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𝓘𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 ；

❝ 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 ❞

STARRING: SECRETARY!FEM!READER

LOOSELY INSPIRED BY ; secretary (2002), body heat (1981), basic instinct (1992), disclosure (1994), and out of sight (1998).

“ …𝙎𝙀𝙀 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙁𝘼𝘾𝙀 𝙀𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙔 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝘾𝙀 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙄 𝙒𝘼𝙇𝙆 𝙄𝙉 …”

SUMMARY. BACKSTORY. FACTS. OFFICE PERSONA.

SUMMARY ;

miami metro assumes its new secretary is merely shy, perhaps a little strange, but harmless. she types beautifully, speaks softly, and approaches clerical correction with an intensity better suited to religious confession. what nobody knows is that desire has always reached her through shame: through mistakes discovered, instructions obeyed, disappointment survived, and the humiliating relief of being observed closely enough that concealment becomes impossible.

debra morgan notices because deb notices everything irritating. the repeated typo. the unfinished signature. the way your breathing changes when she stands behind your chair. the indecent stillness that enters your body when her voice becomes sharp. she begins correcting you because your mistakes offend her. she continues because something in your face makes correction feel less like administration and more like touching you where nobody else knows you have skin.

how long can you continue calling it embarrassment when you have begun making mistakes just to hear her say your name?

“ …𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙑𝙊𝙄𝘾𝙀 𝙀𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙔 𝙏𝙄𝙈𝙀 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙄𝙈 𝙏𝘼𝙇𝙆𝙄𝙉𝙂 …”

BACKSTORY.

▸ SECRETARY!READER grows up in a house with an exhaustive vocabulary for impurity and almost none for desire. nobody speaks plainly about appetite. bodies are discussed only when they are sick, improperly dressed, bleeding through something, or being warned against. pleasure belongs to the same domestic category as mildew and vermin, a concealed infestation proving somebody has failed to keep the interior clean. she learns early that shame is not merely an emotion but a housekeeping ritual. dirty thoughts are followed by cold water. curiosity is followed by prayer. an accidental touch below the waist is followed by the frantic rearrangement of blankets, clothing, posture, expression, until the body appears innocent again. she becomes very good at appearing innocent. what she never learns is how to stop noticing the incriminating little relief that comes after being caught by herself.

▸ SECRETARY!READER is not naturally composed so much as deeply practiced at stillness. as a girl, she develops the habit of sitting with both feet flat on the floor and her hands folded tightly enough to leave half-moons in her palms, as though good posture might prevent anyone from hearing the indecent machinery operating underneath it. she is quiet without being tranquil, polite without being socially effortless, and prone to answering questions with a degree of honesty that makes ordinary people glance at one another. she laughs late, after she has already decided whether laughter is appropriate. praise leaves her awkward and overheated. criticism, strangely, calms her. criticism has edges. instructions have sequence. disappointment can be survived by doing something correctly afterward. affection is formless, humid, impossible to file. correction arrives with margins.

▸ SECRETARY!READER discovers clerical work because typing allows the body to disappear into a system of keys, spacing, alignment, and repetition. she likes the clean percussion of a typewriter and later the softer mechanical obedience of a computer keyboard. she likes that a mistake can be located, struck through, and replaced. she likes forms because forms do not ask what kind of woman fills them out. they only demand dates, names, signatures, boxes checked in the proper ink. at secretarial school, an instructor returns one of her assignments veined with red corrections, every careless letter and misplaced comma exposed beneath the teacher’s narrow handwriting. secretary!reader carries the page home folded inside her handbag. she tells herself she keeps it because the corrections are useful. several nights later, she unfolds it in bed and traces the red marks until the paper softens beneath her fingers.

▸ SECRETARY!READER enters criminal-defense work by accident, hired by a firm twelve floors above biscayne boulevard because she types quickly, speaks softly, and looks incapable of participating in anything that would require a subpoena. the office is all smoked glass, lacquered walnut, refrigerated conference rooms, and framed newspaper clippings commemorating acquittals nobody discusses without instinctively lowering their voice. the men there mistake her strangeness for modesty. they call her sweet because she goes pink when addressed too directly, shy because she watches their hands instead of their faces, harmless because she apologizes after correcting them. what none of them understands is that her attention is not passive. she notices everything with the private greed of someone who has spent her life forbidden to want openly.

