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“Poppy, I need you.”
Those were definitely not the words Poppy expected to hear out of Brad’s mouth when he stormed into her office that morning. She’d just sent her little coding team back to the den, after giving what she hoped was a pretty inspiring speech about how it definitely wasn’t selling out to make this battle royale mode and it was just a way to get into Montreal’s good graces and how they were definitely gonna be able to do whatever they wanted once they’d finished this soulless cash gr—this exciting new addition to the game. She’d been looking forward to a little bit of alone-time, really. Being an inspiring genius could be tiring. But no, now she had this to deal with.
“Brad, I’m already doing battle royale, I’m not coding another one of your shitty lootboxes—” she began, but Brad started hurriedly hushing her, closing the door behind him. He looked… nervous? She wasn’t sure, she’d never seen him like this.
“This isn’t about the game,” Brad hissed, “it’s—ugh, it’s personal. I need someone to just… be a bitch to me for a second, and you’re the bitchiest person I know, aside from Jo, and I cannot tell Jo, that would be a nightmare.”
Poppy frowned. Personal? Brad Bakshi didn’t do personal. She barely knew anything about him. He could have a wife and five kids for all she knew about his personal life. This was weird. And possibly a trap of some kind.
“Uh, okay. What’s up?”
“This is… okay,” he began, pacing around the room. “This is fucking embarrassing and if you tell anyone I will make your life a living nightmare, but I need to talk about it to someone or I’m gonna jump off a fucking cliff.”
“Right…”
“It’s just—” He sighed, rubbing his eyes, still pacing frantically. “I need you to talk me out of this thing, because it’s stupid and disgusting and you’re gonna laugh, and you should, because maybe then I’ll come to my senses, so I need you to be a bitch, okay? No mercy. I don’t deserve it.”
“Okay,” Poppy said, holding out her hands like Brad was a wild animal she was trying to calm down, “maybe you should… sit down and just—just tell me what’s going on, alright?”
He stopped pacing, sighed again, closed his eyes. Centered himself. Took a deep breath. Then, with all the gravity of someone telling their loved one they have terminal cancer, he said:
“I want to fuck David.”
There was a beat in which Poppy and Brad just stared at each other.
“...what?”
“I’m not saying it again.”
“You want to f—David? As in, our David? David David?”
“Yes, David David! What other David could I possibly mean!”
“I don’t know!” Poppy said. “There’s lots of people working here, for all I know there’s a David in Accounting.”
“I wish it was David from Accounting,” Brad mumbled, “at least he’s just boring, not boring and embarrassing.”
“Okay, but...” She rubbed her forehead, trying to wrap her mind around this. Not a wife and five kids, then. Actually, this was far weirder than that would have been. “So when you say you want to fuck him—”
“You don’t have to say the word.”
“...okay, you want to sleep with him—”
“Ugh, never mind, that sounds worse.”
“But why? ”
“Look, I… I have a tragic addiction to dads,” Brad said.
Poppy stared at him for a moment. “Every sentence you say is weirder than the previous one.”
“It’s not weird, it’s extremely common!” Brad sputtered, like she’d genuinely offended him. “I’m just really into the whole middle-aged suburban dad thing, you know? And not literal dads, in fact, preferably not actual dads. Just give me a greying dude who wears lots of flannel and has too many expensive barbecue tools, and I’m there. And I do not want to unpack that,” he said, pointing a warning finger at Poppy when she opened her mouth.
“I wasn’t going to. I don’t want to unpack anything with you. I don’t like you, remember? But you’re the one who said it was tragic.”
“It’s tragic because David also happens to fit that description.”
“He has on more than one occasion shown me pictures of his expensive barbecue tools, that is true,” Poppy admitted. She was fairly sure David didn’t even barbecue that often, since that was an activity that required friends, and the image of him roasting sausages and burgers for himself was too sad to even contemplate.
“Exactly. Not to mention that since I share an office with him, I’m the main person he subjects all his dad-isms to. It’s like… years and years of bad jokes and endless talks about cars or cycling or a new pair of fucking socks he bought has worn me down, and now I…”
“Now you want to fuck him.”
“Stop saying the word! ” he groaned, flopping down onto Poppy’s blanket-covered chair and burying his head in his hands in despair.
“Okay, well…” She sighed, pulling up another chair and sitting down next to him. “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”
He looked up at her. “Just tell me I’m insane. Call me a pathetic loser. Laugh at me.”
The pleading expression on his face was so new to her that he almost looked like an entirely different person altogether. She should have laughed, he was right. It was ridiculous. If anyone else had told her that Brad—soulless, money-hungry, sociopathic Brad—had a crush on David ‘once cried for half an hour straight after a bad phone call with Montreal’ Brittlesbee, she would have laughed her ass off. It was objectively funny.
And yet…
“Is it… that bad?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What is this, reverse psychology?”
