#she told us that the boss told her ass that ‘oh we’re fully staffed ^^’ like to die

[tariah23]

My sister just cursed out one of the goofy ass managers (I just had issues with her ass the other day since she got mad that I wasn’t doing as she asked and go run her stupid ass to the boss and complain to her then the boss came over to where I was complaining at me and using the “we’re just trying to help 😔-“ like fuck off. I hate working with her ass, man. She used to be a concierge but got promoted to being one of the floor managers and almost IMMEDIATELY let it go to her head because she used to be just fine before she had some sort of rank) so if she finds out that she’s fired the next time she goes in got her shift, I’m quitting too, bro.

[renaerys]

Prompt 50. But Berserk & Boomer😔👉👈💕

50. “I thought you left.”

We’re calling this one Unfortunately, She Impressed Him. This is a pair of characters I love with all my heart in any flavor of relationship and can’t wait to write more of in my ongoing multi-chapter fic Trinity House over on AO3.

This fic is part of a prompt challenge that is now closed to new requests, but you can read all the completed submissions here. Reminder that the challenge is to make everything SFW, so we’re getting creative here.

xxx

Boomer was halfway across the deserted lobby of Faust Keating Rogers, LLP when he realized he’d forgotten his keys at his desk. He groaned aloud because it was 8 p.m. and no one was around to hear him because they had all gone home to their families hours ago like normal people. Boomer didn’t have two to three kids and a house in the suburbs, though, and neither did his boss. The three hour lull reserved for dinner, baths, and bedtimes before the evening work-from-home grind offered him no alternative but to power through. He fully planned to grab take out on his way home and enjoy an episode of whatever was on HBOMax before getting back to the tedious work of reviewing the draft prospectus statement his boss had sent him to proof by tomorrow morning.

Except, his keys were forty floors up and he now had to risk running into her again when he’d managed to slip away so neatly. He’d even removed his tie on the elevator ride down, and now he rubbed his exposed neck, flushed with anxiety over what might happen if she saw him and asked him to stick around to finish the work here.

“Nice going, dumbass,” he lamented as he stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for the fortieth floor.

It wasn’t that Boomer disliked his job. In fact, he didn’t mind it at all. It was better than slinging drinks or waiting tables. He had health insurance, a steady paycheck, and a resumé that could proudly display the name of one of the most elite accounting firms in the country. He could pivot his career if he wanted to, as Brick would say. Boomer wasn’t thinking about his next job right now, though. Right now, he was thinking about this one and how his boss was a hard-ass and a workaholic even if she was brilliant, and how there was a one hundred percent chance she would detect him coming back to his desk (which was annoyingly set up right in front of her office so that he could answer her calls, manage her meetings, and deal with whoever passed close enough to her event horizon to get suckered into the latest heinous audit in need of staffing).

There were his traitorous keys sitting on the desk next to the framed picture of his brothers. He glared at them, as if they were a forgotten household item that had developed a supernatural grudge like in those old Japanese folktales he liked to read online. He half expected them to jingle and alert his boss to his presence, just to spite him.

They didn’t, and he slipped them into his pocket as quietly as could be. He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and took a beat. It was quiet. Most of the offices were dark, save for a few poor souls in the large conference room stuck on the ongoing year-end audit for one of the firm’s most important clients: Unicorn, Inc. His boss’s office was also lit up behind her closed door, but she hadn’t called out to him like she would during the day when he got back from his lunch break hoping for a few minutes to catch up on emails in peace before she dumped more work on him.

This, of course, was odd. The small legion of assistants who had come before Boomer were notorious for their short-term employment working this specific desk. The work was demanding and so was the boss, but there was something else that set her apart from other senior associates in the International Tax Services division, something that seemed to intimidate away any support the higher ups sent her way. Denise a couple desks down had warned Boomer not to bring too many personal effects to the office; chances were he wasn’t going to last long. Boomer had smiled thinly and thanked Denise for her advice, and brought the picture of his brothers in the next morning because he had his pride and Brick told him it was healthy to indulge that once in a while. Brick would certainly know.

So here he was, uncertain. Anxiety over having to sit here for another two hours finishing work and having tepid Doordash delivered pulled him toward the elevator and escape, while that annoying, rare pride demanded he check on his boss and make sure she knew he was here to support her, lest she get the idea that he needed to be fired.

