Rebound Pt. 01

---Super slow burn heads up---

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Jude.

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I grinned as I spotted Levi walking out of the office and leant against his car casually. He was on his phone- nothing new there- and as usual having an argument with whoever was on the other end. I waved as he caught my eye. He paused, and muttered something into the phone before approaching me as he hung up.

"Hi." I grinned and held out the flowers. "How was..."

"What are you doing here?" Levi sighed as he brushed past me. "I told you this is an important couple of days." I blinked.

"I know... sorry... I...just thought..."

"Just thought? You weren't thinking. Fuck's sake tonight is not the night for..." He glanced at me. I'd dressed up, in a three piece suit with a soft pink waistcoat he used to love. He frowned at me. "For whatever this is." I bit my tongue.

"I called Andrew." I said quietly. "He said..."

"You called Andrew?! Jesus Jude, you want to get me demoted for incompetence?"

"He didn't seem to think there would be a problem with you taking a night off."

"I can take a night off when the fucking budget is announced. Until then..." He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair as he looked at me. "Fuck's sake." He said again. I swallowed.

"Ok. Got it." I glanced down at myself, feeling utterly ridiculous. "I'll Uber home."'

"That's dumb." He sighed. "I'll drop you home. But I'll have to get back." I nodded.

"Thanks."

I shoved the flowers in the back and we sat in silence the whole way home. He grazed my cheek with a kiss as he paused to drop me off.

"Jude. I will take you out." He said with a sigh.

"Yeah." I shrugged. "Sorry.... For..." I shook my head helplessly.

"See you tonight."

"Love you."

"Love you, darling."

----

I didn't quite know what to do with myself after that. I called Mason, our favourite restaurant, and cancelled our booking. I should have just gone. But I would have totalled myself, and Levi would have had to pick me up and it would have been a whole stupid thing.... I considered ordering in and on a whim I got a pizza which I ate roughly one slice of before throwing out. Maybe the birds would enjoy it.

I had a bottle of wine and 20 cigarettes and a shower that lasted about an hour to scrub the smell out. Levi hated it when I smoked. Which is fair, it's fucking gross.

I fell asleep listening to a podcast and at some point he settled in beside me and kissed my forehead.

"You awake?" He whispered.

"No." I whispered back.

"Fuck you." He said softly. "Fuck me."

"Was Edgar not enough tonight?" I murmured, half asleep. Levi tensed up beside me.

"What?" He said. I curled my arms around him.

"I'll fuck you tomorrow darling. I'm asleep." I murmured. And I really was asleep. I didn't hear a response, if there was one.

----

Morning arrived. I woke with the light, as always, and he woke with his alarm an hour later.

He sat up all of a sudden and covered his mouth as he looked at me. He groaned and hung his head. I absentmindedly reached for his shoulder.

"Oh Jude." He whispered as he touched my fingers. "Yesterday..."

"I should have asked you first." I said. He shook his head.

"It was your birthday." He whispered, turning his head to look at me. "Oh baby. I'm so sorry." I stared at him. Huh. I didn't even realise he'd forgotten. I just assumed it didn't matter. I stared at him and he winced as I stared. "I'm sorry. You know I'm bad at dates."

"That's ok." I said slowly. "Levi... maybe..." he sat up.

"No." He said. I bit my lip.

"You don't know what I was going to say." I said. Levi rolled his eyes.

"I do." He said. "Couples therapy." I blinked.

I said nothing.

Levi stared at me and frowned.

"Not couples therapy?"

I bit my lip.

"Uh." I said slowly. "No. Not that."

"Oh God..." He said.

"Maybe we should take...."

"Oh, this is even worse..."

"A break, Levi." He sighed dramatically and threw himself back on the bed.

"We're engaged! We can't take a break!" I closed my eyes.

"Look. Forget I said anything. We can talk about this after the budget is announced."

"Fuck the budget!!!!" He grabbed my hands. "Jude- baby- I know. I know what I've been like. But please darling... let's talk." I pulled my hands away.

"That's why I suggested therapy." I said quietly. "Levi. Truly. You have work soon. Forget I said anything."

"I can't!" He rubbed his forehead. "Ok. Look. Can you give me a month to get my shit together? And then, if you still need a break- A BREAK not a break up- then we'll see how we go." I reached my arm around him and squeezed him tight.

"Darling- you can't buy me flowers for a month and pretend that's going to fix this." He stuck his chin out obstinately.

