I wrote this last year for another fandom and decided to edit it for Stendan. Might expand it to a two-parter if anyone wants more – if not it works as a simple, stand-alone one shot. Oh and if you read my other one-off story, Our Love Was Lost, thanks so much for the lovely feedback! :)
Impressions
Trying not to collide with the revolving doors, Ste Hay ran inside the building without pausing to take a breath. He was usually never late; but today he was behind by a good twenty minutes, and it had rattled him. Needless to say, that alarm clock was going straight in the bin when he got home.
"Oh! Sorry!" he called out as he managed to bump into someone on the way to the lift. He stepped back cautiously and looked up to find himself staring into the face of a handsome, moustachioed stranger.
"No problem. Are ye alright? Ye look a little panicked," the man replied in a thick Irish accent, offering him a lopsided smile.
"I'm fine. Thank you," he said with an appreciative smile back. Seeing him continue on towards the lift, Ste followed and waited with him until the doors opened. When they did, he let him step inside first.
He swiftly jabbed his finger at the third floor button, wishing his quickness would will the lift to work faster. "Just a bit late for work," he added as an afterthought, explaining away his haste.
"I know the feeling," the man agreed, his eyes twinkling in identification with his admission.
Ste watched as he absently pushed at one of the lift buttons himself. The floor this guy seemed to be heading up to was not his own, but the one which he knew for a fact was holding interviews all day.
"So...you're here for an interview?" he broached curiously, suddenly forgetting his lateness – at least for the short time he was going to be sharing a lift with this man.
His face briefly blanked over, and then he smiled again. "Yes, I suppose I am," he nodded.
"Well, I'm sure you'll be..." Ste was cut off mid-sentence as the lift came to a sudden lurch, and then halted altogether.
"What was that?" he exclaimed anxiously, his mind re-registering the fact that he really had to be somewhere, and that somewhere was not inside this lift.
"I think it's stuck," his companion offered casually. He resisted the urge to glare at him and instead reached over to push all the buttons, as if this would somehow jolt the lift back to life.
But there was no sound. Of course there wasn't, Ste said to himself. This was one of the oldest stories of disaster in the book: getting trapped in a lift at the most inconvenient of times. He would just have to accept that they would be staying here until someone else tried to use the lift and worked out that it was broken.
"I guess we've got a bit of a wait ahead of us," the man remarked before shrugging off his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder.
Ste stared at him and was once again distracted from his own concerns. And it wasn't just the Irishman's looks that did the trick. Rather, it was his whole attitude. "You're very relaxed for someone who's going to be late for a job interview."
He looked almost amused, Ste thought as he waited for a response. He could only guess that he was just another one of those guys who didn't put enough effort into their career.
To be fair, it was really none of his business. But he just couldn't help commenting on his laid back outlook. It really had no place in a job like this; and he wasn't being arrogant. He'd been there and got the t-shirt already when it came to laziness.
"I'm just not one for stressing out," The man explained. "There's nothing we can do to fix the situation, so we might as well not get into a frenzy about something we can't control."
It was all very well for an interviewee to keep calm; but Stehad a meeting to go to. A meeting that for some unknown reason was apparently 'unmissable'.
He sighed as he glanced at his watch and saw that he was now late by exactly forty minutes. And while he wasn't a top executive for the company, and therefore the meeting didn't desperately require his presence; he knew he would face the consequences for failing to turn up.
He had always been told it was bad 'Public Relations' not to turn up to a PR meeting. Especially if you were a part of that PR company...
"Damn! No phone signal," Ste muttered to himself as he attempted to text his friend Joanne – a colleague who would also be there this morning.
"Yeah, there never is in these things," the man remarked drily whilst absently stroking his moustache, as if he was used to such irritations.
With a groan, Ste put his phone away and turned back to face the stranger he had been stuck with for the past quarter of an hour. He decided that randomly placed comments and awkward silences would not help their situation, and introduced himself.
"I'm Ste. Nice to..."
"...be stuck in a lift with ye?" he finished ironically, making him laugh despite himself. "Good to meet ye then, Steven. And It's Brendan, by the way."
