Maybe I spent the better part of a meeting staring at the conference room windows behind my boss, wondering if it would open more than a three-inch crack, or at least wide enough I can shove my computer out and watch it fall six floors, then smash to itty bits on the pavement.
“Janice?”
And then once this plan succeeds, I would go get Khent’s computer, and do the same. Evidence obliterated, in theory.
“Janice.”
I can imagine there’s OSHA related reasons we don’t have windows that open all the way, but then again I’ve never noticed this company’s particular dedication to OSHA compliance.
“Jaaaaanice.”
I blink a couple times, realizing I have been gnashing the end of my pen between my molars, and absolutely zoned out.
I drop the pen and look up at my boss. Melanie’s got her arms crossed and a look of mild concern on her face.
“Thought you’d gone catatonic on us,” she says, suppressing a laugh.
“Oh. No. Just, uh, thinking,” I shrug, the weakest excuse I could probably come up with.
She nods to Bill. “We were just saying some of the personnel files need to be updated.”
Bill continues for her, in his soft, ancient voice, like two pages of an antique book rustling together, “There’s certain distinctions to be made after a tax law was altered a year ago. Some employees never updated their tax status to reflect it.”
I nod along, and lean forward, trying to look engaged. “Was that the law about filing single or married after undeath?”
“Yes, I believe the part that confuses people is that if you’ve been reanimated by a necromancer, you are allowed to actually file as their dependent. Not everyone fills that part out correctly.”
Normally I adore Bill. Honestly, this whole office would fall apart without him constantly checking that everything was in shipshape. But right now, listening to him talk while low-key squirming under the, ahem, symptoms, of Blood Fever is about as uncomfortable as it gets. Maybe I need to email Gwen about working from home for a bit, actually.
“Uh, while we’re updating things, we should look into updating any outdated training material,” I tack on, clearing my throat and sitting up straighter.
It is a bit of a topic change, and probably shows that I have absolutely no mind for this topic right now.
“We’ll circle back,” Melanie nods, though by her expression I think that means she’s going to swing by my office for a little one on one time.
I leave the meeting cringing at myself, and mildly ticked that we couldn’t have gotten that done in an email.
It’s cooler outside the meeting room, where it felt like I was marinating in my own bubble of horny thoughts. Walking around has helped me think a little clearer. I don’t need to despair over the thought of what might happen now that I’ve been caught searching porn at work. Besides, with our non-functional windows, my hare-brained plan won’t work.
I’m not ready to chat with Melanie about my zoning out yet, so I’m resigned to pacing around the hallways and up and down random staircases to work off my feelings.
I don’t think she knows about the porn search yet. She was definitely in too good of a mood for that conversation. Unless that’s what she really wanted to ‘circle back’ to.
Unease bubbles in my stomach like a bad tuna sandwich at the thought. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to cut and run from a job. I’ve learned how to be prepared for the floor to fall out from under me. I always keep an up-to-date resume, I have a list of references I know will say good things about me, and I always have an eye out for job listings. Having worked in HR, I know all the tricky questions that get asked in interviews, how to dodge all the wrong answers, and the right moments to drop a couple corporate buzzwords.
I make it a few floors down before I realize I’m not alone in the stairwell, there’s a voice coming up from a lower landing. I stop short when I recognize it, the sound of my footsteps echoing off the concrete walls.
I peer over the railing, catching a glimpse of Khent two floors down, with a cell phone up to his ear.
“I am not going to bring up couple’s therapy. Ma, I can’t. Humans don’t do things like we do. Bonding isn’t… important to them. It isn’t a thing at all to them,” Khent was saying, and immediately there’s an outburst on the other side of the phone, more than one voice speaking over top of each other. Khent holds it away from his head a moment, turning the call volume down.
“Anyway. It was just an accident,” he says.
One of the vents kicks on behind me, and I feel the brush of air against my skin. Only moments later, Khent stiffens. He turns and his eyes meet mine through the slice of space between the floors.
All the hairs on my body stand on end.
I have to reassure myself that I am not turned on that he can pick up my scent. I’m not. Really.
His gaze holds on me. “I should go, Ma. Tell the rest I said hi.”
I look away and stare hard at the speckled concrete walls while he ends the call and pockets his phone.
