Haunted Mediation (Conflict Mediation: Not So Normative Spin-Off #2)

Chapter 1 – James

Chapter One

JAMES

“ L ook out, mensch!” an all too familiar voice called.

James didn’t have time to stop and wonder what it meant that his immediate first thought upon hearing that voice was to do exactly what it said.

Well, it was probably at least a semi-good thing, given that less than a second after James ducked his head, a stress ball went whizzing by right where his face had been.

“Sorry, boss!” two equally familiar, and much more annoying, voices called.

James took a deep breath in through his nose and then let it out through his mouth before he sat back up and slowly turned around.

If only he had a cat to stroke. It would probably make his attempt at looking serious and intimidating work better.

He had the suit and the dull blue eyes that sometimes even he couldn’t get a read off of in the mirror.

He also had dark hair and pale skin, but what he was clearly lacking was any sort of actual intimidation factor.

As he turned to glare at his two subordinates, Ashley and George, they grinned back at him and scurried back to their workstations.

Maybe if he got some tattoos, he’d be more intimidating.

Like the source of that familiar voice that he sometimes heard in his dreams–

Nope, he did not have time for that line of thinking right now.

“Can I help you?” James asked in his most no-nonsense tone.

Leon “The Asshole” Rabinowicz quirked a pierced eyebrow at him but otherwise made no move to stand up out of his slouch against the wall of James’ cubicle.

Okay, to be fair, he definitely wasn’t an asshole.

At least, not anymore. After their fateful conflict mediation turned into an accidental couple’s counseling session nearly seven months prior, James had learned a lot about Leon.

First of which was that his bad boy persona was just that: a shield he wore to hide a soft, squishy interior underneath.

“Yeah, you could give me my stress ball back,” Leon said. “I think it lodged somewhere in the corner of your desk, right near the stick you usually keep up your ass.”

Okay. Maybe soft and squishy wasn’t quite right. That was more like James’ insides—or, at least, what James’ insides did every time he was around Leon “The Not an Asshole but Still a Pain in My Ass” Rabinowicz.

Because, yes, he had somehow fallen for the office bad boy, aka his best friend.

“Real funny,” James said. “You’re lucky you didn’t actually hit me, or I would have to write you up—and then you’d have to face Kevin again.”

James turned around and tried to ignore the fact that he knew the exact sound Leon’s boots made on the shabby office carpet as he walked up behind James’ chair and said, “Now that was funny. I’ll never get over the look on Kevin’s face as he tried to explain to me that even while he didn’t understand the reference, he was pretty sure it was inappropriate for me to throw stress balls in the office while announcing to anyone interested that I was working on my ‘pegging’ skills. ”

James choked back a laugh as he subtly glanced around his desk to see if he could find Leon’s stress ball. If he couldn’t find it quickly enough, Leon would grow bored and wander back to the IT department, leaving James alone with his spreadsheets and inappropriate thoughts about pegging.

“I think that’s actually rather homophobic of him for not knowing,” James said absently as he failed to find it in its usual place behind his monitor or stuck behind his water bottle. “You could have written him up under the new company policy.”

After James came out as pansexual and trans to Leon in couples—er, conflict mediation, the two of them had formed a bit of a team, along with Conroy over in Legal.

They’d submitted, and eventually succeeded in achieving, more stringent HR policies against homophobia and transphobia in the workplace.

James’ horrible boss, Antonelli, had made it about six weeks under the new policy before getting written up, and four weeks after that, he’d been put on leave without pay for having been reported four different times by James and his army of minions.

He was eventually terminated, much to the entire team’s delight.

“Now, now, my little mensch. The straights can peg each other, too,” Leon said, reaching over James’ shoulder to grab his stress ball from where it had wedged itself between two of James’ accounting books from college.

James tried not to breathe too deeply, lest he drown in Leon’s citrus-y scent.

Given his appearance, James had initially been assumed Leon would smell like burnt umber or chainmail or something equally and ridiculously masculine.

It wasn’t until their third time hanging out, when they’d ended up huddling under a bus stop together to avoid a flash thunderstorm, that James had first caught his scent.

