Archive of Our Own

The eyes that met Conan Knyght’s were pale, shadowed with dark rings, and slightly bloodshot, caged by copper-framed glasses with teal-rusted hinges. After a moment of eye contact, refusing to blink, he looked away from the mirror and turned on the sink, tapping at the gurgling stream of water as it slowly started its long, arduous journey from ice-cold to warm. Another morning before the sun had bothered to rise, another morning with exhaustion weighing down his bones, and another morning where he was a prisoner, shackled to his job. Well. Temporary job.

His spluttering faucet decided to grace him with warmth after a solid five minutes, but by the time he’d wet his facecloth, it had lapsed back into being only a few degrees above freezing, leaving the grey fabric square an unsatisfying half-warm half-cold. It hurt a little when he dragged it across his face. Good—the hurt would help him stay awake for now, cut through the sense of exhaustion that had plagued his days for far longer than he would’ve liked it to. It wouldn’t help in the long-term, though; he’d tried that three months ago, twisting his ankle and walking on it the entire day, and all that had come of it was the pain dulling 32 minutes after noon and the thrilling experience of faceplanting onto his desk in the middle of filling out a form.

Conan took off his glasses and scrubbed his face a few more times, shaved, made a note to change the blade of his safety razor and buy a puck of shaving soap on the way home, donned his glasses once more, and left his bathroom with the lights off. The empty bottle from the hospital that had sat on the sink for weeks, the one that he couldn’t afford to refill, was deposited in his recycling bag. He had not looked at the nasty, gnarled scar that lay beneath the shell of his left ear, nor the mangled ear itself, when he’d been facing the mirror. He did not think about it as he took off his glasses, polished the slightest smudge of a thumbprint off of a lens with a rag, and put them back on.

He’d poured his coffee into his thermos after he’d pulled himself out of bed, made it, and clothed himself with his current self-imposed uniform. It came into view as he padded into his kitchen, having retrieved his coat and work shoes from his bedroom. The sight of the dark, scuffed cylinder felt like an omen, a black cat taunting him as it sauntered past him, despite the fact that it was not a cat, nor was it moving. “How will today go? Will I be of any help, or will you fall regardless?”

The imaginary cat was ignored, the thermos was grabbed, and the sleeves of his least favorite shirt were rolled up before he put his jacket on. Today was projected to be hot, and from the way his skin prickled dully in the air of his 72℉ apartment, he knew his body wouldn’t bother to properly sync with reality any time soon; he could not afford to add “passing out from heat exhaustion” to his list of daily stressors. He would wear his jacket to work and back—it would ruin the entire point of a suit, even if not of the best quality, if you didn’t have the jacket—but he would not allow himself to wear it throughout the at the workplace.

Work. Even the thought of it made him flush red, made his hands grip his bag all the tighter as he wrenched its strap over his shoulder. It wasn’t his job—not the job he would have chosen for himself, nor the one he had dedicated years of his life to, only to have it all ripped away from him. He internally cursed his uncle and uncle-in-law for his current profession—though he knew he shouldn’t, they’d been the ones to get it for him after his accident—as he pulled his shoes on, stalked out of his apartment, placed a bouncy ball from one of his brothers on the inside handle of his front door, and gently pulled it closed, locking it and checking it thrice. From there, he took the elevator down—he would have taken the stairs if it wasn’t such a potential safety hazard for him—and prowled to the nearest bus stop, leaning against the inside of the plastic shelter and extracting his thermos so he could take a swig from it. His coffee, slightly diluted with oat milk, was just okay.

The bus arrived three minutes late, which was seven minutes earlier than its arrival yesterday. His seat, three rows back and a window seat on the side behind the driver, was unoccupied and a bit cleaner than yesterday—a dark stain on the edge of the flat cushion that had been there for two weeks had vanished. It felt strangely stiffer than usual when he sat down on it. He checked his phone for any notifications and was met with none. His phone sat in his hand, silent as a rock. Either his coworkers weren’t up yet, or they had yet to be awake enough to send him any information he may need to know—or in the case of one specific man’s communiques, information that he didn’t need to know. The roads were relatively clear, and the pothole on 52nd street had been filled—the bus didn’t lurch when it passed the cheesy mural on the pizza place that he swore he would never go to.

He disembarked on the street with the streetlamp that had been painted an offensive bright green and walked the few yards it took to get to the subject of his current occupation. Despite the heat trapped against his skin beneath the jacket, an uncomfortable chill was layered underneath it, leaving him as uncomfortable as he usually was. He stopped just outside the abandoned construction site, looking through the wire gate. The dull headlights of the haul truck, stuffed with dirt from carving out space for the foundation of the current project, and the concrete mixer stared back, their glassy eyes daring him to approach and intrude upon a world that was not his.

Conan was still. Then he opened the gate, walked onto the site, past the vacant vehicles and finally-set concrete foundation, and over to the pile of materials on the far side of the site. Hardhat-less as he was, he kept his distance as he pulled a notebook and one of the scattered pens out of his bag and started to take stock of what they had. He’d arrived just at dawn this time, and the soft, orange glow of the sun peeking over the horizon, dripping amber light over buildings and through streets, removed the need for a flashlight to see his notes. Not that he needed to see the paper to write legibly; he’d always been good at writing without looking, even in the dead of night. It was one of the skills that had been so useful during his chosen career, and now one of the skills that was being wasted alongside his potential.

The sun’s rays had lost their orange tint and brightened a tad when Conan was pulled from his duty by the sound of six very specific voices getting closer. Two were bickering about the rightful ownership of an unclaimed burrito in the fridge, three were discussing the potential location of a load-bearing wall in the current project, and one was humming a little tune. He could hear every pair of boots clomping against the ground, pick their unique gaits out of the cacophony of their chattering and stomping. Something wrapped itself around his heart, sunk its claws in, and squeezed.

He forced himself to look back to the stacks of materials in front of him. “Good morning,” he greeted blandly as the crew entered the site.

Milo Ross just about tripped on thin air and dropped the bouquet of flowers he was holding, which led to his twin, Sawyer, running into him and bowling the both of them over. Henry Faust and Logan Hayes-Walker paused in front of the brothers, their conversation cut off as they watched the two peel themselves off of the ground; the former’s eyebrow ticked and the latter’s scarred lips quirked to the side in a grin. Brian Tanner and Michael Flynn walked around the four men, still squabbling about who their unclaimed burrito belonged to, gesturing like they were arguing over the fate of a country and not, in fact, a burrito.

