#pretty sure one of my first posts ever was me adding an unsolicited four paragraph reblog addition to one of scott megabuilds ethubs posts

[sarioh]

ethubs

shoutout to you and all the other ethubs warriors who have been here with me in the trenches since 2021. we were right about everything ever since the beginning of time but in the worst possible ways and no one can ever take that away from us . amen

[rhetoricalrogue]

31 Days of Wayhaven, Day 27

Prompt: Unkempt Rating: PG-ish? Nicky may have thrown an F-bomb or two around, I can’t remember. Words: 3,271 Characters: Nicolo Morelli, Elaine from Records Summary: Nicky is about to have words for some agents who can’t spell properly.

For the @31daysofwayhaven event.

Nicky was many things: a charming man with a reputation with the ladies, a loyal team member adept at technology and stealth, a man who prided himself in keeping up with the latest fashions.  What Nicky wasn’t was a patient man when it came to proofreading documents, especially documents that were supposed to have been written by people who knew what they were doing.

“This is unacceptable,” he growled, swiveling in the office chair he’d been assigned to.  He wasn’t much of a day drinker by any means, but he suddenly craved something to vent his frustrations on as he went through the fifth document of the morning.  

It was only nine.  He still had an entire stack of paperwork he was expected to complete by lunch piled high on his inbox and who knew how many files in his email.  He needed more coffee.  The office building he was in could only be described as bland, and even that was by Agency standards. Normally, the rest of the Facility was a uniform neutral done up in white paint and stainless steel, but this looked as if someone had gone back in time, snipped off a portion of the seventies, and whisked it back to the present day.  Beige walls and dark brown carpet assaulted his sensibilities.  Even the very air seemed to smell of old toner - Nicky was certain that purple ditto sheets reeking of methanol and isopropanol had gone the way of the dinosaur, but then again, this was the Agency.  There was probably a reason an early era Xerox printer was still being used, and as inquisitive as he was, Nicky wasn’t going to try to investigate.  He was merely lucky that there was a computer hooked up to his desk, even if it was an ancient yellow box of an Apple Macintosh from the 80s that somehow had Microsoft Word installed on it.  Again, he wasn’t going to question it, even if he did nervously glance down at his phone on multiple occasions to see if there was something in the office or perhaps the office itself that would transform his latest phone upgrade into a brick bag phone.

God, he’d hated that era of early technology.  Everything had been so goddamn expensive and it was comical to see the cutting technology of the day compared to now.  

“Welcome to my world.”  Nicky peered around the plain grayish beige partition of his cubicle - a cubicle!  The demotion from Charlie to Delta was irritating enough, but to have to go through an entire probationary period before being able to get back onto the sort of fieldwork that his unit was used to performing was downright galling. - that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and watched as a tall, sturdy looking woman sat down in the cubicle next to his and sighed.  At first glance, Nicky wouldn’t have thought that she belonged in an office setting. Trolls normally weren’t the types that came to mind when one thought about what a clerical staff would look like.  Yet apparently Elaine was one of the best and fastest proofreaders in the Agency, shooting up from ground level staff to managerial level quicker than anyone would have thought, troll or not.  Nicky hadn’t worked with her before, but he had worked with trolls in the past, so her craggy gray skin and over seven feet height didn’t put him off.  She walked and sat with a hunch, to make herself smaller in the environment or if that was purely her nature, Nicky didn’t know, but her lichen colored hair was done up in a neat bun atop her hair and the tips of her fingers were painted a bright coral color that matched her lipstick.  On anyone else, the color would have looked garish, but she seemed to pull it off well.