The longer he stood there, indecisive, the greater his curiosity grew. What was she doing in there? It was quiet, even when he strained his Super hearing. He could hear Dean Matheson pouring whiskey a few offices down (that guy had a drinking problem and everyone knew they only kept him around because he had the Unicorn, Inc. account), Adebayo Hansou on a conference call with Dubai that was escalating to profanity, Shelly Kim with her head down and typing away at an Excel spreadsheet like a pro. Their assistants were long gone for the night, but here was Boomer, loitering and indecisive and what is she doing in there not yelling at me when she definitely knows I’m here?

He couldn’t take it anymore. He knocked on the closed door—rap, rap, rap—and called out softly, “Berserk?”

A beat, then: “Come in.”

Finding his boss in upward facing dog while still in her pencil skirt was not a sight Boomer was prepared for. Berserk had her eyes closed as she stretched at a near ninety degree angle and listened to music on her Airpods. Boomer had never seen her with her heels off and her mane of red hair thrown together in a messy bun; it was so casual that it was almost obscene.

“You’re staring.”

Fuck, he was staring and now she was looking right at him down her nose, even though she was the one on the floor. He stood up straighter, unable to help himself when she took that tone that reminded him so much of Brick’s when he was about to criticize, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “Sorry.”

She breathed in deeply through her nose and hoisted herself up into downward dog position. “Why are you here?”

Forgot my keys seemed like a really lame excuse that she’d probably laugh at him for, but he also was not in the habit of making shit up on the spot if he hoped to make people believe him. “I forgot my keys.” He took them from his pocket to show her, as if she might not know what keys are, as a concept.

“Smart locks.” Berserk exhaled and slowly walked her hands back on the yoga mat until she reached her feet and began to swing slowly left and right.

Huh? he almost said like an idiot, until he caught himself. “Don’t think my landlord would approve of me installing that.” Also, those things were like $200 a pop, which was not worth the occasional inconvenience and shame of forgetting his keys and then catching his boss doing yoga in her office after hours.

Berserk made some noncommittal sound like whatever, peasant and slowly uncurled upward one vertebra at a time. Boomer realized he was back to staring again, literally lingering in her door watching her and trying to equate this subdued, casual version of Berserk with the terse, no-nonsense businesswoman he was used to dealing with on a daily basis.

When she finally achieved her full height, she popped her neck. The hair that was too short for her bun fell in around her narrow face in a stylish, athleisure sort of way. The top buttons on her blouse were undone. She wore a small, golden necklace he’d never noticed before because he wasn’t in the habit of checking out his boss. “I thought you left.”

The accusatory nature of her words were totally at odds with her flat tone, only the barest hint of curiosity dangling there at the end, like she expected him to respond.

Oh, she expected him to respond.

Boomer took another step into her office because he was full of poor judgment today. “I forgot my keys.”

At which point he showed her his keys again and also had a mild stroke, because what the fuck are you doing, mate?

Berserk smiled. “Yeah, I got that part.”

Was she laughing at him? He had never heard her laugh before, unless it was at Dean Matheson, that comb-over in denial who, in addition to being a high functioning alcoholic, also had a reputation for throwing associates under the bus when a client wasn’t happy.

Boomer smiled back, because that was what he did when people smiled at him, and ‘people’ now included Berserk, apparently.

“Well, since you’re here,” she said as she padded around to her desk.

Crap, there was the work he was afraid of soliciting from her by remaining in the building. He debated an excuse to give her: picking up dry cleaning? Plausible, but transparent. Meeting up with his brothers? No, she’d probably make him stay all night for the chance to ruin Brick’s plans.

“Thai or Mexican?”

Boomer stared dumbly. He was becoming quite good at that (10,000 hours and you can become an expert at anything, they say). “Huh?”

The yoga must have put Berserk in an exceedingly gracious mood, because she actually repeated her question without getting that look on her face like she was picturing him getting trampled by stampeding monsters. “Thai or Mexican? I don’t have a preference.”

Oh.

Oh.

Boomer’s stomach picked that time to snarl at him—8 p.m. and still no dinner, the fiend.

