“Um, I, uh, accidentally locked myself out of the admin side of the PTO Request portal. It keeps saying my account doesn't exist, but I don't think I deleted it.”
I twist the desk phone's curly cord between my fingers anxiously in the silence.
“Can you tell me what email address I’m supposed to use to log in?” I ask after too many beats and too many breaths have passed and I'm starting to wonder if he's not going to answer me because I don't deserve it.
“Evil Co One,” he says. I can't get anything from his voice.
A few seconds of silence stretch by, waiting for him to add the @ and a dot com in there. It never comes.
I clear my throat and try again, “Which one?”
“The Evil Co. address,” he states again, and I can’t help but notice it’s still not an email address. I don’t know what was wrong with my question.
I humor him and type ‘Evil Co. One’ into the address bar, and surprise, it doesn’t work because that's not an email address.
“I don’t know what that address is,” I say after grumbling through mashing the backspace bar.
“...It’s your email address. Just use your own work email.”
My cheeks burn. I don't think I've ever felt dumber. Why hadn't I tried that?
The words start piling up in my chest, apologies that don't feel good enough to say, winding up and tightening my throat. I want to tell him I had been spinning myself into some kind of anxiety attack that day, that I wished I hadn't hurt him, that he hadn't deserved to be pushed away with an email.
I should have at least given him the chance to hear his response in person, to perhaps refute the knee jerk reaction I was having.
But it's too much to wonder how that could have gone differently, to wonder if I still had a chance of patching that up. I couldn't ask that of him when I had already done so much damage.
Khent speaks before I can get any words out.
“You don't have to worry about the elevator footage. I put a magnet on top of the security tape shelf.”
My throat is too tight for the small laugh to get through. My heart aches to tell him that's rather old school.
“I didn't ask you to do that,” I say, and it comes out weaker than I want it to.
“You didn't have to,” he answers simply, a deeper note of emotion coloring his words. It's open and caring the way he's always been, in the way I should have known he was.
I press the phone hard against my face because my hand starts to tremble. I bite my lip closed so it doesn't wobble.
“I’m sorry–” I start to say, when dial tone starts buzzing in my ear. I don’t know if he heard me.
I dig through the box of things I’d packed up and hadn’t gotten through unpacking again, looking for the little mug warmer and the vial of claiming ritual oil. I set it up and as soon as I can feel any kind of heat coming off the mug-warmer, I tip a droplet onto it.
Not because I need it as some kind of anti-horny essential oil diffuser, but because I miss the warmth that smelling it made me feel. The sunlight-kissed coziness that was the same as seeing Khent smile.
But now, it doesn't smell like anything at all.
I blink, and after a few moments, sniff a few other things in my office to make sure my nose is still working. Stale vinegar chips and an air freshener tag confirm that it is.
I fall back in my chair, slumping a little more than before. Did the oil only smell like that because I’d been under the Blood Fever’s spell?
Pretty much all of the Blood Fever symptoms were cleared up, and here I was, still missing him. I buried my face in my hands.
If I'd met him normally, got to know him normally, no nose-breaking fever-inciting accidents involved, I still would have really liked him. I'd have been charmed by his dorky little mannerisms and his unfunny jokes and probably still come to the conclusion that I wanted to ride his tusks in a non-supernaturally charged horniness kind of way. I don't give a damn about soulmates or whatever, he made my days better just by being there.
I had to stop stewing in my office at some point. The thing that ended up wrenching me out of my chair was that I had a meeting in fifteen minutes. I figured being surrounded by people and having to think about something that wasn't how much of an idiot I'd been lately would be better.
But my bad luck wasn’t done with me today.