Allison thought on the girl’s suggestion for a long moment. She had a point, Allison could tell that many higher ups seemed very old fashioned. They didn’t think through things through in modern lens, and avoided modern, and better, solutions. “That’s a good point. It’s probably obvious, but I’ve never really done all of this,” she gestured vaguely around her, hoping it was clear she meant an office job, “before, so the whole ‘ask forgiveness, not permission’ thing is still a little foreign. Have you worked here long?”
gemma hummed, leaning her chin in her palm as the other girl spoke. “it was a little weird at first for me, too.” a bit of a lie, admittedly, but nobody else had to know that. gemma had been asking for forgiveness for longer than she’d been asking for permission for things. it’s how she ended up here. “i’ve worked here for...a little over a year, actually? i think. definitely not two years, but i couldn’t tell you exactly when my first day was.” the time seemed to drag on and somehow go so fast at the same time, that whenever gemma was told how long she’d been an employee here, it never seemed right.
𝐖𝐇𝐎: Joey Wilson & @masterspost
𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: June 18th, Friday
𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: Near someone’s computer (??)
If there was anything Joey enjoyed was an event - while the event that had been announced wasn’t exactly what he was used to, Joey still wanted to cause a good impression on everyone and at least dress up correctly. It was a fancy event after all. Deciding that he should take at least an hour break from all of the work he had done that day, he sat down by the nearest computer he could find and started looking for some of the outfits he could wear for the gala - of course, not even five minutes had passed when he saw someone approach him. Looking up at the person, Joey quickly closed all of the tabs he was looking at it and smiled, trying to make it seem like nothing had happened. “Hey! This isn’t your computer, right? Because… I was just working. Like a lot of writing and… legal stuff. I can leave though, if you need the computer.” He said with a smile, hoping that he would get away with his lie.
the announcement of the masters gala shouldn’t have come as a surprise to fin, like, at all; anyone who lived around the city knew about it, and since he worked there, he had taken care to do his research on the company. at least a little bit. but somehow, he was still caught off guard by the announcement, and had no idea what the hell he was going to wear, or if he was even going to go at all. he could always skip out on it, right? but it was his first one, and that would leave a bad impression, wouldn’t it? and that was the last thing he wanted, when he was actually not miserable at his job, and wanted to keep it, so he should - “uh,” fin paused, always so articulate, “that is mine, yeah, but if you need it you can keep using it, i can definitely wait.” he had to rework the intro music for the anchors and he just...did not want to. he hated that stupid music.
— from the moment his head had landed against his pillow many nights ago after the wild party hosted by masters, hide’s life became a bit much of a blur & there wasn’t much he could recall him doing that wasn’t in autopilot mode. most of his tasks were covered & achieved by turning off his switch & he wasn’t too certain who to blame for it, whether it was the alcohol, realizing the bullshit that happened ( & he became a participant to ) at the party or feeling like he was empty due to suspicious circumstances. ❝ this coffee tastes like shit, ❞ he admitted out loud & showed his nearly empty cup to the one standing the closest to him. ❝ one could assume a company like this one would have premium coffee but alas… do you think i’d be successful to sue the ceo over mind poisoning due to intoxicated grounds of coffee ? ❞
@masterspost
“...no?” fin wasn’t too sure what the right answer to that question was. on the one hand, he wanted to be supportive, sure, but on the other hand, even fin knew a bad idea when he heard one. “it can’t be that bad, though.” he grabbed a cup for himself, and reached for the coffee pot. his opinion wasn’t going to be worth shit, because fin didn’t even like coffee to begin with, but he poured himself a cup anyway and took a sip. “oh, ew,” he grimaced, swallowing painfully. so much for it not being that bad, huh? “maybe i’m a little skewed because i don’t drink a lot of coffee, but...i have definitely had better coffee than this.” his dorm mate’s instant coffee somehow tasted better than this, as far as he could remember.
𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐄 '𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆’ 𝐁𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐃, adonis was hardly seen around masters. he kept in his quarters, walked in the spaces he knew not a lot of people didn’t frequent, and didn’t hang around after work. he avoided the canteen, any popular nearby spots, and didn’t say much on social media. it was the best thing for him to do. the last thing he needed was someone else questioning him on something he didn’t want to talk about. so far, it had seem as though adonis’ past was long forgotten. he didn’t see any tweets about it, didn’t hear that many people whispering if they happened to have spotted him. he just hoped it had really died down and he wouldn’t have to deal with the entire thing again. he was still sad about everyone finding out the way they did .. he wanted to share that part of himself when he was ready. he supposed the universe just hated him. first, they took his family from him, and now they took away his choice of being open about it. he sighed as he made his way into the front entrance of masters, rubbing his hand at the back of his head before he made his way to his office. here goes nothing, he thought.
punctuality was never, in all his life, one of fin’s strong suits. for all people talked about new york always going at a mile a minute, he’d never managed to get that perfected; he was a legend at leaving at the very last minute, always knew exactly how much time he needed to get ready for anything...and that, sometimes, came with trouble. like when the train took a longer delay than he anticipated for, because of course it did, and he really needed to start getting that timing thing in order, didn’t he? “shit,” he hissed, because of course his luck would have it that he practically slammed into the fucking door, too, not looking where he was going, too worried about checking the time. “ow,” he grumbled, rubbing his forehead, “just my luck.”
“ ‘course i noticed, ” he answered easily, “ i met you here. ” griffin smiled at her as she touched his jaw, biting on the inside of his cheek. he and gemma had always had a friendship that dipped into flirtation world – it was always worse when they were drunk and there was an empty stall nearby in the ball. but what he liked about them was that they could do stuff like that and still talk normally the next morning. “ it is ? maybe that’s why it sounded so familiar, ” he mused. “ i’ll have someone from legal handle the trademarks so we have permission to use the name, if we want. ” and for a better reason, too, than a movie about guinea pigs. “ you won’t get in trouble with HR, ” he assured, leaning forward in his chair as he looked at gemma, mischief in his eyes. “ let’s leave and get drinks. right now. ”
“flatterer,” she said immediately, but there was no heat in it; there never was. she knew exactly who griffin was, and how he was, and she never minded. at the very least, he made things more fun when he was like that, when he was charming her like that, reminding her of who she was, too. “you’re really going to use lawyer contacts so that we can use a copyrighted name for a made up, hypothetical bar?” she smiled, shaking her head at him, full of fondness and amusement. “has anybody ever told you that you’re just something else entirely?” for all the people she knew that were like him, somehow he was her favorite. “right now?” her eyebrows shot up, “griffin, it’s like, three in the afternoon. we have work.” not that she sounded very convincing. that look on his face always promised a good time, and god, did gemma feel like she needed one of those.
AURI WAS NEVER one to judge, so she barely flinched when the other told her about her dislike of tapioca bubbles – even though she, herself, loved them. ❝ honestly, i can see that. ❞ their textures were very unique and apparently not for everyone. ❝ i’ve never had lychee bubbles, but i do like strawberry and mango bubbles. peach bubbles are also very good. ❞ she spoke, the last sentence almost an afterthought. auri thanked the doorman and stepped out of the building, the wind ruffling her skirt. she tried not to wrinkle her nose as the loud traffic noises assaulted her ears. ❝ if i wasn’t so set in eating chocolate croissant today i’d try the lychee bubbles just in your honor. might try the next time. ❞ her voice was a little louder than before, but not
gemma was, truthfully, just a sucker for any kind of fruit, so listening to auri list off te ones she liked just made her crave that over anything else. but chocolate, she reminded herself, and what else mattered when she was about to have a chocolate pastry? literally nothing. “you literally just listed like...three of my favorite fruits, so. but you should definitely try the lychee whenever you can, it’s genuinely so good.” the smile gemma shot the doorman was warm, like her thank you, and new york traffic sounds always turned into background noise as soon as she stepped outside. “there’s this one place that has the best boba tea, we should go for lunch one day. the food is also to die for, and it’s not too far from work.” gemma liked to go there, when she needed to get out of the office for a little while.
