Business and Pleasure SLASH, MxM

Chapter 16

The next few days passed by in a blur. Patrick went to work. Got shit done. Avoided Marshall like the plague. Or rather, somehow they ignored and  avoided one another while still managing to get work done at the same time. Not many people noticed the shift at all. And only Michelle had the gall to point it out. She had clearly noticed the dramatic change in her friend's mood and work ethic and cornered him in his office one day to get to the bottom of it.

"You royally fucked up didn't you?"  She stated calmly as soon as she walked in the room. She was careful to lock the door behind her in case of any eavesdropping that might occur.

Patrick didn’t look up from his desktop and kept typing away on his email. "What makes you say that?"  He asked with a small amount of bite in his voice. He didn’t want to be bothered by anyone, clearly. ‘Tough titty.’ Michelle thought. The clacking of keys filled the room as she rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of his desk. Raking a hand through her straightened dark hair she huffed. "Well for one you've been sulking in here for the past couple of days and business is booming. Care to explain? "

Patrick stopped and clenched his fists. With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "I fucked up. Plain and simple. I ruined everything.” He felt his chest  start to hurt and he bit his lip.”I wasn’t thinking. And I...I don't... I'm not sure what to do next."

Michelle nodded slowly. She understood. "You should had to have known this wasn't going to workout in the end. These things never do.” What did Patrick think was going to happen? This wasn’t some love story. It was an office romance, or rather, fling, with a married man who wasn’t even completely comfortable with his own sexuality.“What you should do next is move on."

The blond man stared at his  friend. As badly as he wanted her to be wrong, he knew she was right. Michelle always was right. About everything.  But he badly wanted to know if it it’d be just as hard for Marshall to do so as it would be for him.

 -

"I'm quitting friday." Marshall said. "I applied for a position at Pro-Corp and my cousin Mike told me I'd be a shoe-in for it. " He was leaving Hart-Blackwell. It wasn’t a hard  choice to make. It may have seemed petty but he knew it would be better for himself and his sanity if he got out of there while he could. Pro-Corp was a new upstart company that his cousin Mike worked at. He be doing similar work with slightly higher pay. Hell that was reason enough. He wasn’t so much as running away as he was getting out.  He wasn’t going to let Patrick know, though. He didn’t even want the bastard to. He’d find out the same as everyone else.

Ann just slowly nodded as she twirled soggy spaghetti onto her fork. She flipped through the pages of a magazine with her free hand. Marshall couldn’t even tell if she had been listening or not. He let out an exasperated sigh and put down his own fork. He took of his glasses and ran a hand over his face. “Ann. Look at me, for fuck’s.”

His wife rolled her eyes and glanced up at him. “What, Marshall?” She didn’t want to talk to him. She hadn’t talked to him. For the last two weeks. Ever since he came home that afternoon the ball dropped. There was no big argument. No screaming and shouting. She simply threw her ring at him when he walked in the door and stalked off with her head held down and tears running down her cheeks. And the passing conversation he had about preparing to  leave Hart and Blackwell a few days ago had barely gained a response from her.  But in that time of silence, he was able to do a lot of thinking.

“This isn’t going to work. Not just us not speaking. Us being together, I mean.”

The air tensed up immediately. There was more silence between them. Ann began to tremble and Marshall got up and moved to her side. “ I love you. And I hurt you. And there is literally nothing I can do to fix that. But I’m not going to live in this house and stay with you, knowing that it is looming over us like this.  We’re not going to work out, not like this.”

His wife hiccupped and he could tell she was on the verge of tears. He wrapped his arms around her and was grateful that she didn’t pull away from him. “I’ll take care of you. And our  kid. But I’m not going to live like this anymore. I can’t.”

When she didn’t say anything he moved away from her. He didn’t have anything else to say. He went back to his seat and picked up his plate. He was going to take it into the kitchen and throw it away but she stopped him by speaking.

“Alright.” She said. It was short and clipped. But it was an agreement. He put his plate down and went back over to her, taking her hand and pulling her to his chest. “We’ll both be happier. I promise you that.” It was one thing he was absolutely sure of.

 

Marshall got the call at 11am seven months later when he sat in his apartment with Derek unpacking his boxes. He picked it up just to hear Ann’s mother yelled at him over the phone to take his ass down to Hoover Hospital immediately and that Ann had been in labor for three hours already. That day he almost got into about three accidents before he made it to the hospital. And nearly ran over three nurses getting to Ann’s room.

It was seven hours and many profanities before Jackson Walter Evans was born. At seven pounds and  six ounces, he was the most beautiful child that Marshall had ever seen.

Oh hey.

There's one more chapter after this one, btw.