His name is Vance Vixen, and he’s the bane of Prophet’s fucking life.

Over the past ten years, there has been a veritable parade of new managers through the Supply Division of Friar Holdings – after Gideon had left, Sara Rochester had taken on the role for three years until her MS had stopped being manageable, and then…

One after another. None of them has lasted longer than a year; most of them haven’t lasted longer than nine months.

Vance Vixen had started two months ago, and Prophet knows already that he’s going to last.

It’s not just his chipper morning attitude or his “people-positive” management style or the shiny whiteness of his teeth or how golden his hair is, tied up in a loose bun always with one or two handsome strands hanging down.

It’s not because Vance Vixen looks fifteen years younger than he is when he’s the same age as Prophet is, but that’s what Daddy’s money and a fancy boarding school education and private healthcare will do for you; it’s not because he has a frankly punishing-sounding gym regimen that he throws himself into with glee and delight and complete satisfaction; it’s not because despite being two years divorced, he’s apparently a father extraordinaire, has his three daughters’ pictures hanging up around his office, sends them to the right schools, puts all his hours into them outside of work.

Half the posh cunts that have filtered through the office have had that sort of shite going for them.

No, Vance Vixen is going to stay because he’s got steel in his eyes – it’s steel he tries to keep secret under that cheery, happy demeanour, but Prophet sees it very day. He sees it when Vixen walks into his office and says, “Now, did you really have to use such… profuse language with Jenny?” and Prophet scowls at him – whenever Prophet scowls at him, Vixen raises his shoulders just a little bit, lifts his chin, and his lips don’t quite but almost smile, his gaze settling on Prophet.

Most of the managers have been scared of Prophet – they haven’t been able to cope with him because he’s cold and brisk and, most frightening of all, extremely good at his job. He’s the one holding the bulk of the department’s complexities on his shoulders, he’s the one that’s always there for the end of quarter reports even when the newest manager has only recently stepped into the role and can’t tell their cock from their nose.

And, of course, the fact that he’s got a ragged scar across his mouth puts a lot of them off; the fact that what comes out of his mouth is distinctly Scottish, Glaswegian at that, and gruff and rough and oh-so-scary?

Yeah.

Your average prissy little Oxbridge fucker doesn’t know what to do with that.

Vixen doesn’t find it scary – or maybe he finds it scary, a little.

What he finds frightening about Prophet, though, does not make him shy away from Prophet. It does not make him run away from him or try to hide from him like it has other managers; it doesn’t make him awkwardly try to get Prophet fired or moved to a different department as Prophet breezily continues sailing through on his twenty-six years of uninterrupted service and impeccable work; it doesn’t even make him snap prissily at Prophet the way that some of them have done.

Vixen enjoys it, Prophet thinks.

Vixen’s the sort of rich fella who enjoys the “grit” of hard work, who likes to be adjacent to those horrible poors his family’s been denigrating all his life. He’s better than his family, after all, isn’t he? Better than his peers, because he’s just so-o good at roughing it.

“Good morning,” chimes Vixen.

“It isn’t,” says Prophet. “Depot fucked up the Easter orders, which I knew they were gonna do and I said they were gonna do as soon as I saw Miranda put her maternity in the calendar six months ago and I knew she wouldn’t be chasing up Dev or Alain W.”

“You did predict it,” allows Vixen. “I read your memo. Or, er, your RE:RE:RE of your initial memo.”

“And what did you do about it?” asks Prophet, arching his eyebrow.

 Vixen actually looks the slightest bit of regretful as he looks at Prophet and says quietly, “I assumed you were just being a bit overdramatic.”

Prophet gives him a flat look.

“The Cassandra comparison is perhaps painfully apt,” admits the posh fuck as he comes further into Prophet’s office and nudges it closed with his arse, which is actually surprisingly plump under those linen trousers he’s wearing. It’s the summer, he keeps saying, so it’s time to wear linen. He’s got a lot of natural meat on him, isn’t scrawny the way Prophet is, the way he most certainly would be if he did all the exercise that Vixen does.

He's got a comfortably fat, well-sculpted arse; he’s got tits that jiggle when he comes to work still in his joggers; he’s got thick, carved thighs, thick, carved arms, so much definition in the fat and the muscle.

Gideon’s never been quite like that – he’s a bigger, more muscular man, is stacked and thick with it. Twenty years ago Prophet doesn’t think he’d have even glanced at a man like Vixen. Twenty years ago Prophet never looked at anybody, and now he notices men all the time.