“Well, thank you.” Allison said, lifting the pen a little to show her gratitude. The following question caught her off guard. The thought of just doing it was not something that occurred to her. She was all for taking initiative, and getting a task done. But to change the format of what they asked for felt like she was pushing things a little too far. “Oh. I’ve never really been put in a… decision making position before. I guess I just kind of figured that they would want to know. But, I guess that is kind of stupid on my part.”
“it’s not stupid.” gemma pulled out her phone, deciding to reply to emails because she didn’t have a pen anymore. mostly because she felt a little weird, empty handed while allison was still working. “i get it, wanting to ask for permission for stuff. but the truth is, a lot of people here are really old school and don’t even consider new ways of getting stuff done.” gemma recalled having her own similar issues with her own boss, and how frustrating it was. “so if you do it, and you know it’s a better idea, then you’re saving a whole bunch of time by skipping the explanation and arguing to try and make your case. once it’s done, it’s done, and the work is still good so they can’t argue.”
Tom could only shrug. They weren’t the type to go down negative hypotheticals and he wasn’t about to start after some drinks. “Nerves, maybe? I don’t know. This is the furthest I’ve lived from home and it’s weird starting over,” Tom confessed. They’d heard plenty of horror stories about how it was hard to make friends after college despite acquiring new friends never having been a problem in the past. Their social skills still seemed to hold up over here on the east coast and it didn’t hurt that it was summer either. People were naturally more social and that was an environment Tom thrived in. “Well first we gotta finish what we’ve got here,” Tom said gesturing to their dwindling supply of sangria for the table, “Then we should… I don’t know, are there any markets happening right now? Or a party? I just wanna find people, you know?” Pretty people and pretty things were two of Tom’s favorite things.
“you’re magnetic,” gemma said, assuredly, like it was just a fact. and to them, it was. they didn’t need to be drinking a little bit for that statement to hold true to them; tom was a person that people wanted to be around. that she wanted to be around. “why did you move from seattle, though? i mean, if i can ask.” truthfully, gemma couldn’t imagine herself doing it: packing up, going all the way across the country like that. she would miss the city too much, the homesickness would eat her alive. “oh, i never leave a pitcher or a plate full, don’t worry,” she waved a hand, “and trust, there’s going to be a party going on somewhere. you just have to know how to find it, and luckily for you, i’m an expert.”
not me realizing i named my jeremy shada character fin
( JEREMY SHADA, 23, CISMALE, HE/HIM ) * hey, i’m looking for the office of FINLEY ‘FIN’ OLSON. he’s the MUSIC PRODUCER who’s known around the office as THE GOOFBALL if that helps ? not to be a gossip, but i’ve heard that they’re EASYGOING but INDECISIVE, is that true ? i also heard that they’re the one who LIKES TO REMIX TIKTOK SONGS WHEN HE SHOULD BE WORKING. anyways, here’s the coffee that they ordered.
brooklyn baby, born and raised. sometimes he still gets lost in manhattan. an only child, and it’s...kind of obvious sometimes.
music has always shaped fin’s life; he insists that even before he was born, he loved music, because his parents would always be playing something, and he will swear up and down until the day he dies that he could hear everything.
fin grew up in a home full of music and laughter; he is always more than willing to embarrass himself, or put himself out there, to make people laugh. never being one to take things too seriously, fin tends to take it upon himself to be the one to diffuse situations; conflict-avoidance and fixing with humor at its finest.
it was a no-brainer to pursue music as he got older, and he only ever received support from his family- especially his uncle, and his older cousin, phoenix. he learned how to play the bass guitar, the guitar, and piano all before he ever even considered sports as a hobby. music has always been the easiest choice that fin has ever made.
fin would say his life has been full of...pretty average experiences. school was average, he was never popular or unpopular (objectively, he leaned a little more towards the popular angle, as he always had the title of class clown down within the first week, and his brand of flirting is making them laugh, since he’s not very good at being charming on purpose) and college was average; he partied a little bit, as children with freedom are want to do, but he wouldn’t say he’d ever gone overboard. graduated in a moderate class placement, got decent grades. exceptionality was never his strong suit.
fin has never been able to take sides in whatever that beef is, between his cousins. he grew up watching it happen and still doesn’t quite understand it, chalks it up to being none of his business and never chooses one over the other.
following his older cousins to masters wasn’t...ever a part of a plan, but. it never seemed like a bad idea, especially as a new graduate with a degree in music production, especially when he was kind of floundering for something to do; for inspiration, for a career, for anything.
he’s still kind of floundering in this totally new environment, but. it’s fine. fin has never been great in competitive situations, would always prefer to go along to get along, but he’s doing his best, and that has to count for something.