All of their conversations and distractions came to a halt as they each registered Conan’s voice, and for a handful of heartbeats, he had six pairs of eyes staring at him, five of them obscured by sunglasses. Even with three years and four months of experience with the six men, Conan still had no clue how to proceed after greeting them, and so he waited.

As always, the youngest of the group broke the silence.

“Boss!” Milo yelped, grabbing his bundle of only slightly smushed flowers and holding it behind his back as he staggered to his feet. Sawyer groaned and pulled himself to his feet as well, pulling off his sunglasses to rub at his eyes as his brother spluttered. “What a surprise! I, uh- I didn’t think you’d be onsite today!”

“Don’t call me Boss, and I, ultimately, will not be,” Conan corrected, mentally checking each of them off of his roster (he was not the foreman, this was not part of his job, he did not need to do that). “I’m taking stock of the materials you have as of this morning so I can have that in my records. I want to prevent ordering too many materials in the case that someone misfiles the amount you need.”

“Yeah, sounds great, Boss!” Milo agreed, nodding vigorously. Brian muttered something to Michael, nodding almost violently, who laughed and cuffed him in the back of the head. Even after all this time, seeing colleagues joke around like that was strange, but it didn’t bother him anymore.

Sawyer rolled his eyes and slipped his sunglasses back on with a scoff, stepping out from behind his twin to meander around the site; he avoided Brian, who was now attempting to smack Michael back. “I’m not that bad at keeping track of materials,” he griped, pulling his gloves out of his back pocket to waggle them at Conan admonishingly. “I’ve been a foreman for years—it was one time, and it was only a few boards too many that we used on the next project! Will you ever let me live that down?”

“No.”

A second of silence stretched between them before Sawyer snorted, shaking his head as he turned away, grinning and shoulders shaking. “Pffft- you’re worse than Henry is with his rough drafts.”

“Hey!” Said man protested behind him, slapping a hand to his chest and recoiling dramatically. “My rough drafts are all done by hand and on paper, mind you! They’re amazing and don’t deserve to be dirtied by your filthy, plebeian fingers!”

The two started tossing insults and Conan couldn’t help but roll his eyes, fixing his glasses just for something to do. As he did so, something caught his eye, and his gaze locked onto the flowers peeking out from behind Milo’s back. “…why do you have flowers? There’s nowhere to store them here, and you can’t leave them laying around; that’s when they become a potential hazard. Any one of you could trip over or slip on them,” he said, his eyes narrowing as three kinds of OSHA violations seemed to bloom among the flora poorly hidden behind the man’s back. “Leave them in your house, your car, if you have one, or don’t bring them at all.”

Milo wilted and pulled the flowers out from behind his back, looking down at them and then back up at Conan. “I… I got them on the way here, and I didn’t really think of that. They’re for… well, you-”

“Yes, I shouldn’t be so stiff about it. I suppose I could take them back to the building with me,” Conan sighed, pushing his glasses back to rest on the bridge of his hooked nose and paying no mind to the fact that he had just cut the man off mid-sentence. “I should be able to find a cup to hold them in until the end of the day. Sawyer will be able to pick them up when he drops by to deliver his report and requisition forms. Give them to your paramour after work hours.”

He closed his notebook and returned it, and his pen, to his bag before marching over to Milo, who looked stunned. When he held his hand out on front of him, palm open and facing up, he dropped the bouquet into it without a fuss. “…sure. Thanks, Boss,” he muttered, the fingers of his now-empty hand twitching. “Nice of you to offer that.”

“Want one of us to drive you over to the office?” Logan cut in, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I can take you in my car. It won’t take too much time out of the day, and it’s better than walking.”

An instinctive spike of fear shot up Conan’s spine, searing the left side of his head with the memory of pain. Being alone with someone—without any witnesses—was dangerous. Too risky. He knew Logan, trusted him, but when had that ever guaranteed his safety in the past? He couldn’t really trust him. He couldn’t trust anyone.

But he could, couldn’t he? The crew was fond of him for some reason—none of them gave a clear reason as to why when he asked, but they were—and they would notice if he didn’t show up to work. Sawyer would notice if he didn’t get his email with his daily expenses report and noted potential jobs, which meant that Milo would also notice. Henry would notice if he didn’t affirm that the blueprints he sent in were being archived. Michael would notice if he didn’t read the inane texts he sent about concrete. Brian would notice because he seemed to have a sixth sense for when things were amiss. If Logan did anything to him, the rest of the crew would know.

Still, nothing was worth the risk.

Shaking his head, he shifted his grip on the bundle of flowers so he could prop it in the crook of his arm and swat at his emotions like they were fruit flies harassing his lunch. “No, you need to be here to drive out the haul truck, and Henry can’t do it either—he needs to be here to help with general construction. The rest of you don’t have cars.” A lock of hair, black streaked with stress-induced white, flopped over his forehead, and he smoothed it back. “I can take the bus.”

“If you wait for the bus,” Brian called, finally smacking Michael in the back of the head as he spoke, “you’ll get bored and we’ll keep talking to you instead of working. Come on, let Logan drive you in—Sawyer’ll make sure he comes back and puts his hours in.”

Conan looked at Logan, and Logan looked back at him. He looked over to Sawyer, who shrugged. “We don’t need him right now,” he agreed, “and it sounds like a better idea than waiting for you to take the bus.”

After a second or two of silence—a second or two too long, weighing the risks and benefits and likelihood of violence—Conan sighed. He would be safe. They would notice. “Alright,” he acceded, hefting the flowers against his shoulder like a rifle. “You can drive me. Let’s go.”

Logan grinned, and despite Conan’s fear banging pots and pans in the back of his head, it was… nice. “Great.”

For the nth time, Conan shifted his grip on the bouquet in his lap and tightened his seatbelt. Logan, being the saint he was, didn’t comment on it. He also didn’t turn the radio on, which was strange; whenever he drove past him, he and Brian or Michael—or all three of them, with the aforementioned men squished into the passenger seat beside him—had the radio cranked to a probably unsafe volume as they yelled whatever lyrics they thought they heard. He was grateful for Logan’s choice to spare his eardrums, really, but the silence was starting to get uncanny. It wasn’t natural for any of his crew to be silent for this long.

He was starting to think that he should have taken the bus after all.

Finally, normalcy reasserted itself, and Logan awkwardly coughed into his hand as they came to a halt at a stoplight. “Uh,” he started, tapping his thumb in a vague pattern against the wheel, “You want the windows down? I’m still working on getting the smell out.”