▸ SECRETARY!READER becomes fascinated by the senior attorney before she likes him. he is married, politically connected, and handsome in the overpreserved manner of men who have outsourced every degrading consequence of age. he represents narcotics traffickers, corrupt officials, businessmen laundering public money, and wealthy sons whose fathers can purchase enough reasonable doubt to make a dead woman seem argumentative. inside courtrooms, he performs authority. outside them, he loses reading glasses, misplaces motions, forgets telephone numbers, and leaves his wedding ring inside the upper drawer whenever a young client or attractive reporter is expected. secretary!reader notices the pale band of skin exposed around his finger. she notices how often he touches it. she notices that his voice loses its polished courtroom resonance when he is tired, frightened, or speaking to her after the office has emptied.

▸ SECRETARY!READER does not flirt with him in any recognizable sense. she does not drape herself over furniture, invent reasons to touch him, or perform the bright social confidence of a woman enjoying a game. her interest is stranger and less graceful. she becomes absorbed by his inconsistencies. she watches him sign his name. she memorizes which verdicts leave his hands trembling despite going in his favor. she notices that disappointment makes him rub his tongue against the back of his teeth before speaking. once, while correcting a brief beside his desk, she realizes she has been listening to his breathing rather than his dictation. the discovery floods her with such immediate self-disgust that she transposes two numbers in the case citation.

▸ SECRETARY!READER expects him to return the brief through ordinary channels. instead, he summons her into his office and closes the door. the mistake is insignificant, almost insulting in its smallness, but he points to it with the capped end of his pen and waits. she apologizes too quickly. the words crowd one another in her mouth. he asks her to sit. she does, spine rigid, knees held together, hands arranged carefully over the notebook in her lap. then he makes her read the incorrect citation aloud. the humiliation should feel childish. administrative. bloodless. instead, something inside her body lowers its head.

▸ SECRETARY!READER corrects the mistake while he watches, aware of each key beneath her fingers and the intolerable fact of his attention resting between her shoulder blades. afterward, she washes her hands in the women’s restroom until the water runs cold. she studies herself in the mirror, cheeks hot, mouth slightly open, disgusted by the calm that has entered her muscles. she tells herself the response was fear. then she tells herself it was embarrassment. then she goes home and remembers his voice telling her to read the line again until memory becomes a private abrasion she cannot stop touching.

▸ SECRETARY!READER becomes nearly flawless for the next two weeks. no errors, no late filings, no missing signatures. the attorney praises her in front of the partners, and the praise leaves her nauseated. there is nothing to repair afterward. no private summons. no low voice marking the precise place where she has failed. approval spreads through her without structure, cloying and useless. by the third week, one date migrates to the wrong page. by the fourth, a signature line remains blank on a contract she has reviewed twice. she does not consciously decide to make the mistakes. her hands simply begin understanding before the rest of her does.

▸ SECRETARY!READER does not initially realize the attorney has noticed the pattern. he notices because he is professionally trained to recognize contradictions and personally vain enough to study any behavior that might concern him. her errors are too precise. they never jeopardize a case. they only create reasons for him to call her inside, close the door, and direct his full attention toward a woman who otherwise moves through the office like a careful little absence.

one evening, he leaves the signature line blank himself. you catch it immediately. “you forgot to sign this.” you place the contract over the brief he has been pretending to read, aligning its edge with the blotter so carefully that the neatness begins to resemble delay. his attention lowers to the empty line, though the slight pull at one corner of his mouth suggests the omission has surprised neither of you. the pen remains loose between his fingers. “did i?” the question is mild. almost bored. the tone is what makes heat climb beneath your collar, because it carries the unmistakable patience of someone waiting to see how long you will continue lying in front of him. “you reviewed it twice.” your fingertips remain on the paper. withdrawing them would be easy. the fact that you do not becomes abruptly visible. he turns the pen once, slowly, its silver clip passing beneath his thumb. “careless.” “for you.” his gaze rises from the contract to your face. there is no triumph in it, which would have been easier to resent. only attention, complete and indecently calm. “you sound disappointed.” your hand tightens against the page. “i sound employed.” “do you?” the office beyond the closed door continues without you, telephones ringing faintly through the wall, a copier opening and closing its mechanical throat. inside, the silence narrows until even your breathing begins to feel like an answer. “sign it,” you manage, but the instruction leaves your mouth too softly to possess authority. he sets the pen down instead. “look at me.” your body obeys before pride can organize a refusal. the movement is small, only the lifting of your chin, yet shame passes through you with the cold, comprehensive clarity of a blade rinsed beneath water. his expression changes when he sees what the command has done. not surprise. recognition. “there you are.” the words touch nothing. your skin behaves as though they have. you reach for the pen because your hands require employment, but his fingers close around it first. for one suspended moment, both of you hold the same narrow instrument between you, neither willing to convert the contact into something ordinary by letting go. “you keep making mistakes,” he observes, his voice stripped of courtroom polish, quieter now because he no longer needs volume to control the room. “and then you look relieved when i find them.” the accusation is unbearable because it is exact. “that’s not true.” “no?” his eyes move briefly to the pulse beating at the base of your throat, then return to your face. the glance is so small another person might miss it. you do not. you will remember it later with greater clarity than the words. he watches you for another breath, then presses the pen into your palm instead. his fingers do not linger, but the withdrawal feels deliberate, leaving you holding the object he has refused to use. “sign your name,” you repeat. he watches you for another breath, then presses the pen into your palm instead. “ask properly.” something low and diseased unfurls beneath your ribs, not pleasure exactly, but the terrible precondition of it. the desire to be made to confess by someone who already knows. your fingers close around the pen. “please.” only then does he take it back.