Elaine didn’t normally have a cubicle, her glass encased office was down the hall, but one of the other proofreaders had called in sick and she had decided it was easier to complete the workload at their desk instead of hauling it over to hers.  It meant that the space wasn’t quite suited to fit her, the cubicle walls short enough that the top of her head was clearly visible over them and her knees bumped the top of the desk if she wasn’t careful.  Nicky had already heard her mutter curses under her breath at least four times that morning alone and hoped she wouldn’t bruise her kneecaps before the day was done.  The permanent scowl her mouth was set in while she worked seemed completely out of place in the cubicle: the actual owner had a thing for bright pink office supplies and the little poster of a kitten hanging onto a branch emblazoned with a “hang in there, baby!” at the bottom definitely seemed like it wasn’t her sort of decor.

“Is it always this bad?” he asked, changing the spelling and punctuation in a paragraph that a toddler could have written better.  He tisked, he knew this agent and hadn’t thought they were capable of this...this monstrosity.  He was going to have to have words with them once his time in purgatory was up.  Not for the first time since agreeing to this sort of punishment, Nicky wished that he had swapped spots with Cam and taken on the rookie agent field assignments instead.

“Sometimes it’s worse.”  Her fingers flew across the keyboard, editing as she went.  “If it makes you feel any better, Morelli, I’ve never seen any of your reports cross my desk.”

He scoffed before getting up to the little breakroom, the brown low pile carpeting making way for white vinyl linoleum spattered with black and beige speckles.  “I should hope not.  I look over my reports for typos at least twice with a fine toothed comb before I turn them in.”

“And you still get them done in a timely manner, I’m impressed.”

He came back with a cup of coffee.  It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was hot and at least whoever had made the last pot had made it strong.  “What can I say? I’m quick, efficient, and I get the job done right the first time.”

There was a sound from the cubicle almost as if someone were crushing gravel.  It took Nicky a split second to realize that was Elaine laughing.  “Sounds like the ideal traits for a troll mate,” she joked.  “Careful, lest I think you’re trying to come on to me.”

Nicky grinned, though he was inwardly running through his mental catalogue of supernatural mating habits and blanched at what he dragged up.  Apparently trolls had a use ‘em and lose ‘em mentality when it came to their partners.  The lose part was when they bit off their heads and had them for a post-coital snack.  “Now, now,” he said, holding up his hands defensively.  “As much as I would like to, I am a married man!”

That gravel noise sounded again, even as Elaine’s fingers continued to clack on the keyboard. “Ha!  Good one, Morelli!  Pull the other leg while you’re at it!”

“No, it’s true!  And believe me, it’s just as much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else!”  It had been a week since coming back from Chicago where Isabela had apparently made her home.  Communications with her were still in this strange state - how did one text one’s estranged wife romantically without it boiling down to looking like a booty call or an invitation to send nudes, especially when one’s long-lost spouse was prone to stabbing and spellcraft?  Seeing that Isabela had already hexed certain body parts of his before, Nicky was careful of his wording, lest his best feature downstairs suffer a second cursed fate.

At least she was responding favorably to his texts, even if his buongiorno, Bella the other day had been answered with a slightly grumpy it is five in the morning, Nicolo.  Even so, he’d treasured the picture she added: Isabela in her bedroom, hair sleep-tousled and unkempt, eyes still half-lidded and sleepy looking, lips slightly pursed and cheek pressed against her pillow.

It had become his phone’s home screen almost instantly. 

He should just wear her down enough to give him her email address.  At least then he could take his time and compose honest to goodness love letters to her, even if they weren’t of the pen and paper variety, instead of having to rely on quickly creating off the cuff compositions that while expressed his sentiments were still a little unpolished.