“I would appreciate that, thank you,” was Conan’s reply, though it would have been the same to him if he hadn’t been asked in the first place. One of the offices he had worked in during his earlier years he had shared with a man who chainsmoked about two packs a day, and he had eventually acclimated to the stink of nicotine. Even now, years later, in his coworker’s truck—secondhand, Logan didn’t smoke and never had—he didn’t notice it.

Logan nodded and poked at the window controls on his side, jabbing at the buttons harder when they didn’t immediately respond. The light breeze that wafted in from the now-open glass was slightly cold and brushed away that slight droop that Conan’s eyelids had been stuck in. Again, Logan spoke, seeming almost as uncomfortable with the silence as he was. “So, what happened to your hardhat? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you onsite without it. If you lost it or something, I can ask Sawyer to get you another one. Or Brian. God knows that man has enough hardhats to outfit an army.”

Conan shook his head and shifted his grip on the flowers again. “I don’t need another one, and I left it at home. Thank you for the offer,” he answered. “My nephew decided that he needed to slap as many stickers as possible on it, and I wasn’t able to get all of them off before I left today.”

The light turned green and Logan forged onward, gesturing violently when the car that had been beside him cut in front of his truck. “Fuckin’ asshat! Oh, your nephew put stickers on your hardhat? That’s so cute! Bring it tomorrow, I wanna see if you can get Milo to pass out,” he said with a tone that was too close to a coo to not be embarrassing. “I bet you could rock it, too. What kind of stickers?”

Fighting the instinct to bristle and hiss like a cornered cat, Conan cleared his throat and stared out of the windshield, refusing to even try to meet the man’s gaze. “…star stickers. He’s been interested in space recently, and I made the mistake of giving him a sheet or two of space-themed stickers, which he then decided to plaster half of onto my hardhat. And I will not bring it; it would be a distraction, especially if Milo passed out, though I have no idea why he would do so.”

“Oh, there’s lots of reasons,” Logan snickered, biting his lip and running a canine over one of the scars adorning it. It looked unusually sharp. “Sometimes Henry and I take bets on what’ll get him all blushy when we talk on lunch breaks. We always do it behind Sawyer’s back, though—I think he’d box our ears if he finds out we’re teasing his younger brother. He’s the same way when his cousins come to visit. He was great with them when they were younger and all squishy, and he’s pretty great with them even when they’re non-squishy.”

“Oh?” Conan tilted his head, glancing at the man out of the corner of his eye. Logan was a blurry mess, as he wasn’t looking at the man through his glasses, but his smile was bright enough to bleed into his voice. Conan looked away. “I didn’t know Sawyer had cousins.”

Logan nodded, tapping his thumbs on the wheel in a little rhythm. “Yep! Three of them—one on one mom’s side, two on the other’s. Heard there’s another on the way on one side. Maybe Sawyer’ll take them to work and leave ‘em with you, let you flex your babysitter muscles, eh? Considering your “gift” from your nephew, he really likes you, which means you’re probably really good with kids,” he chattered. “You two can have a “cool uncle”-off or whatever. Don’t worry, you’d definitely win. Sawyer can keep a kid busy, but you can charm them onto your side with… paperwork airplanes or something.”

“I wouldn’t describe myself as “good with kids,” though I appreciate your… support,” Conan scoffed. “My brother’s job is very busy, as is his husband’s, so I don’t get to see my nephew often. As such, I have limited experience with children, and my abilities in managing them are most likely… subpar.”

“Why don’t you drive yourself up to meet them? A man like you, who can afford so many fancy suits and all, could probably afford a rental or something.” Logan asked as he turned the truck onto a peaceful, less crowded road. “If you can’t afford it, I can lend you mine. Henry’ll buckle if I ask him a few times to give me a ride for a week or two.”

“For medical and legal reasons, I do not drive. It would put myself and others at risk,” Conan replied.

“Ah,” Logan said. “I see. You wanna talk about it?”

“No thank you.”

The light turned red and Logan’s truck came to a stop. Conan relaxed his grip on the flowers and attempted to do the same to his shoulders. He found that he was unable to.

The rest of the drive over was, thankfully, uneventful. Balancing the bouquet in a red solo cup half-filled with water, carefully placed beside the excavator toy Michael insisted upon him keeping, was stressful, but uneventful. The day was uneventful, save someone calling the office—they’d assumed that “Arbour Construction” meant that they were a landscaping business, and Conan had spent thirty minutes of his time, three into his lunch break, explaining to them that no, they weren’t a landscaping business, and no, he didn’t know why the founders chose to name their business that. He’d asked a similar thing to his uncle-in-law when he was first offered the favour, and then Milo and Sawyer, who’d inherited the business from their mothers after they’d retired, and the answers he was given were always some variation of a shrug.

Sawyer picking up his brother’s flowers and dropping off his forms was sure to be just as uneventful as the rest of the day (save the “excitement” of the hectic call). “Good evening,” Conan said when he heard the door to his office creak open, not looking up from his computer. “Your brother’s flowers are on the side table. Do you have any requisition forms?”

“You know, you can call them “request forms,”” Sawyer said, sliding a slightly dusty manilla folder onto the desk, next to his computer, as he nudged a black pen into the pocket of his shirt, which was partially obscured by his high-vis vest. “It’s not gonna kill you, I promise. And yeah, they’re before the daily report.”

“It very well might, and thank you,” was Conan’s curt response as he abandoned the mostly-written email on the screen for the folder, flipping it open to scan the papers within. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the blur of neon yellow that marked the foreman was not moving in any way toward his brother’s flowers. “…are you not going to get Milo’s bouquet?”

“Nah,” Sawyer said, waving him off. “He doesn’t have a chance. Better that the flowers spend their time livening up your office rather than rotting in a trashcan, eh?”

Conan lost his place on the first form and, for the life of him, could not find where he’d left off. “Ah,” he replied after a few seconds, his eyes flicking up to the beginning of the page. “That is… acceptable. And a bit rude of a thing to say about Milo, as well. He can b- I’m sure he can be very charming at times.”

Sawyer gagged obnoxiously, grabbing at his throat as Conan moved onto the next form. “Blegh, never say anything like that about Milo around me ever again,” he groaned, pulling his glasses off so he could swoon theatrically. “Milo and charming are two words I never want to hear someone put together.”