"It might." He whispered. I laughed- and he smiled a little, and he tucked his body in close to mine. "A month." He whispered. "I will change." I stroked his hair. He wouldn't. I knew he wouldn't. But...

"Ok." I whispered. "1 month."

-----

Monday.

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Nate.

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I was so, so, so bored between the morning rush at 7.30am and the mid morning rush at 10.30am. I was going spare. I used to pass the time by reading under the counter but I'd somehow talked my way into a promotion and now I had to lead by example... Ugh. The extra dollar an hour was SO not worth it. My hand drifted to a crossword that was lying open on the desk.... I wasn't like... actually doing it. I was just sort of scribbling in the answers when...

"Kia Ora."

"Hi!" My head jolted up as I quickly pushed the crossword further away. I blushed as I took in the guy in front of me. Jesus. Hello Sailor. I'd never seen him before which was rare- it's basically the same faces day in day out here. And I would DEFINITELY have remembered. He had short hair and some stubble that he probably spent hours curating to look just the right level of unkempt. He was in a suit that fit him so well I assumed it cost more than my entire wardrobe. He was sooo attractive. Soft features and big lips and big eyes. I stared at him for a fraction too long. Oh god, I needed to get my head together.

"How's your day going?" He asked.

"What can I do for- oh!" I stumbled on my words. "Good thanks- and you?" I laughed at myself and I could feel my cheeks heating up. "Sorry- I wasn't expecting to be asked." He grinned at me.

"My day's fine." He said. "Better now." My eyes widened.

"Pardon?" He gestured vaguely to his keep cup and I internally rolled my eyes at myself. Right. Better now because coffee. The reason he's here. Not because you, Nate, you dumb, horny idiot.

"Brilliant! What can I do for you?"

"Americano. Quad shot." He said as he yawned. I raised my eyebrows.

"Rough night?" I laughed. "Or rough morning?"

"Or I just drink a lot of coffee." He shrugged with a smile.

"Sweet as. $4.50. You want a coffee card? I haven't seen you before but if you're gonna be here often we usually fudge the numbers and you get a free one, like, whenever I feel like it." His eyes crinkled.

"I'm contracting." He said. "I'll take you up on that. Expect to see a lot more of me." He grinned as I handed him his coffee and the card. I smiled and nodded and waited patiently till he was out the door before I sighed deeply and swooned over the counter.

"Holy shit." I said out loud.

"Married." Russell interrupted my developing infatuation with this new tall Maori guy who drank too much coffee. I glanced up at him.

"Huh?"

"He had a ring on." Russell gestured to his finger as he started to do work around me, putting takeaway cups away and folding napkins. "Married. Get over him."

"Dammit." I sighed. "Why are the good ones always straight?"

"He might not be straight." Russell said slowly. "But he is off limits." I sighed. Well. Yeah. Too good to be true. The man reeked of machismo. You know the type. Broad as a fucking barge- honestly I'm not exactly scrawny myself but he could probably bench press me. Too tall. I mean, the perfect height but too tall ya know? Big brown eyes. He probably had a magazine cut out picture perfect blonde wife who looked divine hanging off his shoulder. And anyway, even if he was single and gay- the odds of someone who clearly knew what he was doing with his life- contracting for presumably the Ministry of Business and Innovation & Employment- with that damn nice suit and all... his bloody deeply symmetrical face and height and... well look. Odds were he wasn't gonna ask his barista out on a date no matter what. I smiled. Still. Nice to have something to look forward to.

----

Jude.

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Levi called me in the morning and asked if I wanted to do lunch with him. It was petty, it was shitty, it was bad communication but....

"What, you can take lunch now that I've threatened to break up with you but you couldn't actually be fucked to remember my fucking birthday a few days ago?" Levi sighed.

"I'm trying to make that up to you." He said slowly. "I don't know how many times I have to say I'm sorry." I sighed and looked at myself on the computer screen. I swallowed. Come on Jude, the little angel on my shoulder was saying, give him a fair chance. The asshole on my other shoulder was calling Levi a cunt and telling me to go sleep with someone else. But I'm sure I could strike a happy medium.

"Just once." I sighed. "Sorry for bickering, Lee, but anyway- I'm not sure I have time for lunch. I'll make something nice tonight."

"I can cook." Levi interjected. I smiled and rolled my eyes.

"No you can't, darling." I said softly. He sighed.

"I could try." He sounded almost as convinced as I was. Which was not at all.