▸ SECRETARY!READER leaves his office that night with the corrected contract hidden between two ordinary files. she makes it to her apartment before the shame becomes physical. she locks the door, checks it twice, removes her shoes, and stands motionless in the darkened hallway with the page held against her chest like evidence rescued from a fire. she despises him for seeing her. she despises herself more for the relief of it. later, she washes, changes the sheets, empties the wastebasket, and cleans beneath her fingernails although there is nothing there. every attempt at erasure sharpens the memory. by morning, the scene has become cleaner in her mind than anything that actually happened, each pause lacquered by repetition, every word preserved with the devotional accuracy of blasphemous scripture.

▸ SECRETARY!READER and the attorney begin constructing an intimacy the rest of the firm mistakes for an affair because ordinary adultery is easier to comprehend. there are closed doors, late evenings, hotel bars after client dinners, and gifts she accepts only long enough to feel ashamed of enjoying them. perhaps they kiss once in an elevator and both dislike how simple it makes the arrangement. perhaps they sleep together eventually and discover that physical access is less indecent than the ritual that preceded it. perhaps he never touches her beyond a hand at the back of her neck while reading over her shoulder. the office does not know. what the office sees is dependency accumulating around routine: mistakes offered, corrections delivered, instructions obeyed, and secretary!reader leaving his office with her face composed too carefully.

▸ SECRETARY!READER hates herself most when she begins manufacturing anticipation. she leaves a comma where no comma belongs. omits an attachment. mistypes a surname she has spelled correctly for months. each error is small enough to defend as fatigue and deliberate enough to stain her entire day. after submitting the document, she cannot concentrate. every footstep becomes his. every telephone ring tightens her stomach. shame turns the waiting erotic by making it punitive. she wants to be summoned and suffers because wanting to be summoned means some grotesque, childish part of her has begun arranging failure as an offering. the mistakes are not invitations. they are bait laid for herself.

▸ SECRETARY!READER becomes more frightened as the attorney learns the shape of her appetite. he discovers that praise embarrasses her, but disappointment stills her. that direct orders make her breathing shallow. that she can tolerate profanity more easily than quiet formality. that being called good affects her only when she has first been made to feel wicked. he never names these discoveries clinically. naming would imply distance. instead, he incorporates them into the private grammar between them, using a lowered voice, an extended pause, a document placed precisely in front of her, until clerical work and bodily shame begin sharing the same nervous system.

▸ SECRETARY!READER becomes less compliant when he mistakes access for ownership. the deterioration begins with questions disguised as concern. where was she after work? who drove her home? why did a woman from the district attorney’s office call twice and laugh before giving her name? then come the altered lunch appointments, the gifts too expensive to remain playful, the emphasis he places on my secretary as though employment has become a title of possession. he resents strangers for receiving versions of her he cannot supervise. what he fails to understand is that shame may make secretary!reader obedient, but it does not make her docile. the moment he drags their private language into the daylight and attempts to use it as ordinary male authority, the ritual becomes ugly in the wrong way.

▸ SECRETARY!READER is therefore not surprised when his life begins splitting along its load-bearing seams. his wife files for divorce and produces financial records he believed inaccessible. a former client gives investigators correspondence implicating him in witness tampering. confidential invoices reach a journalist already examining his political donations. the state bar opens an inquiry. his partners remove his name from the lobby before the formal vote because cowardice, unlike ethics, has excellent reflexes. the collapse occurs with such eerie simultaneity that the office begins searching for a single hand behind it, and naturally their attention turns toward the woman who controlled his calls, his calendar, his correspondence, and the private rituals through which he once controlled her.

