Chapter Text
"Ah, Jopson." Francis greets her with as much gusto as he can manage, but it still comes out flatter than usual. "How are the troops taking the upcoming expedition?"
"Not fantastically, sir, it has to be said." She sounds tired too, voice still oddly scratchy and bags showing under her eyes as she drops off his coffee and a stack of papers. It's been a few days since she had to break the news about the Arctic trip, and nobody's expressed any real enthusiasm since. "Starting to get a grudging list of volunteers together. Hickey's signed up on the prod side, though I'd recommend we find a way around that."
"Christ, I'm not having him bumming his way through the Arctic on top of wherever else he's putting it about. There'll be a mutiny." He takes off his glasses and pinches his nose, headache already threatening when it's only just approaching nine-thirty on this dreary Wednesday.
Although it takes place at the same time every year, it feels like the lead-up to Cannes Lions starts earlier and earlier the older he gets. The folder full of emails enthusiastically inviting him to boozy parties and beach networking events on the French sand is threatening enough, even without the industry-sanctioned temptation to drink the stress away. He still remembers the year he passed out under a plastic palm tree and tried to propose to Sophia Cracroft from Left Behind Inc as she poured him into a taxi. Never again.
Jopson reaches under the pile of papers and moves his snail mail to the top. The first two envelopes are expensive, heavyweight, Patrick Bateman-pleasingly embossed event invitations. Christ. An industry full of psychopaths and the universe didn't even have the decency to make him one of them.
His team might disagree on that point, but he's the boss so they can keep it to themselves.
"Am I allowed to ask if John's back yet?" Francis shoves the offending invitations off his desk and directly into the bin without opening them. "Or is that an HR violation as well?"
"Don't be snippy about it." That's uncharacteristically short of her, and she must realise because she meets his raised eyebrows with an apologetic little grimace. Francis had totally forgotten she was in the process of dealing with a complaint about whatever heinous shit Bryant said to her a while ago, he must try and be more sensitive to that. "He's at his desk, yes. Would you like me to send him in?"
"I would say tell him I'll see him after lunch, but he'll only sit there panicking and getting fuck all done." Francis sighs and takes a sip of the coffee. It's burnt. For fuck's sake. His mam always said he'd face the consequences for his bad behaviour one day, but he thought he might've dodged them by his sixties. "Might as well send him in now. Will you tell George to take the call from that wanky start-up while I'm busy? What the fuck is it they make?"
"Hyaluronic personal lubricant," she explains without hesitation, elaborating as if it explains anything further when Francis just stares at her blankly. He's fairly sure he knows two of those words mean sex lube. " Artisanal hyaluronic personal lubricant."
"Jesus wept." He puts his glasses back on with another swig of the hideous coffee. Penance for his sins indeed. "I'll speak to John now, then."
"I'll send him in." Jopson hovers in the door for a moment, arms folded over her tablet as she all but wags the stylus at Francis. He notices her nails are bitten down further than usual and there's a plaster wrapped around two fingertips - definitely needs to see about making her take some leave sooner rather than later. "Be nice."
"I'm always perfectly nice," he tries to protest, but she's already left the room. He'd be bloody nicer if his assistant wasn't being cryptic and weird at him when he's already staring down the barrel of Cannes, for fuck's sake, he thinks he's being quite understanding enough of everyone else's feelings in context.
A glance back at his inbox shows that three Cannes invitations have arrived in the past five minutes: one to an ice cream brand throwing a party to launch music created with sounds gathered from the surface of the sun, one to a 'disruptive' pop up which pelts attendees with tiny plastic pellets to raise awareness about climate change, and one simply entitled IT TAKES BOOBS TO PUT REAL WOMEN IN ADS with no information about what the associated event entails. Francis deletes them all with such force it aggravates the arthritis in his pointer finger. No wonder everyone drinks their way through fucking Cannes.
A tentative knock at his door announces John's presence, and Francis takes one look at him and sighs internally before gesturing him in. The lad's spectre white, his usually impeccably ironed shirt is rumpled at the collar, and he's shaved off the beard during his time off and is sporting some decidedly depressed stubble instead. Will Francis ever, a single time in his life, have a meeting that doesn't turn into an ordeal?
"You wanted to see me?"