He smelled like what James imagined an orange grove would smell like.

There were hints of wood and freshly plowed earth, but the predominant scent was a fresh, almost sweet tang.

“Sure, but clearly Kevin doesn’t know that,” James said, struggling to maintain the plot of their banter as Leon’s muscled chest brushed along James’ shoulder.

Leon pulled back, only to lean down and murmur in James’ ear. “You gonna teach him all about pegging? Maybe it could be the next installation of your ‘Queer in the Workplace’ seminar.”

James had also begun offering small brown bag sessions—mainly to the younger staff, but a few older members had joined as well—on how to be more accepting in the workplace.

“Pretty sure I’d get fired for that one,” James said, tipping his head until he could lightly tap the side of Leon’s head with his.

Leon laughed, a sound that had no right being as warm and inviting as it was, before stepping back from James’ chair.

James had never had a friend he could be physically affectionate with.

Or, well, no, that wasn’t quite right. When he’d been a kid and still identifying as a girl, he’d had a lot of close girl friends he’d snuggle up with at sleepovers or on the bus ride home from a long day of coloring and learning fractions.

In adulthood, though, most of his physical affection had been through random hookups, or hugs and supportive hand holding with his mom.

James' world had practically turned upside down the first time Leon rested his boot-clad ankle against James’ under the table at their favorite coffee shop.

It wasn’t like James had been afraid of what anyone might think if they saw the casual intimacy.

The café was called the Rainbow Bean, after all.

The owners, who had both attended the university where Leon worked and earned his computer science degree, ensured that everyone knew the café was inclusive of all genders and sexualities.

It wasn’t even that he hadn’t wanted Leon to touch him, which would have been accurate only a few months before. No, what had rocked James’ world was that in that one gesture, Leon had managed to break down every last wall James had been holding up between them.

After that, James had been an open book to Leon.

He’d told him, in great detail, about his mom’s cancer diagnosis, which had led to him putting his career, friendships, and love life on hold for almost a decade, and about how, meanwhile, his dad had run off to live his own life without the shackles his family had apparently become.

James told Leon about his ex, Eli, and his horrible first job, and he even told him about some of the nastier things Antonelli had said to him that still kept him up at night.

Leon had listened—over coffee, while splitting Chinese food on his couch, in line for the movies, and as recently as last week, while sitting with their shoulders pressed together at an ice cream parlor.

He’d listened to all of James’ stories for almost seven months, and every time, he made sure that some part of them, whether it be their pinkies, ankles, knees, or shoulders, was touching.

On top of that, Leon had slowly opened up to him as well.

It had taken a lot longer, and there was still a lot James didn’t know about him, but little by little, he’d peeled back that bad boy shell and given James a glimpse of the real him.

Not soft, not squishy, but fiercely loyal and sometimes even kind.

God, James was such a cliché. Of course, he’d fallen for the bad boy who showed him kindness and even an ounce of physical affection.

“Who would I assault with stress balls if you got fired?” Leon asked.

James turned around just in time for the stress ball to bounce off his forehead and right back into Leon’s hand.

Their eyes met, and James tried; he really did. He prided himself on being the bigger person in front of his minions, in staff meetings, and even sometimes with Leon. But today, he just couldn’t help himself.

“I guess you’d just have to start pegging someone else.”

“Mom, I told you I could get that for you,” James said and hurried to take the embarrassingly heavy box from his mother.

“Oh, thank you, honey. Now I can grab the skeleton,” his mom said, heading back up the attic ladder.

“Mom!” James moaned as he struggled to lift the box onto the kitchen counter and follow her up the ladder.

“Yes, dear?” she asked, shuffling across the rickety attic floor towards the Halloween skeleton in the corner.

She hadn’t always shuffled. Before the cancer, she’d been a half-marathon runner, but the year of IV chemo had given her peripheral neuropathy in all of her extremities.

A fair amount of it had gone away, and physical therapy was doing wonders to help her fingers and hands, but her feet still didn’t seem to want to lift up as high as they used to.