▸ SECRETARY!READER visits him once after his disgrace becomes public. nobody knows where the meeting occurs or what passes between them. a hotel clerk remembers a woman in a conservative blouse waiting near a service corridor. a former associate claims he saw her car outside the attorney’s temporary apartment. neither account can be verified. afterward, he condemns his wife, his partners, the press, the bar association, and the legal system with the articulate rage of a man being eaten alive by consequences. he speaks of betrayal as though it were a procedural defect. he insists that documents have been misinterpreted, that witnesses were coerced, that every act can be explained if the correct context is restored. mention secretary!reader, however, and the fury becomes strangely malnourished. he calls her “exceptionally competent,” then pauses with the sickened expression of someone who has accidentally described the most obscene thing he was ever permitted to witness. perhaps, during their final meeting, she placed a document in front of him and aligned its edge with the table. perhaps she asked him to read a sentence aloud. perhaps no document existed and the cruelty lay in refusing the old ritual any final performance. whatever occurred, he emerges without the language that once allowed him to convert her shame into obedience. she leaves with nothing visible in her hands.

▸ SECRETARY!READER disappears from professional records for six months after the firm dissolves. there is no listed employer, no payroll, and no forwarding address beyond a voicemail service that answers without giving her name. she spends part of that period in an apartment with the curtains closed, living according to small punitive routines. she wakes early. types pages from old books. destroys them. rewashes clean dishes. keeps the telephone unplugged and still checks it for messages. desire becomes an amputated limb that continues aching despite the body’s insistence that nothing remains there. when she eventually applies to miami metro homicide, the six-month gap is the only irregularity in an otherwise immaculate work history. she describes the missing period as personal leave and offers no further explanation because none is formally required.

FACTS.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S desk is orderly without looking decorative. there are no family photographs, novelty mugs, or cheerful little proofs of a life outside the building, only sharpened pencils arranged by length, two telephones, a silver letter opener, a porcelain cup, and a locked lower drawer she checks twice before leaving. the absence is not calculated mystery. she simply cannot bear the thought of displaying affection where strangers might examine it while waiting for an extension.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S handwriting changes according to what she believes the words are permitted to reveal. official documents receive severe block lettering, clean enough to survive photocopying without losing authority, each capital separated from the next by a narrow, disciplined interval. telephone messages are similarly controlled, with names underlined once, times recorded to the minute, and any uncertainty enclosed in parentheses rather than allowed to contaminate the rest of the sentence. private notes lean forward in narrow cursive, letters crowded together as though ashamed of occupying space, their loops compressed until language begins to resemble something whispered through clenched teeth. she dislikes anyone watching her write because observation changes the hand before the mind can prevent it. the letters straighten, the pressure deepens, and whatever she had intended to say becomes formal enough to survive discovery. when she is genuinely distressed, however, her penmanship becomes almost exquisitely neat. every line sits level. every period is round. no word crosses another or presses against the margin. a page written during ordinary calm may contain a hurried correction or an uneven tail on the letter y. a page written while she is close to panic looks prepared for archiving. the effort of perfecting each mark gives fear somewhere narrow to stand, and by the time another person notices how beautiful the writing has become, she has already concealed the cause.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S handbag is dark, structured, and heavier than its size suggests, constructed from stiff leather that retains its shape even when placed beneath a chair. inside are blotting papers, aspirin, breath mints, a compact mirror, clear nail polish, a travel sewing kit, two pens nobody may borrow, and a small address book containing numbers she refuses to store electronically. each object occupies a fixed pocket, and she can locate any of them by touch without looking. the sewing kit contains black, white, gray, and navy thread because she does not trust decorative emergencies. the aspirin remains in its labeled bottle rather than a loose tin. the address book includes disconnected numbers she has never crossed out, since striking through a person seems needlessly theatrical when silence has already done the work. beneath the lining is a shallow tear she stitched closed herself with thread one shade darker than the fabric. the repair is competent but intentionally incomplete, leaving an opening small enough to deny and large enough to use. occasionally she slips a folded note, marked page, receipt, or strip of paper through it and carries the item for days before admitting she has kept it. the hidden paper changes the weight of the bag by almost nothing, yet she feels its presence whenever the handbag rests against her hip. sometimes she opens the lining at home, confirms the object remains there, and sews the tear closed again without removing it, transforming concealment into a task that allows her to touch the evidence while claiming she is only repairing damage.