Berserk snorted in laughter and fanned herself with her phone. “Jesus. Mexican it is.”

Which was how Boomer found himself on the small sofa tucked in the corner of Berserk’s office, shoes off and belt loosened, with enough tacos, tamales, and rice and beans to feed a small family. He even had a beer from the mini fridge Berserk kept under her desk.

She hadn’t stayed late to work. Well, she had, but only because she didn’t have a reason to go home.

“I just hate getting home to a dark apartment sometimes,” she said in between bites of food. She had her legs tucked up under her on the sofa close enough to brush Boomer’s thigh if he reached to grab the salsa.

“I thought you lived with your sister?”

“Brute got her own place a few months ago. The arrangement was only temporary while she was in between jobs.”

It was weird knowing so little about a person whose whole family had been in Boomer’s inner orbit since childhood. As far as he knew, Berserk wasn’t close to any of her cousins, not even Blossom. Boomer himself had never been more eager to leave a room than when Brat walked into it. Only Butch, Brute, and Buttercup had ever found common ground among each other once the sworn rivalries and blood feuds of their youth gave way to teenage rebellion against their respective overlord fathers and then the slog of adulthood that was inescapable even for a bunch of Supers flying high on Chemical X.

The fact that Boomer had gotten this job surprised him more than anyone. After drifting from restaurant jobs to office temp placements over the last six years, he’d never thought he would dust off his economics degree and land a temp-to-permanent position that seemed way above his qualifications. And he never thought it would be working for a woman he’d most definitely electrocuted in battle at least a dozen times before puberty.

“What?”

Boomer blinked. He’d been staring again, Jesus Christ. “Sorry, I was just thinking… I didn't know that. I’ve been working here for five months and I don’t actually know much about you at all.”

“Hm.”

Her magenta eyes were wine-dark against the murky sky beyond the window forty stories up. Boomer did avert his gaze this time to reach for the salsa, but he didn’t use it.

“I don’t even know why you invited me to stay for dinner in the office if we’re not going to do any work.”

“Why did you stay?”

“For the free food.”

Berserk grinned—the third time she had smiled at him tonight (or ever). He needed to stop counting; he’d be disappointed when it stopped happening tomorrow.

“Don’t get used to it. Much as I appreciate the company now and again, there’s no need for both of us to be stuck here while Matheson’s breathing down the associates’ necks. Can’t have him poaching you out from under me.”

“Well, I don’t work for him; I work for you.”

“It’s sweet how you don’t understand office politics.” She ate a lone slice of avocado with a fork. “He landed Unicorn back when they were early stage, and back when he was still putting in the work to earn his reputation. But since they IPO’d three years ago and make up twenty percent of our revenue now, he’s just another big name coasting by on associate work. You know he regularly schedules client calls and just doesn’t bother to show up? He forgets half the time, and the other half he’s busy playing golf or buying a yacht or whatever the fuck rich, white Boomers do.”

“Well, as a Boomer myself, I can say I’ve spent exactly zero hours buying yachts.”

She chuckled. Fourth time. “Oh, really.”

“Never even thought of yachts. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even real.”

“Thanks for your expert opinion.”

“Any time.” Boomer turned his body to face her and draped his arm over the back of the sofa. With only the soft light from the floor lamp in the corner, he imagined himself adrift in the darkness, the sky scraper lights nearby stars. It was a lonely thought, one made romantic in the knowledge that she was here too, and he wasn’t actually alone.

“Matheson almost did poach you, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Boomer couldn’t recall exchanging more than a few words with the man.

“When we were filling support positions. Someone recognized you from the news a few years back, when the Cyclops Monster attacked the marina district and you and your brothers took it out. Matheson got it in his head that you’d be able to work at Super speed and help lower his billables.”

“Wow. Maybe you should’ve let him. What do you think the net savings would be in yacht units of measurement?”

Berserk rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. “I claimed you before he could get the paperwork in.”

Boomer hyper-focused on that word: claimed. He also pointedly ignored it entirely, much in the same way he ignored the new count of five smiles tonight. “Showed him your bending powers, did you?”

