Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Taylor is thrown off-balance.

In those few moments between spotting the Genometech Atlas buy and slamming open the door to Axe’s office, they’d anticipated several ways he might respond to them demanding to know what the fuck he’d done — outright denial, unfocused rage, insistence that they’d undermined him by throwing the meeting with Andolov’s second and that undermining them by striking at Oscar was simply tit-for-tat. At no point had they expected Axe to assert that really, they’d wanted him to tear up Oscar’s deal and slipped Breen’s name into the conversation for just that reason, because the very idea is patently absurd.

Isn’t it?

“Congratulations, by the way,” Axe says, and Taylor thinks they might be sick. “You’ve earned out on your advance, and you’re way into bonus already.”

They turn for the door, desperately trying to shut down that small part of their mind that perpetually says listen to Axe even when you think he’s wrong, he knows things you don’t, and still haven’t succeeded when he says, “Hey… I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

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Taylor can’t immediately recall the last time this has happened.

The rush of panic upon being caught stepping out of line by someone whose opinions matter, the spark of stubbornness insisting that no reasonable person would consider a wrongdoing to have occurred — they thought they’d left those feelings behind in the haze of their teenage years.

“So you know…” Taylor’s voice is terribly small; they recalibrate, retry. “You think we should tell people?”

“No,” Sara says immediately, and the wave of relief that washes over Taylor ebbs away just as quickly, leaving a residue of guilt that stings like salt.

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The ocean goes on forever.

Not in the most literal sense, of course, but it reaches unbroken to the horizon, in sharp contrast with the gray of the sky, and the shoreline stretches left and right as far as Taylor can see. The breeze off the water whips in their ears and carries the smell of salt and something earthier, something decaying.

Taylor picks their way over the sand, which slides and shifts under their feet at first but soon enough becomes steady, firmer and cooler as they get closer to the water. Traces of dissolving seafoam mark the furthest points reached by the waves that roared into existence and crashed against the sand and rolled back into the depths before Taylor ever saw them.

They stop a few yards off from the water, waiting for the approaching wave.

When the water hits them, halfway to their knees, and surges on past them, they gasp — it’s shockingly cold, which perhaps they should have expected, and forceful enough to make them take an involuntary step back. The sand under their feet gives way, so waterlogged now that it swirls around their ankles.

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Taylor’s hands shake when they open their office door, step in, and pull their coat from the back of their chair.

But you don’t have your own shop. If you were ready for that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, I’d be looking at a Taylor-shaped hole in the wall.

Six months ago, Taylor would have judged that an apt hypothetical. Now, when their own shop waits for them across the river, a half hour by train that they’ve traveled in the middle of more than one workday, it rings of a threat. They don’t know what Axe knows, what information might have flowed to him despite Taylor’s best efforts to keep it out of the watershed, and what he’s only imagining; they do know that the instinct pressing them to flee the building and hide from him for the rest of the day will fail to tamp down any suspicions he might have, or to change his mind about the raise.

Taylor turns and steps out, looking over the balcony just as Wendy walks into the kitchen, reaching for one of the fridges. Axe won’t notice immediately if they leave now, but Wendy will, and she’ll wonder why they’re avoiding her, rather than coming to discuss comp with her as they’d promised.

Perhaps that’s exactly what Taylor needs.

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The action is on Krakow now. He glares, returning Taylor’s steadiest gaze. Frustrated that they haven’t tilted or folded yet.

“Time,” he says, standing and turning away. Taylor lets their shoulders drop and their hands fall into their lap; the surest way to prove one’s hands aren’t trembling is to keep them in sight during play, but Krakow isn’t looking now.

When Taylor turns to Axe, for — what do they expect from him? Guidance? Criticism? Acknowledgement? — he, too, is looking elsewhere. At Krakow’s coach, who lingers at the rail a few moments more before following Krakow away from the table. She’s been watching Axe as well.

This game isn’t about Taylor, not really. It’s about those three, circling one another. The thought offers little comfort.

Chapter Text

“How come I don’t have one?”

“One what?” Lane asks Pununzio, as Taylor settles into the seat at the end of the row. “Dick?”

“If it’s balls,” Gibbs adds, “you’re supposed to have two.” Taylor looks around the auditorium to check again that yes, this seat is the last one left, and the only alternative to sitting with the other interns is standing in the back.

“You all have cards.” Pununzio gestures to the rectangles of black cardstock on the table in front of Gibbs, Lane, Willard, and the rest of the row beyond them. There’s one at Taylor’s place, too, but Pununzio’s is empty. “I should have one.”

“Look on the floor,” Willard says, unmoved from his phone.

“There’s nothing there,” Pununzio insists. “I checked.” Taylor surveys the lower rows; their lines of black cards seem to have gaps too, though it’s hard to tell for sure through the packed seats. “Can’t someone give me one?”

“No, go find your own,” Gibbs says, grinning.

“Come on!”

“You don’t know what they’re for,” Taylor says. “There may be a reason you don’t have one.”

All four interns stare at them, and Pununzio opens his mouth to speak just as Wags bellows “Hush up in the fucking peanut gallery!”, silencing the chatter in the auditorium. Axe steps forward, backlit by the projection screen.

“Millions of years ago,” he begins, “a meteor hit the Earth and brought on an ice age.”

He continues on about the K-T extinction, analogizing the current existential threats facing the hedge fund industry to the Chicxulub asteroid. No one dares to even whisper while he speaks, and every eye — nearly — is on him. Taylor can feel Pununzio glaring at them still, like their newly issued ID bracelet — not heavy, but unfamiliar enough to chafe.

“In the great expanse of time, we are already dead,” Axe says, and Taylor almost misses the very slight sound of paper sliding against plastic as Pununzio steals their card from underneath their nose.

The smugness radiating off him is unbearable. Taylor breathes in, breathes out, slow and deliberate. Two weeks. That’s all they have left to endure before they can leave this place and its people. Retain the knowledge, shed the rest.

The projection screen switches from the Axe Cap logo to a reflection of the auditorium, and Axe orders everyone with a card to hold it in front of their face. Taylor has a clear view of the sea of black rectangles, and of the few other bare faces — including Mafee, a few rows down from them, looking around anxiously.

“If this room represents all the hedge funds in business,” Axe says, “the uncovered faces are the only ones left in eighteen months’ time.”

Pununzio drops his — Taylor’s — card. “What?”

“Freakin’ idiot,” Lane whispers. Gibbs fist bumps her, both of them stifling giggles.

“That’s not fair.” Pununzio turns on Taylor. “You tricked me,” he hisses, though it comes out less venomous than whiny.

“No,” Taylor says lowly, underscored by Axe chiding Mafee about this being a “random fucking exercise!” down front. “No one tricked you but yourself.”