▸ SECRETARY!READER dresses with the anxious precision of someone who experiences clothing as both protection and evidence. her blouses fasten high, her skirts permit movement without climbing the thigh, and her seams sit exactly where they are meant to because badly fitted fabric makes her aware of her body in a way she finds intolerable. she checks collars in mirrors for lipstick, powder, loose threads, and the faint darkening that can occur where perfume or skin oil meets cloth. she owns slips in several lengths and treats visible lines beneath a skirt as a private failure, though she knows intellectually that nobody else would consider them important. nothing she wears is deliberately provocative. the fabrics are subdued, the cuts practical, the shoes selected according to how quietly they cross tile. the eroticism, when it appears, comes from how visibly she is trying not to inhabit herself, from the careful button at the throat, the cuffs secured even in humid weather, the moment she presses both palms over a skirt before sitting as though smoothing away the fact of thighs beneath it. when heat causes fabric to cling between her shoulder blades, she becomes distracted and irritable, unable to stop imagining the exact outline another person might see. she does not want to be undressed by attention. she wants attention to notice how desperately she has dressed.

▸ SECRETARY!READER keeps her nails short enough to type quickly and paints them in colors resembling things preserved too long in darkness: bruised plum, tobacco brown, blackened cherry, dried rose, the red-brown of old varnish, a grayish mauve that looks almost colorless until held beneath direct light. she applies polish late at night with the concentration of a conservator restoring an object nobody will display. the layers are thin, the edges cleaned carefully, and any smudge requires removing every nail rather than repairing the damaged one alone. she says bright colors are distracting, although what she dislikes is their cheerfulness, the blunt expectation that decoration should be seen and enjoyed. when anxious, she presses one thumbnail beneath another until the polish separates in a narrow crescent. the action is slow enough to appear absentminded and controlled enough to leave the nail itself unbroken. she collects the flakes in her palm rather than letting them fall where somebody might discover that her composure sheds. at the end of the day, she may find several colored fragments caught in the lines of her skin, tiny curled surfaces that resemble evidence removed from a body. she wraps them in tissue before discarding them. once, after a particularly humiliating conversation, she keeps one crescent inside an envelope for three weeks, unable to explain why the piece of polish seems to belong to the event more completely than any written account would.

▸ SECRETARY!READER drinks from a thin ivory cup because paper cups leave wax against her mouth and styrofoam squeaks faintly against her teeth. the cup has no pattern except a narrow gold ring near the rim, worn away where her thumb habitually rests. a faded lipstick impression survives near the edge regardless of how thoroughly she scrubs the porcelain. she has tried baking soda, dish soap, diluted bleach, and once the abrasive paste used to clean the break-room sink. the stain remains, less a clear mark than a blurred rose shadow embedded in the glaze. she dislikes it but always rotates it inward, covering it with her thumb while she drinks. the gesture appears modest, almost dainty, though in truth she is preventing anyone from seeing the detached outline of her mouth. once separated from her body, the mark feels strangely intimate, as though the cup has preserved something she failed to keep private. during meetings, she catches herself rubbing the stain with the pad of her thumb until friction warms the porcelain. she knows this only deepens it. the knowledge does not stop her. occasionally another person uses the cup by mistake, and the sight produces a nausea so immediate she must look away. afterward, she washes it twice, not because she fears contamination from their mouth, but because she cannot tolerate the two traces sharing one surface.

▸ SECRETARY!READER has an uneasy relationship with praise. compliments produce heat without relief, leaving her uncertain where to place her hands or what expression would look least incriminating. when somebody calls her brilliant, beautiful, thoughtful, or indispensable, the word seems to enlarge the part of her it names until she becomes painfully conscious of carrying it. she often responds with a factual correction, explaining that the report was mostly assembled from existing material or that the blouse was purchased on sale, which others mistake for modesty and sometimes find charming. it is neither. she is trying to reduce the compliment to a manageable administrative size. correction affects her differently. being shown exactly where she failed gives humiliation a boundary and offers the possibility of repair. a misplaced date can be changed. an omitted enclosure can be added. a misheard name can be written correctly and repeated until the mouth remembers it. she is ashamed by how quickly instruction can resemble tenderness, particularly when the person correcting her lowers their voice, moves the document closer, and waits while she fixes the error. praise tells her she has been seen without explaining what the observer expects next. correction shows her where the gaze landed and how to survive it. this distinction is difficult to confess because it makes disappointment sound kinder than affection, and because sometimes, after an especially precise correction, she must stand alone in the restroom until her breathing becomes ordinary again.