Berserk’s Corona bottle turned frosty under her hand in a totally unnecessary, big dick energy display of said powers, and she took another sip. “No. Sharon from HR likes me. And I promised her I wouldn’t fire you after three months like your predecessors.”

Flattered was not how Boomer would describe the feeling of being claimed by Berserk and eluding Matheson’s vampiric clutches. But he was a bit tickled all the same. This was the woman Butch had once described as essentially Brick, if he were constipated all the time.

And then he realized what she was doing. “Hey, you’re sharing things about yourself.”

She clinked her bottle to his, and Boomer shivered at the frosty chill she transferred on contact. “Aw, you figured it out all by yourself.”

“Ha ha.”

She didn’t quite smile, but she did look kind of serene then, content even, as she lay back against the arm of the sofa and yawned. Her gold necklace—just a simple disk with an engraving Boomer could not make out—reflected the lamp light when she moved. It rested just beneath her collarbone, which had suddenly become the single-most interesting part of Berserk, and oh no, was he interested—

“You’re staring again.”

Son of a bitch.

“Sorry,” he said automatically. “I didn’t mean to.”

Hard no. He was not allowed to be any percent attracted to Berserk. First, she was his boss, and there was a cliché here that, while subverted on the gender role spectrum, was still very risky for both of them. Second, she was Berserk, a fellow Super, cousin to his best friend Bubbles and a shrewd, stiletto bitch in Brick’s estimation, which sounded bad. Not that she was bad, or even evil, unless you counted helping rich corporations accurately report their taxes while taking advantage of the many egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. Which, okay, point taken, but he also worked here and anyway, people should not be deemed good or evil so much as their choices ought to be—

“Are you thinking about fucking me?”

You shrewd, stiletto bitch!

She was smiling again, and Boomer pathetically logged that as the sixth time, although he wasn’t sure he should count it given the overt malice behind it.

Unfortunately, Boomer was, as had been previously established, very bad at making shit up on the fly. So he miserably said, “Yeah.”

“Hm.”

She sipped her beer slowly, and of course he watched. If it was out in the open, as fleeting a bout of insanity as it may have been, at least he could wallow in it without worrying about appearances.

It was the yoga. That fucking upward facing dog, Jesus Christ.

It was more than that too. Over the last few months, he had worked closely with her, watched her navigate the cutthroat halls full of piranhas like Matheson and other account managers, getting herself work on the best clients while managing her juniors with efficiency and professionalism. She was excellent and sharp, and she demanded excellency and sharpness in kind. After years of going it alone or temping for bosses who didn’t care enough even to learn his name, much less provide him with guidance and mentorship, it was an unspeakable relief to work under someone who knew how to rally the troops. Someone who knew how to lead, how to motivate, and how to reward loyalty with loyalty in return. It didn’t hurt that she looked amazing in her daily stilettos, either.

Unfortunately, she impressed him.

“I have some work to get done tonight.” Berserk stood up and smoothed her skirt.

Boomer scrambled to his feet. “Of course! Um.” He began closing food containers and repackaging them in the bags they’d come in, because he was panicking. “I’ll get rid of the trash. Do you want the leftovers in the fridge?”

“You take them. Otherwise my office will smell like a burrito for a week.”

“Okay.” Numbly, Boomer finished packing everything up, while Berserk made her way back to her desk and logged into her computer to check her emails.

Boomer lingered at the door. “I’ll have the prospectus back to you later tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Wow, way to go, stud.

He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

“Boomer?”

“Yeah?”

“Friday is good.”

He stared back at her in expert mode. “Huh?”

Berserk poked her head around the side of her large, external monitor. She was smiling again. Lucky number seven. “For fucking.”

“Okay,” Boomer said.

Okay?!

She pulled back behind her monitor. “I was going to get a cat, but you’ll do much better.”

Because she didn’t like going home to a dark, empty apartment alone. With no one to fuck.

“That was a joke.”

“Yeah, I got that,” he croaked.

Friday is for fucking, he thought, which was delightful alliteration and also completely insane and one hundred percent something he was getting more on board with by the nanosecond.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

Boomer clutched the leftover Mexican food in his fist. “Okay. Goodnight.”

It took him the time to fly home and put the food away in his small fridge to realize that he had a sort-of date with Berserk lined up for two days from now.