Rolling his eyes, Conan scanned the paper before him. “Apologies, I forgot that I can’t say anything positive about Milo ever,” he snarked, flipping to the next form. “Thank you for reminding me that it’s the eighth deadly sin to-”

A glaring issue halted him in body, mind, and spirit.

There was a mistake on this form. There was a very big mistake on this form.

Instead of a number for the amount of 4’ x 12’s the crew needed—which was what the form was for—there was “you’re cute xo – 24” on the neat, dotted, black line. “You’re cute xo” was not a numerical unit—it had no business being there. A quick scan showed another occurrence like this—at the bottom of the paper, where the person filling out the form should have signed their name, there was “dinner?”

Conan’s grip tightened on the paper, and it took everything in him to not slam the entire folder down on the table. He knew whose handwriting this was. “Sawyer,” he said calmly, placing the faulty form on the table and sliding it the other man’s way, “did you know that Henry filled out this form incorrectly?”

As Conan leaned back in his chair, his jacket rustling softly on the back of it as he uncapped his thermos to take a rather large drink from it, Sawyer cautiously edged toward him, picking up the form and inspecting like it was a bomb. “…huh,” he said, too carefully casual to be anything other than guilty. “I did not, no. I’ll scrap this and rewrite it, yeah?”

“That sounds like a fabulous idea,” Conan all but bit out. “Thank you.”

He pulled a blank form out of a drawer and Sawyer took it, fishing his pen out of his pocket so he could fill it out. Conan’s eyes drooped and he tightened his grip on his thermos, taking another swig of the now-cold, less-okay coffee. “…so,” Sawyer enunciated slowly, “about what Henry wrote on it.”

“It was quite rude; I don’t appreciate pranks,” Conan scoffed, recapping his thermos with a dull clunk, “especially such childish ones. I would have expected that from a high schooler, not a grown man.”

The cautious expression on Sawyer’s face matured into one he would have if he’d stepped on a thumbtack, barefoot. “What makes you think it’s a prank?” He asked, sounding a little strangled.

“What else would it be?” Conan asked, picking up the manilla folder and returning to the forms, this time on the lookout for any more “mistakes.” “I’m not the kind of person who would ever receive something like that with genuine affections behind it.”

Sawyer sighed—the angle at which his head was tilted allowed Conan to clearly see him narrowing his eyes. “I don’t know, Conan, you’re a pretty cool guy. Smart, hard-working, caring if you get a pickaxe and start chipping away, not to mention you’ve got that “stressed and serious” charm thing going on. Anyone’d be lucky to have you. Ah, from a friend’s point of view, strictly speaking.”

Conan failed to suppress an eyeroll. “I don’t need you to boost my ego, Sawyer,” he stressed, flipping through forms almost violently. “You all may find me amusing, but I can’t suspend my belief enough to even conceptualize that Henry would seriously want to have dinner with me. When you next see him, tell him that I didn’t appreciate his prank.”

Sawyer’s thumbtack-in-foot expression grew even more strained. “Uh, Boss, Henry doesn’t flirt as a joke.”

“I’m not your boss,” Conan said, snapping the folder closed. “You’re my boss. And there’s a first time for everything. Thank you for re-filling out the form. I’ll send you the expenses and prospective job list before 6pm.”

When Conan opened the door of his apartment, he was met with the soft thwunking of the bouncy ball bouncing away—no “unexpected guests” had decided to stop by throughout the day. He turned the lights on before he closed the door behind him, shucking off his shoes and coat. The soft slippers he settled his feet into before padding over to fish the bouncy ball out from underneath a table were slightly dirty—nothing he couldn’t fix with a run through the washing machine—and so were his work shoes. Going onsite always left them covered in dust. The bottoms of his trousers, too; they left a light layer of powdered dirt on his slippers.

He didn’t bother turning the lights on in his bedroom when he made his way through his apartment and into it—he tossed his work shoes into their assigned box and his jacket onto his bed in the dark, as he usually did. He didn’t run into the wall when he stumbled back out of the room, unlike last week, and he hauled his tired body into his bathroom to wash his hands and face. He didn’t bother waiting for the water to warm up before he stripped any lingering dirt from his hands and face. He instinctively for a bottle that was not there afterwards, curling his fingers around air and banging his knuckles against the wall when, met with nothing to anchor himself with, his arm kept going. He washed his face again. The cold water, layered over the chill that always lingered on his skin, hurt.

When his skin was numb was when he pulled himself away from the sink, stumbled out of the bathroom, fumbled his way back in to turn off the sink, and ambled into his kitchen to scrounge up something to eat. He forfeited whatever he had left in his fridge for his soup cabinet and pulled out the first can he found. What he got didn’t matter. As long as he could eat it.

Conan dumped the soup into a bowl, which was then placed a bit too harshly in the microwave, and let himself slump against the table while he waited for his dinner to heat up. Unbidden, his thoughts turned back to work, to the form that Henry had mutilated for a cheap laugh, and his neck flushed hot in a way it hadn’t since grade school. His form hadn’t deserved it and he hadn’t either. He hadn’t expected it from him. Henry was a good enough man with a talented mind—one could easily realise that from his designs—but he never seemed immature. He didn’t even seem like the type to jaywalk unless he was with the rest of the crew. The fact that he’d set that all aside to make a jab at him was… disappointing.

The microwave beeped, but it sounded far away. Something in his chest lurched. Ice prickled up the inside of his spine. A wave of exhaustion swept over Conan, taking his body by storm, and he barely made it to his couch before he passed out. When he opened his eyes however many minutes later, golden ones were peering back at him, the black mass they belonged to standing over his prone body. He blinked and the figure vanished. His head hurt.

He wasn’t able to even try to begin to convince himself to get up and get his soup before it got cold—or colder than it already was—when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Maybe it was a text from his uncle or said uncle’s damned husband. Maybe it was from the police notice subscription he had, alerting him of break-ins occurring on his street. Maybe it was even a friend from his past reaching out to express sympathies regarding the accident (His eyes kept haunting him and his head hurt). Or maybe it was Michael.

He opened his phone, turned down the brightness, and squinted at the screen. It was Michael. The concrete-related thing he’d texted this time was a link to an article about Roman concrete, as well as the “😮😊” emojis. That was a rarity—he hadn’t been sent any emojis in weeks. Like always, he opened the article and scanned the first few paragraphs for anything interesting. Tonight, he made the uncommon choice to finish it.

Halfway through a paragraph detailing how the head researcher had broken several laws to get a concrete sample, Michael texted again. “Hey, you want me 2 start sending stuff other than concrete? Or should I stop? I know I like it, but I don’t think you do.”

