Chapter 9: Office Fallout
The newsroom buzzed with a specific, frantic energy that felt like its own weather system. The clatter of keyboards was intermittent hail. The low, urgent conversations were a rolling thunder. The smell was stale coffee, toner, and the sweet, greasy scent of takeaway containers from the night before. Matthew slid into his chair, the memory of Brian’s silk sheets and commanding touch clinging to him like a second skin. He felt conspicuously well-rested in a place running on caffeine and anxiety.
“You look like you just got a full eight hours and a massage. It’s offensive.” Liana appeared at the mouth of his cubicle, holding two mugs. She pushed one toward him. It was bitter, institutional coffee. A sacrament.
“I slept,” Matthew admitted, taking the mug.
“In your own bed?” She leaned against the partition, her eyes sharp and amused. She was wearing a vibrant blue dress that seemed to deflect the office’s grey fluorescence.
Matthew took a scalding sip, buying time. The truth felt too big, too fresh. But Liana had a way of pulling confession out of people. It was her superpower. “No.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Do tell. The brooding actor or the chaotic heir?”
He glanced around. Mo’s cubicle was two over, and he could see the back of Mo’s head, bent over a light table, examining slides. He lowered his voice. “Both. Sequentially.”
Liana’s mug halted halfway to her lips. A slow, delighted smile spread across her face. “Matthew Callahan. You messy bitch. I need details. Which one first?”
“Henry. Two nights ago. Then Brian got back from Bangkok yesterday.” He found the words tumbling out in a hushed rush. “Henry was… intense. Like being in a car crash. Brian was… different. Softer. But then he laid down the law. Wants me staying at his place. Told me to end things with Henry.”
“He told you?” Liana whispered, leaning in. “Not asked?”
“It was a very prettily worded command. ‘That has to end. Now.’” Matthew mimicked Brian’s cadence, the quiet force of it.
“And the heir? What’s he saying?”
“He says Brian is possessive and doesn’t like to share. He says I’ll be back.” Matthew rubbed his eyes. “I feel like a contested piece of real estate.”
“You’re a prime waterfront plot with stunning views, darling. Of course they’re fighting over the deeds.” She took a thoughtful sip. “So you’re choosing the actor. The hidden, high-maintenance, closeted option.”
“I’m… trying it on. For two weeks. He’s in town filming.”
“And you get to live in that marble paradise. Not a terrible consolation prize.” She smirked. “Though a gilded cage has bars, sweetie. You can’t be seen with him. Ever. You’ll be his very beautiful secret. How does that feel after being someone’s very public humiliation in New York?”
The question was a needle, precisely aimed. It deflated the fleeting glamour of it all. “It feels familiar in a shitty, recycled way,” he admitted, his voice flat.
From two cubicles over, the sound of a slide sleeve being slapped down onto the light table was sharper than necessary. They both looked. Mo’s broad shoulders were tense. He hadn’t turned around.
Liana’s eyes flicked from Mo’s back to Matthew’s face, her expression shifting from gossipy glee to something more pragmatic. “Well, while you’re navigating your telenovela, some of us have actual work to do. The docks piece. Judy wants a fuller narrative on the Bangladeshi crew foreman, the one with the daughter’s medical bills. Mo’s photos are brutal. Your text needs to match them. Have you written a word?”
Matthew’s gut twisted. He’d glanced at his notes this morning at Brian’s, but his mind had been a fog of sex and ultimatums. “I’m getting to it.”
“Get to it faster. The world does not stop because you’re having explosive sex with Singapore’s most eligible.” She pushed off the partition. “And for god’s sake, be careful. Secrets here have a way of not staying secret. Especially when rich, bored men are involved.”
She walked away, her heels clicking a stern rhythm on the linoleum.
Matthew turned to his screen, pulling up the interview transcripts. The foreman’s name was Rahim. His voice, in the recording, was soft but fractured with a fatigue that had nothing to do with physical labor. “The agent promised fifteen hundred. We see eight. My girl, she needs medicine. Every month. The numbers do not match. The numbers never match.”
He started typing, forcing himself into the words, building sentences around Rahim’s quiet despair. The clicks of his keyboard felt weak against the memory of Brian’s hands, Henry’s laugh.
After twenty minutes, a shadow fell across his desk. Mo stood there, holding a contact sheet. He didn’t smile. He placed the sheet in front of Matthew. It was a series of images from the docks: close-ups of hands scarred by rope burn and rust, a man asleep on a coil of cable, his face carved with exhaustion, the vast, indifferent hull of a container ship looming over it all.
“These are the selects,” Mo said, his voice neutral, professional. “The one of him sleeping next to the ‘Handle With Care’ stencil is the lead. I think.”
“They’re incredible, Mo. Really.” Matthew meant it. The photos had a stark, empathetic gravity that his own prose was struggling to reach.
Mo nodded once, a tight, economical movement. He didn’t leave. He stood, a solid, silent presence. Finally, he spoke, his voice lower, meant only for Matthew. “Liana’s right about the piece. It’s important. Judy is fighting for the column inches.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Mo’s dark eyes held his. There was no malice in them, but a deep, thrumming frustration. “Because it sounds like you’re a little distracted. Focus less on fucking the rich and famous of Singapore, and more on the people who actually built it.”
