do without you?”
The statement threw Cassius off more than it should have, and he couldn’t come up with a quick reply. Instead, he just turned and sat back down at his own desk. He turned his computer on and opened his selling documents file. God, he was unorganized. He reached into one of his drawers to find a sticky note. “Organize desktop files.”
Brutus was going through and calculating the percentages he had been avoiding. The office was quiet. Usually, there were more than a few conversations all happening at once, and gossip floated around the floor like a feather on the wind, but today it seemed subdued. He wondered what Porcia was doing. Probably making phone calls or still getting ready, since she could wake up whenever she wanted. She had always hated him working here. She thought it was stuffy and far too white collar, but Brutus enjoyed the monotony and without it, he wouldn’t have met Cassius, which in his mind made the rest of his coworkers, a significant number of whom he harbored some enmity towards, more than bearable.
Later, Decimus came into the office, pushing his sunglasses onto his head. “Did they tell you all about the party they’re having, or did that information come to me through an inside source?”
“Antony was in charge of the meeting this morning, so I doubt it’s a secret. He probably just failed to mention it,” Cassius said, rolling his chair out to face Decimus.
“I wouldn’t know, missed it ‘cause of a dentist appointment this morning,” he said, gesturing to his teeth.
“They haven’t sent an email about it, so you’re probably one of the first to know,” Brutus said, spinning around to look at them.
“The secretary in the main lobby told me, and I trust her intel.”
“She probably would know. She talks to people from all over the building,” Cassius said.
“We’ll all be on the edge of our seats waiting for more information,” Brutus said.
Decimus made a nondescript hand gesture and made his way to his desk.
Cassius rolled his chair over to Brutus’s side of the table and rested his head in his hands. “Are you doing anything important?”
“Not particularly; I would ask if you were, but you’re visiting with me, so I don’t think you are.”
“Do you want to go to the break-room and get coffee with me?” he asked.
“Sure.”
They walked down the hallway to the room where the Keurig machine was kept. Cassius brought the mug from his desk. Brutus put in the cups and turned the machine on. There was a moment where they both just stared at each other, not wanting to say anything to break the silence. Cassius had known since he met Brutus that he was hopelessly in love with him, but he felt like there was some distance between them he couldn’t place. Brutus was married, and from all signs, incredibly in love with his wife. His unavailability kept Cassius from doing something rash. So they did this - stare at each other’s lips for the minute it takes for the coffee machine to run.
Brutus picked up his cup from the machine and moved out of the way, leaning on the doorframe as he waited for Cassius to make his inhumanly large cup of coffee. He would be content to watch him like this, spending the most banal parts of his days by his side. He felt something more than a standard work friendship for Cassius, more than a regular friendship as well. He couldn’t put a name to it, but he wanted to be close to him, to make coffee with him, and to sit side by side while he told him how to use the software that he should’ve learned to navigate months ago.
“You all ready to go, or do you want to stay here for a few more minutes?” He asked, breaking Brutus out of his thoughts.
“I don't have anything too pressing to get back to, I can afford to wait a while. Unless you need to go back, then I’ll go with you.”
“I’d like to stay. Any excuse to avoid sending more emails - plus, you have to walk down this hallway to get to the elevator, so you can catch all the gossip if you wait long enough.”
“You’re more invested in office politics than I am, so that’s new information to me. I’ll remember to avoid saying anything sensitive as I’m walking down this hallway next time,” Brutus said, stirring sugar into his coffee.
“- He only got that promotion because he’s got a pretty face,” someone walking by said.
Cassius looked at Brutus as if to say “I told you so.” After the person in the hallway had moved on and they heard the elevator ding, he said, “See? All the good scandals!” he said.
Brutus just rolled his eyes, poorly hiding his affection. They finished their coffees and made their way back to their desks. The rest of the day was quiet, filled with more mindless number crunching and more vague fervent gazes at each other across the desk.