▸ SECRETARY!READER perfume is applied sparingly and regretted almost immediately. one touch beneath her hair, another at the wrists, followed by an entire morning wondering how far the scent has traveled and who has noticed it. she prefers compositions that smell dry, old-fashioned, and faintly medicinal, iris powder, bitter citrus, faded roses, leather warmed by skin, though she owns one sweeter bottle she never wears and cannot bring herself to discard. perfume troubles her because it leaves the body before the body enters a room. it announces proximity, persists after departure, and can be recognized by someone who has stood close enough to learn it. if a coworker remarks that something smells nice, she becomes unnaturally attentive to whether their gaze moves toward her. she sometimes rubs at her wrists in the restroom until the fragrance becomes faint and overheated, mixing with soap, skin, and the metallic odor of the tap. what remains smells less like perfume than evidence that someone stood close enough to warm it. on those mornings she keeps her hands folded near her lap, afraid that movement will release another trace. at home, she may hold the cuff of the blouse near her face and discover the scent has survived all day. the intimacy of this persistence disgusts her. she hangs the blouse separately from the others and wears it again before washing it.

▸ SECRETARY!READER cannot easily discard anything another person has corrected. circled dates, underlined sentences, irritated notes in margins, and reports returned with one precise mark are folded and stored with the care ordinarily reserved for correspondence between lovers. she dislikes sentimental objects when their sentiment is obvious, yet a page carrying someone’s impatience can remain hidden in her possession for years. the marks become intimate because somebody noticed the exact location of her failure. not merely that she had failed, but where. a slash through one word proves another person’s attention occupied the same inch of paper her hand once occupied. she studies differences in pressure, whether the circle was drawn quickly, whether the underline stopped beneath the final letter, whether the note was written before or after the speaker became angry. she knows this is not a normal reason to preserve paperwork. knowledge has never cured the habit. several times a year, she gathers the collection with the intention of destroying it, sorting pages into piles according to age and insignificance. the more carefully she prepares them for disposal, the more clearly she remembers the circumstances surrounding each mark. by the time the shredder is ready, she has restored their importance through inspection. she may destroy one page as proof of control, then spend the evening reconstructing its wording from memory until the loss becomes another method of preservation.

▸ SECRETARY!READER becomes unnaturally still when embarrassed. she does not babble, hide her face, or retreat. her spine straightens, her hands settle, and her expression smooths into something strangers mistake for composure. beneath that stillness, every physical sensation becomes intolerably articulate: saliva caught behind the tongue, pulse striking the throat, dampness beneath the arms, stockings moving against the knee, the humiliating suspicion that another person may be watching her attempt not to react.

▸ SECRETARY!READER keeps a notebook containing sentences that exposed more than their speakers intended. apologies disguised as jokes. jealousy disguised as professional concern. threats delivered in the cadence of advice. confessions hidden inside complaints about traffic, paperwork, spouses, children, sleep. names rarely appear. she records the words, the time, and occasionally a physical detail: bit inside of cheek before answering. removed wedding ring beneath desk. looked at door twice. the notebook is not evidence in any official sense. it would be useless in court. its obscenity lies in the fact that the people inside it never consented to being remembered so accurately.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S compact mirror bears a shallow dent along one edge. she uses it to repair lipstick, remove eyelashes, and observe the room behind her without turning around. she is particularly attentive to people who watch while believing themselves unseen. being looked at does not thrill her cleanly. it produces nausea first, then curiosity, then the need to determine precisely what the observer noticed and whether they understood it correctly.

▸ SECRETARY!READER wears lipstick less consistently than office rumor claims. some days her mouth is bare except for balm, which she applies in private because the act of touching anything directly to her lips feels too intimate beneath observation. other days the color is so muted it seems naturally embedded in the skin, a brown rose or faded berry chosen to make intention look anatomical. she saves darker shades for evenings, court appearances, and mornings after insufficient sleep, when looking deliberate is easier than looking rested. colleagues remember the darker colors more vividly and begin describing lipstick as one of her signatures, though she goes without it more often than she wears it. the rumor disturbs her because it gives strangers ownership of a detail she believed variable. she becomes conscious of mouths whenever someone mentions hers. before important meetings, she blots twice, folds the tissue inward, and places it in her handbag rather than the wastebasket. several used tissues remain hidden in an inner pocket longer than hygiene or reason permits, each holding a reversed mouth more confident than the one she remembers possessing. when she finally throws them away, she does so in a public bin far from work, then spends the drive home imagining them unfolding among ordinary refuse.