"You don't have to look so scared, John. This is just a check-in, now you're back." Irving looks pale enough that he might lose his lunch if Francis so much as speaks too loudly, lowering himself into a squeaky seat after shutting the door tightly, so he restrains the urge to roll his eyes at his junior. Jopson said be nice, so he's being nice. "Now you don't have to tell me any details, I know enough about HR to know I'm not allowed to ask for them, I just want to make sure you're doing alright in yourself."
"I, um." John clasps his hands tightly around his skinny knee where his long, spindly legs are crossed awkwardly, and Francis notes where he's picked the skin next to his nails bloody with a wince. "Been having a few problems at home, recently. I'm sorry it's affected my work, I didn't intend-"
"Your work's been fine." He won't stretch to too much praise, even when he's faced with someone who looks more holy ghost than man, but John's earned that much. "Is there anything we can support you with? If you're worried about any sort of discrimination or-"
"Discrimination? For what? I might be the whitest man in the office, unless Sir John's been on about Jocks again." John forces a laugh, one that grates through his throat like sandpaper as his eyes visibly widen with panic. Well, fuck it, they're doing this then, are they? Francis might be a dyed in the wool bastard, but he's seen that pained look on men's faces in his office before, and it's never ended in anything but tragedy.
And unlike his countrymen, he can't stand funerals. Falls asleep without fail in a pew.
"John." He pauses for a moment to try and come up with a clever sentence or some understandably euphemistic way to phrase this… but he can't, and Irving has the countenance of someone about to faint, so Francis gives up and just ploughs on as usual. He wouldn't say it's seen him well so far, but it's certainly seen him. "Did you know I'm bisexual?"
John blanches even further, which probably shouldn't be medically possible. Francis conspicuously slides the bin over with his foot, just in case the lad does end up doing an impromptu gut evacuation. If their last office refit was anything to go by, he doesn't want to be shelling out for new mouldy carpet any time soon.
"You really don't have to-"
"I'm just saying. Because I want you to know that I mean it when I say that nobody's going to give you trouble about your sexuality, not on my watch."
"Mr Cro-"
"I know you're from a religious background, and that these things can be complicated. So if there's anything we as a company can do-"
"Sir-"
"-to support you, then you only need to ask. You can speak to that nice boy from HR about mental health resources, and it's all confidential."
"That's really not-"
"Or if you run into problems with your boyfriend, there's help avai-"
"Dad, please."
That stops them both in their tracks.
Francis blinks. John's mouth snaps shut like a mouse trap as his pale cheeks rapidly turn sunburn red. They stare at each other for a moment in total silence, before Francis awkwardly breaks the tension out of the sheer kindness of his heart. Look at him go, Jopson, he's being the nicest.
"I think that covers everything."
"Okay. Cool. Great. Thanks, sir. I'll just…" John almost knocks over the chair in his haste to leave the office, banging his hip hard on the door on the way out. Francis drops his head into his hands and lets out a low, pained sound which doesn't nearly vent enough of his feelings, and wonders if he shouldn't just retire now like a lame horse being put out to pasture.
He wishes that'd been the first time someone on his team called him dad, and he's got absolutely no interest in investigating the deeper meaning behind that.
There's no point in raising his head when Jopson's familiar tap on the doorframe alerts him to her presence a few minutes later, and she doesn't ask him to. God bless his assistant for understanding that sometimes the only thing getting him through the day is holding the palms of his hands over his eyes and pretending his career is some hideous fever dream he'll wake up from soon. Hopefully on a tropical beach, with someone gorgeous (who definitely doesn't look like James Fitz-fucking-james) doing lovely things to his lower half. Chance would be a fine thing.
"Irving's gone home in a hurry, I assume that was signed off on."
"I think it's for the best." Francis sighs heavily, still hiding behind his fingers. If he looks at his inbox right now he'll scream, he can't even begin to care that John's bunking off in embarrassment. "Lot of issues, that boy."
"Coming out isn't a one stop shop." Her tone is odd, and Francis has a brief and uncharitable flash of how the fuck would you know before he decides that lifting his head to say so is too much effort. He doesn't know she's not queer, to be fair, and anyone dating Edward Little feels like a gay thing to do even if it is a mixed-gender relationship. "I overheard that the boyfriend's talking to him again, though."