The words landed like a physical blow, clean and deserved. Matthew flinched. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” Mo’s jaw tightened. “You left New York to get away from a scene that ate you alive. You get here, and within a month you’re wrapped up in another one. Different currency, same game.” He gestured to the contact sheet. “This is real. The foreman’s daughter is real. Brian Pang’s need for a secret boyfriend is a plot point. Henry Lee’s daddy issues are a side quest.”
Heat flooded Matthew’s face. Anger and shame mixed into a toxic brew. “You don’t know anything about my life.”
“I know what you show me,” Mo said, his tone finally cracking, revealing the strain beneath. “And recently, you’re showing me a guy who’s using this city like a buffet, picking and choosing. It’s beneath you.” He paused, running a hand through his hair. “Just… file the story, Matt. Make it good. Be the journalist you’re supposed to be.”
He turned and walked back to his cubicle without another word.
Matthew stared at the contact sheet. The sleeping man’s face swam in front of him. The words “Handle With Care” were stamped right beside his temple. He thought of Brian’s penthouse, a monument to handled care, every detail controlled. He thought of Henry’s chaotic shophouse, where nothing was handled with care at all.
His phone, face-down on the desk, vibrated. A soft, insistent hum. He knew without looking it could be either of them. A demand, a tease, a summons to a world that had nothing to do with rope burns and medical bills.
He left the newsroom while the evening shift was still groaning into life, the harsh fluorescence doing nothing to burn away Mo’s words. A side quest. A plot point. Beneath you. They echoed in the taxi’s silent cabin, mingling with the driver’s talk radio chatter in rapid Mandarin. The city slid past, a glittering lung that expanded and contracted with money, not air. He was returning to a gilded chamber, choosing curated silence over the messy truth of the docks, and the recognition tasted like bile.
He used his key card in the lobby, the deference of the staff now feeling like a judgment. The penthouse was exactly as he’d left it: immaculate, silent, waiting. He poured a whiskey from Brian’s crystal decanter, the burn doing little to warm the cold knot in his chest. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the sailboats, their freedom a taunt. He was handling with care a life that wasn’t his.
The click of the lock was soft, but in the tomb-quiet, it was a gunshot. Matthew didn’t turn. He heard the suitcase drop, the rustle of a jacket being shed. He felt Brian’s presence before he saw his reflection in the dark glass, approaching from behind.
“You’re here,” Brian said, his voice rough from a day of manufactured emotion on set. It wasn’t a greeting. It was a verification.
“I said I would be.” Matthew finally turned.
Brian looked carved from tension. His famous smile was absent, replaced by a stark hunger that stripped away the actor’s polish. He didn’t ask about Matthew’s day. He didn’t speak at all. In three swift strides he closed the distance, his hands framing Matthew’s face, his kiss a claim that was closer to a violation.
It was nothing like the tired reunion of the previous night. This was pure consumption. Brian’s tongue plunged into Matthew’s mouth, a possessive invasion that stole his breath. His hands slid down, gripping Matthew’s ass through his chinos, pulling their bodies together with a force that was almost violent. Matthew could feel the hard line of Brian’s erection, a demanding pressure against his own. A shock of pure, undiluted lust short-circuited his introspection.
“Bed,” Brian growled against his mouth, not a request but a command issued through clenched teeth.
They didn’t make it. Brian shoved him back against the cool glass of the window, the panoramic cityscape sprawling beneath them. He yanked Matthew’s shirt open, buttons pinging against the floor. His mouth was everywhere—biting a trail down his neck, sucking a dark bloom onto his collarbone, laving a nipple until Matthew cried out. This wasn’t lovemaking. It was a branding.
“Turn around,” Brian ordered, his voice guttural. He spun Matthew to face the window, pressing his front against the glass. “Watch the city while I fuck you.”
Brian’s hands were relentless, shoving his trousers and briefs down to his thighs in one rough move. He spat into his palm, the wet sound obscene in the quiet room. He didn’t wait, didn’t prepare him with more than that crude, hurried slickness. He pressed the thick head of his cock against Matthew’s entrance and pushed in with a single, relentless thrust.
“Fuck!” Matthew gasped, his forehead knocking against the glass. The stretch was breathtaking, a white-hot filament of pain that instantly spiraled into deep, shocking pleasure. Brian didn’t pause. He set a brutal, piston-like rhythm, each drive knocking a choked sound from Matthew’s throat. His grip on Matthew’s hips was iron-tight, sure to leave bruises.
“You feel that?” Brian hissed, his breath hot on Matthew’s ear. “That’s mine. You’re so fucking tight around me. Take it. Take all of it.”
The vulgarity, the raw physicality, obliterated everything. Mo’s disappointment, his own guilt, the foreman’s daughter—all were burned away in the furnace of this coupling. Matthew pushed back, meeting each thrust, a wanton surrender to sensation. The cool glass against his cheek, the searing heat filling him, the breathtaking view of a city that couldn’t see him—it coalesced into a sensory overload that tipped him over the edge.