“I do not particularly, no,” was what Conan chose to reply with, “and your messages are not obtrusive or disturbing enough to warrant you to stop, though I would appreciate it if you sent me other things.”

“O gr8!!! What things do you like??? Do you like book stuff? I’m not sending you tge news btw.”

Conan couldn’t help but roll his eyes, levering himself off of the couch to stand up. “I’m not going to ask you for the news, I have an app for that. Articles related to books would be nice- anything that’s not about romance or anything in the YA genre. I often read”—he internally cursed himself for being a stereotype—“mystery novels, historical fiction, nonfiction, etcetera.”

To his embarrassment, Michael quickly replied, “Oh my god your an old man. I’m going to tell Sawyer to increase your pay so he isn’t underpaying a senior citizen. BTW I have some books that my sibling sent me that I don’t care for, you want them? 1 nonfiction mafia thing and 3 mystery things, tho they’re pretty old.”

The corner of Conan’s mouth twitched upward. He smothered the expression before it could mutate into a full grin. “I would appreciate that as well. Thank you,” he sent, turning to amble into the kitchen. His soup was cold, so he reset the microwave and let it hum on, irradiating his dinner and only maybe heating it up, as he picked the bottle of ibuprofen he kept on the counter and took a pill or two. The ache lessened.

“Gr8! I’ll get them to you tomorrow! See you!”

Most of the rest of the work week was uneventful and, blessedly, void of pranks that came at the expense of innocent forms and Conan’s self-respect. Sawyer dropped by every day, delivered request forms and his daily report, and Conan did his job as his crew’s superintendent. Michael texted him links to articles about historical mysteries. He dropped by and gave him the books, carefully tied together with a sparkly ribbon and in remarkably pristine condition. The flowers had been transferred to a proper vase, one he’d picked up for five dollars from an antique shop three minutes away from his apartment building, and their bright purples and yellows were now held by mottled, jade-green porcelain.

Friday refused to follow this pattern. A quarter past three, five sweaty, dusty construction workers barged into Conan’s office, all of them chattering at varying volumes, and the shock almost made him spill today’s less-than-mediocre coffee all over himself. “Boss!” Michael exclaimed over the sound of his coworkers yapping. “We’re out of 2’ x 6’s, 3’x 14’s, and 4’ x 12’s! We can’t work without them, so Logan’s off to the lumber store to get ‘em and we’re back here for the sweet, sweet AC!”

“How nice,” Conan deadpanned, looking down at his shirt to confirm that it wasn’t stained before capping his thermos. He made a mental note to go to the site on Monday and check their supplies again. “And how kind of you to phone ahead.”

“We agreed that it’d be more fun to just show up. Well, Michael insisted and we went along with it,” Brian explained, ducking under Milo and Sawyer arguing to lean against Conan’s desk. Henry wisely hung back by the door, hooking an arm around Michael when he got close enough. From the looks of it, he was trying to start a conversation about concrete. “So, Boss, what’re you drinking? I won’t tell if it’s alcohol, scout’s honour.”

“It’s not alcohol,” Conan rebuked, almost offended at the suggestion. “It’s… coffee. Coffee-adjacent. And don’t call me “Boss”—I’m not your boss, I’m your superintendent. Milo and Sawyer are the ones who own the business.”

Brian looked up, back to the squabbling siblings, and then back to him. “…I think you’re more Boss material than them right now. What kind of coffee do you like? Why’s the kind you have only coffee-adjacent?”

Looking at the Ross twins, Conan couldn’t find it within himself to argue. “This brand is, well…” he trailed off, leaning back in his chair. His elbows brushed against his jacket, and he resisted the urge to don it—the thermostat had said that the room was 70℉ when he was on break, and he wasn’t really cold. His brain just thought he was. The jacket wouldn’t help. He took a moment to pull off his glasses, attempt to rub exhaustion from his eyes, fail, and don them once more. “…it’s very bitter. This brand doesn’t even have what kind of roast it is; it’s just “coffee.” Additives can only go so far, and I can’t afford enough to make it tolerable, much less to just buy good coffee, so “coffee” is what I settle with.”

Brian frowned, pulling his sunglasses off of his face and perching them on his hat as he slid onto the edge of the table. “What? Sawyer pays you good, right? You should be able to afford nice stuff,” he asked, jerking his chin toward said man, who was now trying to pull his own sunglasses free of Milo’s grip. “You waste it on printer paper for your forms?”

“I do not waste money on printer paper for forms,” Conan corrected firmly, poking at the man’s side with a pencil, “and off of my desk, you dirty heathen. I’m currently paying off some debt and saving for medication, so I can’t spare the money for expensive coffee.”

“Ah.” Grimacing, Brian slid off of the table, wiping off the little layer of dust he’d left behind. “I get it. Is it about the…?” He nodded to Conan’s head, to the scar that wasn’t able to be covered by his hair yet and the pockmarked mess that was left of his ear.

Conan did not answer.

Brian coughed after a few moments of awkward silence, pulling his phone from his pocket and quickly tapping something out. Before Conan could peer at his screen, the phone was deposited back in his pocket, and Brian was giving him a lopsided grin.

“You know, I have a few scars of my own,” he said, moving to sit on the edge of the desk again but catching himself a moment before disaster. “I was a real rebel when I was a lil’ guy, climbed and scampered around where I wasn’t supposed to. I got my arm cut open falling from a tree—broke it too—and I’ve squished my right hand in enough things when I was a teen that I had to learn to write with my left. My knuckles still pop sometimes. I’m not saying that I get it,” he gestured to Conan’s scars again, his grin straining a little, “but I kinda get it. You can talk to us if you need some help, ‘kay? I’m sure Michael’d love to mix you up some kinda magic brew, and I have some tips about concussion stuff I can give you.”

The tight expression on Conan’s face slackened slightly. “I will keep that in mind,” he said, placing his pencil down. “…thank you, I suppose.”

Brian nodded, patting Conan on the shoulder and leaving a slightly dusty handprint behind. “Yeah, no problem. You’re part of the crew, and we take care of our own,” he assured him. “Hey, what’s in this drawer?”

Before Conan’s desk was able to be made a victim of Brian’s terminal messiness, Logan opened the door, almost hitting Henry square in the spine. “I’m back, Boss and boys!” He declared. “Brian, come get your special order before I chuck it at your head! I’m not wasting more gas to ferry it over to you.”

