I didn’t end up hearing from the IT Department for several days after that meeting.
I don’t know if I was happy or not about that. I mean, as far as I could tell, that meant that no one was following up on my Not Safe for Work searches.
But it also meant I hadn’t talked to Khent for several days.
Which was the idea. Getting as much space from him as possible was what Monsters Resources instructed. Eventually, my vulva would receive the message.
I tried working from home one day, but that was a bad idea in itself. With my personal laptop right there, wearing sweatpants, that post-it note with the Orc porn website and my vibrator a mere room away, well. I got very little done.
I think I watched that video I’d clicked on at work, the one with the claiming ritual, at least a dozen times. It did something different for me, made the fever feel not like burning up, but warm and cozy. Like I was lying in a sunbeam and soaking it up, instead of sweating in a summer-hot car.
In the claiming ritual video it looked like, in the most polite of terms, there was a somewhat intense penetration and exchange of body fluids. There was some kind of oil involved, made of some unspecified herbs mashed up until they were liquid. It moved like oil but looked like ink in the bottle. It was shinier than anything else when it was used, from where it was used like lube and where it was swirled in shapes and spread along the skin.
And there was a lot of spreading.
At first I insisted to myself that I was rewatching how this whole mating ritual thing was done so that I could assure myself I hadn’t done anything similar with Khent that time in my office.
Of course, that excuse wore out when I realized I pretty much had the video memorized.
I kind of wanted to call Khent and ask questions. Were the herbs or oil used in the ritual the sticking point of the whole mating thing? Also like, how was his day going?
Then again, I couldn’t really do that without making things weird again, realistically.
I mean, it wasn’t just the Blood Fever making me want to talk to Khent. We were in the same boat, I didn’t have anyone else to complain about how being constantly, unendingly horny was wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule. Or how it made my legs weirdly sore from how they were constantly tensing up. I mean, what kind of guy doesn’t email you after he mate-bonds with you? Even though he technically already did.
So nature, and uh, Unhinged Janice, She Who Destroys Computers, find a way.
I did not succeed in melting my computer, not even after running every program I had on the computer at the same time for an hour or so. But the screen started flickering just after I opened a few hefty spreadsheets, and when I came back to it after lunch, the screen wouldn’t turn on. I had my excuse to call the IT Department.
“Try turning it off and on again,” he says over the phone.
Since I’m back in my office, whenever he speaks, I squeeze my knees together and shift my hips in my chair. Above the desk line at least, I’m pretending the sound of his voice hasn’t wet my panties instantly. I brought more underwear to work, because at least I’m now ready for this. I also brought a little cooler full of ice packs, so that I could make it through meetings without trying to hump my chair.
“No, no don’t give me that, I’m not restarting it again,” I pull off my glasses and put the end of the temple between my teeth.
“Did you already try restarting?”
“…No,” I mumble a bit sheepishly. I push the receiver away from my face as I grumble, “That’s what the IT guys say to trick you into forgetting what the actual problem was.”
“Humor me,” he says, his voice pure patience. His voice is soothing mental itches I didn’t know I had. It’s deep and complex and I don’t think I’ve ever listened this closely just to the sound of someone’s voice before.
Blood Fever is one hell of a drug.
I harrumph as loudly as possible into the receiver so that there’s no mistaking my displeasure. I’ve been onto these IT guys and their quick fix solutions that give you the runaround.
“It’s still doing the thing,” I snap, perhaps a little too triumphantly, when the screen flickers through the start up.
Khent hums a little on the other end of the line, a note of amusement. “That’s not a good thing.”
“Well. I guess that means it’s just broken, right?” I twirl the office desk phone’s chunky wire cord around my finger a moment, and stop myself just before I offer to bring the laptop down to IT myself.
As good as the plan cooked up by my nethers sounds right now, it would be entirely counterproductive. I just wanted to chat for some solidarity or something. Not to announce my impending arrival so we could find a storage closet to get to know each other in.
“There’s something else we can try,” Khent offers after a few moments, and it does take me a second to remember what he means about my computer. Not like, positions or locations.
I put him on speaker phone, just to get the intimate hush of his voice out of my ear.
“Alright, what do I do?”
“Turn it off.”
“AGAIN?”
“And then unplug the laptop.”
