Little Crush

Slice-of-life short. A muscle man has a crush on the boss’ new secretary.

1k. Just a tiny bit of slice-of-life, a member of the Pike family crushing on Gellert Osgodby!

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There’s something wonderful about the boss’ new secretary, something that Eddie can’t get a handle on, can’t get over. He’s not beautiful, not really, and not handsome either, Eddie doesn’t think — or at least, when he almost said he thought he was, when he almost let it fall out of his mouth, before he could get very far a few of the lads were laughing their heads off at the very idea.

Eddie first meets him when he comes back from working in one of the factories down London way, and the lads tell him he has to go to the boss’ office to get his marching orders, so he does, goes into the old hospital that they’ve started to turn over and convert to offices.

It’s a damn sight cleaner, more organised, than it had been when he’d been there last, so fucking spotless he almost can’t believe it, and what he also can’t believe is that when he stands in the boss’ office, there’s a fucking computer on his desk. The boss has never been into shit like that, computers — he doesn’t read or write much, and doesn’t know anything about information tech, or whatever, but then, nor does Eddie.

He expects the secretary to be like any of the last ones, expects him to be a woman, or at least somebody with big fat tits and a fat arse, and maybe a fat pregnant belly as well, because that’s the theme with secretaries once the boss has had them a while.

The new one isn’t any of those: he’s a man, and he’s short and square with gaunt features. He’s thin, although not extremely so, and the bones of his cheeks are very obvious, as are the edges of his jawline; his eyes, which are a mottled green colour, look extremely big and insect-like, because he wears glasses with such thick glass that they end up magnified to some absurd degree.

The first time Eddie ends up in front of him he forgets to ask for his marching orders, his heart skipping a beat and his stomach flipping over, a kind of dizziness or light-headedness sinking into him and making his head rush. He only ears the blood in his ears when the secretary’s mouth initially moves, and he hears it even louder when, having not been heard, the secretary advances on him, looking up at him with his thin lips in such a thin line that they completely disappear, his brows furrowed, his big eyes squinting in disapproval.

“S-Sorry?” chokes out Eddie.

“Who,” pronounces the secretary, “are you?”

He has a funny way of talking — he’s got a Yorkshire accent, sounds local enough, but he puts a weird emphasis on some of the letters, putting an emphatic severity on some of the vowels.

“Eddie Sinclair, sir,” says Eddie. “I’ve come up from London there. They said I should come see you about where I’m to go next.”

“Edward Sinclair,” says the secretary, turning on his heel and going up to the computer at the boss’ desk, and Eddie wrinkles his nose but he doesn’t say owt, doesn’t argue the point. It makes him feel like he’s back at school again, being called Edward instead of Eddie, but the feeling, to his surprise, is not an entirely negative one.

His heart’s already skipped a few beats and his stomach’s already twisted oddly — it should be no surprise, Eddie supposes, that his cock is showing an interest now too.

“Here,” says the secretary, pushing a file into Eddie’s hands, and Eddie takes it, looking down at it, at the neat printing of two addresses, one of a pub he knows and another building that looks to be a storehouse. Eddie’s fingers had been brushed by the secretary’s as he handed it over, and although the little man is now already halfway across the room, Eddie still feels the ghost of them on his own, warm.

“Who, um,” says Eddie, and the words catch in his throat when the secretary whips around to look back at him. “Who are you?”

“Funny question,” says the secretary. “I’m Mr Pike’s new secretary.”

Eddie blinks. “Mr Pike?” he repeats, not sure he’s ever heard someone call the boss Mr before that actually knew him. Most of them don’t even call him sir, really, except for his kids — to talk about him, they’d just call him Pike or the boss, and to him? Eddie doesn’t know that he’d actually call him anything but Boss.

“Mr Pike,” agrees the secretary in unchanging tones, bent over the computer and tapping away the keyboard. “Thank you for coming over, Mr Sinclair. Mr Merchant is downstairs on the processing floor, if you’d go seek him out. He’ll be able to give you further guidance on the changing state of our operation.”

“You’re his new secretary?” asks Eddie.

“That’s right.”

“Where’d you come from?”

The secretary glances up at him, his lips twitching, and then back to the computer monitor. “Here,” he says.

“What’s your name?”

The secretary actually looks surprised at that, and he stands up straight from the computer, his arms crossing over his chest. His thin lips are curved into that same invisible crescent. “Gellert Osgodby,” he says quietly.

Eddie’s heard of Gellert Osgodby, who killed Gwyn Fickle when he was a teenager, who last he heard, was working for the Laithes as one of their managers. He doesn’t know how he came to work for the Pikes, let alone the boss, but it’s an intriguing idea.

“Off you go then, Mr Sinclair,” says Osgodby.

“You working late after this?” asks Eddie.

“Beg pardon?”

“You working late after this?” repeats Eddie. “When’d you get off?”

Osgodby looks at him, and there’s something about the look on his face that goes right to the core of him, sends a shiver through him and makes his cock give an interested twitch. Eddie’s always liked men who are shorter than him, smaller than him — and more importantly, he’s always liked men who could boss him about a bit.

“I don’t, Mr Sinclair,” says Osgodby. “Off you go, if you know what’s good for you.”

Eddie goes.

But he thinks about Osgodby all night. He’ll go back, when he has a chance.