Brendan. Why did that name sound so familiar to him? How did he know a Brendan? For the first time since clocking eyes on him, he really studied his features. At first glance, he was handsome. At second glance? Well, he almost forgot what he was doing and where he was for a moment...
And he'd called him by his full name – something he always asked everyone he knew not to do. Yet for some reason, it felt right coming from his new acquaintance.
"So, what do ye do?" Brendan asked politely.
"Er...I work here," Ste told him, certain he'd already made that clear.
He chuckled good-naturedly. "Yes, I know. I actually meant what do ye do here?"
Ste felt his cheeks flame red at his own stupidity. "Oh. Right. I'm in the Marketing department."
Brendan nodded, then bent to sit down on the floor, staring up at him expectantly. His feet were starting to ache a bit, but he didn't really want to sit on the floor of a lift that was probably very dirty.
Then again, they could both be here for a while yet...
So he took off his coat, which thankfully wasn't brand new; and placed it on the floor so he could sit on top of it. When he looked over at him again, he was already watching him in fascination.
"What?" he asked self-consciously.
He grinned back. "Ah, nothing. So, Marketing eh?"
"Yes," he nodded, wanting to steer the conversation towards him. "So what about you? What brings you here?"
Brendan smiled, only there was something different about the way his face looked with it this time, Ste noted.
"It just seemed about time for a change," he explained vaguely.
Just as he was about to ask him what job he'd been doing before, the man beat him to it with a question of his own.
"So, how long have ye worked here for?"
"Three and a half years now," he sighed, not really meaning it to sound quite so dull. But there it was.
"Is it a boring job?" Brendan wondered, raising an eyebrow and clearly picking up on his lack of enthusiasm.
"Oh, not at all," he answered truthfully. Ste knew he had to put this delicately; it wasn't the done thing to slate your job whilst actually in the workplace at the time. It could be even worse to say something he shouldn't to a potential new employee.
"It's just that I've got a degree in Business; but I don't really get to do much here. I get to hear and observe a lot, though, and I guess that's what makes it interesting."
Brendan looked thoughtful for a few moments, and he took the time to check his watch again. Another half an hour had passed, only it seemed to have flown by due to the distraction of chatting to this gorgeous stranger.
"You know what? If PR is what ye are really passionate about, I'd say stick with it. If ye enjoy it and ye work hard enough, one day ye'll get to the top," Brendan said, to Ste's immense surprise.
"How do you know all that? You sound so sure," he said of his advice.
His hesitation was so brief that he almost missed it. "I have a friend who was in your position. Let's just say he was smart enough to wait around for the right opportunities."
"Okay...thanks for the tip, then." This was bizarre, he mused. Here he was, still trapped in the office lift with this man; listening to his philosophy on careers. And he'd been in this job for years while this Brendan was here for an interview!
Not that those facts made him feel superior. What he'd told him earlier still stood. Only he'd sugar-coated it a bit. He was bored with his role - just not necessarily with PR.
He wasn't quite bored enough not to stress out about missing the meeting, though. "Does your phone have any signal at all?" he asked him, rising to his feet to stretch his legs out.
They both knew what the answer would be, but Brendan took out his phone and flipped it open anyway. "No such luck," he sighed expectantly, pulling himself to a standing position now too.
Ste had already retrieved his phone and searched it for bars of reception. "Nothing on mine either. I can't believe there isn't an emergency button in this thing," he moaned, gesturing towards the other buttons.
"I'm sure that after this, it'll be in their business plan as a top priority," he teased, and Ste rolled his eyes at him.
"Good luck in that interview, joker," he shot back. "That's if we ever get out of here..."
"Hey, we will," he reassured him softly, watching as he cradled his head in his hands.
Ste drew out a long breath and looked over at him. "Sorry," he offered with a weak smile. "It's just that I'm never late."
"Well, there's a first time for everything," he joked, trying to lighten the moment.
"Have you always been such an optimist?"
Brendan grinned in response, and at the sight, he quickly dealt himself a reality check that put a completely different spin on his advice. He was the one with a secure job; yet here he was, close to complaining about it. Yet this man was doing his best to cheer him up when for all he knew, his own future was up in the air!