For someone who hadn’t seen himself as the type of man that was willing to settle down with one woman, Nicky was sure taking the whole matrimony against his will, being magically bound to one woman for all eternity, having knowledge that he’d fathered a child and was currently a grandfather dumped into his lap not even two months ago pretty well.  Having this time away from fieldwork and actual missions gave him time for introspection and the fact that his daughter - and how that still had him reeling! - texted him at least once a day to catch him up on her life gave him a warm feeling in his heart that he hadn’t felt in a very long time, if ever.  Nicky made a mental note to invest in one of those silicone wedding bands.  Gold and other metals weren’t the best to wear out in the field and while his body regenerated severed limbs and whatnot, he really wasn’t interested in accidentally getting a finger crushed or torn off when his hand ultimately got stuck in a door or some other scenario that had already come up several times in the past.  Fingers grew back.  Fingers also hurt like no one’s business when they were lost and while they grew back.  He would like to avoid either scenario as much as possible.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  Would sending his wife an unsolicited picture of his hand while wearing a wedding ring count as flirting?  While the tone to their texts had been amiable if not a little icy at times, perhaps the gesture would endear him to her a little bit.  He grinned.  Maybe it would even earn him an actual phone call.  His grin widened.  Perhaps, if he played his cards right, the phone call would change from talking about the weather to more steamier topics.

His grin faltered.  He wondered what would happen between him and Isabela.  While they had only known the other for a paltry week three hundred years ago, Nicky knew when a woman was interested in him but playing hard to get.  But what would happen when she decided that he’d suffered long enough, when he’d taken another flight to grovel for her forgiveness at her front door like she said she’d wanted him to do?  He was an agent, it was the only life that he’d known since being scooped up, shell shocked and horrified at being brought back to life after being murdered and left to rot in a ditch.  He had a life here with the Agency, had a deep loyalty to his unit, surely she wouldn’t expect him to leave it behind to run away from his responsibilities with her?  And what of her?  She was settled in one spot, she had people of her own that were important to her.  He couldn’t ask her to leave that life behind, wouldn’t ask her to leave that life behind, in favor of joining up with the Agency so they could share a cramped windowless room with a narrow full-size bed. 

Nicky thought back to her cottage with its iron fence and little backyard garden.  Granted, he hadn’t gotten to see the interior of her home very well, seeing as she had stabbed him to death in her kitchen and then shoved him out the back porch, he knew that he wouldn’t want her to trade that life for one here, even if it meant that all their relationship - or whatever this was that they were starting could be called - would ever be merely good morning and good evening texts with brief visits when vacation time was allotted and FaceTime calls filling up the spaces in between. 

“You’re spacing out.  Daydreaming isn’t going to get that pile of work done.”  Nicky blinked and sighed as Elaine looked at him from over the partition.  Then he growled, realizing that in the brief moment he had taken to think of Isabela, the work in his virtual inbox had doubled in size.

“No one deserves this kind of torture,” he grumbled, fingers all but slamming on the keys as he corrected “teh” to “the” for the umpteenth time and formatted the entire document to full justification.  Did no one know how to write a proper office memo?

“Eh, it pays well.”  Elaine got up, shoulders bunched up to her ears and back hunched so she wouldn’t risk brushing the white drop ceiling tiles - tiles Nicky was sure contained asbestos - and made her way to his desk.  Before he could say anything, she grabbed the physical files in his to file inbox and made her way over to the wall of dark grey metal filing cabinets.  She’d explained on his first day in the department that they weren’t actual filing cabinets, but magical portals to deliver each report to its intended recipient.  “Some of us aren’t fit for field duty, so reading badly written reports is the closest we’re ever going to get to the action.”

“Aw, come on, Elaine.”  Nicky hit print and deleted the file, moving on to the next.  Sure, he understood the whole paper trail as means of securing Agency secrets from getting spilled, but really, all one had to do was get a strong enough firewall and other cybersecurity options and none of this transcribing digital to print would have to happen.  He eyed the file cabinets.  It wouldn’t take someone with enough skill to break through the security wards to change just where those files ended up to either.

Besides, there was a major loophole in Agency logic: if all the reports were done in the field via laptops or tablets, then what was stopping anyone from leaking company secrets at that level?  Somehow, the bureaucratic nature of even having this department, even with the older technology on hand, seemed inefficient and redundant. 

Oh well, at least no one was making Nicky type handwritten field notes and reports on an actual typewriter.  He was a good typist, but not good enough to avoid going through his share of correction tape and white-out.  The backspace key was his friend, one that he could not do without.