“Chuck it at my head and you get a Sawzall in your foot, smartass!” Brian yelled back, abandoning Conan’s desk to bound over to his crewmate—Milo and Sawyer had finished their spat, so he didn’t have to give them a five-foot clearance.

Casually, Logan swung a previously unseen bag into Brian’s chest, snickering when he wheezed and clutched at it as he doubled over. Brian shot him a glare over his sunglasses before he returned to Conan’s desk, still wheezing a little and upending the bag to plop a bag of… wait. “You work so hard, Boss,” Brian coughed, patting the bag of expensive, high-quality, medium-roast coffee like he would a bag of bricks. “You deserve a little treat. Think of it as a bonus, ‘kay?”

Conan didn’t respond, too busy staring at the bag like it had fallen from the heavens. Sawyer narrowed his eyes, placing his glasses on the brim of his hat as he peered around Milo and Brian’s shoulders. “If you spent company money on getting yourself coffee, Tanner, you’re gonna be putting in so much overtime that Logan’ll have to haul you to a hospital to get your arms replaced,” he snapped, shouldering his way around the two men.

“Hey!” Brian objected, rubbing his chest where he’d been smacked with his gift. “It’s for the Boss, not me! And I’m offended, Sawyer—you know I’m responsible. Ow, Logan, that damn hurt.”

“Crybaby,” Logan scoffed, closing the door behind him.

Finally, Conan found his voice. “I…” he trailed off, his hands twitching before he reached out, picking up the bag and inspecting it. No evidence of tampering whatsoever. “This… I don’t know what to say. I… thank you, Brian.”

“No problem. Hope your mornings are better now, Boss,” he replied proudly, his grin showing his chipped canine tooth.

Conan nodded, his eyes still locked on the bag. The sides of his mouth curled up slightly. “Yes. Yes, as do I.”

This week was going quite well. Conan’s desk was clear, save for the mug he’d been given by his older brother that was filled with the heavenly coffee Brian had gotten him, and the flowers in his vase had been replaced. He’d decided to wear one of his nicer suits today—this one had been his designated Court suit, a warm brown with red undertones, and it had been strangely freeing to pull it out of the closet and brush off the dust—and the feeling of a cotton shirt against his skin, in lieu of too-smooth plastic, was soothing. He was cold, but it didn’t feel as bad as it usually did.

The red solo cup that the flowers had previously been kept in was in one of his drawers, and he extracted it before rising to his feet, taking one last sip of his coffee before he left his office, closing the door behind him. It was a short walk to the one bathroom in the office space that belonged to Arbour Construction, and the plumbing here was not as bad as that in his apartment—when he turned the water to warm, it complied within moments.

He didn’t allow himself the alluring pleasure of sticking his hands under the stream and just letting it run—he’d ended up with a bruised jaw and cracked glasses last time he did—and filled the cup. When he returned to his office, he moved over to the little table holding his flowers and parted their stems gently, pouring the contents of the cup into the vase. Conan was not one for wishful thoughts, much less fanciful ones, but the flowers seemed to perk up after their watering.

After dumping out the extra water and drying the cup, Conan returned to his desk, placing the cup in its designated spot, and paused when he looked up.

He’d been in offices many times, so many he wouldn’t be able to count how many, even if he tried and had a historical record to help. He’d been behind a desk, he’d been in front of a desk, he’d jumped over desks and been thrown over them, and yet, none of them had been particularly memorable. Even the office he’d worked in for over half a decade was a fuzzed mess of grey, ashen mustard, brown, and black—though that might’ve been because of the brain damage—and in every memory of his in that room, it never seemed to really be his. It was less of an actual office and more of a corpse he’d hunker down in like a scavenger until he was contacted for something new to do, complete with bones to scour for chunks of rotted meat.

This office, belonging to a business he’d never have touched in his younger years, owned by a man who could swing between ordering his crew around without a hint of uncertainty and getting into slap-fights with his twin over a tootsie-roll they found in one of his desk drawers in a heartbeat, and decorated with, of all things, flowers and a honey-yellow excavator toy that wouldn’t roll right, felt like it was his. Even if he left without looking back, estranged himself to all six men in a violent, rude manner and stripped the room of anything that was his, he wouldn’t be able to forget his office. He wouldn’t be able to fully forget the men who gave it to him.

The drawer was closed firmly, only for another to open, which Conan pulled a manilla folder out of. That drawer was closed as well, and he tossed it onto his desk in a motion that came all too naturally to him. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, doing this again brought a small thrill to his heart—it was almost as if nothing had ever happened—and he flipped it open, revealing his extensive notes, copies, and picture evidence.

His crew had been very attentive to him lately. He wasn’t a fool, he noticed how they had started migrating to his office—thirteen blocks down and five over from the site—for lunch, how Henry and Sawyer had started turning their forms in with silly doodles on scrap paper paperclipped to them, and, of course, the changing of his flowers. Milo was not very subtle about that. It was not endearing in any way, shape, or form. Even Brian’s gift of coffee and Michael’s books could be counted as part of their efforts.

It was… not something that had made him happy when he’d started noticing it. In fact, it had made him consider blocking Michael’s number and returning the coffee grounds, maybe even changing the locks on his apartment or fleeing the city—and his job—entirely, though he’d managed to convince himself to follow proper protocol before making any hasty decisions after a night of sedative-induced sleep. Ever since then he’d kept himself busy, and he had the (small amount of) evidence to show for it.

He knew what they were doing. At least, he was pretty sure he knew. Buttering up to someone before making a move—financial fraud, burglary, anything—was one of the oldest patterns there was in crime, and judging from their behaviour towards him in the years he’d been with them, this was a long time coming. What he couldn’t figure out was what they were planning, and why they were finally executing their little scheme. They had no motive that he knew of—he didn’t control their pay, Sawyer did, and he didn’t have any privileges he could use to get them extra benefits. Every report that Sawyer indulged him with, though made slightly endearing with his and Henry’s doodles, showed no evidence of siphoning money, and Conan himself wasn’t doing any of that. None of them had followed him home, driven him home, and when he opened the door to his apartment, the little ball always bounced away. His valuables always lay untouched.

They weren’t getting anything out of him—not at his job and not at his home—and nor were they exploiting their business. So, why were they paying so much attention to him?

Conan was not a man who liked unsolved questions. It had been one of his main drives in his past job, and it was still one even now. He would get to the bottom of this, and when he did, he would tear his crew’s scheme apart. He closed the manilla folder, returned it to its place, and waited.

