Noah tried to do as Beckett asked and breathe, but for some unimaginable reason, breathing seemed nearly impossible for his friend to do.
So Beckett did the only thing he could think of to still his friend’s agitation. He rested a hand on the side of Noah’s face and kissed his lips.
The effect was almost immediate. Noah moaned and kissed him back, softening in his arms and settling. Beckett kept kissing him—with tongue, but not an excess of passion—until he was certain whatever moment of upset in Noah was over.
“There,” he said, breathless himself, setting Noah back in his seat. “That’s better. Everything is right as rain, just the way it is.”
It was another egregious lie, but Beckett didn’t know what else to do or say. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Lawrence, or Marcus, or everyone else, when they said Noah was mad, it was just that he cared too deeply for Noah to preserve himself.
They were a bit late for work by the time they reached the glassworks, but as always, Beckett’s father was willing to forgive both of them without a word.
“I’ve an important meeting with the stockholders later this morning,” Beckett’s father informed him as he and Noah entered the bustling office. “I need you to arrange for lunch to be brought in, and Noah, I need you to copy these notes onto the chalkboard I’ve set up in the boardroom. I want to try something new,” he went on, addressing Beckett again. “I’ve summarized the points I want to talk about in this meeting, and I thought that writing them on a chalkboard for the shareholders to see will expedite the meeting process.”
“A capital idea,” Noah said with a broad smile. “It’ll be just like copying lines in school.”
He laughed a little too loudly at his joke, startling one of the clerks at the desk near where they stood. Beckett had noticed the young man grow nervous in Noah’s presence before. Perhaps because Noah had knocked over a bottle of ink onto the man’s work on his first day at the office.
They went their separate ways after that, Noah heading to the boardroom and Beckett heading downstairs to write out a list of the things they would need to send with one of the runners to the restaurant that usually catered his father’s business meetings.
But only an hour later, as some of the stockholders began to arrive and require entertaining before the meeting was set to begin, one of the office boys came racing into the room where Beckett and his father were chatting with the men.
“Mr. Smith, sir,” the young man said, glancing between Beckett and his father. “You’re needed in the boardroom. Mr. Cheevers is…well, you’ll see.”
Beckett let out a tense breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll see what the trouble is,” he said.
“Yes, and please take care,” his father said as Beckett left.
Beckett frowned. Was his father worried about Noah being a danger to him now too?
He was relieved when he reached the boardroom to find that nothing was on fire, ink hadn’t been spilled anywhere, and Noah was still fully clothed. He was less amused to find that instead of his father’s careful notes written on the three chalkboards that stood at one end of the long table, Noah had indeed written out lines, as though he’d been punished.
“I will not fuck my best friend when I am in love with Marcus” was written about fifty times already in increasingly sloppy handwriting, and Noah was still going at it.
“Noah, you know you can’t write that here,” Beckett hissed, rushing to the nearest chalkboard. He grabbed an eraser and began to remove Noah’s words as fast as he could, before anyone else could see them.
“Beckett!” Noah said, overly bright and apparently overjoyed to see him. “Isn’t it a lark?” he asked with a laugh. “I just couldn’t contain myself. It’s exactly the sort of thing the schoolmaster in my mind has been growling at me for a week now.”
Beckett’s stomach lurched. “Do you really hear voices?” he asked, afraid of the answer.
“No, of course not,” Noah said, putting his chalk down and striding right up to Beckett. “It is merely a figure of speech.”
Before Beckett could reply, Noah grabbed the sides of his face with his chalky hands and planted a long, wet kiss on Beckett’s lips. It was a beautiful and tragic kiss, and it broke Beckett’s heart, because Beckett could taste the desperation in Noah’s lips.
“Not here, love,” Beckett said, using the term of endearment for the first time, as he broke the kiss. “The stockholders are on their way up, and we need to tidy up the place before they get here.”
“Yes, right, of course,” Noah said, breathing faster than usual, as he peeled away from Beckett. “It has to be perfect for the meeting. Everything has to be perfect, because Mr. Smith has been so kind and so generous to me, and so have you, and if it isn’t perfect, something bad will…. I’ll make everything perfect for them.”
Noah went to work, tearing around the room like a whirlwind, straightening the notepaper and pens on the table and arranging the water glasses that had been laid out with perfect symmetry. Beckett knew it wasn’t healthy, but he had to let Noah run wild while he erased the lewd lines from the chalkboards, then did his best to copy out his father’s notes.
“Here, I can help with that,” Noah said once he’d made a complete circuit of the table and reached Beckett at the chalkboards again.
Beckett was terrified of what Noah might write on the boards, but there wasn’t time to stop him from picking up the chalk and going to work. He could already hear his father and the stockholders in the hall, approaching the room.
They were still hard at work, copying out the notes, when everyone arrived. Beckett sent an anxious look to his father, but his father seemed thoroughly confused about what the trouble could have been. Other than the delay in having his notes copied to the chalkboard, the room was completely in order.
“Gentlemen, if you will have a seat, we can begin this meeting in just a moment,” his father said, walking to the head of the table, where Beckett and Noah were just finishing up. “Is everything all right here?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Everything is splendid, Mr. Smith,” Noah answered in a loud voice. “Absolutely splendid.”