He wonders if Gideon notices the boys he picks out to fuck about with, one affair after the other, what it is he notices, what it is he enjoys. Prophet’s never met any of them face-to-face, has mostly seen pictures of their cocks or arses when he’s made the mistake of looking at Gideon’s phone – it’s unfair to call them boys, really, when most of them are their age or a few years younger, maybe, but Gideon’s never gone in for twinks.

It'd be easier if he did.

If he went for twinks, at least they’d be offering something halfway fucking different, chasing the lose of his fucking youth with whatever midlife crisis he’s on by now, number four or number five.

“Isaiah?” prompts Vixen, and Prophet blinks at him, meets his gaze.

“Sorry?”

“I said sorry,” Vixen says quietly, with a little smile. It’s a painfully kind smile, the sort that Prophet normally gets from well-meaning nurses and psychiatric professionals – not when he’s in for his own fucking problems, obviously, only when he’s in for Gideon.

They always fall in love with Gideon as soon as they lay eyes on him – Prophet they love by extension, and only for as long as he keeps his mouth shut.

“I’m making an official commitment, Isaiah – a verbal, explicit one to you now – to take this more seriously, hm? Your advice is valuable, you’ve got decades of experience, and it would be silly of me not to make use of your expertise, hm?”

“Hm,” echoes Prophet, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

“In the meantime,” says Vixen, turning the lock on Prophet’s office door, “I thought we might discuss you.”

“Me?”

“Your performance.”

“My performance?”

“Calm down, calm down,” says Vixen placatingly, spreading his delicate, plump hands with his perfect, graceful fingers, the nails carefully manicured because he takes his little girls out for manicures once or twice a month to show them he’s not a victim to toxic masculinity or whatever the fuck. “But honestly, my dear man, do you really think I haven’t noticed, hm? Your demeanour, of late, you’re… Well. I think it's fair to say you’ve a short temper, but these past few weeks, it’s been even shorter than usual. It’s hardly even fair to say you’ve a short fuse – you’ve no fuse left. Any little thing is sending you off the handle.”

“Is this about Jenny again?”

“Well, don’t tell her I said so, but the girl is a bit wet,” mutters Vixen, and Prophet laughs despite himself before he gives Vixen an irritable scowl. “And yes, it is rather annoying she can’t follow basic instructions unless you write them in front of her face. But Jenny is more the symptom than the disease, isn’t she?”

“She’s several fucking diseases,” says Prophet.

Vixen says, doing that kind smile that’s for the Gideons of this world, not the Isaiahs, “Is everything alright at home?”

“Everything at home is fine,” says Prophet dryly.

And it’s even true, isn’t it? Everything at home is fine and fucking dandy – the place is in good nick, the guttering’s recently been done, and every Thursday morning Prophet goes out and prunes back the potted plants.

Every month or so Gideon complains about the patio, about how the tiles are so unpleasant to lie on, but it’s not Gideon who ever had to mow the fucking lawn to keep the Pickerings from complaining or Mrs Munton coming to knock on their door to make funny little comments about how things are looking unkempt.

Everything is fine at home – it’s just that Prophet is barely spending any time at home. Prophet comes to this building at eight, works until six, goes over to the bar, does the inventory and the figures that Gideon hasn’t been doing, gets on top of their safety bollocks, does all the boring stuff that Gideon doesn’t get done even when he’s there, which he often isn’t on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays.

“I need nights off too, you know,” he keeps saying.

“Isaiah—”

“No one fucking calls me Isaiah,” says Prophet.

“Do you prefer Cassandra?” asks Vixen, and there’s enough of a sardonic note in his tone, his lips pressing together, that Prophet almost shudders, but he doesn’t quite. Fuck.

Fuck off.

“Does it— Do you really like being called Prophet?” asks Vixen, coming forward and leaning into the side of Prophet’s desk as Prophet sits back in his chair – he closed his laptop as soon as Vixen entered the room, knew full well he wouldn’t be permitted to get any work done whilst Vixen was in the room.

“When you joined us and forced us to do your “fun”,” he makes air quotes, which makes Vixen screw up his nose, “intro activity with the names and the pronouns, did I or did I not use the name Prophet?”

“But it’s not your name,” complains Vixen. “Your record says Isaiah. Your driving license says Isaiah.”

