Chapter Text
“I'm not coming back,” Noah said resolutely, to convince himself more than his coworkers.
“It's just so out of nowhere! What the hell happened?” Everette asked, louder than necessary. A few bar flies turned their heads in the trio's direction.
“Everette, have some composure, for God's sake,” Tarrey said over the rim of his martini. “It was obviously those barbarians in the sales department, present company excluded,” he added to the loudest of their friends.
“No offense taken, I guess,” Everette shrugged, well-accustomed to Tarrey's stuffy demeanor. “Is that true?”
Noah shrugged back. It was true, but he really didn't want to get too deep into why. His fingers rapidly tapped against the side of the beer he'd been nursing for the past half-hour. “I can't work there anymore. Debugging files, answering the same phone calls over and over...I had to clean out Vickerson's hard drive today,” he trailed off.
The other two made disgusted noises.
“Oh, no, it was chock-full of porn, wasn't it?' Everette asked with a face like he had smelled something rotten.
Noah nodded.
It was nearly a once-a-month ritual to erase the evidence of the vice president of the sales department's little internet habit. The job nearly always fell to Noah. The contents of Vickerson's hard drive today made his stomach churn nervously. His palms grew sweaty.
Tarrey stopped sipping his martini long enough to give his bird-of-prey stare. “It had to be illegal in flavor. Vickerson is a Neanderthal, grunting and dragging his knuckles through that workplace.”
“It wasn't illegal,” Noah supplied quickly. There were already bound to be rumors about why he left so suddenly. He didn't need extra suspicion surrounding Vickerson, for his own sake.
The other two regarded him with bated breath, certainly waiting for an explanation as to what was causing the viruses on the hard drive.
“I-I just don't really want to talk about it,” Noah shifted in his seat, tapping his fingers on the bottle.
“But it's your career-”
“It's a job,” Noah retorted. “I wasn't going to stay at Consolidated anyway...it was just a matter of time. The time just happens to be now.”
Everette looked to Tarrey as if to say, “Can't you talk some sense into him?” And Tarrey replied with his uncanny stare as if to say, “Shut up.”
“I say, more power to you, escaping the slogging punishment of Consolidated's IT department,” Tarrey said to fill in the awkward silence. “Though, I shudder to think what will become of the incompetent half of Accounting when you're no longer there to lead them through their self-imposed technical catastrophes.”
“And when the computers stop working too,” pointed out Everette.
Tarrey patted him on the arm lovingly, if not to give himself the strength to carry on.
“It'll be fine,” Noah said to him. “Bernie is still there...she'll fix anything that goes wrong.”
“Of course, you realize, that the arduous task of de-fracking Vickerson's hard drive will inevitably fall to Bernadette?” said Tarrey.
“I...I hadn't thought of that,” Noah said, suddenly feeling a pang of regret.
“Just something to mull over, before confirming that resignation,” he said, sucking an olive off the swizzle stick.
“That, and we're gonna miss you,” said Everette sincerely.
“Me too, big guy...me too,” Noah sighed.
* * *
On the way home from the bar, Noah kicked every piece of litter or small rock that lay in his path, for the simple joy of distracting himself from the nightmare of a day.
He hadn't thought of shoving all the work on Bernie after he left. They probably wouldn't replace him. Not right away, anyway. Likely, they would just give her his workload and not pay her more to do it, either. Guilt wormed into his stomach.
He stopped at the sight of a flyer stapled to a telephone pole. It was for a maid service, looking to hire. He tore off a paper strip with the phone number and shoved it in his pocket.
It was already a wrench to leave the department. Vickerson and his troubles aside, he would very much miss Bernie's laugh in the break room, sneaking extra minutes in front of the coffee machine under the pretense of cleaning it, just to hang out with her before returning to his desk.
Once or twice, she even brushed past him with a fleeting touch on the arm. The memory of the light pressure of her fingertips sent a quake down his spine. He shivered pleasantly, pushing the door to his apartment open.
In the safe, comfortable cocoon of the apartment, he slumped against the door for a few moments. His fingers, unbidden, wandered to his throat and unknotted his tie. Palpable relief washed over him, so much so, he could almost taste it on his tongue.
Piece by piece, the corporate shell shed off his skin, pooling on the floor around his feet. The last to go were the shoes, leathery brown and unremarkable.
He padded lightly to the bedroom, the days' events rolling over and over in his mind. He took in his reflection in the closet door mirror. He wouldn't be in this mess right now if he just stopped.
But he couldn't. He twanged the strap hooking his stockings to a basic black panty. Even the stockings didn't have the usual frills or lace. It was as discreet as he could possibly be under the circumstances. To the untrained eye, the stockings looked like men's black socks if his slacks rode up.
His little secret. Except it wasn't so secret anymore. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but at some point, he got sloppy. At some point...Vickerson saw something.
For the longest time, Noah didn't exist. He was unseen, like a ghost who breezed through and made sure the computers were running. He was the specter who cleaned the hard drives whenever they got too clogged up with porn viruses.
Then, something changed. Vickerson must have seen a flash of fishnet or a glimpse of frills sometime when Noah was rummaging around the wires under the desks, maybe in the men's room. He didn't know. All he knew was that suddenly, he was on Vickerson's radar. The VP smirked at him in the hallways and asked about his weekend plans in a way that made Noah feel uneasy.
At first, Noah dismissed it as some kind of anomaly. But, that very day, Vickerson's computer came to his desk overstuffed with pornography of young men in women's lingerie. Adrenaline flowed into his stomach and turned it over.
It couldn't have been a coincidence after the sudden attention Vickerson was showering over him.
He slowly started to peel the black stockings off. What was he supposed to do, anyway? File with human resources for sexual harassment? He didn't have much of a case. And it would mean exposing his own secrets. It would be a cold day in hell before they could get his own secrets out of him.
This is the only way it'll work out. He let a cold stream cascade over his head to hopefully wash away the day while the tub filled with hot water.
They'll be fine without me. I'll just start over somewhere else. He sank into the warm water to finish his night routine. Shaving, exfoliating, making the skin as smooth and soft as he could get it. All the better to revel in soft fabrics.
I could stop if I wanted to. But I don't want to. He slipped into pink silk, and it sent familiar shudders through him. Rolling waves of electric thrumming where the fine textures touched him.
Who am I kidding? Bernie probably wasn't all that into me anyway. This thought sent a pang through his stomach that ruined an otherwise pleasant evening.
Pulling a plush robe around himself, he returned to the front door to pick up the corporate clothes. A wadded-up scrap of paper fell out of the pocket. It turned out to be the number for the maid service.
Rent's gotta be paid somehow, he thought, and smoothed it out on the counter.