"Sure. You cook." I laughed. I guess takeout wouldn't be that bad.

----

I drifted downstairs to the ubiquitous Mojo Cafe and smiled at the sight of a bored 20 something who was leaning on the front counter, absorbed in a crossword. He blushed furiously as I greeted him and hastily shoved the crossword to one side. I'll be honest- it took me a second to recover when he looked up. Fuck me. But actually, really truly, fuck me he was insanely good looking. No way this was his actual job. He had to be a model or an actor and did this between gigs. He was mixed something and something though god knows what. Bluest eyes you've ever seen. Not as dark as me, but not white, with an unusual sprinkling of freckles across his face- the kind of look you see from models in high fashion magazines; perfect imperfection. He had ridiculously long thick dark hair, tied up obviously but I could see it would probably reach his ass if he untied it. Exactly the length I always tried to get mine in high school except my foster mum always intervened when it hit my shoulders. She told me people would think I was a girl. Which, in her defence, they would have. This guy though... no one would mistake him for a girl- all tattoos, and muscles... I blinked and recovered. Actually I recovered way faster than he did. He was really blushing and only just managed to get himself together, completely missing that I was away with the fairies. I grinned. Yeah- pretty, but thick as pig shit.

I bet he made really, really shitty coffee. There was no way this guy was hired for anything other than his looks- he was a total space cadet, even if it was bloody charming watching him stumble over his words as he cheerily started to talk to me. I hoped the other guy working would be the one to actually make it- he looked me over and seemed less than impressed which is exactly the attitude I like from a barista- not this... bubbly sex god who was mumbling about a coffee card. He stamped it three times and winked at me, and blushed again.

The coffee was actually more than passable- it was great, and to be honest it's hard to make what's verging on concentrated caffeine drinkable let alone great. I blinked back at him in surprise as I entered the elevator. He was slumped over the desk again, and his co-worker was telling him off. My barista waved the other guy away with the goofiest smile. I smiled privately watching them. Well. There was something to look forward to.

-----

"Where's mine?" Caroline asked as I thumped down beside her. Oh. I laughed at myself.

"Oh fuck I'm sorry. I totally forgot." I bit my lip. 'I was daydreaming about the hot piece of ass down there' probably wasn't a great excuse on your first day when you've offered to get someone coffee. "I'll go back."

"Na it's fine." She smiled. "Maybe coffeed out anyway." I rolled my eyes.

"It's not even 11! I'll go back." She grinned.

"It's ok. I'll head down after lunch. The cute one doesn't start until 12 anyway." I laughed as I caught her eye.

"You and I have different opinions on cute." I said. "The guy down there was plenty cute." She laughed as she ran her eyes over me. Oh. Huh. She was reassessing. Yeah. Even after a lifetime of not giving a shit for some reason I still read straight. Levi says if I smiled more people would get the picture. I asked him what was inherently gay about smiling and he said brooding moodily in a corner the way I do was a trope of boring straight men from terrible romance novels, to which I said why do you read them if they're terrible and he said I could stand to be a little more Darcy and a little less Heathcliff and I... well, that was another really dumb argument anyway.

"How is it I always get stuck with a horny gay man next to me?" Caroline muttered. I spluttered.

"Uh...."

"Although I've missed Sam." She said. "We've been through a few since him but his life was always the spiciest." I swallowed.

"Well... I hate to disappoint but uh, my life is pretty far from... spicy." She shrugged.

"Day one and you're crushing on the barista." She raised her eyebrows at me pointedly. I laughed.

"He's cute." I raised my hand and wiggled my finger at her. "But I'm engaged so 'he's cute' is as far as that's going."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "Oh well." She stretched out. "You're only here for a few months anyway." I snorted. Charming. She caught my eye and grinned at me. "Joking." She said. "It'll be lovely to work with you Jude."

----

Levi offered to pick me up at 6 which made a nice change from biking up the hills to Karori in the cold, so I locked my bike in the garage overnight and waited for him, scrolling on my phone. Yeah. I'm a late bloomer in the whole... learning to drive thing. As in roughly 16 years late. Levi had quite rightly vetoed being my personal chauffeur so the bike it was- unless he was feeling particularly remorseful, which was relatively often these days, not that I was really trying to look into that. Obviously we'd been close to breaking up before- because of Greg. And that time I accidentally put his suit jacket in the laundry- which would NEVER have happened if he bothered to do the laundry every now and then. And then George. And that time when I got drunk and smashed his mother's china teapot... And then he'd proposed and I said yes because I figured that meant Greg and George and Edgar and DomTopDownSouth, whoever the fuck he was, and all the fights about stupid shit and not so stupid shit didn't matter. Because Levi wanted the ring on MY finger. He wanted me, forever, to be his. And that meant....

