Chapter 2 #3
"Because we don't settle disputes by fighting!" She enunciates each word with someone trying to explain basic concepts to a particularly dense child.
"Then how do you settle them?" I ask, leaning back in my chair, which creaks ominously under my weight.
"Through discussion. Mediation. Compromise." She counts off each option on her fingers, her manicured nails catching the fluorescent light.
I wrinkle my nose. "Boring."
"Effective!" she snaps back, jabbing one finger toward me for emphasis.
We stare at each other across the small breakroom table.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly. My breathing remains steady, calm.
I could sit here all day, watching the fire build in her eyes, but I suspect she is calculating how many workplace violations she could charge me with if she gave in to the urge to throw that binder at my head.
Her pulse is visible at her throat, a rapid flutter beneath pale skin. Her hands grip the binder so tightly her knuckles have gone white. She is vibrating with contained fury, and I realize with sudden, perfect clarity that this woman does not lose control often.
But I have pushed her to the edge of something she cannot calculate or predict or defend against with protocol and procedure.
And I find that I like it very much indeed.
"You are very beautiful when you are angry," I tell her. It is a simple observation. A truth.
She freezes completely. Every muscle locks. Even her breathing stops for a heartbeat. "What?"
"Your face gets color. Your eyes get brighter. You look alive instead of like a...what is the word? Statue."
"That is the most inappropriate thing you could possibly say right now," she hisses, her voice dropping to something dangerous and low. The color hasn't left her cheeks—if anything, it's deepened, spreading down her neck in blotches that I find oddly fascinating.
"Why?" I ask, genuinely curious. It seems like a reasonable observation to me.
"Because we are talking about you breaking workplace rules!" She gestures emphatically with the binder, nearly smacking it against the table. "We are in the middle of discussing your complete disregard for professional conduct, and you—you—"
She seems to run out of words, which is unusual for her. She always has words, usually very sharp ones delivered with surgical precision.
"I have not broken anything," I point out reasonably, leaning back in my chair. The plastic creaks under my weight. "Steve is still breathing. I checked."
"He's unconscious!" Her voice climbs an octave, edging toward that pitch that means she's truly losing her grip on her carefully maintained composure.
"Temporarily," I clarify, because this seems like an important distinction. "He will wake up. Probably with a headache, but humans are resilient. He'll be fine by lunch."
Orla makes a sound that might be a growl. She flips the binder to another page. "Section Seven. Theft of personal property."
"I did not steal," I say, crossing my arms over my chest. The suit jacket pulls tight across my shoulders, I hear a small thread pop. "I conquered."
"THAT'S WORSE!" Orla's voice erupts from her throat with such force that I'm momentarily impressed. For someone so small, she can produce remarkable volume when sufficiently provoked.
Her voice echoes off the breakroom walls, bouncing between the motivational posters about "teamwork" and "synergy" that I still don't fully understand. The fluorescent lights seem to flicker in sympathy with her outburst.
Silence falls in the wake of her shout, heavy and expectant.
On the floor beside the vending machine, Steve groans softly and shifts his weight, his fingers twitching against the cheap linoleum. But his eyes remain closed. He doesn't wake.
Orla looks down at him, her chest still heaving from the force of her yell.
Then she looks at me, her eyes narrowed behind those sharp-edged glasses that somehow make her look even more dangerous.
Then she looks at the binder in her hands, that massive tome of rules and regulations that she wields like a holy text.
Then she does something I don't expect.
She laughs.
Not a polite laugh. Not one of those controlled, corporate laughs I've heard her use with the Chieftain—the CEO—during meetings. Not the kind that sounds like it's been practiced in front of a mirror and deployed strategically.
A real one.
Short, sharp, almost painful sounding, like it's been dragged out of her against her will. Like her body has staged a rebellion against her usual iron control and wrested this sound from somewhere deep in her chest where she normally keeps all her genuine reactions locked away.
She covers her mouth with one hand, the one not gripping the binder, but I can see her shoulders shaking. Her eyes squeeze shut behind her glasses.
"This is a disaster," she says through her fingers, her voice muffled but still perfectly articulate. Even when laughing, even when breaking, she enunciates.
"Yes," I agree cheerfully, because I see no point in denying the obvious. The evidence is literally unconscious at our feet.
"You've been here less than two hours," she continues, lowering her hand enough that I can see her lips quirking despite her clear attempt to regain her composure, "and you've already knocked someone unconscious."