“No,” Poppy said slowly, very carefully choosing her next words, “it’s just… out of all of us, he does seem to be the person you get along with the most.”
He gave her a blank stare.
“And David is… an alright guy, all things considered,” she continued.
“All things considered? Poppy, the man got kicked out of his own house by his ex-wife. He failed so hard at standing up for his employees that he got instantly fired. He’s a soy boy beta cuck, you said it yourself.”
“Sure,” Poppy said hurriedly, “I’m not denying that he’s a deeply sad, miserable little man. But he’s nice! He, like… has a good heart. Mostly. Some ingrained sexism, probably, but which man of his age doesn’t have that, y’know.”
“Poppy, none of that stuff is relevant,” Brad said, sitting up straighter, “the point is that I am miles out of his league and should never waste even one nanosecond thinking about fucking him, yet here I am, thinking about fucking him. And I need to stop doing that. So someone needs to smack some sense into me. Preferably right now.” He leaned in, grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her closer (her own fault for sitting on a chair with wheels, really). “Look at me, Poppy,” he said, waving one hand in front of his own face. “Look at this. Look at my hair, my cheekbones, my immaculate sense of fashion—”
“You literally just have the one outfit.”
He shook her shoulders. “Look at how hot I am, Poppy.”
“I don’t… I’m not the best judge of that, to be honest,” she said, but Brad rolled his eyes.
“Pop, you can’t get out of this one just because you’re a lesbian. I am objectively hot. And David is objectively deeply average. You know how little you have to care about your looks to look that average when you’re rich? I bet he doesn’t even have a skincare routine. He looks middle class. I cannot fuck someone who looks that average.”
“Okay!” Poppy said, pushing Brad’s hands off her shoulders. “Sounds like you’ve figured it out, then.”
“But I still want to fuck him.”
“Well, then—then fuck him! Y’know, I know a thing or two about being into someone you can’t stand, and sometimes it’s better to just… get it out of your system.”
Brad looked at her for a few seconds, then said, “Oh. Michelle?”
“Wh—how did you—I never said—” Poppy stammered, but Brad just scoffed.
“Pop, you don’t have a social life outside this office, and Michelle is the only other woman you see on a regular basis aside from Jo, and I know you didn’t fuck Jo.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Fucking your employee, though. Bit dicey.”
“That’s… well… fucking your boss is dicey too. And Michelle doesn’t work here anymore, anyway,” she mumbled.
“Cold Alliance?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, makes sense. But David is hardly my boss. He’s just a nuisance, most of the time.”
“Alright!” Poppy said, throwing her hands up in despair. “Then go fuck him! I don’t care either way.”
“Ugh, you’re useless,” Brad groaned, slumping back into his chair and covering himself with one of the blankets. A deep sigh came from the Brad-shaped lump. “Maybe you’re right. But he’s probably straight, anyway.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Poppy said, smirking a little. “He had a sex dream about Ian.”
Brad slipped the blanket off his face to peek at her, a little skeptical. “Really?”
“Yeah. He said it was just a power thing, but I have my doubts.” She did not elaborate as to why exactly she had those doubts. She didn’t particularly want to spend much time thinking about that dream she’d had. The one David wanted to know a suspicious amount of details about.
“Hm,” Brad mumbled. “Well, I guess I’d find out pretty quickly if I try to seduce him, anyway.” He pulled a face. “God. Can’t believe I said that. Maybe it’d be easier if I just asked him straight-up if he wants to have sex. But he has this girlfriend now, so I probably have to be a bit more subtle about it.”
Poppy raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, he has a girlfriend? ”
“Oh, yeah. It’s my own fault, really, I got him the date.”
Poppy’s eyebrows rose higher. “You got him a date? Why?”
He looked a little flustered at that, eyes darting back and forth. “Well—I was just—I thought it would be an interesting challenge.”
“A challenge.”
“Yeah. And it was. I had to redo his whole dating profile just to get him that one date. Took me like a whole night.”
Poppy’s eyebrows were almost at her hairline at this point. “You spent a whole night. Redoing David’s dating profile.”
He stared at her. She could practically see the gears rattling around and clicking into place before her eyes. A look of horror came over him.
“Brad,” she said gently, though she couldn’t keep the grin off her face, “do you think that maybe, possibly, you want to do a little bit more with David than just fuck him?”
He jumped out of the chair like it had shocked him, an actual, honest to god blush creeping up his cheeks.
“No. Fuck you.”
“I’m just saying,” Poppy said, barely pretending not to be extremely amused by this. “It just seems like a lot of effort to go through for someone else. Seems like maybe you like him—”
“Fuck off, I do not like anyone, that’s—that is disgusting. I just want to bang him. It’s purely physical.”
“Hm, seems like all this time you have been describing personality traits that you’re attracted to, though.”