Maybe a little less to him than it did to me.

But I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about work, the stupid contract I'd picked up because it paid well even if it bored the tits of me. That's what you get when you specialise too much. You end up shafted for 6 months every year because no one needs you and the other 6 are spent in awful offices with no one who jokes with you because you aren't going to stick around. So I thought about work, and then I thought about the barista, but only because he was leaving for the day, wrapped up in a thousand layers with only the tips of his ears and his eyes visible under a heap of wool. I smiled. Even just that and he was pretty. Life isn't fair. I giggled to myself as he slipped and caught himself mid fall, only to throw his phone out of his hand and swear as he launched himself after it. He managed to catch it with a fairly competent barrel roll. Huh. Maybe he did parkour or something. I grinned as he slipped again and fell on his ass. Maybe not.

Levi was late, but I'd prepared for that and left a few emails for me to get through while I sat down in the car park and waited. He arrived eventually and honked at me. Like I couldn't hear his obnoxious Maserati from a fucking mile away. I rolled my eyes and collected myself to slip in beside him.

"Hey darling." I smiled. "How was work?" Levi groaned as he pulled into traffic and glanced at me. Yeah. Things are always rough for him at the end of the financial year. But you know, he's the bloody genius who got into accounting.

"Ugh. Don't." He said shortly. "How's the new gig?" I shrugged.

"Pretty dull. You'd hate it. No eye candy." He laughed.

"Aw. Poor baby. Put a picture of me on your desk." I laughed.

"What, like a sexy one?"

"They're all sexy." He joked. "Ah, maybe nothing too outrageous. Your co-workers probably don't need a hole pic in the first week." I spluttered and Levi nudged my knee. "Prude." He teased. "You never used to be a prude." I rolled my eyes.

"You never used to bait me like that." Levi glanced at me but mostly kept his eyes on the road and switched the radio on. He did it a fraction before I could. We never used to listen to the radio. We used to talk for hours and hours and never get bored of each other. But talking never led anywhere nice these days. Barbs. Accusations. Sarcastic comments. We were as bad as each other, and there was never a winner.

Levi's brain must have been ticking over because as we pulled into the supermarket he sighed deeply.

"Darling..." He said. I shushed him.

"It's ok." He blinked his big grey eyes at me and pouted a little.

"We're ok?" He asked quietly. I laughed and pressed my head to his shoulder.

"We are not ok." I said. "What do you want for dinner?"

"Oh god. I don't know." He sighed and pulled me close. "Jude... I'm the worst."

"I know."

"I love you."

"I love you too." I kissed his forehead as I pulled away.

-----

We decided on a lot of wine and homemade pizza. Levi always said he didn't do carbs but he'd never really followed through on that. I think he just wanted to be the kind of person who didn't do carbs. I mean, who doesn't want to be that smug thin healthy arsehole who doesn't do carbs? He started on the dough and I started on a bottle of wine, giving advice whenever he asked for it- which was once every two minutes. I smiled at him. God he was adorable, covered in flour with a smudge of dough across his face.

"Sure you don't need a hand?" I offered. Levi stuck out his chin obstinately.

"I'm doing great." He said. He caught my eye and we grinned at each other. "Anyway this needs to rise- pour me some wine while I uh.... I guess shower." I obliged him and he went to rinse himself off. I quickly checked the dough was actually rising- it looked like we were in the clear- he might be a little- uh completely moronic when it comes to anything practical but I guess he could follow a recipe if I explained it to him in vivid detail. I went to pour him a wine and glanced at his phone as it lit up.

Oh.

I mean. I shouldn't be surprised I guess. If anything I should be surprised he left his phone out where I could see it. And maybe whatever that 'secret' message from HungDaddy91 said wasn't what it looked like anyway. Maybe it was just a jokey colleague fucking around. I stared at his phone and went to sit down. Maybe.

His shower took longer than it should.... But who am I to judge if he wanted a long shower.... Only... I had my suspicions...

Ah, maybe I was overthinking. Maybe.

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Tuesday.

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Nate.

----

I grabbed a bagel from the pile and held out a mug.