I open and close the pamphlet the Monster Resources lady handed me, glancing over it again. ‘So You’ve Mate-Bonded with a Coworker’.
I can’t even finish a single thought. I feel my brain bluescreening on me. What kind of special hell is this?
Most of the information inside is about company policy, that mate-bonding is highly discouraged on company property. A lot of it is about trying to let MR know about any mating/bonding plans before it happens, rules for making sure a bonded pair don’t work within the same department to avoid favoritism. It reads a lot like the internal dating policy the company has for HR.
The problem is, the whole outdated looking thing assumes that this was on purpose.
“I didn’t bond with anyone,” I say, running through this morning’s events in my head again. That moment in the storage room was the first time I ever saw Khent.
Even his name makes my cheeks burst into a streak of red. I feel him shift out of the corner of my vision, and I steel myself to not turn to glance at him.
All of what just happened may be wholly inappropriate, but it was not mating.
Mating bonds are usually a bite, I think. There’s blood exchange for vampires, that’s done with a bite, there’s the mid-sex mating bite for werewolves, there’s the… well I can’t think of any others but that’s how it usually goes. I’m pretty sure.
Anyway, I haven’t bitten or been bitten by Khent, to my knowledge. I definitely elbowed his nose, not his teeth. And for all his mouth was on me a little while ago, that was purely tongue.
Gwen, the Monster Resources lady, smiles at me, nodding sympathetically. Her platinum blonde bob sways and highlights an unnatural sharpness of her cheeks.
“Stanley’s getting me the training video, I think it’s a little more relevant,” she says placatingly. If she’s a monster, I can’t tell what kind.
“Right,” I nod. I look down the conference room table, to the far end where Khent is seated, and curse myself for allowing it. He looks the picture of any office employee, all neatly prepared again, aside from the bandage on his nose.
I cleaned up after that little encounter we had, but even glancing at him makes the need between my legs thrum back alive, as if I didn’t just come like a freight train twenty minutes ago.
The room’s pretty big. I guess it’s usually reserved for large meetings. Gwen led us in a few minutes ago and directed us to sit as far apart as possible.
Gwen crosses to my end of the table, and takes the chair next to me. She lays out a notepad before her and uncaps a pen. “So, I understand you broke Khent’s nose earlier today?”
“It was an accident!” I blurt out, sitting forward. “He was helping me with a stuck drawer. I don’t understand what that has to do with this—”
I flutter the pamphlet at her as agitatedly as one can flutter a pamphlet.
Gwen looks tranquil and unfazed as she jots down a few notes. “But you gave him the nosebleed, not the drawer itself, yes?”
“Yes.” Khent’s voice cuts in from the other side of the room, like he’s late for something and could get through these answers quicker or easier than I could.
“And I apologize for that, I am truly sorry,” I insist at the table before me. My palms are starting to sweat. I put my cheeks in my hand, my elbow on the table, my fingers partitioning my vision from him. In a lower tone I say to Gwen, “If he wants me to pay to fix his glasses, I’ll figure out some way—”
“Not to worry, that’s covered in the Monster Health Plan, it happens more often than you think,” she says easily. She points her pen towards my outdated pamphlet.
“Drawing blood is an Orc betrothal custom. Apparently, it has roots in some kind of physiological response. Blood Fever or something it’s called,” she shrugs as she writes something down. “I’d have to look it up for specifics.”
“Could you? Look it up?” I squeak.
“Yes, well. Here’s the movie now. I’m sure it will be enlightening,” Gwen smiles at me again as Stanley comes into the room, looking out of breath with sweat stains beginning to form on his thin button-down shirt. He waves a VHS tape triumphantly at me.
Fuck. It’s been at least a decade since I saw one of those. I can only just imagine what crypt of company archives Stanley had to dig through to find that. Has nobody made any more recent resources on this?
The cardboard jacket on the tape is faded enough that the title isn’t legible anymore. Gwen fiddles with the combo DVD and VHS player for a few moments, rewinding the tape before she turns the TV on and hits ‘Play’.
Static dances across the screen momentarily while the player whirrs mechanically.
“Well. Too bad the vending machine was out of popcorn,” Gwen jokes, and slips back out the conference room, closing the door behind me. I can’t help but listen to her fading footsteps.
Khent’s chair creaks as he shifts in it. I curl my fingers around the edge of the table and sink a little lower in my chair, eyes trained on the TV screen.