He Y-posed at the window and whooped, “Hell yes!!”

Loud pounding in the floor followed by old Mrs. Cruikshank’s muffled Keep it down! couldn’t bring down his mood.

Boomer leaped onto his threadbare, living room sofa with his work laptop and took to the prospectus with alacrity. He’d send over superior work product and make Berserk’s job just that much easier tomorrow morning.

xxx

If you enjoy my writing, check out more of my fics on AO3, link in my profile. I’m currently updating Trinity House (which has a lot more Berserk and Boomer content, btw!) and The Alchemy of Us. Thanks for reading!

[oopsimpregnant]

Triage

For those of you following this blog extra close, you know I’m around eight months. So it might not surprise you folks that recently, I had my first trip to (and then back from) triage. 

For those of you that don’t know - if you go to the hospital and you’re pregnant, unless you have something unrelated obviously wrong such as a snake hanging off your foot, this is where they send you. It’s a strange, small emergency room ripe with hugely pregnant people all shuffling about in the polyester sticky bottomed socks they give you when you waddle in. It is quiet, and then it’s not. And then, very quickly, it’s quiet again. It’s a waiting space. It’s not really, necessarily, an emergency room.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I woke up last Tuesday morning with a low, dull back ache and the absolutely Insatiable urge to organize all the baby things. It was five am. 

I waddled quietly into the baby room, trying not to wake my boyfriend, who had work later that day. I actually also had work later that day, but it paled in comparison to this emergency - the baby stuff. The baby stuff was not, necessarily, all in its proper place. Upon reaching the baby room, it dawned on me that this was not even the beginning of the problem. The beginning, quite frankly, was the books.

My boyfriend and I are two different kinds of bookworms. He attended (and finished) several years of upper schooling dedicated to books, and has a vast collection of thick paperbacks he never returned to the school bookstore after the semester was done, either out of love or forgetfulness, both are equally likely. But with him alone - we have a library, casually academic and currently stuffed into an enormous duffel and a series of boxes of various sizes, all large. 

With me, we have the fun section of the library. I attempted college several times, but never finished. Instead of reading what I was supposed to be reading, I read apocalypse novels, urban fantasy, fairy tales, alien lit. 

Where is our library, in our tiny new apartment? In the baby room, of course. Still half packed away, despite the bookshelf my sister so lovingly trash picked for us, sitting empty in the living room. Or like - sitting, empty of books, stock full of magic cards, empty mugs, my boyfriend’s lost keys, and various papers.

This was ridiculous and had to be handled immediately.

I probably shouldn’t have done all that heavy lifting, but when my boyfriend awoke a few hours later, it was to me in the living room, organizing our books. He pointed out that I shouldn’t have done all that heavy lifting, and I insisted (somewhat truthfully) that I’d dragged most of the stuff out here, not ‘lifted’ it. Whatever. Whatever! The day went on.

I went to work, back still hurting, a strange pressure cradled heavily in my hips. I probably shouldn’t have done all that heavy lifting.

The work day progressed. Still pain. A deep, horrible pain, in fact. Nap time! Not for me of course, for the kids. Good. Time to sit. Sit the pain away. Because surely, that’s what would happen, right?

As soon as I had been sitting for a half hour, I finally had time to notice it - the strange, recurring clenching. My belly - there’s no other word for it - contracting around its wiggling contents. And the pain in my back, as if -

As if -

I could imagine her, suddenly, intensely. Feet on my ribs because I knew they were there, knees slightly bent, absolutely poised to rocket down and out of me, all her practice springs colliding her soft noggin with my spine.

I texted my doctor. She, I’m guessing, in an effort to cover her ass, insisted I go to triage. “That sounds like it could be premature labor” is what she actually said, in a text that clouded up my consciousness, brought cotton down over my ears and muffled the soothing snores of my preschoolers. 

I went to my boss. Told her what was going on. She sighed, said, “We’re very short staffed,.” and then insisted I try rolling my back on a ball first, as if back pain was the real problem, here. Being all cotton eared, I took the ball she offered and walked in a daze back to the classroom. My coworker stared at me. I explained the ball. “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” she said, right there, in the middle of our classroom.