When I finally glance up again, I wish I’d kept my eyes on the ground.
Even with the vent blowing cool air past me, heat creeps up my cheeks at the visible evidence of arousal starting to bulge in his pant leg. MR did say something about not being in the same room together, even if no one would consider the stairwell a room.
On one hand, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one having unwarranted physical reactions. On the other hand, I don’t know what it says about Khent that the scent of my hair conditioner is getting him hard.
Khent rolls his neck and grumbles a little, angling himself away so his erection is much less visible from me. I’m simultaneously disappointed and impressed with the quality of pants he owns.
“I don’t need to tell you about company policy for personal calls,” I say, a line of defense to conceal how curious my eavesdropping had made me, half to say anything at all. I cringe at how callous I sound.
Khent raises a brow at me over his shoulder, like I have any business telling him off when he knows I’ve been searching porn at work.
I press my lips together a moment and add, “But I won’t say anything if you don’t tell anyone I’m hiding from my boss either.”
For a moment, his face is unreadable. A sliver of a smile breaks through between his tusks. Then a near silent laugh gives his massive shoulders a little shake. A silent earthquake in its own right.
I realize then that I’ve been clutching the railing. Less like I’m trying to not fall over the edge, more like it’s the only thing between us and if my puny human arms were stronger, I could rip my way through them. Fucking hormones. Or pheromones. I don’t know.
I sink down onto the step, trying to make myself hold the railing bars looser. I lean my temple against them and the cool touch of the metal on my skin cuts through the heat.
“So, uh, kinda soon to tell your mom about us. You haven’t even asked me to dinner yet,” I chide teasingly, and his face flushes a slightly darker green.
“I’m. Uh. Not great at lying to my mom,” he admits, running a hand through his dark hair, ruining the neat combed lines he had.
“Not even over the phone?”
“Believe me, I got in more trouble trying to hide the rules I broke as a kid, than actually breaking them,” Khent shakes his head, though he looks fond. He smiles a little like he’s remembering something.
I’m not charmed by his mama’s boy-ness, I’m just pressing my face a little too hard into the railing bars.
I force my eyes to the ground in front of me, and mumble, “Maybe you’ve got poker tells.”
“Probably.”
A silence falls over the two of us. This might be the first real conversation we’ve had in this whole ordeal. It’s nice. It’s normal.
In the last few days, I feel like I forgot how to be normal.
I fidget with a loose thread on my pants a moment, unwilling to get up and just leave. I want to keep talking to him. It’s nice not to have to be the only one suffering through this, even if we have to stay several yards apart.
“So, tell me about bonding. I don’t really have a reference point for it,” I say, instead of telling him he’s wrong about thinking humans wouldn’t think it important. I’m sure it’s important.
Khent shrugs. “It’s just the foundation of Orc society. That’s all.”
I swallow. “Oh, that’s all?”
I had felt a little bad about eavesdropping, but something about his tone made guilt sink down in my stomach. Not only had I stumbled into accidentally kickstarting the whole mating ritual thing, but apparently I’d stepped on some important cultural norms.
Why couldn’t the pamphlet have gone into a little more detail on that? Surely the many sets of tusks an Orc goes through in life could have taken a back seat to this.
“It really isn’t possible to step on another human’s toes and be pronounced married from it,” I say after a little while, my unease probably a little too clear in my voice. “Though to be fair, if it was a thing for us, we’d probably all wear steel-toed shoes.”
He gives a laugh so small it’s barely more than a breath. “To be fair, humans don’t usually draw first blood from an Orc barehanded. At least, not that I’ve heard of.”
I nod a little. The internet had turned up about that much too. “If I’d have known, I would have worn protection.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Elbow-pads.”
“Ah.” He nods, though it seems even with clarifying, my joke didn’t land.
I scoot down a step, inching closer. I want to know more about this, what bonding means to Orcs. If it really is the same as getting married or if it’s more just like a relationship. And like, even humans get married and divorced a number of times over their lives.
“So, you can just end up married to anyone that breaks your nose?”
Khent gives me a look, like I’m a silly human for not knowing something so simple, so obvious to him.
“It doesn’t happen every time you get into a fight. It’s something of a rare event in your life,” he shrugs.
“Oh,” I say, because, shit. Fuck me.