Ste was just about to thank him for forgetting all about his impending interview on his behalf; when suddenly the small space they had been trapped in whooshed to life, almost knocking them both off their feet.
In the process, he'd practically been thrown towards him, and there was a strange spark of energy radiating between them before they moved away from each other. It was more than obvious that they had both felt the connection.
"Well, how's that for timing?" Brendan commented as they steadied themselves, and the lift finally began to move again. "Ye see? Optimism is the way forward!"
Ste laughed back, shaking his head just as a 'ping' sounded that signalled their arrival at his floor. He was about to bid the man good luck and say goodbye, when to his shock he stepped out of the lift alongside him.
"So, in the interest of being optimistic...ye wouldn't fancy going for a drink with me later, would ye?"
He didn't know whether he'd just imagined that; but it had sounded very much like he'd just asked him out. And suddenly he really, really wanted to say yes. Only, he knew things could be awkward.
"But we might be colleagues soon," he pointed out, silently cursing himself for having to bring up the problematic side to his suggestion.
"I might not get the job," Brendan reminded him, the smile in his voice almost telling him that he wouldn't be all that bothered if he didn't.
They hadn't moved from the spot outside the lift area yet; and while Ste was still trying to work out what to say, someone approached them and began talking in a rush.
"Brendan, where have you been! I've been calling you from upstairs!" said the older man, and Ste looked up in wonder at the abrupt tone.
The man he was staring at was one of the two directing partners of the company. In other words, he was the joint owner. He had never met the other one – for as long as Ste had been in the job, he'd played his part in the business overseas.
"Sorry, Benjy, we got stuck in the lift...ye might want to get someone to look into that." Brendan replied casually.
His mouth fell open, and 'Benjy', or Mr Byrne, as he knew him, looked at him. "Shouldn't you be getting to the meeting room?" he addressed him in an impatient manner.
"It's okay, Benjamin," Brendan interrupted pointedly. "I was just talking to Steven here about his interests in PR. I have a feeling he's being somewhat underused in the Marketing department. We'll be right behind you," Brendan explained, clearly wanting to finish his previous conversation in private.
The man eyed him warily. "Right...okay. Er, listen, Brendan. I know we've been through this already, but are you absolutely certain about your decision?"
Brendan nodded. "I am. Don't worry, Benjy. I know you can manage without me."
With an accepting nod, Mr Byrne walked on ahead; and for Ste, the penny had finally dropped.
Why the hell had he never googled the other Director online?
As they started a slow walk far behind the boss he did know, he forced himself out of his state of amazement and turned his face towards the man that had given him the impression he was here merely for a job interview.
"Brady & Byrne...You're Mr Brady? Brendan Brady?"
He smiled back a little sheepishly. "Yeah, that's me."
"Why didn't you mention this before? Why did you let me think you were coming for an interview?" he managed to ask incredulously. What he really wanted to do was have a go at him for being so cunningly deceiving for all that time. But as it turned out he was his boss, he didn't see that as a sensible idea.
"I'm sorry," Brendan replied softly. "I suppose my only defence is that it felt good to talk to someone around here who didn't know exactly who I was. When ye guessed what I was here for earlier, I just went along with it."
"That's...crazy," Ste found himself saying, at a loss for a better description. But now it occurred to him that, as ludicrous as it sounded; being the co-founding Director of a top PR company might not be a bed of roses all the time.
"Well, that's me. Crazy and optimistic," he gestured towards himself with a chuckle. "So, is it crazy for me to ask again whether ye'd be up for that drink?"
Ste simply gaped at him, and Brendan's smile didn't waver.
"But...but you're my boss!" he exclaimed loudly, as if he was clinically insane.
They stopped outside the door of the meeting room, and the other man stopped to look at him with his hand poised on the door handle.
"Only for another five minutes. I'm about to sign my half of the company over to Benjamin in there," He gestured inside the room with a slight nod of his head. "Decided I needed a change of direction."
As he took in this revelation, his face changed from an expression of utter shock; to confusion, and finally, into a smile that spread rapidly over his features as it dawned on him what this meant.
And as he followed him into the meeting with as much professionalism as he could muster, all he could think was that he was rather glad things weren't always what they seemed.