6. GRANT

I’d given him ample time to come to the conclusion, and I’d even approached him again in the privacy of his office to see if he was making the connections. I didn’t want to push the information on him because it wasn’t something I wanted to force. I knew when it came about organically, it would be much more fun, but there was still some fun that could be had until that time approached.

As staff members left for lunch and the first floor was clearing out, I headed back the Henry’s office with a small teddy in a red scarf and a note. It was one of the teddies I’d had in the bottom of my desk drawer with a Santa hat on, usually a decoration I would have out, but I’d only just gotten back into the office. I paired it with a little note, a prompt from an email he’d once sent about not having anyone to snuggle when it snowed.

The note read, ‘ Everyone needs someone to hug when it snows - Santa’.

Nobody noticed me leave it, I might’ve been spotted entering the office, but nobody questioned me. I was the partner assigned to the case he was working.

That gift alone had to have been the final tick to get him to figure out who I was.

In my office, waiting for Henry’s to appear, Rachel showed up instead.

“How’s the Aurora Records case coming along?” she asked, sauntering towards me with her large curls bouncing. “They have a second artist in the same boat. Apparently, this streaming service is stopping artists from performing at the Christmas Square Ball happening next week.”

“What?” The Christmas Square Ball was a staple of the city.

“Can you check in with Henry and see if he’s found anything in the contract,” she said. “Tell him there’s a couple VIP tickets involved in it as well, but only if our client can get out of this exclusivity contract.”

“Of course. Anything else you needed from me?” I asked.

“Yes, I need you to stop telling people how awful you think the tree is in reception,” she said. “It’s supposed to represent the firm, not you.”

Her comment tickled me into chuckle. “I just think a Christmas tree should be real with red and covered in tinsel.”

“That’s why you have a home, Grant,” she said, winking at me. “You can decorate that however you please.”

I hadn’t even had the time to put a tree up yet. It was on my to-do list, even if I rarely spent time at home because of how much I considered this place to be a second home. “What do you say about me propping up a little tree for my office?”

“As long as it’s not visible from outside, be my guest,” she said. “But the moment it can be seen from above the frosted glass, I’ll have to ask you to take it down.”

“What about I invited our client over at FlixMas over, then we’ll have a reason to show out and go big with some decoration,” I said.

Rachel laughed, brushing a hand through her curls. “Don’t you dare. I’m not having this place turned into the Christmas equivalent of Spirit Halloween .”

It was a playful back and forth we had over the decor at Christmas, and we had been having it ever since I started here as an associate. Back then, I was a little more feistier about it, and back then, I never got my way either. There were occasional times I could add tinsel and decorations to the desks around the firm, but they had to fall in line with the colors that had been picked out that year.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she said.

I turned my Christmas mug around on the desk to see the ceramic Santa face. “Once Henry figures out who we are, I bet he’ll want to help decorate,” I whispered to myself.

As Daddy Kringle, a persona I’d built up within myself for many years, I knew the power of Christmas and Daddy kink. I’d always been interested in the scene. I’d once ventured to a club in the city which boasted playful Dom and sub dynamics. It was a lot for me to take in because I hadn’t been around so many Daddies or littles. I’d researched, which is one of the things I knew how to do best, but I hadn’t gotten the practice in like I’d wanted.

A Daddy was many things to many different people. To me, being a Daddy was a state of mind where you got to play protector and the biggest cuddle monster to a sweet, small, and submissive little. I knew there was often more to it than that, but for me, all I wanted to do was find a connection on a level with someone that was more than surface level, I needed an elf to my Santa.

This was just like me, I had been described as a dog with a bone when I found a detail or piece to a puzzle, and that’s what Henry was. A piece to a puzzle that I needed to make the bigger picture.

I took the stairs down a floor with my empty mug. I did a lap around the pit and saw Henry at his desk with Sophia, they were both staring at the gift I’d left him. The plan hadn’t been a plan at all, but relied on Henry being alone, which he wasn’t. I passed right by to the break room.

Elliot approached me. “I’ve been brushing up on the details of the companies we’re working with in Paris,” he said. “Just in case you need an extra set of eyes.”

“If and when those eyes are needed, I’ll ask,” I told him. I couldn’t blame his approach, he was doing his best to expand his resume for the annual partner track promotion. He was already a shoe-in for the work he’d been doing with large companies, but he was lacking in the approachability and not many of the other associates worked well with him, not for their lack of trying, but he liked to go solo or stag it seemed.

After filling my mug up with delicious Christmassy goodness, I was caught by surprise. Henry stood behind me, a smile beaming on his face. He had to have been here to tell me he knew it was me.

“All good?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s all great,” he said, still forcing those pearly white teeth on show. “You were in Paris, right?”

“Yeah, for a couple months,” I told him.

“Did you bring back lots of jam?” he asked.

I was anticipating his comment any minute now, but it never came. We both skirted around it while all eyes were on us, probably not all of them, but we were all lawyers, we loved to talk.

“With all that jam, you could probably go Upstate and open a small homemade jam store,” he said. “You know, like a FlixMas movie.”

On the tip of my tongue to ask him outright. “They’ve done that to death,” I said.

“Yeah, straight couples,” he said. “I think they should bring more LGBTQ plus into their movies. Don’t you think?”