I went back to my boss. Told her, this time, that I was going to triage. Called my aunt. Cried in the car. Felt Sookie wriggling in my belly, and it was definitely different, how had I not noticed that today it was different?

I wasn’t ready for this.

“Do you want me to pick up Jacob?” my aunt asked.

I shook my head immediately. Jacob was working. Jacob was working and this would be nothing, nothing, nothing. I was insisting to myself already that it was. My aunt sighed. Pointed out that I should text him, at least, so I did - a calm, totally not freaked out text of “Hey everything’s probably fine but Teen’s taking me to triage,” essentially.

We got to the hospital. Parked. Spent around ten minutes wandering around asking to be directed to triage, yes, prenatal triage, do you see the hugely pregnant chick behind me? No problem.

Soon as we got there, I think the nurses behind the desk diagnosed me with ‘false alarm.’ They didn’t jump to their feet immediately, at any rate, which calmed me down immensely. We were guided past a series of small, curtained off sections to our own small, curtained off section, where a hospital robe and a pair of socks waited neatly on a cot beside a series of large, intimidating machines. Also, a pee cup. I did that, and we waited.

It was at this point that Jacob must’ve gotten my text, as both our phones exploded with responses, and then he immediately called. My aunt Teen calmed him down, I told him it was probably nothing, and that’s when the nurse came in and we had to hang up.

“You look scared,” she said to me, in an accusing kind of way. 

I stared at her. “I’m scared shitless,” I responded. Her face softened.

My dudes - this nurse - and, in general, everyone I met in triage - helped to calm me down immensely. Upon hearing my response, she immediately began to, oh so successfully, distract me, as she hooked me up to various monitors. 

She told me first about how most of the people that come here leave an hour or two later, diagnosed ‘perfectly fine.’ When that didn’t calm me down (when it comes to bad things happening, my family’s known to assume we’re not ‘most people’), she switched tactics. Suddenly I was hearing all about all��these preemie babies, all way less cooked than my Sookie, all of whom popped out, spent a little bit of time in nicu, and then went home fine. After that had calmed me down a bit, she started in on the real wild stories. Folks who had come in too late and had ended up giving birth right there in triage - babies and parents all fine, of course.

When she was done hooking me up to five different monitors, she left. And no one came back for a solid half hour.

This is apparently normal! Even in cases like mine, when labor is not imminent, they need to monitor the baby for at least a half hour before the ultrasound tech can come in and tell you what’s really up. I honestly think it was more nerve-wracking for my aunt, who was watching little Sookie boop on and off the monitor. 

“She’s just moving around,” I said, when my aunt jumped at the sudden swoosh and silence. She was moving around. She must’ve gotten my burst of adrenaline at the beginning or something, cuz she was trying her best to do her old backflips within her shrinking confines. 

When the ultrasound tech finally came in, she apologized for the wait, explained the half-hour thing, took me off all the monitors, and set up a grainy little ultrasound machine that would immediately tell us the real situation - the baby had dropped. Not gradually, the way I’d been told it would happen. All at once, overnight. Yup. Sookie now rests squarely on top of my bladder, head down, ready for launch. 

Not only that, but she’s about twice the size I was thinking of her as. Before this point, I’d known, generally, that her feet were probably right under my right ribs. You can guess how I’d guessed that. I also kinda figured she was head down as sometimes after a little rib tap tap boosh something clearly head shaped rolls beneath the surface of my belly, down below. I think I’d been imagining her stretched out sideways, exactly that length. No.

Sookie is curled up tight in her tiny home, feet under my right ribs, head down against my bladder, knees bent, and butt under my left ribs. During the ultrasound, she held one hand over her face and the other out, as if to say ‘No pictures!’ She’s fine. Very fine. Doing everything right. We’re both fine.

I was embarrassed, but would’ve been more so if everyone hadn’t been so understanding and considerate of how nail biting of an experience this thing had been for me. In the end, it was good to confirm what I’d already known, kinda, about her positioning. It was really good to see her again, even though it was just on a grainy little ultrasound. And while the back pain and stomach clenching is just a fun new part of this experience, it’s good to learn it doesn’t mean she’s on her way to an early delivery.

Not that that would be, like. The worst thing ever. So long as she’s fully cooked, honestly.