I grumble and do as he says, wondering if this is all the IT guys do every day. “Ok.”
“And then flip it over, there should be a slider to release the battery, so you can remove it.”
The slider takes a moment to open, but then I’m holding the battery in my hand. It’s heavy, and about as wide as the laptop. “Ok, now what?”
“Shake out all those electrons.”
“Your credentials are getting less believable by the second,” I mutter. That can’t be real. That sounds so unsciencey. Is he pulling my leg, or do I actually need to do that?
Instead of just asking for clarification, I say, “I think you’re just enjoying telling me what to do.”
He just chuckles. “I have been known to abuse my power.”
A beat goes by, and I do end up shaking the battery, just in case. Then I feel like an idiot and put it down.
“What do I do next?”
“Now we just let it sit for a minute,” he answers simply.
“We just sit here?”
“For a minute.”
A few seconds of silence stretch before us. Somehow the quiet is what makes me squirm. It’s just the sound of his breath and mine. It’s comfortable, even though the memory of the other day lingers over our interactions.
I kind of want to apologize for making this whole mate bonding dilemma harder than it already is. But that apology has a number of other struck through thoughts that I didn’t get to first, about the broken nose and broken glasses, and honestly anything else I might have broken at this point.
“I gotta apologize again,” he says, like he’s thinking all the same things I was.
“Not again, you don’t,” I return quickly, because he’s beating me in the apologies department and leaving me in the dust.
“I have to,” he says, concern in his voice. “I mean, I understand the whole mate bonding thing is highly unusual to humans–”
“Oh, please. This is by no means the worst thing to happen to me at work,” I scoff, really just to get him to stop worrying about the comfort level of humans. It’s also kind of an attempt to get him to stop apologizing all the time. Really, I need him to stop.
“…What was?” Khent asks after a beat.
I probably should have anticipated him asking me that, I did put it out there. But my arms close around my chest and I have to stop myself from reactively turning away, the phone cord wrapping around my shoulder with the movement of my swivel chair.
“It was, uh, at the last company I worked at,” I say, my voice falling into a softer register, almost hushed. It’s not a secret, but it’s not something I exactly want to think about.
Sometimes I tell the story of my biggest dating mistake at parties or among friends, sometimes as my bid to win some verbal ‘Dated the World’s Biggest Asshole’ contest. It’s usually a third glass of wine kind of story. Ultimately, I tell it to make people laugh, to gasp and say ‘oh my god, what a dick’.
“I dated one of my coworkers for a while,” I admit out loud and cringe a little, the words like admitting some huge misstep. Still, I can’t fault myself for choosing that relationship, I was younger and it had been exciting precisely because it was the wrong choice. “We were in the same department. At first that made it easy for us to talk to each other, we bonded over complaining about the same things at our job.”
Khent hums a little, a note of safeness that nudges me along.
I sit forward and tap my fingers on the desk. As much as revealing this in a plain, non-joking way makes me want to curl into a ball of shame, I want to see him. I want to watch his expression, to try to read his thoughts from his posture. But I also know that would be a mistake. We shouldn’t be trying to get to know each other any better.
“But he was a bit competitive with me. If our boss told me I did a good job on something, he would take it like some kind of personal insult. One day, our boss hinted that I was due for a promotion. And James– well. My ex went and told our friends that I had slept with the boss to get it. And when I confronted him about it, he said it was a joke. Just a joke.”
This is the part where my voice shakes a little as I tell it. In the quiet of my office, confessing into the receiver, it’s much more evident than at parties, where my friends usually explode into outrage and giggle madly over another round of drinks.
I don’t know what I want Khent to say in response to this. All I know is I hope maybe someone like him would understand. Maybe he’ll see how these memories hang over me and steer me.
At worst, maybe he’ll laugh.
“He said this while you were still dating?” Khent asks, and it strikes me as odd.
It’s not something I had ever really considered. Would it have made more sense if it had happened after we had broken up?
“Yeah, we were still dating at the time. I mean, not long after. Maybe he thought he could tell everyone this hilarious joke of his and that I would just be ok with it. And when we had to sort our shit out with HR, it came up, and there was a whole investigation into whether or not I had actually slept with my boss in exchange for the promotion. And at the end of it all, well. Companies don’t really care about you. They care about not getting sued for the indiscretions of their other employees.”