“All that talk about pronouns is just performative bollocks, is it?” asks Prophet pleasantly. “Should I put out a memo saying that Mr Vixen says that all of us are to start she/her-ing Drew in accounts and calling him whatever the fuck his deadname was?”

“You’re not transgender!” protests Vixen.

“I could be,” says Prophet. “How the fuck do you know? Maybe you’re just cisnormative.”

“You said the transgender flag looks like a new toothpaste,” says Vixen.

“I can’t be transgender and also recognise a colour palette?”

“I’ve seen your cock,” says Vixen. Prophet opens his mouth, and Vixen says, “And you’re far too poor to have been able to afford bottom surgery.”

Prophet blinks, so taken by surprise he almost laughs – his momentary moment of being impressed with Vance Vixen fizzles when Vixen shivers, runs a hand through his hair, and says reflexively, “That was a bit too far. Sorry.”

“You spineless cunt,” says Prophet. “How do you know it’s called bottom surgery, anyway?”

“My girls are nine, eleven, and twelve, I do see things on Twitter.”

“You know that Twitter is meant to be thirteen and up?”

Vixen blinks. “Is it?”

“Oh my fucking Christ, Vixen.”

Vixen pulls his little notepad out of his front pocket and scrawls a note on the front of it – he makes a habit of it, writing down anything he needs to remember, anything he has to pick up on his way home, any television or movies or books that people recommend him, or shit like this, stuff he should already know trying to be dad of the year.

“I’ll have a word with them,” he says.

“TikTok too,” says Prophet. “And Instagram.”

“Bollocks,” hisses Vixen. “Lying little…” He clears his throat, shoving his notepad back into his front pocket, and then he folds his hands and puts them non-threateningly on the thigh that’s on Prophet’s desk, leaning in a bit toward him. “Anyway. The point— The point is, you’ve been ever so tired, Prophet. You seem so stressed all the time. Is there— Is there anything I can do to help?”

“This you trying to get me to use up my leave?”

“Erm, no, no,” says Vixen hurriedly, and Prophet resists the urge to laugh this time, because he’d tried putting in his holidays with Val already and had immediately gotten two emails asking him to put off until the summer. “Er— God, I’m sorry, I know you’ve got a lot of holiday hours to use up, but we just need all hands on deck until we get to schools letting out, you know.”

“Yeah, I hear that one often,” says Prophet dryly. “And then when I put in my holiday for the duration of the summer – which I’ve done, by the way, I’ve applied to take all my leave at once so I’ll theoretically be gone for a month – they’re gonna be onto me about how unfair it is for me to take the summer off when I don’t even have kids. Val in HR always manages to make it homophobic as she says it, too.”

“You don’t have children,” says Vixen softly. “That’s— Yes, of course. You’ve never mentioned any, of course. Erm— But you are married, aren’t you?”

“Ha,” says Prophet.

“Oh,” says Vixen. “Oh, dear. That bad, hm?”

Prophet can’t stand looking at Vixen’s sympathetic expression now and he turns his head away, not able to look at Vixen’s lips right now, at his brown eyes which are a deep, dense brown, so much darker than the honeyed shade of Gideon’s.

“Is it— Is that why you’re not getting much sleep?” asks Vixen. “Fighting all night at home?”

“Vixen, if I’m reading this right,” says Prophet lowly, “you’ve come in here to offer me something under the table, else you wouldn’t have locked the door. Is it cocaine or sex?”

Vixen stares at him, his jaw dropped, and then he gets that look that Prophet doesn’t like to like in his eyes, that perfect steeliness as he takes one step forward, another.

“Do you have to be,” he says quietly, “so unpleasant?”

“Why should I stop?” asks Prophet. “It’s not even nine in the morning, and here you are fantasising about putting me in my place.”

There’s colour in Vixen’s cheeks, his lips pressing together, and then he moves and Prophet’s skin is on fire under his suit because Vixen’s handsome, plump hand is gripping his jaw and he’s doing it too lightly for Prophet’s taste, actually.

“Harder,” says Prophet.

“I’m not hurting you?” asks Vixen.

“I wish you’d fucking hurt me,” says Prophet. “Then I wouldn’t be so fucking bored.”

Vixen’s eyes flash with heat, and then he’s kissing Prophet all teeth and biting, and Prophet growls as he drags him closer, deepens it. The guilt twists in his belly but he’ll feel guilty if they stop now anyway, so he just focuses on unbuckling Vixen’s vegan leather (it’s fucking plastic) belt and grabbing hold of his cock.