His orgasm tore through him with violent, unexpected force, a convulsive wave that milked Brian deep inside him. He shouted, a raw, unfiltered sound against the window. Brian followed seconds later, a stifled roar buried in Matthew’s shoulder as he pumped his release into him, his body shuddering with the force of it.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their ragged breaths fogging the glass. Brian softened inside him but didn’t pull away, his weight a heavy, comforting anchor. He nuzzled the sweat-damp hair at Matthew’s nape.
“Christ,” Brian panted, his voice wrecked. “I can’t get enough of you. I think about this when I’m saying my lines. I’m having the best sex of my life.”
Matthew, still trembling, still pinned, managed a breathless laugh. “Yeah. Me too.”
And in that spent, vulnerable moment, he almost believed it. The secrecy, the ultimatums, the isolation—this molten, connecting passion felt like a worthy trade. It was a truth written in nerve endings, not logic, and it drowned out the quieter, more complicated truths waiting in the morning light.
The two weeks dissolved into a single, continuous sensation. Sunrise meant the slow peel of Brian’s limbs from his, the shower steam, the silent elevator ride down to the snarling traffic. Daytime was the newsroom’s sterile buzz, the clicks of his keyboard, the weight of Mo’s polite but persistent distance as they finalized the docks piece. Liana’s knowing looks. Judy’s satisfied nod when he filed the final copy, the foreman’s voice centered, clear, human.
Sunset was a taxi ride back to the marina, the city transforming into a necklace of light. The lobby’s chilled hush. The key card’s soft beep. The view.
Nights were Brian.
It was never the same twice. Some nights were slow, exploratory, a languid mapping of skin in the cobalt glow of the infinity pool. Others were fierce and wordless, like that first time against the glass, a conflagration that left them breathless and bruised on the kitchen floor. Brian was an artist in his secrecy, his hunger a shapeshifting thing. Matthew gave himself over to it. His own apartment, with its unpacked boxes and his own scent, became a forgotten idea. He lived in the scent of Brian’s linen, Brian’s soap, the peculiar silence of supreme luxury.
He existed in the space between Brian’s public persona and this private, voracious truth. He saw Brian on a billboard one afternoon, smiling that practiced, benevolent smile for a bank advert. He stared up at it, a hollow feeling in his gut. That smile had never touched the man who’d sobbed, once, into Matthew’s shoulder after a particularly grueling day on set, the pressure a vise Matthew could only clumsily try to loosen.
On the final night, the air was different. A suitcase lay open in the bedroom. Brian was leaving for Shanghai at dawn. They’d shared a bottle of wine, the conversation softer, edged with a melancholy they hadn’t named. Now, they were tangled in the sheets, spent. Matthew’s head was on Brian’s chest, listening to the steady, slowing drum of his heart. Brian’s fingers traced idle patterns on his shoulder.
“This has been… I don’t have the right words for it,” Brian murmured into the dark. His voice was raw, unused for hours. “I haven’t felt like this in years. Maybe ever. It’s been amazing.”
Matthew nodded, his cheek moving against Brian’s skin. “Yeah. It has.”
“I want to keep seeing you. When I get back.” Brian’s hand stilled. “I know the terms aren’t ideal. I know it’s asking a lot.”
“It’s okay,” Matthew said, the reply automatic, a reflex from the two-week bubble. “I understand the terms.”
Brian shifted, tipping Matthew’s chin up so their eyes could meet in the dim light. The vulnerability there was terrifyingly real. “I’m going to be gone for a month. Shanghai. Then maybe Beijing for promotions. It’s… a big project.” He swallowed. “Will you wait for me?”
The question hung in the air between them, dense and heavy. Matthew felt the pull of the body beneath him, the memory of every touch, the solace of being wanted so specifically. The loneliness of his old flat yawned like a chasm. “Yes,” he heard himself say. “I’ll be here.”
Brian kissed him then, deep and grateful, a seal on the promise. They made love again, slower this time, a silent elegy for the temporary paradise they’d built.
Morning was a clinical affair. A car waited downstairs. Brian, already in the crisp armor of a travel suit, looked like the man from the billboard. He cupped Matthew’s face. “A month,” he said, as if convincing himself.
“A month,” Matthew echoed.
He stood in the empty penthouse after the door closed, the silence now absolute and accusing. He showered, dressed in his own clothes from the drawer Brian had emptied for him. The thought, so clear in the night, began to curdle in the grey daylight.
A whole month. Of waiting. For a man who could not text him freely, who would never meet him for a public coffee, whose life in Shanghai would be a mirror of the performance here. He would be waiting in this beautiful, empty box for a key to turn in the lock. The promise of a secret reunion.
He packed his bag, the same one he’d brought two weeks ago. It felt heavier. He took one last look at the panoramic view, the sailboats like specks of freedom. He didn’t belong here. He was a guest in a life that was not, and could never be, his own.
The elevator descended. The lobby staff nodded their familiar, impersonal nods.