“No. No, it’s—it’s like, a vibe, an aesthetic—”
“Think about it, Brad. Would you have willingly shared an office with anyone for the last couple of years if you didn’t like them at least a little bit? You really wanna tell me you couldn’t have manipulated your way into a private office?”
He didn’t even have an answer anymore, just opened and closed his mouth in outrage. She leaned back in her chair with a self-satisfied smirk. This was great. This was a great turn of events. She’d rendered Brad Bakshi speechless. This was one for the history books.
“Hey, you wanted me to laugh at you,” she pointed out, after a few more moments of horrified silence from Brad. He stared at her. She was pretty sure she’d seen this type of look in photos of shell-shocked World War II soldiers.
“I didn’t want you to… to burden me with this… you can’t just…” He ran his hands through his hair. She was actually starting to feel a little sorry for him. She sighed. Goddamn empathy.
“Listen, if it’s any consolation, David is the one person in this office who actually likes you—well, the one person who isn’t also a raging psychopath, anyway,” Poppy said. “And he’s pretty desperate, I’m sure he’d sleep with you at the drop of a hat—although, if he has a girlfriend…”
“The girlfriend’s not an obstacle,” Brad said, voice still a little shaky.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That sounds like you’re gonna kill her.”
“Look, whatever, who cares. It doesn’t matter. I don’t like him. It’s just—just a physical… just a…” He trailed off, staring into the distance. Man. She’d actually broken him. An honour previously only held by that little shit LOL_Trevor and, if she’d understood David’s retelling of it, someone buying a ludicrously expensive in-game weapon. She wasn’t sure if she should feel proud or ashamed. She definitely leaned more towards proud. He was still an asshole. If anything, she felt sorry for David. Sure, Brad was out of his league physically, but having a vulture like that crush on you… probably wasn’t going to go anywhere good.
Still, not her problem.
“Well,” she said, getting up from her own chair, “glad I could help. Good luck fucking him, or dating him, whatever ends up happening. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the game too much, I can’t say I really care.” She gave him a reassuring little pat on the shoulder.
“Right,” he mumbled, his mind clearly still on some other plane of existence. “Yeah. Okay.” He made to walk out of her office, but turned around at the door.
“Hey, Poppy?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck you.”
She smirked. “You’re welcome.”
*
She didn’t speak to Brad again until their next meeting on Monday. It had been a pretty standard meeting, with them going over battle royale and which types of monetization they were going to implement (all of them), and Ian staring daggers at Poppy whenever he disagreed with something she said (all of it). As the meeting dragged to an end, the conversation started to dissolve into the usual smalltalk.
She’d kept an eye on Brad throughout the meeting. She was sure that to anyone else he seemed his normal, asshole self, but she couldn’t help but notice that he was a bit more fidgety, that his eyes kept flicking to David, that he laughed a little too loud at David’s jokes and then immediately caught himself laughing too loud at the jokes, his face contorting in a mixture of embarrassment and disgust. There was an air of pent-up frustration around him. David was oblivious to all this, of course, and Ian was far too busy being mad at Poppy to pay attention to anyone else.
When David started to talk about the Tour de France, it was their signal to pack up their stuff. As Poppy jotted down some final notes in her notebook, however, she noticed that Brad was not moving, just stared at David, transfixed.
“...there’s a lot of stages that end downhill this year, so I put Roglic in my team, he’s good at that,” David rambled to no one in particular. “Plus, he did really well in Paris-Nice, so he’s gotta be worth a good few points—I mean, he ended up not winning, but that was because he fell twice in the final stage, if you can believe it, just some real bad luck there…” His voice faltered as he turned to look at Brad and finally noticed the other man’s intense stare. “So that’s… that was sad…” he muttered. “You, ah—you okay there, Bradley?”
Poppy had the distinct feeling she was about to witness some kind of trainwreck.
“David,” Brad said, very carefully enunciating every syllable, “if you keep talking about cycling, I am going to kiss you square on the lips.”
Ian, who’d already had his hand on the door handle, turned around and mouthed, “What the fuck?” at Poppy, who, for her part, wanted to both bolt out of the room and record all of this so she could use it as a bargaining chip against Brad in the future.
There was a long, heavy pause. David looked like he had stopped breathing. Brad was leaning towards him slightly, his whole body tense, like a cat ready to pounce. Then, finally, David said:
“There’s this game called Pro Cycling Manager—”
The rest of his sentence was cut off by Brad launching himself at him, grabbing David’s face with both his hands and kissing him like this was a Nicholas Sparks movie and David was his long-lost lover who had just returned from the war.
This was Poppy’s cue to hurriedly grab all her stuff and sprint out of the room, dragging a dumb-struck Ian with her, closing the door behind them like it wasn’t made of glass. Speaking of which, every other employee in the bullpen had stopped their work to witness their bosses make out furiously. She could see Jo standing at the back, horrified look on her face.
“Well,” she said after a long moment of bewildered silence, “Carol’s not gonna be happy about this.”