"Well that's something." Francis finally finds the strength to remove his head from his hands, and catches Jopson with a funny look on her face before she smooths it away the instant she's being observed. There's definitely something going on with her, but Francis isn't sure he has the bandwidth to enquire at this juncture. "What can I do for you, Tommi?"
"Weekes from NPC called, wanted to know if you'll be attending their Cannes talk."
"What's it called?"
"Gen Z: Slow Your Scroll."
"Absolutely fucking not."
"I'll translate that for him." Thank goodness for her willingness to be his socially acceptable interface with the world, Francis isn't sure he'd survive in this new, sensitive society without her. She taps something into her phone and then looks back up, pushing her glasses up her nose. They're new, Francis thinks idly, and he's tactful enough not to say it out loud but they give her face a bit of a masculine shape. Perhaps that's power dressing for the feminists these days, at least it's not shoulder pads again. "Oh, and I forgot to remind you that I'm out this afternoon, so I've asked Edward to keep an eye on your schedule."
"I don't need a babysitter," Francis grumbles, before acquiescing to her sceptical, quirked eyebrow. "Not all the time."
Tommi, very generously, doesn't comment.
"Just ping him if you need anything, I've fixed his notifications so they'll actually sound now."
"I did wonder if he was telling the truth about that." His underling has been missing messages ever since they put in the new slack chat software (Hodgson did all the research and maintains that it's the best bang for their buck available, although many around the office suspect he chose it purely for the animated penguin emojis which come standard), though Francis was admittedly dubious that Little would do so on purpose considering how obviously stressed missing deadlines made him. Quite literally everything seems to make the man stressed, though. "Doing anything nice?"
"Meeting my mum and brother for a coffee." That inspires Francis to raise his eyebrows, and Jopson pulls a tight, close-mouthed smile in return. Frank doesn't know many of the details, considering how private Jopson is, but he's aware that his assistant's family relationships are somewhat fraught and definitely distant. "Hopefully with a minimum of arguing involved, but I'm not holding my breath."
"Well, good luck." She really does seem unsure of herself on the topic, now Francis knows about it, and he moves his computer mouse to wake the screen up for want of something to fiddle with before continuing. "If you, er. Need your very bastardly boss to summon you for a work emergency which can't wait…"
"I'll text." Her face does that funny thing again, makes that unusual twist Francis can't quite place, but her smile is more genuine when it returns this time. "Thanks, sir."
"Any time." He waves off the gratitude and hopes she understands that it's not dismissive, he's just shit at all this touchy feely stuff. God knows back in his day he'd have fallen over stone dead if Sir John had turned a kind word his way, at least one that wasn't flamboyantly complimentary as a means to upset somebody else. The old man's mellowed out in his dotage, but he was as much of a bastard as the rest, back in the day. Fitzjames seems to have inherited his habit of being overly nice in a way that feels sarcastic, though, the cunt. "You're the glue that holds this operation together, Jopson."
"I'll get a big head if you're not careful." She snorts and heads back into the office proper, and Francis watches her go with that little flash of paternal care she tends to inspire in him on a good day. Maybe nerves about this meet-up are what's been making her seem off the past little while. Perhaps once this afternoon is over and done with, things around the office will get back to normal… as normal as they ever do, anyway.
There are five emails prefaced with bright red urgent exclamation marks in his inbox, which catch his eye the moment he turns back to the screen.
! TIKTOK - TOP OF THE TIKPOPS CANNES POP UP
! POTATO MILK - COCKTAILS OF THE FUTURE AT CANNES
! ARE BRONZE AWARDS WORTH THE ENTRY FEE? BREAKFAST LECTURE ON THE RIVIERA
! CANNES DISCUSSION: RENT SCHMENT AND THE UNPAID INTERN
! SUSTAINABLE DJ-ING FOR SNICKERS' TOTALLY NUTS CANNES PARTY!!
Francis covers his eyes again and wishes his team would finally snap and murder him, Lord of the Flies style. Maybe they can cannibalise him for good measure, then put out a press release about how even in death he's fuelling the top creative minds in the industry. They'd probably win a Grand Prix for it. Sir John would be thrilled.
His inbox pings again.
Fuck Cannes.