▸ SECRETARY!READER asks questions that become inappropriate only after they have already left her mouth. she wants to know whether someone realized their marriage was ending before the papers arrived, whether guilt changes when nobody discovers the offense, whether grief is missing a person or missing the version of oneself that existed under their attention. she asks with sincere curiosity and waits for an actual answer. when people recoil, she becomes confused because they initiated the conversation with a question equally intimate but socially permitted, usually something like how was your weekend?

▸ SECRETARY!READER keeps an antique letter opener in the upper-right drawer of her desk. it is too sharp for envelopes and too carefully maintained to be decorative. when questioned about it, she says blunt instruments damage paper.

▸ SECRETARY!READER initially finds deb vulgar, disorganized, and almost offensively alive. deb slams folders instead of placing them, chews pens, tears forms from pads without following the perforation, writes in margins, loses paper clips, and speaks to office equipment as though betrayal by machinery is a recognized criminal offense. secretary!reader dislikes the noise, the disorder, the careless physicality of her. she also begins recognizing deb by footsteps before anyone else in homicide. within a month, she can identify the mood from the speed of the approach. within two, the lower drawer contains a pen bearing deb’s teeth marks.

▸ SECRETARY!READER attempts to throw the pen away three times. the first time, she retrieves it before leaving work and tells herself it may still contain usable ink. it does not. the second time, she prepares more carefully. she places the pen inside a used tissue so she will not see its shape, ties the wastebasket liner, and carries it to the loading dock herself rather than allowing maintenance to remove it. beneath the white industrial light, the black bag shines with damp-looking folds. she drops it into the dumpster and hears other refuse settle beneath the weight. for several seconds, nothing happens. then panic arrives with such humiliating immediacy that saliva floods beneath her tongue and her fingers go cold. she tells herself the bag may contain a telephone message she failed to file. the excuse is poor, but it permits action. she climbs onto the low concrete ledge, reaches inside with both hands, and drags the liner back toward her. the knot resists. she tears the plastic open with her bare fingers, releasing the smell of coffee grounds, toner, old food, and chemical cleanser. by the time she finds the tissue, one knee of her stockings is marked with grime. she carries the pen into the restroom, washes it with hand soap, dries it on a paper towel, and spends the remainder of the evening pretending the red scrape across her knuckle came from a filing cabinet. the third time, deb enters while secretary!reader is holding the dead pen over the trash. she has chosen the middle of the afternoon because daylight makes the act seem less ceremonial. the lower drawer stands open. the wastebasket has been emptied. her fingers hold the pen near its unmarked end, avoiding the places deb’s mouth altered it.

deb stops halfway through the doorway with a folder tucked beneath one arm. her gaze moves from the pen to your face, then back again. the pause is brief but complete, recognition entering the room before either woman has agreed upon what has been recognized. “why the fuck do you still have that?” deb asks. she does not sound disgusted. bewilderment roughens the question, along with the beginning of a laugh she has not yet decided is safe. you study the crescent impressions along the plastic barrel. one mark is deeper than the others, probably made during anger. you have noticed this before. you have tried not to. she remembers the afternoon deb produced the mark, pacing beside the desk while describing a suspect who had smiled during an interview. each time deb stopped speaking, her jaw tightened around the pen. you had watched the plastic whiten beneath her teeth and looked away only when deb addressed you directly. the pen remains suspended above the wastebasket. dropping it now would appear performative. returning it to the drawer would constitute an admission with no acceptable wording. your body solves the dilemma by becoming still. the muscles in your wrist lock. your spine straightens. heat moves beneath the collar of your blouse while your fingertips lose sensation around the barrel. “i don’t know.” the answer leaves you quietly, without ornament or defense. it is so accurate that neither woman can dismiss it as a joke. deb’s mouth closes. the folder under her arm slips half an inch before she catches it. your gaze returns to the bite marks, and you experience the unbearable reversal of seeing another person examine an object through the significance you have assigned to it. until this moment, the pen has been private because its meaning existed only inside her attention. now deb knows enough to know that meaning is present, even if she cannot yet name its shape. you lower your hand, though you do not release the pen. deb takes one step into the office and lets the door swing inward behind her, reducing the view from the corridor. the gesture may be practical. it may be mercy. it feels intimate because deb performs it without comment. “it’s dead,” deb says after a moment, her voice quieter now, stripped of the coarse amusement that usually protects her from discomfort. “the pen. it doesn’t even fucking work.” “i know.” deb looks at your face with a concentration that makes the skin beneath her eyes tighten. you can endure being seen more easily when the observer misunderstands you. pity, suspicion, flirtation, irritation, all can be corrected internally. this attention is worse because deb has stopped deciding too soon. she is allowing the evidence to remain unresolved. “did i give it to you?” your eyes remain on the barrel. “no.” “did you steal my shitty pen?” the question nearly becomes a joke. deb’s mouth pulls briefly at one corner, searching for the ordinary rhythm in which she can insult the situation until it stops being intimate. but you do not provide the expected laugh. your thumb presses into the barrel until the deepest tooth mark fits against the edge of your nail. “you left it.” deb breathes out through her nose. the sound contains frustration, embarrassment, and the faint beginning of curiosity. “that’s not really an answer.” only then do you raise your eyes. the movement is controlled, your chin lifting by less than an inch, but your throat betrays you with a visible swallow. “it’s the answer to what happened.” for one second, deb looks as though she may laugh, not cruelly but from the familiar frustration of encountering your precision where normal conversation would prefer evasion. the laugh does not come. her gaze drops instead to the open lower drawer. inside, everything is arranged in shallow rows: spare keys, correction tape, a roll of stamps, two envelopes, a bundle of messages tied with plain thread. the empty space where the pen belongs is visible.