The beginning of the tape on Orc biology is boring and not all that helpful. I learn their blood is green due to copper-based hemocyanin, the many sets of tusks they can go through during their life, etc. I spend more than I’m willing to admit of it glancing down the table at Khent, searching for his reactions. He’s angled enough away that I can’t really see much of his face.
Then the tape gets to a part that makes me want to sink low in my chair and disappear under the table. Or even duck out the fire escape.
“Having a long history with courtship by combat, many Orc mating traditions started with bloodshed. The breaking of skin triggers a pheromone response, colloquially known as the ‘Blood Fever’, for the fever-like symptoms it starts with,” the tape’s narrator drawls on like it’s an interesting fact. “Those pheromones, once spread to the one to draw first blood, would calm the partner into stopping their attack, and begin a centuries-old claiming ritual.”
I cover my face with my hands and sink a few inches further into my chair. It doesn’t take me long to connect that by elbowing Khent in the face, I must have accidentally initiated the Orc mating bond.
I wish I could clarify with Khent’s biology that I wasn’t actually attacking him. It was an accident.
“On occasion, the Blood Fever phenomena has been noted to affect other species, such as werewolves or vampires, the rare brave challenger who dares to take on an Orc.”
The video droned on about how combat-based courtship was somewhat frowned upon today, but that bloodletting ceremonies were still arranged between families to preserve this beautiful and unique cultural custom.
The video soon ends, and the light flicks back on. I feel like half a lifetime has passed since this morning.
Fuck. I’m mated to an Orc.
I’ve sat through a number of sensitivity training sessions with other company members, usually teaching them how not to micro-agress the undead, respecting the cultural boundaries of swamp creatures and accommodating the needs of cursed peoples. I’ve seen most of these videos enough to have them half-memorized.
None of them have made me feel like I’m back in seventh grade watching a video about the wonders of puberty through my fingers.
Still, I think I would rather have been prepared beforehand. How many other monsters could I have accidentally stapled their fingers or given a papercut? How does anyone work here, traipsing around, not knowing how they could accidentally trip into a mating bond?
Gwen slides back into the seat next to me, straightening out a stack of papers on the table. I don’t even remember her coming back in. She smiles again in that way that’s starting to make me despair.
“So our policy does not allow mate-bonding on company time or premises, but because this was an accident, and you work in different departments, we’re not going to consider what happened as such. We do, however, have a couple policies regarding mating-bond annulments,” Gwen says, as cheerfully as if she were telling me my health plan options. “Since you two brought this to us fairly quickly after the accident, it should be rather easy. Annulments are a lot harder to arrange after.”
“After?”
Gwen’s smile pinches her face a little. She glances around the room and makes a quick, work-inappropriate gesture. The video probably couldn’t have gone into very much detail about the alluded claiming ritual if that was involved.
My eyes flick to Khent, all thirty feet across the room, and meet his for the first time this meeting. My face burns. Do we need to tell her that we’ve already found the time for him to eat me out? Does that not count?
“Your local pharmacy should sell some sort of over the counter anti-aphrodisiac that most Orcs use, just ask them any questions you have about human appropriate dosages. The company can reimburse you for the cost since it was an on-site accident. There’s also some pamphlets on the different side effects the medications have on different species, though there isn’t a lot of information about how it affects human systems.”
The thought of more outdated company pamphlets giving me possibly wrong information makes me balk.
“What’s the other option?”
“Option two, if you like, you can wait to see how long it takes to wear off on its own. Since you two work on different floors, it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Or we can arrange for one of you to work from home,” she says. “Annulment studies show Blood Fever can take a couple weeks to a month to completely leave the body for Orcs. Again, there aren’t many case studies of how humans are affected.”
I swallow. Trying to get on with my work day mildly horny all the time doesn’t sound great, but it doesn’t sound as risky as taking some over the counter magic herb that isn’t EFDA approved.
I glance down the long conference room table.
Khent has been utterly silent the last few minutes. His chair hasn’t creaked once since Gwen mentioned annulments.
I mean, I guess we don’t really need each other’s input on this. This isn’t couple’s therapy, I don’t need to consult him on this. I didn’t ask to be mated or bonded, or whatever!
Still, I guess I got him into this mess. He probably doesn’t want to be in it as much as I do.
“What are your thoughts?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m shouting across the table at him.
The light reflects off his glasses as he turns his head to look at me. “It’s up to you.”
Impassioned pleas, that was not.
I guess the whole bonding thing means about as much to him as it does to me.
I shrug and turn back to Gwen. “Option two sounds good.”
If I’ve never noticed Khent much around the office building before, surely we can go a couple weeks without running into each other again.