“ oh, that’s an easy deal. breaking bread with people is easily one of my favorite parts of this weird little journey we call life. ” if gemma’s one-bite takoyaki situation was supposed to be embarrassing, parker didn’t notice; he just assumed that was how takoyaki was meant to be consumed, and let he who never opened his mouth too wide for a takoyaki ball cast the first stone, right? either way, he cheers’d gemma’s takoyaki helping with his own, then pushed the standard black-with-red-and-gold-accents plastic tray holding the sushi rolls in gemma’s general direction. “ okay, in all fairness, i wasn’t just, like, taking huge gulps of honey all day long. just, you know, a drizzle here, a drizzle there … and then suddenly it was four pm and the honey hadn’t done shit to stop me from getting hungry. and now my honey-to-lemon ratio for tea is probably off, so that’s disappointing. ”
“you know, back in high school, i had to read this book,” she tilted her head, trying to recall the full title, it had been longer than she liked to think about since she’d touched the thing, or thought of it, “how to read lit like a professor, right? and there was just...a whole chapter about the symbolism of sharing meals in stories.” there was always a sense of camaraderie and comfort, when it came to sharing food. it was one of gemma’s favorite ways to get to know someone; dinner dates, lunches, going out to eat, cooking together- she always felt like the way people ate, what they ate, said something about them. she was never too sure what it was, but it was still how she felt. “i’m honestly just trying to understand how you like..snacked on honey, like it was a bag of chips. and also how you thought that doing nothing but eating honey was going to be filling at all?” she couldn’t help but laugh a little, it just sounded ridiculous.
“ they did hire me because i’m pretty too, actually, ” griffin smiled, but he was also being completely serious. “ my boss told me once that the spot i have now was between me and this other lobbyist who had way more experience than i did. like a whole extra list of experiences on his resume. but they ended up choosing me because he was hard to look at. ” and about half of the bills he lobbied for required him to be on c-span for at least five hours, so he supposed masters wanted someone on the air who didn’t have a giant boil on their chin. “ g-squared… ” he tested the name out loud, humming. “ …g-force ? ” he suggested next. he was sure that was a movie title but they’d worry about copyrights later. “ i do, ” griffin insisted, “ more often than you might think. but i will complain the entire time i am getting ahead of deadlines either way. shit’s so fucking exhausting. ” he was tempted to see if gemma just wanted to leave early and get a drink with him even though it was only – he glanced at the time on his computer – 2:37. “ man. if only i had something of a liquid variety to get me motivated to do my work. ”
“have you ever noticed that masters only hires pretty people?” she reached out, brushing her knuckle along his jawline, just this casual touch. gemma was a big fan of that; easy touching, that simple intimacy. especially with people like griffin, always toeing a line she probably shouldn’t be. “...isn’t g-force that movie about the spy guinea pigs? i feel like you’ve just unlocked some weird childhood memory, or something, and i also feel like it was buried for a reason.” she couldn’t recall details, but there was a vague idea, something she could see, fuzzy and unfinished but definitely there. and she absolutely hated it, as a concept. “yeah, uh huh,” she put her hands on her hips, “complain all you want, as long as you get it done.” she blinked, and bit the inside of her cheek. “griffin, you do not want me to respond to that, it’ll get me in big trouble with HR.”