So like a more important than marriage kind of thing? Like a once in a lifetime thing? Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“How rare?”
I cringe at the way my voice catches on the words, but I’m far more preoccupied with hanging on every micromovement of his face, waiting for the answer.
He shrugs again, runs a hand through his hair. “Not everyone gets a chance to have it happen to them.”
I wince, like I could crumble inwards on myself and out of existence.
Maybe it’s not rarer than winning the lottery, but I can only imagine growing up, wondering whether or not you’d find a mate this way, and then some idiot human elbows you in the nose?
It makes me want to square up with whatever cosmic beings are out there deciding these things, to break their noses and tell them Khent didn’t deserve to have his one chance at a mating bond ruined with me.
I want to tell him it’ll probably happen again, with someone important to him. Someone he’s probably completely head over heels for. I doubt he would believe me though, since I am clearly no expert.
“Do you know why it happens?” I venture, even though this is getting a little too fraught and way more personal than I ever intended to get with Khent. I don’t know what kind of answer I’m hoping there is.
He shrugs again. “I couldn’t tell you why you get hiccups either.”
I nod. That’s fair.
I don’t really know how to apologize for being the person who robbed him of this once in a lifetime opportunity and got tangled up in his personal life in the most intimate of ways. ‘Sorry’ feels wholly inadequate.
I watch him for a moment, and there’s something in the little ways his eyes track the movements of his hands as he unbuttons his shirt at the wrists, rolling up his sleeves.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought he was attractive, Evil Overlord knows my hormones have taken care of that, but it is the first time I’ve felt on the level with him. The tousled hair and his shirt less than perfectly buttoned up, he looks like he’s been having a rough time of it as well.
Maybe I don’t hate him, despite my feelings about his emails. Maybe I was just mad that I was stuck in this situation and wanted someone to direct my anger at. Because as much as this sucks for me, from my recent education, it sounds like it is colossally worse for him.
I think desperately for a moment for something to get out of this personal conversation, some conversational parachute that will pull me out of this stairwell. He had mentioned in his email something about handing over my laptop to get it looked at for malware.
“Out of curiosity, where would I go to download a virus?” I ask after a moment, and then wish I’d just searched it on the internet. Still, it’s the only thing I can think to talk about. “So that I know what sites to avoid. And if we’re on the topic of my search history, is it like a three strike system, or is it one and done?”
Khent’s forehead creases as he looks at me again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you tell my boss immediately or do I have to rack up a few more incidents before Melanie has enough to fire me?”
“Fire you? No, I–” he pauses, and his brow wrinkles behind his thick glasses. “Forget about the search. I’ll…if you take the phishing refresher course and pass the quiz at the end, it’ll all be good.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That corny training course? Don’t we already have a spam filter for that stuff?”
“It’s not just for emails, it also has to do with clicking on links that look suspicious.”
I chew on the corner of my cheek for a moment. That could easily explain why I was searching porn on my work computer, I guess.
“Fine. But I want to clarify I wasn’t asking you for any favors—” I start to say. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to take advantage of this little heart-to-heart.
“No, no, I feel partly uh, responsible. Considering, the uh, whole bond thing,” he says a little stiffly. He turns bodily away enough that I can’t really see his face through the gap in the stairwell now, just a slice of his back.
“But um… I would save the research for your home computer,” he says over his shoulder.
This whole bonding thing has me off kilter. It seems like everything I say or do is just a little too much. It’s like I don’t know how to be Cool Janice. Subdued, Unaffected, Perfectly Poised Janice. That’s the only reason I end up blurting out, “Have any recommendations?”
Oh my god that’s the exact opposite of being cool. I meant it to sound ironically flirty and a hundred percent joking. A squeak in my voice makes it err into genuine.
He lifts an eyebrow, and maybe it’s the angle he’s looking at me or his expression, but it makes my cheeks flare again. “…If you give me your personal email, I can send you some stuff.”
“Just don’t tell your mom you’re sending me porn, ok? I won’t be able to live down, even if I never meet her,” I stage whisper through the railing bars, because I can’t not keep trying to play it off.
He coughs. “It wasn’t going to–, I mean, I would never–”
My face flushes an entirely new shade of red at Unhinged Janice’s behavior, and I quickly escape back into the hallway.
