The Orc from the Office (Claws & Cubicles Book 2)

What irresponsible, fucking— ugh! Who the hell shuts a drawer this tight?!

I let out a small noise of frustration, rattling the entire metal filing cabinet as I wrestle with the one drawer that I need to stick this report in. That noise is the only hint that I’m losing my cool, and to a piece of furniture, no less.

You would think that working at a company chaired by a board of undead and a spearheaded by a fearsome necromancer, this kind of petty thing would be expected. On the contrary. I expect my coworkers at Evil Inc. to have some standards for how they file things away.

I step back, dusting off my shirt even though it’s barely out of place. I take in a deep breath that’s supposed to be calming.

Mediating tough conflicts is usually my strong suit. But it’s not exactly my arena to negotiate with badly maintained shelving.

My day hasn’t been great, admittedly, but this is pissing me off. There’s no reason anyone should be jamming the drawers closed this tight. This is ridiculous. I’m about to get the label maker and stick ‘Janice’s drawer, DO NOT FUCK WITH’ on this, just so people will stop slamming it closed and making this more difficult than it has to be.

I take in another not-nearly-calming-enough breath that makes my nostrils flare.

No, I’m not going to do any of that.

I’m going to go back to my desk and write up an email reminding people about policies regarding damage to company property, and send it out to everyone on this floor and anyone I suspect may have used this cabinet. Then I’m going to send out a company-wide reminder that performance reviews are just around the corner, so that the emails show up next to each other, and it makes someone sweat.

I’m going to cast a shadow of unease over anyone who even dares think about using my drawer.

That course of action, however petty, does un-ruffle my metaphorical feathers.

I give up on trying to pull it open, but I slap the filing cabinet for good measure, one final release of aggression.

The IT department has asked me to stop slapping my computer when it gives me trouble, but for inanimate objects, I’ve always found percussive maintenance to be the most persuasive. I can’t exactly Bcc furniture into submission.

I do glance around real quick to make sure no one saw that completely unprofessional little outburst, though. The door is open, but I–

“Do you need, uh, help there?”

I turn around completely at the voice, straightening my appearance, all the little things that I’m constantly rearranging back into place – hair, shirt, glasses. I don’t usually let anyone see me as less than composed. It’s important to be a little detached when you work in HR. If you let the little things get to you, or take other people’s problems personally, you’re going to have a bad day every day.

Luckily for me, the voice doesn’t belong to anyone I recognize.

Neither does the nearly ten foot tall shadow that overtakes the doorway.

The thick black frames on his face compete for attention with the ivory tusks protruding a few inches from his lower jaw. He takes up just about the entire doorway, his shoulders wider than the frame. He’s stooping through it to avoid knocking his head on the top, and a curtain of dark hair falls forward.

He kind of hunches in on himself as he steps fully inside, trying not to bump into anything. That’s a task in itself just based on how he makes the storage room feel much smaller than it already is. With how he keeps his gaze to the floor though, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a self-conscious element in the action.

I can see that the right side of his head is shaved to the scalp, in typical Orc fashion, revealing a pointed and torn up ear, a number of sharp looking piercings through it.

My eyes draw down his button up shirt, the way the fabric strains at those poor little buttons whenever he breathes in. The pocket protector on the left side of his shirt is wide enough to hold four different colored pens and a calculator.

He must be from accounting or something.

“It’s stuck,” I say, nodding my head to the cabinet. I spare a glance at his arms, which are probably about as wide as one of my thighs, if I had to guess. I know Orcs are big-boned, but I imagine there’s enough muscle there for him to pry the cabinet open.

“Probably because of that dent in it,” he nods, talking more to my shoes than to me. Now that he mentions it, I spot a little dent in the bottom corner. “May I?”

I nod, and shuffle around him in the tiny room to let him at the corner filing cabinet.

He kneels before it, about eye level with the stuck drawer, and gives it a tug.

Nothing.

At first, I think it’s because his fingers are a little too large to get a proper hold on the little drawer handle. The second time he tugs however, the whole filing cabinet shifts forward a couple inches out of its indents in the carpet.

“No, you gotta sort-of-angle-upwards when you pull,” I say, crossing over and gripping what space is left for me on the handle.