Staring into his eyes, we both knew. We’d both been testing each other.

“Do you want to come up to my office?” I asked. “I think I’ve got some documents I need to show you.”

“That depends,” he said, holding his empty mug up at me. “Do you need a legal elf to help?”

There it was. “Hi, Legal Elf,” I whispered, making space for him to use the machine. “You like the gift that was left in your office?” I whispered.

“I knew that was you,” he whispered back at me, his lips barely moving. “I want it known I figured it out first.”

“I figured it out yesterday.”

“Oh. I—”

Sophia approached. “I think there’s a secret Santa going around,” she said. “I didn’t think we were doing that this year.”

Henry turned and stuttered around over his words in Sophia’s face. “No, no, my friend Fallon thought it would be funny to have it brought up here. So, yeah, I think we can stop looking for whoever it was that left the teddy. He works at a toy store, it was a first day of work thing, but he—” he paused to suck in a deep breath.

“Oh, no worries,” she chuckled. “I was going to get the employee handbook out because previous secret Santa’s had this monetary value cap on it.”

“Just a gift from a friend,” he said, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

“Well, glad you’ve got that sorted out,” I said. “Now, do you want to come up and collect those files I was telling you about?” I asked, disguising my want to talk with him behind work.

We walked back to my office together. Exchanging glances and whispering to each other how we both knew who the other was. I didn’t doubt he knew, but I knew before him.

I closed my office door and he sat at my desk. Inhaling a shaky breath. “I wasn’t actually completely sure, but that’s because I like to have several pieces of evidence before I even approach someone with my findings,” he said, then cleared his throat.

Sitting on my fancy chair, I rolled it around beside him. “I don’t want our pre-existing friendship to interfere with the work we’re doing,” I told him. “But since we’ve discovered we’re working together. I’m not sure what happens next.”

“I had this big idea about what it would be like meeting you,” he said, licking his lips.

“I had ideas too.”

“You’re attractive,” he let out.

A surprise to hear. “You’re very cute yourself. And maybe a little pointy in the ears. You really might be an elf.”

“A legal elf,” he giggled. “We’ve been talking for so long, I’m worried you might think I’m different.”

“I think we’re all different from the way we present ourselves in an email than we do in person,” I said. “And then it would depend on who I’m emailing. If I’m emailing in work, I’m professional, and if I’m emailing Legal Elf, then I’m flirting.”

He broke eye contact with a sharp turn of his head. “At least I wasn’t imagining those things then.”

“I guess working together complicates things.”

“Actually, now that we have met, you said you were going to get me flowers for my first day, and you also promised me jam,” he said, slowly looking at me again. His nails on the edge of my desk, grinding across the grain slightly.

“You got a teddy, I think that’s better than flowers.” I fought the urge to reach out and place a hand on his leg or some other form of physical touch. “I will tell you that I had this idea of meeting you, it would be a date, but I guess that’s out of the question now.”

Henry hummed. A grumble in the back of his throat. “If I knew you worked here before I applied, I might’ve tried finding another place to work. I’m already being stared at for my family connection. I don’t want people to think I’m getting preferential treatment if I start dating a partner too.”

“Nobody has to know if we’re just hanging out,” I told him.

He looked to me, reaching out, he placed his hand in mine. “We spoke at length, flirting, right.”

“I’ll keep flirting,” I said. “In fact, maybe not flirting, but work related. There’s two tickets to the Christmas Square Ball with your name on it if you do well on the Lila case. And if that’s not motivation enough, I don’t think anyone would mind if I went with you.”

He pulled his hand away and stomped a foot slightly. “Seriously? Ugh. Ok, now you might hate me. You see, I absolutely would’ve loved that, but my best friend would kill me if I didn’t take him.”

“Please do take him,” I said. “I was just thinking of idea of where we could have our first date.”

“Don’t those movie nights we had together count as dates?” he asked.

He’d caught me there, because they absolutely had counted as virtual dates. “Then how about we turn the next movie date into a real one, in person, where I can make you my famous peppermint cocoa, made with real chocolate. It’s the premium stuff.”

“I think you’re forgetting who you’re dealing with, fancy stuff like that doesn’t impress me,” he said. “Daddy Kringle wouldn’t need to impress me with his famous cocoa. He’d need to impress me with his film choice, and how much he thinks I’d like it.”

“Oh, ok. So, my place, this Friday, we’re watching a screener of a new FlixMas movie,” I told him. “Unless you don’t want me to make those type of demanding controls over you. In which case, you—”

“Daddy Kringle gets to make those demands of me,” he said.

“I want to seal it with a kiss, but—”

We were both very aware of the view into my office from the glass. I’m surprised nobody had come waltzing in asking why were we sat so close. From behind, it might’ve looked like I was consoling him, and in a way, I was, consoling him with the idea of our first in-person date.

“Save that for Friday, I guess,” he said. “And I’m still going to call you Daddy Kringle.”

“As I would hope so, my Legal Elf,” I said, hooking my pinky under his. Our pinkies hugging together. “Now, we should probably talk about some work. As boring as it might seem now, but I’m sure you don’t mind spending more time with me.”

“Of course.”

He nodded obediently as I swiveled back around my desk. “That’s a good boy.”