It’s big.

It’s a damn sight thicker than Gideon’s, is thicker even than most of the cocks Prophet had touched before he’d gotten fucking married, and a gasping, ragged noise works its way out of Vixen’s throat.

“Oh,” he gasps out. “Oh, oh, are you sure you— you want to—”

“Shut the fuck up with the respectful act, posh boy,” says Prophet, getting to his feet and pushing up and into Vixen’s space, their noses together, his grip so hard around the other man’s fat prick that Vixen is shuddering as he tips his hips into Prophet’s palm. “You came in here to fuck the stress out of me – fuck me, then.”

Vixen’s tongue licks from the base of the scar halfway down Prophet’s chin and traces the tissue up and through his lips – it feels fucking electric, the nerve endings in the scar tissue all twisted and weirdly sensitive as they are, and he almost fucking keens into Vixen’s mouth as he clashes their mouths together again.

“You like that, don’t you?” demands Vixen. “You’re really quite— quite filthy. You like that sort of perversion?”

“Choke me, Daddy,” says Prophet, says it with all the sarcasm he can pack into it, but Vixen just blinks down at him with his stupid big eyes and his surprisingly thick eyelashes and uncertainly puts his hand around Prophet’s throat. “The fuck is that?”

“You said to—”

Prophet smacks him across the face and Vixen doesn’t even hesitate: suddenly Prophet is shoved over his desk so hard that his in-tray tumbles off the edge of it and Vixen is so incensed he doesn’t notice. He hauls Prophet’s trousers down and then his big cock is slapping, raw, against his arse cheeks, against his lower back, and he lets out a sharp noise at the weight of it.

“You’re such an unpleasant man, Prophet,” says Vixen, and Prophet shivers as he hears the familiar crinkle of a foil packet – it’s familiar but not that familiar, fuck. When was the last time he and Gideon fucked? Six years ago? Seven?

He keeps saying it turns him off, whenever Valentine’s or a birthday rolls around, to wear a condom, that he misses when the two of the went raw – that he misses when Prophet trusted him enough to let him go raw.

“Have you stopped fucking other men?” he’d asked the last time Gideon had brought it up. He’d gotten a scowl and a lot of bluster for his trouble, and then Gideon had disappeared for two days on a bender with his boys.

“Am I?” asks Prophet now, his elbows on the glass surface of the desk as Vixen’s cock, now wrapped, lands against his cheeks again. “Am I so fucking unpleasant you just have to put your cock in me?”

“You’re the one who wants me to put you in your place,” rumbles Vixen, and fuck, fuck, he might not be practised at the entitled posh cunt act, might be a bit too focused on being oh-so-nice and polite, but these fragments of it, these little windows into what he’s capable of, they’re pretty fucking good. And then, because he’s Vance fucking Vixen, he ruins it: “Is this, um— Is this alright?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” groans Prophet. “Just fuck me.”

“But if things aren’t doing so well with your, ah, your husband, are you comfortably prepared to—”

“People can have bad marriages and still fuck, Vixen,” says Prophet, dishonestly, but what is he if not dishonest? “Especially if we marry the right gender from the get-go.”

“I might be bisexual,” says Vixen.

“I might be the Queen of fucking Sheba,” retorts Prophet.

He does not get to retort further, because then Vixen is sliding into him and God, God – the head of his cock presses up against the rim of his arse, nudges against the muscle until it relaxes, and then he’s sliding forward. Whenever Prophet clenches around him, Vixen pauses, until he’s got just a few inches left and then he just slides fucking forward anyway.

Prophet keens at the tightness of it, at the incredible fucking stretch, feels fucking dizzy at the tightness of the twin rings of muscle at his arse as they’re both pressed so fucking wide apart they might as well be one, fuck the inner and outer. He can’t breathe, he can’t fucking think.

His cock is half-soft from the fucking distracting nature of being stretched out like a fucking muppet introduced to a bodybuilder puppeteer, but then Vixen reaches under him and grips at it with a spit-slick palm, his other hand resting on the centre of Prophet’s back to keep him steady.

“How’s that?” he asks, painfully chipper, and before Prophet can snap at him to stop being such a people-positive cunt, Vixen pulls back and all Prophet can think about is the sublime drag of his cock against his inner walls, the sudden relief and also the sudden awful emptiness.

