Devils and Details, pt 3 (Patreon)

contains gas, wg, crappy boss

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Argyle adjusted his tie again, having done so enough times to lose count. He truly did not want to get out of his car and enter the building today, and yet that wasn’t really an option. He had not been properly fired after all, just passed up indefinitely for promotion. It was likely Lewis would need to disturb things more than otherwise if he went and changed that fact, and it struck the wolf as unwise to unnecessarily instigate such things. Besides, he was supposed to do… something. Something here, today, that would be important, though Lewis had been worryingly vague on the specifics.

The tie wasn’t going to ever look right, Argyle realized. He let out a sigh and cracked his car door open, leaning toward it, finding himself immediately glad he did as his shift in position was apparently everything that a deafening fart had been waiting for. Argyle hadn’t even felt it coming, nor had a chance to intercede and hold it back – though he probably wouldn’t have given the circumstances. It did give the wolf a reason to hurry out of the car and toward work if nothing else. Rushing across the parking lot toward the front doors, doing his level best to ignore Marshall’s name printed over them.

Knowing he looked a bit rough, knowing he was still a bit nervous and a lot butthurt about the general state of affairs with things in this building, Argyle headed for the break room first instead of his desk. His desk was a symbol that he wasn’t worth an office here, which was one of many reasons this mad state of affairs was happening to begin with. 

On some level it struck Argyle just how easily he slipped back into the routine, head for coffee first and then the grindstone. Dedication they had said, that was all it took. Argyle tried not to feel too bitter, but he wasn’t having much luck with that today. Nor with anything else. The coffee pot was empty, as was the creamer, and just to add insult to injury he felt his insides rumbling a little. Grumbling, Argyle started the net pot brewing – adding a bit more grounds than usual on the assumption he’d need it soon.

Creamer wasn’t quite as simple as getting into the cupboards in the small kitchen the break room had (mostly a sink, a coffee machine, a fridge, and a microwave) – he had to head halfway across the floor to the supply closet to fix that one. All for the tender joys of powdered creamer and maybe some sugar. Argyle immediately found himself thinking of home, of Lewis and his mastery of all things culinary that he had apparently somehow picked up in the inferno. He had to deal with this though, today at least – he hoped it was just today. Argyle lingered at the edge of the heavy door to the supply room with his hand on the handle and stopped to ask himself how many of these he could tolerate before he might ask more of his new manservant.

It was a question he shook off as quickly as he could while pushing the door open quietly, not wanting to have to explain why he was in there to anyone. Argyle immediately stopped as he got the door a few inches open – the wolf was not the only person in there. Across the room, backed up against one of the shelves, was the broad Clydesdale backside of Marshall Reyes with his pants around his ankles. Argyle almost didn’t see the room’s third occupant, almost. The thin little tail didn’t show up too well behind Marshall.

The frightened squeak did. 

“S-sir, please… I don’t-”

A loud huff came out of the stallion’s barrel chest as he stepped in a little closer.

“Girl, you’re from the typing pool – whatever you’ve got to say can wait until you get off work.”

Silently, Argyle stared as the stallion shuffled in closer to the little mouse he kind of recognized but couldn’t recall the name of. The wolf’s mouth worked a bit, but no sound came out. There were options here, Argyle realized. 

The wolf glanced behind himself, but nobody else was moving anywhere nearby. Quietly, he reached for his phone. A damning minute or two later he slid quietly out of the room, easing the door shut behind him and with it shutting out the muffled grunts of his boss and the occasionally nigh-silent whimper of the girl from the typing pool. 

Argyle could take his coffee black today, he had something sweet enough already.

*** 

It couldn’t be said that Argyle got a great deal of work done that day, not with as much on his mind as there was. Both the idea of what he’d walked in on, the implications it had, the questions it raised – and the constant distractions from other sources that kept him from focusing. He asked himself how long that had been happening – how long had Marshall been taking advantage of the lower ranked employees in the firm? The stallion certainly hadn’t seemed hesitant about the matter. How best to use the proof, though?

Argyle’s stomach made a rather distressing sound as he waited on the elevator, forcibly holding his ass clenched just in case. He’d lost control of another rank eruption halfway through his shift and he had no desire to be the person on the elevator who gassed the whole thing. So, while he might have looked a little odd fidgeting where he stood and might have been busily cursing the glass walls carrying him down in full view of the expansive lobby under his breath Argyle made it out of the elevator and quickly to the front doors before all that pressure that had snuck up on him worked its way loose while he crossed the parking lot to his car. 

By the time he reached it the worst was over at least, Argyle was able to slide into the driver’s seat and let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Was able to pluck his phone out, looking that the video was still there for the tenth time today, as if it might suddenly vanish on him. Now he just had to get home and put this hunger he’d been wrestling with to bed, all he’d been able to think about since lunch was-

“Sandwich, sir. There’s more at home but I anticipated you’d have need of something.”

The wolf’s hands clenched tight enough that the casing of his phone creaked a little as he turned his head and saw the squirrel sitting in the passenger seat, holding out a large and somewhat messy looking pulled pork sub. Argyle swallowed, feeling his mouth shift from dry to salivating halfway through it, then handed the phone to Lewis in exchange for the sandwich that he wasted no time digging into. The squirrel meanwhile set about watching the video, and immediately adopted the most genuine grin the wolf had seen him wear so far.

“Excellent. That should be quite sufficient for my needs. Now that this has happened it’s a fixed instance I can manipulate. When it happened is malleable. Especially since it’s happened before.”

Swallowing a dense, messy mouthful of meat and bread and a few other things, at least one of which set his throat and belly to tingling pleasantly in a familiar fashion, Argyle nodded once to that.

“Yeah, I got the impression he’d been at this a while. I got to wondering if this would be something you take to HR, but then it struck me that the other senior partners might make better use of it. They aren’t all friendly to Marshall.”

Lewis gave a quick nod in reply.

“Precisely. I’ll need to hang onto this while I go about my work, but it shouldn’t take but a day or two sir. Now, I would suggest trading seats with me. I can drive while you eat.”

Argyle grunted out something affirmative to that and began shuffling out the side of the vehicle, trying to ignore how bloated he was starting to feel. Something that only worked in the brief window while he was standing upright circling his aging sedan, and immediately assailed him once more when he made to sit down again. 

Still holding a mouthful of sandwich, Argyle momentarily questioned his devotion to propriety. That point resolved itself in his mind quite rapidly, leading to the wolf adjusting his seat to lean back a fair way and undoing his belt once more. 

That little strip of restraint’s removal was all it took to let loose an encore of his performance walking across the parking lot into the vehicle. One that left Argyle’s nose wrinkling (though he had the sandwich to mask things) while the vehicle started. Being leaned back as far as he was, the wolf didn’t spot Lewis easing into a look of profound relief, and taking a deep, languid breath.