“What?”  Elaine picked up the report from the copier and made her way towards the file cabinet again.  

“I’m just saying, I bet you would be a formidable Agent out in the field.”

She rolled her eyes.  “No can do, Morelli.  Apparently the powers that be came to the conclusion that my aptitude tests put me at a higher risk of accidental exposure via bloodletting.”  She went back to her cubicle and began typing again.  “The risk of collateral damage would be too high to let me loose in the world.”

“Yeah, I could see that being a big minus on the pros and cons of getting you into field agent status.”

“Hey, I’m happy where I’m at.  I’m being helpful and not causing havoc under some bridge or underpass somewhere.  It’s a win-win situation.”  She sat back down at the desk, cursing when her knee banged into the desktop hard enough to make the little fake plant that was activated by the overhead lighting wobble precariously on the cute clip-on cubicle wall shelf.  “You though?”

“What about me?”

She paused in her typing.  “You don’t belong in an office tied to a desk.  Those powers that be?  I say they did your unit dirty.”

Nicky shrugged.  “Yeah, well, we win as a team and we make mistakes as a team.  We wouldn’t leave one of us out to dry that way.”

Elaine leaned forward.  “And I read the report that another unit gave about the whole incident.  Hell, it was so full of typos that I’m pretty damn sure it was meant for me to read.  Exiling Agent Adams, especially with no way of fending for herself when it comes to regaining her energy?  Demoting your entire unit?  Something smells distinctly like bullshit.”

Nicky sagged in his desk chair.  “Fuck.  And here I thought it was just me being my usual paranoid self.”  He ran a hand through his hair.  “It’s just that I can’t find any evidence that would suggest why anyone would set Win up to fail that way.  And I definitely can’t find any evidence that would suggest why, knowing the way that Cam leads our unit and how loyal we are to the other, that anyone would want to take us out of commission.  It wasn’t the old Delta unit, they fought being promoted to Charlie the entire way, and no one jumped up to try to play unit ranking hopscotch either.”

“I wish I could tell you something, I really do.  All I know is that my gut is saying this isn’t right.”  She gave him a pointed look over the cubicle wall.  “It isn’t much, but I can keep my eyes peeled for any leads.”

He nodded.  “Thanks, but I don’t want to drag you into anything, especially if this turns out to be something big.”

“You’re not dragging me if I go willingly, Morelli.  While I may not be busting heads and whatnot out on the surface, let me do my own sort of carnage of the paperwork variety.  In the meantime, take an early lunch.”

“Elaine, it’s only nine fifteen.”

“Then take an early brunch.  I’ve already got myself caught up on my own paperwork and once I get this stuff done, I’ll move onto your workstation.  That report that came in?  Hit up Agent Kline in Unit Foxtrot, see if they’ll give you any information.”  She winked.  “And I’ll understand if traffic was so bad that you couldn’t get back to the office today.  Just be sure to come in at regular time tomorrow morning.”

He got up and shrugged on his jacket, stuffing his phone back into an inner pocket.  “Thanks, Elaine.  You’re a doll.”

She made a vague shooing motion with her hand.  “Quiet, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.  And if you talk to her, tell Agent Adams hello.”

Nicky made his way out of the Records Department and strode down the labyrinthine hallways of the Facility.  It was a strange sense to step out of whatever time era the department was stuck in and step into a more modern hallway.  For a brief moment, Nicky almost preferred the archaic, not quite retro feel of the office instead.  Tugging on his jacket collar, he pulled out his phone.  Cam and Penny would want to hear what he discovered for themselves. 

As he strode down the empty hall, texting as he walked, he thought back to Elaine.  He made a mental note to make a trip topside that evening.  As thanks for helping shed some light on ideas that had been bothering him, he was buying her the best coffeemaker he could find to replace the sad, beaten up plastic and glass number that took up way too much space on the counter.

He’d even go out of his way to get her the good coffee beans.