Vixen fucks back into him with a fucking vengeance, and then sets up a pace so punishing it feels like he’s trying to fuck Prophet until his tonsils come loose. Every slam of his hips into Prophet’s arse makes a loud clap of sound, and God, that’s nothing compared to the press of Vixen’s fingers against his back or Vixen’s other hand squeezing and pulling at his cock.

Prophet’s eyes are almost watering at the sheer intensity of the sensation, sex just the way he likes it, rough and hard and heavy because soft touches always make him shudder, and wanking is fine, toys are fine, but they’re not like this, not the same as a man on top of him, shoving him down, burying his cock in him and fucking ruining him with it.

Prophet’s heart is thumping in his chest and he’s grunting as he fucks his hips back into Vixen’s tight grip now on his hips, fingertips pressing right in and leaving bruises Prophet knows Gideon won’t even fucking notice. Vixen’s cock is good. So fucking good. Already, Prophet is thinking about having it again, thinking about riding him, about sitting in his lap, about Vixen having him against a wall, on the floor, on the backstairs—

In a bed? No.

No.

Because this is infidelity, this is cheating, this is Prophet showing after twenty fucking years that he’s no fucking better than Gideon is, but it’s not like it’s a relationship, it’s not like it’s feelings, it’s not like he’s going to quit, like he’s going to file for divorce, walk out on his responsibilities.

It’s about Vixen’s fucking cock splitting him open, the sense of emptiness and then fullness, completion, and Prophet remembers being a young man, remembers how it fucking felt to fuck all the time, every other night, to go to sleep exhausted and fucked-out, to feel fucking owned, to feel fucking wanted.

Vixen suddenly grips him by the hair instead of the hip and pulls his head backward: the change in angle means that as his cock sinks into him it drags right against his fucking prostate and he can’t help it, he can’t fucking help it, his cock is pulsing and Vixen is laughing.

“This is what you needed, isn’t it?” he growls, and he lets go of Prophet’s hair and his cock at the same time, grabs his arse and shoves his buttocks apart – Prophet hears his breathless gasp, presumably as he looks down at Prophet’s arse stretched around him – and then goes to grab his hips again. His body tilts forward, his breath hot on the back of Prophet’s neck as he grazes his teeth against his skin, fucks into him with full force. “Is this what you need, hm? A boss really breathing down your neck? A stiff fuck to keep you mellow between meetings?”

“I never promised it’d make me fucking mellow,” grunts Prophet, and Vixen laughs indignantly and does something with his hips that makes Prophet’s consciousness blur at the edges, that sends him somewhere close to fucking ecstasy, that sweet, sublime space he hasn’t entered into for years – could Vixen get him there?

Just the idea makes him flutter, shiver, lean back into him.

When Vixen finishes he flops over Prophet’s body, his fingers sliding up under Prophet’s shirt, his breathing heavy, his fat cock staying buried in Vixen for a few passing seconds before he pulls out and leaves Prophet empty.

“Now, Prophet,” says Vixen with a surprisingly even keel, and Prophet glances back at him through heavily lidded eyes as he pulls up his fly, buttons it, buckles his belt back on. “I need those figures from Thursday by ten.”

“They’re already in your inbox, boss,” says Prophet dryly.

There’s a little colour in Vixen’s perfect cheeks, and he’s smoothing down his shirt, his jacket. “If you’re not careful, you know, I’ll be back at three o’clock to put you over my knee.”

“Going to show me how they used to beat you at school, are you?”

“I might just do,” says Vixen, unlocking the door, and Prophet’s own cheeks fucking burn at the fact that he opens the door and leaves, because Prophet’s still fucking here, undressed, come on the boards underneath him, his trousers around his fucking ankles.

Laughing breathlessly, trying to ignore the guilt that’s trying to dig its way into his chest and make a home there, he pulls them up, wipes up the mess on the floor and tosses it in the bin with the tied-off condom, and gets back to work.

His phone buzzes with a text from Gideon and it tangles tighter, feels heavy and weighted in his belly, the guilt the worst so far, and then he checks the text and it says, need u 2 close up 2nite, im going 2 jordans w hal and viz

The guilt, suddenly, is gone – he just feels vaguely shitty. He checks his watch – two and a half hours since, and Vixen will be in his office for two hours until the directors’ meeting.

Sucking his cock, Prophet decides, will make him feel better.