Dillon spoke up uncharacteristically quickly and loudly.
“Raine pitching, Beck catching. Obviously.” Obviously? What the fuck did he mean by that?
As pissed as I was, I couldn’t keep up the anger with Nate and Dillon goofing around like that. I erupted into laughter, still standing within kissing distance of Raine.
“Oh God, pass me the fucking bleach. Dude just spat in my mouth.” Raine wiped his lips on the back of his hand exaggeratedly, faux spitting as he did. It was worse than high school, more like grade school. I was half expecting him to start bitching about cooties any minute.
“Oh please, if I slipped my tongue in right now, we all know you’d kiss me back. So stop being coy.” I was only half joking. He probably would have.
“Fuck you.” The anger had left him, as it had me. The UN should hire Nate on account of his stellar peacekeeping skills. The dude was a legend.
“Ditto.”
“Apparently not. At least, not according to Dillon.” Raine’s tone was friendly.
I shot Dillon a faux angry look. “Yeah, what’s with that? I mean, what the hell man? You didn’t even need to think about it for a second. Why the fuck am I catching?” I was now almost more pissed at Dillon than I had been with Raine when this whole thing had started.
Dillon remained characteristically tight-lipped. Silence was his superpower, especially in a partnership like ours, where almost every decision was a pissing contest, with the strongest stream winning the debate. That was until Dillon cut through the noise with logic and reason that shot our shit down in flames.
Thanks to Dillon “Bart” Bartholomew, I’d learned that you underestimated a quiet person at your peril. In fact, I now realized they were the ones I needed to watch the hardest. Just as I thought you had the measure of them, they’d pull out something to knock me on my ass.
A slow smile crept across his lips. He didn’t do it often—smiling, or emoting period, just wasn’t really his thing—which made it all the more dazzling when he did. I could totally see why one grin from him had panties flying off on both sides of the Atlantic, and both sides of the gender divide, for that matter. Women especially loved the quiet, sensitive-seeming types. As for men, I wasn’t quite sure what it was about him that did it for them, but it was definitely something.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that he looked like a fucking supermodel, was smarter than most computers, and richer than God. Oh, and he sounded like a cross between Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Prince Harry—that right there put him ahead in the panty melting stakes, before the rest of us were even out the gate. The man was a walking cliché. One that nobody thought actually existed in real life until they met Dillon.
He shrugged lightly, speaking in his flawless English accent.
“No need to think about. It is what it is.” What? Why the fuck am I the catcher?
“No, really though, what is it with you two? Is it truly a case of unresolved sexual tension?” Nate picked up the baton again.
“Because if that is it, I for one wouldn’t judge you if you did screw. I’m serious. You know I’m not a homophobe. Oh, but wait a minute. Maybe I’ve been missing something here all these years. Wait. A. Hot. Fucking. Minute! I’m the common link between the two of you. I even introduced you both. Maybe I’m the ‘problem’,” he air quoted.
“Maybe you both have a boner for me, and all of this,”—he moved his fingers back and forth between the two of us—“is just man jealousy. You both want me, right? Right?” His grin was a mile wide.
Neither of us said a word.
“Well I hate to break it you both, but I’m straighter than a military reg. parting. Pussy for me, all day, every day. Double on Sundays. But what if I made a life sized cut-out of my irresistible self, and you guys could each lie one in bed with you and beat yourself off, while looking deep into my golden hazel eyes? Deal? At least then maybe you’d get off each other’s backs so that we could all get on with some fucking work!”
Both Raine and I glared Nate in utter disgust “Fuck you Bumble,” we growled in unison.
Bumble was Nate’s family’s nickname for him, and as we both well knew, he hated anyone except his parents and five sisters referring to him that way. I could see why. As cute as it had been for a goofy nine-year-old kid, it was hardly in keeping with his image these days, neither in the boardroom nor in the bedroom.
“Ah, there we are, united against a common enemy, and back to being the best of friends. Conflict Resolution 101. Also, fuck both of you. Hard.” He grinned like he’d worked out the secret to eternal life.
I flipped him the bird and headed back to the couch. I had to hand it to him, Nate was damned good at what he did, which was largely to keep us and everyone else in the agency in check. His military school training stood him in good stead for steering this particular ship full of assholes. I didn’t envy him the job. It took a special kind of person to be both empathetic—or at the very least, give the appearance of empathy—and enough of a bastard to be the enforcer at all levels within the agency. Lucky for us all, he had both heart, and an assertive streak a mile wide. Some would go as far as saying he could be aggressive.
Raine moved to return to his seat behind his desk, but Nate shook his head.
“Listen man, we’re serious about this. As if it’s not bad enough that we have Confession here every day. We’re not all going to sit on the couches while you recline at that desk looking down on us like an overseer. We’re your partners, not kids who’ve been sent to the principal’s office. Sit on the fucking couch like the rest of us, or we really will start holding Confession in the boardroom.”
Raine shot Nate a look, not even trying to hide his contempt, but remained silent and took a seat as indicated. Like the rest of us, he knew when to pick his battles with Nate, and when to back the fuck down.
“Good. Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, can we please get on with the order of the day, which might I remind you, is the Beyner pitch, and winning the shit out this piece of business.”
Beck
I might not have been totally in favor of the strategic direction we’d taken for the pitch, but I couldn’t deny that Raine and Dillon had pulled off another master stroke with the creative work and the presentation they’d given up most of their weekend to put together. Both were works of absolute genius. If the goons at Beyner Toys Inc didn’t hire us on the basis of this pitch, they weren’t the right clients in the first place, and I guess we could call it natural selection.
On the other hand, part of the secret of our winning record was that we preferred for that selection process to have happened before we walked into the pitch room. We did our research thoroughly, and if we got even the slightest vibe that a client might not be the right fit for us, or vice versa, we bailed. Again, this added to our cred. Nobody wanted to be the client who was dumped or blanked by BR&ND.
After a few hours running through the pitch materials, presentation and creative work, we were good to go. More than that, we were shit fucking hot. As ever. I looked around Raine’s office at my partners, and once again, internally patted myself on the back for having chosen these bastards to conquer the world with.