At 12:00 sharp, the door to his office opened and his crew filed in, some with lunchboxes, others with bags, and all of them carrying a chair from the storage closet in the hall. Logan kicked the door closed behind him. Conan did not try to interrogate them. “So, Boss,” Michael started, fishing a water bottle full of an unknown liquid out of his bag, “what’s going on? Any riveting forms to be filled out? Did we get another landscaping call?”

Conan did not comment on the “Boss” title. Instead, he pulled his lunch out of his bag and picked up his coffee mug, taking a sip as he placed his small container of soup on his desk. “No riveting forms and no landscaping calls,” he informed, popping the lid off. “Though I do have a few forms about nuts and bolts that I can show you.”

Sawyer cackled, almost spilling his off-brand lemonade on Brian’s leg, and Conan couldn’t help but let the side of his mouth tick up. “Oh come on,” Sawyer snickered at his neighbour’s disgruntled expression, “it’s funny! Conan can be funny sometimes!”

It took Conan a few moments of staring, watching his crew banter and eat, to remember that he, too, was on his lunch break, and that he had a container of cold soup in front of him that he needed to heat up—he could no longer rely on his body to tell him such things. He rose from his chair, straightening his tie—he’d pulled this out of retirement as well, a red one that accented his suit—before he picked up his currently thick, mediocre potato and leek soup. He ambled out from behind his desk as he rummaged through his pockets, trying to find the spoon that he swore he brought from home this morning. Before he could, though, exhaustion bloomed in his skull, dripping down his throat and oozing through his veins like tar. He couldn’t help but let his eyes droop. This would pass. He’d… He’d worked though worse. He just… just… needed… to… to…

His forehead exploded in a sharp burst of pain and Conan’s eyes flickered open, his vision fuzzy and muddled. His head was throbbing. There was something wet dripping down the side of his face, over his cheek and into the shell of his intact ear. He could hear something, someone. Someones. People were exclaiming things, loud and panicked, running around and out, and someone picked up his head, manoeuvring his tired body with more care than he was usually subject to. His head was cradled on a lap, gentle hands holding him steady.

Though his body was still exhausted, useless and inactive, his mind felt amazingly well-rested. There was no brain fog to fight through, no sense of exhaustion that sloughed off layers of his mind and left him labouring to paste it all back together. For now, at least, he felt awake.

After a moment of effort, Conan’s eyes opened, and he immediately wished they hadn’t. Eyes he never wanted to see again stared back at him, a brown so light it was almost yellow encircling pupils whose dilation he had never been able to read. He could taste blood. He was helpless, able to do nothing but watch as He grinned above him, moving a hand to splay dexterous fingers across his scars. He wanted to flinch away. He couldn’t. “You did this to yourself, you know,” He said, tilting His head. “If I hadn’t, someone else would have. You made a lot of enemies in that business. Well, we both did, but you even moreso, Lieutenant Columbo.”

What had once been a playful nickname burned his ears like acid. His touch felt like fire. Conan’s heart screamed in his chest, battering against his ribcage in a frantic plea for escape as He pressed down, putting pressure on slowly-mending bone, on the shadow of the nail that had pierced his skull and found a temporary home within his brain. Just when it started to become too much, his mind swimming both from fear and the pressure, His hand pulled away. This brought no peace. It only returned, this time holding the broken-off leg of a table, the thick end wet with blood. It dripped onto his forehead and He dragged a thumb over it, anointing him with the blood that had been beaten out of his own skull. “They’ll do it too. They’ll see the rotten thing in you and use your head as batting practice, but probably with a power tool instead—that would be fun! So, would you rather they do it… or have me do it again?”

Conan struggled. He fought. Eventually, he managed to close his eyes, and when he opened them, He was gone. In His place was Sawyer, his sunglasses crooked on his forehead and his dark brown eyes wide with worry. The hands on his head were almost painfully gentle, careful to not touch his scar. “…what?” He mumbled, his tongue clumsy in his mouth as he gasped for breath, blinking moisture from his eyes. “Where…”

Henry materialized over him before he could continue, pressing a napkin to his forehead and prompting a sharp stab of pain that made him hiss. “Hey, hey, don’t push yourself,” he directed. His sunglasses were gone as well. It allowed Conan to see his pupils cinched tight, the firm set of his brow and the clench of his jaw. “You fell and clipped your head on your desk. The bleeding will probably stop with some pressure, but you should probably still see a doctor. How’re you feeling? Can you breathe clearly? Do you know your name and what the date is?”

His head pulsed under the man’s hand, but he didn’t push him away—instead, he let himself be content with laying on the ground, cradled in Sawyer’s hands. Not His. Never His again. “…ow. I’m fine, I can breathe, yes, Conan Knyght, and yes,” he assured, blinking a bit as his heart began to slow. Henry’s head blocked the lamp that was overhead, sparing his retinas from the agony of staring into blazing white for longer than he should. “I just… fell asleep. Sleep attack. It happens. I’m alright.”

Sawyer looked at him like he was crazy. Henry, on the other hand, made a thoughtful noise, pulling the napkin off of his wound before reapplying it. It smelled like iron. The scent clogged his lungs and tears backed up behind his eyes. “Ah, I see. What type of narcolepsy do you have? Are you on any medication for it?”

“No,” Conan replied, clearing his throat. The scent thickened. His chest ached and he suddenly felt very small, the room dwarfing him and the two men leaning over him. He could forget whatever they were planning—it didn’t matter anymore. “No, I’m not on any medication. I have secondary narcolepsy. It developed after my atta- …accident. Where is everybody else? And why are you asking me this?”

The hands on his head shifted, soft and gentle, and a thumb started brushing at the blood that was drying on his forehead, rolling off sticky, red clumps of the coagulated liquid. The emotion this little gesture brought settled in his throat, wet and sticky, and he struggled to not choke on it. “Milo went to Henry’s car for his first aid kit. Logan and Michael are trying to salvage what’s left of your lunch—it was the only thing I could think of to keep them from hovering—and Brian’s-”

The door slammed open, loud enough to make Conan flinch, and the bottom of Brian’s chin quickly joined Henry’s and Sawyer’s faces over him, a bag of ice cradled in his hands. “Henry, I got it,” he panted, holding it out like it was a lit bottle of kerosene. “What’s- Boss! You’re awake! You okay? How’s your head?”

