The Orc from the Office (Claws & Cubicles Book 2)

“Here are the personnel reports, Bill,” I sigh, depositing a stack of folders on his desk.

He raises an eyebrow at me, wrinkling his papery skin. “Already?”

I’ve been focusing on work lately, like I should have been all along. I might be scaring my boss with a new level of productivity and engagement in meetings.

Anything to not think about it.

“Let me know if you need any more changes made,” I tell Bill, and leave before he can say anything else.

To my relief, the constant ache of want and need that used to live between my thighs is gone. Or at least, it’s migrated. Most of the time now it sits on my clavicle, and every time I sigh it hollows out my chest a little more.

It was the right decision, I tell myself for the hundredth time.

I tell myself that a few more times as an email from Monster Resources shows up in my inbox, sending a spike of panic into my chest.

Reading the email does little to stem the anxiety brewing in my chest. Gwen from that first MR meeting is requesting a follow up, suggesting a few hours from now if my calendar is open.

That’s really just a formality, the company has calendar sharing software. She’s probably already checked my calendar and knows I’m free.

There’s always an impending sense of doom when working at Evil Co, but it’s been heavier lately. I’ve been wondering how long it would take someone to find that elevator security footage and report it. The worry had haunted my every moment.

And now that wait is over.

It tears little rips in my chest to ping Bill and Melanie that I’m going to miss our usual coffee break chat.

Melanie writes back a quick, “But I brought hazelnut coffee creamer this week!” to which Bill types out an emoticon I cannot discern the expression of.

I don’t tell them that I’m probably not going to any other informal coffee breaks.

In some way, that email from MR both heightens my anxiety and relieves it: I know where this is going, I’ve been here before.

But the difference is this time, I know how to survive it.

I’ve been updating my resume and cover letter bit by bit the last week or so, deleting a word, rewriting it, then replacing it again with a word that’s probably just as good. I’ve been checking job listings and filling out my information over and over again, a process that is as inefficient as it is torturous, the crown jewel of evil empirism.

I’ve done everything to protect myself right. I’ll come out of this better than I did the last time.

It doesn’t feel like it, though. It still hurts in all the places I thought I was putting armor over.

I send back a short reply to Gwen, and start going through my desk. I start tossing things in the trash, making a pile of things I can take home. I log out of all my accounts, halfheartedly thinking it’ll make things easier for whoever has to reset the machine and make a login for the next employee.

I pack my purse with as much as will fit in it, and stack everything else on one end of my desk. Maybe I’ll get a cardboard box from Gwen and I don’t need to make multiple trips to get everything back to my car. Something about having to make more than one trip feels like it would sap my dignity.

I watch the clock tick down to my meeting with Gwen.

I should take the elevator. I don’t like going into the elevator anymore because it makes me think too much about that moment, that free, wild with abandon, recklessly happy moment. When I take the elevator now, I feel the electric stare boring into me.

But Khent’s more likely to take the stairs. He doesn’t like how the swiftness of the elevator makes his ears pop.

I sigh and try not to dwell on the memory of when he had told me that, one of the nights at his apartment when I’d wondered aloud how we had never run into each other before. Just another thing I need to crumple up and put in the wastebasket.

Such a small detail, so inconsequential. And dumb, too. Who cares that he has a sensitive inner ear? It shouldn’t feel like a treasure.

So I should take the elevator, to avoid him.

A few minutes before the appointmented meeting time arrives as I’m scrolling absently through my phone. I sigh and it takes a few tries to find the strength to push away from my desk, gather myself up for the meeting. I straighten up my appearance before heading out into the hall.

It’s quiet in the halls. In a way, corporate buildings all look alike on the inside. There’s not going to be much I miss about the place. Maybe a couple people I was close with, like Lily. Maybe we’ll friend each other on ChainLinkedin. And finding somewhere else to work means I’ll leave all the mess of these last few weeks with Khent behind.

I round the corner, and might as well have walked into a wall.

I know it’s him before I even open my eyes.

I look up and he’s got a monitor under one arm and probably a mile of DisplayPort cables bundled under the other.

Suddenly this building with dozens of floors is just too small, and we keep ending up in the same hallway, awkwardly trying to shuffle around each other. It hasn’t gotten any easier.

We don’t say anything, we don’t look at each other. We move past each other quickly, but also not so quickly like we’re trying to act like we’re avoiding each other.

I don’t know who the charade is for, each other or ourselves.

Gwen is waiting for me in the same empty conference room as before, etching something in the tiniest handwriting ever in her notebook.

She gives me the same polite yet unnerving smile she did when I first met her a month ago. I don’t know what it is but I’m convinced she must not be human, even if she appears to be.

“Good to see you, how have you been?” She asks as I sit down, and the question stops me.

Is she asking to be polite, as a greeting, or in reference to the Blood Fever Fiasco?

It’s incredibly tempting to just lie and say everything is going well, to whichever one she means. But if she’s seen the elevator tapes she knows Khent and I haven’t been avoiding each other the way we said we would. She knows how irresponsible we’ve been.

“Eh,” I say, as noncommittal as a syllable gets, after too many beats have passed. I pair it with a shrug. “Work, y’know.”