“Stop, that’s so kind of you to say,” Tom grinned. They often came off bubbly and the alcohol certainly didn’t hurt in making them gush over the compliment. It was a sweet thing to hear from someone Tom was liking getting to know Gemma. It was different for him considering he was new and without the group he usually had back home so making the company of new people last was high on his priority list. So if she was down for an adventure on a work night how could Tom say no? “You aren’t wrong there. What could we get up to though?” Tom questioned. Most wild things they got up to in New York thus far had been at the hands of a New Yorker stepping in and Tom going along for the ride.
“why wouldn’t the city love you, though?” and she meant that; there was this air about tom that gemma thought of as magnetic, maybe a little magical. being around them made everything seem a little warmer, a little nicer, a little more like things were tinted rose. maybe it was just because she knew that was how he still looked at things, at the city; maybe things needed to be looked at like that, sometimes. “oh, i mean, you name it, it’s probably happening around here somewhere,” gemma said, thinking about all the things she’d gotten up to before in the city, no matter the day, the time. that was the great thing about living somewhere as big as new york: all kinds of people meant all kinds of things going on, no matter what the rest of the block was doing. she was sure that she’d be able to find something for them to do.
Allison hesitated briefly before taking the pen. Pen, to her, was synonymous with commitment. Sure, white-out existed, but it still somehow felt too confident. Still, she couldn’t use the tiny stub of pencil she had left. “Thank you. I can get it back to you soon, promise. It’s new, I’d hate for you to lose it so quickly.” She stared down at the pages, shrugging slightly. “I think they want to be able to add as we go… but we could just print pages as we go, too…” Allison leaned back in her seat, eyebrows knitting together in thought. She was just so focused on getting the task at hand done, and alternative methods never came to mind. “I guess I could ask them if that would be okay.”
gemma waved the promise away, flippant and without thinking. it was just a pen, she had a thousand of them. “don’t worry about it, i literally just bought a new pack of them at target. i think i can part with one of them.” she smiled easily, shrugging. “i-” she hummed, cutting herself off and pursing her lips. “i mean, why...ask? it’s just a different way of doing the same thing you’re already doing, so just...do it.” that didn’t make sense to gemma, honestly; if she knew there was a more efficient way of doing things, it was just easier to do it.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 from the fashion floor must’ve been exhausting , but minnie was three quarters of her way through a bottle of wine in a starbucks tumbler before her lunch break and the music was blasting . “ i’d rather be drunk but at least i’m aliiiiiiive , ” she sing-songs to herself , laughing at the irony of the lyrics . she chews the reusable plastic draw between her teeth as she compares some of the photos she has pinned to a board on the wall . if the pop playlist was disturbing anyone , she didn’t seem to care , instead finding herself sorting through the mountain of fabrics , photos and forms in the room ( though mostly dancing , instead )
gemma liked the fashion floor; she liked fashion, by itself, and always had kind of thought she’d end up working in it. but marketing seemed- maybe not more respectable, but...her brothers had majored in business things in college, so she majored in a business thing in college. “minnie!” she laughed, "i can’t believe you’re having a party and didn’t invite me!” the music was loud enough to be heard all the way down the hall, and she had to see what was going on. and of course it was minnie, and of course gemma wanted to be here rather than anywhere else in the building.
Allison wasn’t sure how she had ended up working on the paper trail for all the company spending’s. She wasn’t even sure why there needed to be a paper trail in the first place. ‘In case of an outage’ her boss had said. Well, she thought having an external hard drive as a backup was much more reasonable, but who was she to say anything? Snap. The lead of her pencil broke for the third time- probably from the heavy hand of her frustrated writing. She reached for the pencil sharpener, stopping short when she saw how small the Pencil had gotten. “It’s bad enough I have a to write all this by hand, the least they could do is give me a *mechanical* pencil.”
@masterspost
"here,” gemma immediately handed off the pen she had in her notebook, not even thinking. stupid work was the bane of her existence, and bad tools always made it worse. “it’s brand new, has a ton of ink, it should get you through the rest of...whatever the fuck it is you’re doing. which,” gemma frowned, tilting her head, “why not just put this into excel sheets, and then print them?” it seemed like a better idea, at least in her head. it’s what she would do, anyway.
discoholicmusic
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tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
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yousharknotpass