“Did you also get the flashlight from the cupboard?” Henry asked, taking the ice bag and gently pressing it to Conan’s head, moving it a little every second or so. Sawyer ceased the gentle stroking of his forehead to allow Henry more space, and an unexpected pang of loss resonated in Conan’s chest like gunfire. He swallowed the feeling in his throat and refused to let it surface.

Brian pulled a small, dented flashlight from his pocket, thrust it into his hands, and Henry immediately used it to assault Conan’s eyes. “Thank you, Brian,” he said calmly, staring at Conan’s pupils as he burned his retinas to ash. “And I’m asking you these things because I need to know if I need to take you to a hospital. I had a few years at med school, was smack dab in the middle of my class, but I had to drop out—it was too expensive. I remember everything, though. …your pupils are contracting, that’s good. I don’t think you have a concussion.”

“Hnngh,” Conan grumbled, squinting as Henry checked both eyes. “My head’s fine. Do I have to get up now?”

“I dunno,” Sawyer muttered, looking between Conan, partially splayed across his lap, and Henry, who was still hovering and ruthlessly murdering his patient’s eyes. “Is it safe for him to be moving around so soon? Besides, I think he’d be more comfortable down here.” His hands were still holding his head still. His hands were so gentle—he barely noticed the callouses.

Henry snorted, clicking the flashlight off and setting the ice pack to the side. “I agree, but not for your reasoning. It’ll be easier to apply gauze and tape when your head’s down here and not wobbling around.”

Conan felt more questions emerging from the depths of his mind, such as “why did you ask for the ice,” “when will the others come back,” and, strangely, “hey Brian, can you start stroking my head since Sawyer isn’t?” He got to ask none of them, probably for the better, because someone ran into the doorframe, cursed loudly, and then limped into the room. “Henry,” Milo gasped, wobbling into view with a little, plastic box in his hands. “Here’s your damn kit. God, never make me run that far again.”

“I never made you run that far in the first place,” Henry replied, plucking his kit from Milo’s hands and popping it open. “You chose to do that all on your own. The Boss is better, by the way.”

Milo’s demeanour changed in the blink of an eye. In no time, he knelt beside Sawyer, looking down at Conan with bright eyes. “Oh, hell yeah,” he said, grinning despite the fact that he was still panting heavily. “Knew the Boss was too tough to die. …you’re not gonna die, right?”

“He is not going to die,” Henry snapped, pulling a wad of gauze and some medical tape out of the box, as well as a little packet. “He’s going to be just fine. Okay, Boss, I’m going to take the napkin off. I’m going to clean it first with an alcohol pad, and then dress it with gauze. Hold the ice to your head after that—I’ll make sure you get a towel or something so it doesn’t hurt your hand. If it keeps bleeding, enough to bleed through the gauze, go to the hospital. You call me or Logan if you need a ride.”

Reluctant to nod and exasperate the pain assaulting his forehead like someone was trying to drive a nail through his skull, Conan made a small sound of agreement, only flinching a little when the napkin was pulled away and as the alcohol pad met his wound. He felt tender, fragile, like a fawn trying to stand on spindly legs. He swallowed the sticky feeling in his throat again. When Henry abandoned his wound to wipe off the blood drying on his face, the last two members of his crew returned, though their faces were anything but joyous as they shuffled into the room.

“Boss… I’m sorry. We couldn’t salvage the soup,” Logan said, kneeling beside Henry as Michael took up the space between the twins. “We tried, but it was very… thick, and it all kinda splattered when you fell. We cleaned that up, but there was nothing left after that. It would be sucky in general, but after this, it’s just… shitty.”

“Ah,” Conan replied, his face twitching as the wad of gauze was pressed against his wound, which stung furiously in protest as Henry began to tape the white material in place. “That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected, I suppose. It was very congealed. Thank you for trying.”

This acceptance didn’t seem to make anything better—in fact, it seemed to make things a little worse. Logan hung his head like he’d just made a mistake so big that it would take millions to fix, and Michael looked like he was ready to go to a confessional and list “unable to save my superintendent’s lunch” as one of his sins. It made Conan’s heart do a weird little flip-flop in his chest. The sticky feeling returned. “I’m really sorry we couldn’t save your soup,” he muttered mournfully. “I can’t get you more, but maybe I—maybe we—could do something to make up for it?”

“That sounds like a fabulous idea,” Conan replied, unable to muster the energy to speak in anything other than a monotone voice. His words caught in his throat, trapped in the emotion that just wouldn’t go away, but his chest felt so light and warm that he couldn’t help but force them out. “How about I finally take Henry up on that offer for dinner and we all go from there?”

Henry froze, his eyes widening as his cheeks did their best attempt to match the colour of a rose. Milo and Sawyer’s faces dropped into almost identical masks of shock—they’d never looked more related in all the time Conan had known them—and Michael choked on nothing. Logan and Brian chose to follow Henry’s lead and went still, Logan’s hands twitching in the air. “So-” Logan choked out, biting his scarred lips, “-when you say that, do you mean only Henry, or…?”

Conan’s cheeks lit themselves on fire and his heart decided to try an escape through his esophagus. “I… think all- as many of you that- who would like to come,” he sputtered, tripping over too many words to seem as confident as he wanted to. “We can talk about something next week? Sometime in the future?”

There was only a second for Conan to doubt himself before Brian jumped to his feet just so he could sink to his knees, throwing his fists in the air. “YES! FINALLY!”

Logan covered his face, what little of it that could be seen bright red, and Michael looked unsure whether he should be celebrating or still mourning the soup. Milo followed Brian’s lead, though he reverted to making incomprehensible, excited noises, and his twin stared down at Conan, his eyes wide and his lips curving into an unfairly charming smile. Thankfully, breaking through the din, Henry yelled at the top of his lungs, “SHUT UP! Shut your asses UP and SIT DOWN, he’s still WOUNDED you IDIOTS!”

Though the mood was not completely killed, it was definitely dampened—Brian and Milo sat back down, the former looking almost ashamed, and the Logan seemed to curl inward on himself. Only Michael seemed unperturbed, and finally seemed to have chosen what to feel; he leaned over Conan, his face practically glowing with his smile. “I have all our numbers—I’ll make a groupchat later so we can talk about this, okay?” He said, strands of his hair falling over his face. “This is- I’m really excited, Boss.”

Conan found himself blinded again, though this time, not by the light. “That… sounds acceptable,” he replied, the softness of his own voice embarrassing enough to make his neck flush red. “I’d like that.”

Hopefully, they’d let him get his things and go home soon. He had a case file to burn and a date to plan for.