I don’t know what it is in me, I just can’t stand by and watch a job be done incorrectly.

I yank sort-of-upwards, once, twice—

The drawer springs free, and my elbow flies back, colliding with his nose.

He falls back, and my hands cover my mouth, downgrading my shriek of horror to a squeak.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry—” I start to say, my face turning scarlet. The mortification spreads through my body from there, heat moving through me like ink in water.

I just elbowed his face. Did I break something? Surely Orc bones are too solid for a puny human to shatter, right?

“Don’t worry, it was just an accident,” he says, his massive hand cupped over his nose protectively, like I might do more damage than I already have.

“But your nose, I am so sorry,” I repeat like it’ll do anything.

He waves his other hand to dismiss my concern and shrugs casually like being elbowed in the face is nothing to be concerned over, and not something we need to file a whole accident report over.

He removes his hand and dark green blood is dripping down his face. Some of it is smeared on his palm, and his eyes darken behind his glasses when he looks at it. “Oh, fuck.”

I gasp at the sight of what I’ve done, and as soon as I breathe in, all the hair on my skin stands up, a storm of red flushing my cheeks.

My heart is pounding and my head feels a little funny. Not like I’m going to faint at the sight of blood or anything like that, but more like the fog of a fever taking over. It’s not just my forehead, I can feel it all the way down my stomach.

“Yeah, uh, that’s what I’m saying, it’s bad,” I tell him. I turn away, searching the room for a tissue box, but the feeling continues to bloom. There’s a package of paper towels stored here, for the office kitchen. I tear through the plastic and haphazardly rip a few off.

When I turn back around, the feeling returns in a second wave. It’s so heavy I think I forget to breathe for a solid few seconds. It’s definitely too hot in this room for me to be wearing this cardigan.

I look at him, tipping his head back, trying to pinch the bridge of his nose gingerly with one hand and cupping the other beneath his chin to catch the blood. A drop has already stained his shirt, the fabric straining even more intensely at the buttons than it was before.

“You’re supposed to lean your head forward for a nosebleed,” I mumble. The words don’t come out the way I want them to, authoritative, like I’ve got this, like I’m keeping my cool in bad situations. “Something about gravity and… oh.”

My knees feel weak as I try to move closer to hand him the paper towels. They fall out of my hand, drifting pathetically down onto his lap. I don’t even have the capability to cringe at myself for dropping them, I’m so physically overwhelmed, and I have no idea why.

It’s then I recognize some of the sensations sweeping through my body. The desperate, aching hollow between my legs, the pulsing arousal of my clit, the fact that I can tell exactly where my nipples are in my bra now.

My blood shouldn’t be rushing anywhere but my brain in this situation.

I need to get out of this room.

I turn around and stuff my reports in the drawer, before running out the door. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I can barely think until I’m in the bathroom near my office, pressing my face against the cold porcelain of the sink. I turn on the tap and only barely resist sticking my entire head underneath it like a woman in a badly written 90’s movie. Instead I’m at least a little more mindful of my makeup. I cup cold handfuls of water to my cheeks and forehead and avoid making my mascara run.

The air in here is cool and easy. I gulp down breaths like I’d just been drowning.

When I have a little bit of my brain back, I yank a dozen paper towels out of the dispenser and soak them under the tap. I wring them out and press them to my neck. For the first time in ten minutes, I can think like a person that has manners and is considerate of others.

I was just super rude to that Orc from accounting.

“Fuck,” I groan. I really just elbowed him in the face, threw some paper towels at him and left. I definitely didn’t put my papers in the right spot in that drawer either.

I need to go back and apologize for all of that. He’d tried to help me, and I’d essentially beat him up.

That makes me snort a little. I wonder if there’s ever been an HR complaint filed for a human knocking an Orc on his ass before.

My laugh turns into a hiccup, and then a dizzy feeling. I don’t understand it. I’ve never gotten sick from seeing blood before.

Maybe sick isn’t the right word for it. None of that was necessarily a bad feeling, just entirely inappropriate.

Even thinking about it makes me feel feverish and my heart pound.

I do not have enough PTO to deal with this.