She gives me a light, undeserved chuckle, brushing past my terrible conversation to the point of this meeting. She flips a manila folder open. The document text on the inside is also smaller than I can read from across the table.

She interweaves her fingers, propping her elbows up on the table, and lays her chin across her knuckles. I half expect her to reveal fangs as she levels her stare at me.

I brace myself. She doesn’t need fangs to terrify me, just the words “security footage”.

“So… out of the woods?” Gwen asks, eyeing me.

I blink. It takes a moment before I realize that she asked me a question. Wouldn’t she be the one to tell me that?

“Sorry?”

“Well normally it’s supposed to clear up pretty quickly after a bond is solidified, but the process of resisting it tends to draw things out,” she says, like she’s informing me of the weather, glancing down to her documents. “And there’s no real data on what to expect for how long it affects humans.”

My mind takes longer than it should to realize she’s talking about the Blood Fever, and somehow we’re not in the middle of firing me.

“So it’s really up to you to tell us where you’re at in this process.”

“Tell you if I’m still experiencing the Blood Fever,” I clarify, a little more bluntly than I should.

“Yes. And we had discussed it, rewrote some policies during the last month, since we didn’t really have anything in place for this kind of circumstance. If you feel you still need it, you’re free to take an extra week of sick leave.”

“Even though it lasted more than a week?”

The question falls out of my mouth because it would if this were a policy I was helping to write.

Gwen gives a little shrug, making a face briefly as if to say she knows it’s not fair, but that’s corporate for you. “You’re able to still take that week if you feel you need it.”

Weirdly generous for Evil Inc., but then again that’s the card to play to avoid legal action.

I contemplate it. I don’t think I’m in a place where taking time off would be healthy. I’d wallow in my pajamas and rewatch twenty seasons of HGTV shows and order takeout for every meal and not shower once the whole time. At least going to work moves me through the motions of resembling a functional human being.

I shake my head.

“I just have a little survey for you to fill out,” Gwen says, and pushes a form across the table.

It’s a bunch of questions and check-yes-or-no boxes, and a line for me to sign my name at the bottom. It’s a form to tie up all the ends and assure the company I’m not going to sue them over the incident. That they can just file the last month of my life away in a box to be forgotten in some storage closet, because everything is fine now.

Everything is fine? I mean, I guess she’s not firing me, and I’m no more mated to a coworker than I was before all of this started. I guess by those standards, everything is fine.

Except that it still feels like my heart has sunk down into my stomach to live there, and sinks a little more every time I think about Khent.

I get a little more numb with every box I cross off, no I did not sustain injuries due to the incident, and no I was not bonded to a coworker. I scribble my name on it and push it back towards her.

She initials the paperwork and starts packing it into that manila folder. I half want to ask her if the elevator cameras still work, just to make sure.

“What would have happened if it… if we…”

I can’t find the words to finish my question.

Gwen pauses in her paper shuffle. She tilts her head to the side to consider it. “If it wasn’t over yet? You’d have that extra sick leave.”

I shake my head. “No, I mean, if we had gone through with the bond.”

“There… would have been more paperwork. To ensure there wasn’t harassment or coercion on either side. Then some legal proceedings to make sure the company wouldn’t play any role should the bond be annulled later on. Possibly some rearranging in departments to make sure no one involved in the bond was a direct report…”

I stop listening as she continues on, illustrating the sticky situation it could have been.

“Gotcha,” I nod, standing up quickly.

Gwen stops listing various types of paperwork and stares at me.

“If that’s all…?” I start to say, fumbling for an excuse.

“That’s all,” she nods, and I hurry from the room.

I was so sure I was going to be fired. Had I just built all that up in my head?

I’m sitting back at my desk a half hour later, realizing I shouldn’t have logged out of everything. Not being fired, I kind of needed access again.

Had I freaked out over nothing?

No, the footage existed. It was there and it was a ticking time bomb. I wasn’t crazy to think that I could get in real trouble over that. We could still get in real trouble.

But maybe I had overreacted. Maybe I had gotten so wrapped up in the idea that the exact same thing that had happened to me before would happen, all over again, that I hadn’t been able to see things for what they were.

Khent wasn’t like James. James had lashed out over a bruised ego. Khent had done nothing but exude warmth and caring…and fucking responsibility! This whole time he had held himself accountable for every little thing, even stuff he didn’t need to, because he’d been so focused on my comfort level.

Shame bloomed up and down my neck, hunching my shoulders as I curled in on myself.

I wish I’d done that all differently. I wish I’d put his considerations on par with my own. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to protect myself that I was willing to hurt him over it.

The whole mate-bonding incident shoved us together when we wouldn’t have otherwise looked twice at one another, but I did like him. Even after the Blood Fever was over, I really liked him. I missed him and his dumb jokes and his lowercase smiley faces.

But… the Blood Fever was over. We weren’t bound to each other in the way we had been before, there wasn’t any reason to reach out to him, to talk to him. We had our separate lives on separate floors.

There wasn’t any reason he would want to be around me anymore. Especially not with how I had ended things.