"Technically, he knocked himself unconscious," I point out, holding up one finger in what I believe is the correct gesture for making an important distinction. "I merely provided the stimulus."
"That's not a defense!" Her voice rises again, though there's less fury in it now and something that might be hysteria creeping in at the edges.
"It is an observation," I counter calmly.
She lowers her hand. Her smile is gone, but something softer lingers in its place. Exhaustion, maybe. Or resignation.
"You can't keep doing this," she says quietly, her voice dropping to something softer, something almost weary. The sharpness hasn't left her posture—she still stands like a drawn blade—but there's a fragility creeping into the edges now, like even she knows she's fighting a losing battle.
"Doing what?" I ask, genuinely curious. I tilt my head, studying her face for clues.
"Treating the office like a battlefield," she says, gesturing vaguely at Steve's unconscious form with her free hand, the one not clutching that ridiculous binder like it's a shield. "Like every interaction is a potential combat scenario."
I consider this. "Is it not?" I ask, because from where I stand, the distinction seems arbitrary at best.
"No," she says, firmly now, her voice regaining some of that crisp authority I've come to recognize as her default setting. "It's a place of business. People come here to work, to collaborate, to produce results. Not to... to duel over lunch."
"Business is war by another name," I counter, crossing my arms over my chest. It's a simple truth, one I learned long before I ever set foot in this fluorescent-lit maze of cubicles and carpet that smells faintly of cleaning solution and despair.
"You compete for resources. You conquer markets.
You defeat rivals. The language is the same. "
"That's not—" She stops. Reconsiders. "Okay, sometimes. But we use emails and meetings, not duels and conquest."
"Emails are cowardly," I say, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.
"They hide the speaker behind words on a glowing screen.
They let people say things they would never dare speak face-to-face.
Meetings are tedious, endless circles of talk with no action, no resolution, just more meetings to plan future meetings.
" I lean forward slightly. "Duels are honest. Two warriors.
Clear stakes. Immediate resolution. No ambiguity. "
"Duels are illegal," she shoots back, her voice flat and matter-of-fact, like she's reading from one of her precious policy manuals.
"As in, against the law. As in, you will go to jail.
As in, I will have to hire a lawyer, and lawyers are expensive, and I am not paying for your bail because you decided the copy machine was your mortal enemy. "
"Then your laws are flawed," I counter, spreading my hands as if this is the most obvious conclusion in the world. "Any system that prevents direct, honorable conflict is a system designed by cowards for cowards."
She looks at me for a long moment, her dark eyes sharp and assessing behind those severe glasses. I can practically see the gears turning in her head, the calculations, the risk assessments, the internal spreadsheets she's probably creating to categorize exactly how much of a liability I am.
Then, with a sigh that sounds like it's been building for hours, she picks up the binder, tucks it under her arm with the practiced efficiency of someone who has carried many binders to many meetings, and points one perfectly manicured finger at Steve's prone form on the floor.
"Help me get him to the nurse's office," she says, her tone leaving no room for negotiation.
I grin. "So we are allies now?"
"We are co-workers now. And you're going to learn the rules if I have to tattoo them onto your skin."
"I would prefer the duel."
"I know you would."
I lift Steve easily, slinging him over one shoulder like a sack of grain. He weighs almost nothing.
Orla leads the way out of the breakroom, and I follow, Steve dangling limply, the binder tucked under her arm like a weapon she's not ready to use yet.
As we walk, I catch her glancing back at me.
She's calculating again. Planning. Trying to figure out how to manage me, contain me, fit me into the neat little boxes of her world.
She will fail.
But watching her try will be entertaining.
And when she finally realizes that I cannot be managed, only partnered with, she will be magnificent.
"Thraka," she says without stopping, her heels clicking a steady rhythm against the linoleum floor that echoes through the narrow hallway.
I adjust Steve's weight on my shoulder, he's beginning to drool on my ill-fitting jacket, but such is the price of victory. "Yes?"
She glances back at me, just for a moment, and there's something different in her expression. Not quite approval, but perhaps the absence of active disapproval, which I'm beginning to understand is the highest compliment Orla Peace gives freely.
"Next time you want lunch, ask me first."
"Why?"
"Because I know where the good food is. And I won't faint when you challenge me."
I smile.
This anxious one is braver than she knows.
"Agreed," I say. "But I still reserve the right to duel if necessary."
"We'll negotiate that later."
"I look forward to it."
She doesn't answer.
But I see the corner of her mouth twitch.
Victory.
Small, but sweet.