I didn’t tell it right. There wasn’t humor or theatrics in my voice like there usually was.
I realize I’m clutching myself a little too tight, the quiet anger I keep at the back of my throat is bared on my teeth, dripping venom into my tone. The line is utterly silent. For a fearful heartbeat, I wonder if I’ve scared Khent off.
“Needless to say, I didn’t get promoted,” I ramble on in the face of Khent’s quiet, injecting some upbeat casualness into my tone. That is the punchline to this story, after all. “I figured if I got a job at Evil Inc., then at least they would be transparent about their priorities.”
“He should have – fuck.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Orc swear quietly before, like he’s trying to smother the word. The effect of it undoes some of the knot in my chest.
I don’t think I could emotionally withstand Khent being protective of me, even if it’s a year too late. I can live with being horny, but being cared about might cross a line. There’s HR paperwork we would need to file for that.
“Um, when do I put the battery back in?” I mumble, hoping we can bury the subject with another one.
“Ah. Yeah, you can put it back in and turn it on,” he says, some remnants of emotion still in his voice. Clearly he hadn’t expected to shift gears like that.
“Oh. It works fine now,” I say, as the screen lights up.
“Don’t sound so thrilled,” Khent chuckles through the phone.
I throw a sheepish look at my keyboard.
“It’s called power cycling. Try it next time this happens.”
“Oh, but then I wouldn’t get to annoy you about it,” I tease. I am starting to enjoy these little chats. Not because of the bond or anything, it’s just nice to have someone new to talk to.
He gives a soft laugh in response, and almost reflexively, I ask, “So… how are you doing with all this?”
A beat goes by before he replies. “Uh… you want the real answer?”
I scoff and sputter a moment, probably turning a bright, vivid red to complement his earthy green. Ok, maybe that’s a Not So Safe For Work kind of question. Maybe I want to know, maybe it’s not just because he’s the only person I know also going through this.
“I just meant, um, do you feel like it’s starting to clear up for you? Yet?”
I twist the phone’s cord between my fingers a little too tight, and I’m kind of worried he’ll say he’s just about gotten over his fever. The thought makes my heart sink a little. Because if he’s recovered just fine, then we won’t have any reason to talk to each other anymore.
And that does make me sad.
I don’t know why. Maybe this whole ordeal inflated my ego with the thought that someone could just be openly, earnestly and irrevocably in love with me. And that it could be a guy as nice and sweet (and broad, let’s be real) as Khent.
Maybe I don’t want him to be done with all this because I just don’t want to be the only one feeling this. Because it really has not changed at all for me. It’s starting to feel like I’m going to be like this forever.
“Uh, a bit, maybe,” he says, and my heart sinks a little further.
“Really?” I bite my mouth closed to keep from immediately asking for more details.
“Most likely because I’ve been visiting this sort of holistic place in my neighborhood,” he says, and my heart trampolines back up into my chest, possibly my throat.
I should be more excited at the prospect of getting over all this than I am at the thought that our accidental mating bond isn’t just fading away on its own for him.
I nod quickly even though he can’t see me. “Do you think– I mean, could I give that a try? Would that be weird or a bad idea?”
“Well, I’m not your doctor, clearly,” he goes on, like the coolest cucumber, like we’re not discussing how to stem the tide of Blood Fever. “But I’ve found it beneficial.”
“And it’s not like medicines that have yet to be tested on humans that could have weird side effects, right?”
I can hear his chair creak as he leans back in it, considering my question. “I’ve seen humans and all kinds of monsters go. Usually for the novelty of the experience, less for medical needs.”
My nails are between my teeth like a conduit for the thoughts turning over in my brain. I don’t really want to go on my own, like I’ll be perceived as some weirdo human tourist.
He pauses a moment as he gathers a breath. That hint of a smile in his voice deepens as he suggests, “…I’ve got a coupon for two, if you like.”
Fuck. He knows the way I think. I feel weirdly soft and melty and warm under my bra, and that’s a new symptom of horniness for me. Maybe we’re accidentally mate bonded or whatever, but I really like that he seems to know me, that he sees the little details that would go unnoticed by someone who cared a little less.
I stop short of telling him that of all people to get cosmically tangled up with, I’m glad it was him. That might be a little too genuine an emotion to have on company time.