you see deb notice it. the discovery enters your body more violently than accusation. your pulse strikes the base of your throat. moisture gathers beneath the hand holding the pen, making the cheap plastic slick. you want deb to leave before understanding anything further. beneath that desire lies another, smaller and more diseased, the wish that deb will look inside the drawer again and correctly identify the precise vacancy the object has occupied. deb shifts the folder to her other arm. “are you gonna throw it out?” you look down at the wastebasket. its clean liner waits beneath your hand, absurdly white, prepared to receive something without history. “i was.” “yeah, i can see that.” the words contain no command, yet the pause after them creates one. you remain with the pen suspended between preservation and disposal. deb does not tell you which choice would be normal. this restraint feels more invasive than mockery would have. it leaves the act belonging entirely to you. at last, you lower the pen into the drawer. you do not set it in the old place. you lay it across the front compartment, visible, almost carelessly, and closes the drawer with both hands. the lock catches with a small metallic click. deb watches the movement, then looks toward the key still resting between your fingers. “you’re fucking weird,” the words are blunt, but the usual aggression is missing. deb shifts her weight onto one leg, and the folder sags against her hip. she looks less like someone delivering an insult than someone naming a fact because the silence has made it necessary. you turn the key once. the mechanism resists slightly, and she presses harder until the bolt slides into place. only after testing the drawer with one short pull do you remove the key. “you chew office supplies.” deb’s eyebrows rise. one hand opens at her side, palm upward, as though presenting the obvious difference to an invisible jury. “that is not the same thing.” “no,” you say, glancing at the closed drawer before she can prevent herself. “it isn’t.” deb stands there another moment, the unfinished difference between them occupying the office more solidly than either woman. then she places the folder on your desk, not slamming it this time, and withdraws her hand carefully enough that the uncharacteristic care becomes its own kind of disturbance. “i need this logged,” she says. you draw the folder toward yourself. the damaged routing sheet protrudes from beneath the cover, torn diagonally where deb ignored the perforation. you smoothed the page with both hands. “you tore the routing sheet.” deb rocks back on one heel. relief briefly loosens her mouth the return of an ordinary complaint. “yeah, well, apparently i’m a monster.” “the perforation is visible.” “so is your trash can.” deb’s gaze flicks toward the clean liner, then toward the locked drawer. “use it sometime.”

OFFICE PERSONA.

▸ SECRETARY!READER arrives before the detectives because she prefers the office while it is still technically uninhabited. without voices, homicide becomes a system rather than a congregation of damaged people: telephones sleeping in their cradles, desks carrying the pale rectangular ghosts of files removed overnight, fluorescent panels warming into consciousness one electrical tremor at a time. she raises the blinds to an identical height, turns the calendars to the correct date, empties the fax tray, and separates the morning messages into categories that exist nowhere in departmental procedure: urgent, performatively urgent, frightened, lonely, and hoping to be overheard. by the time the first detective enters, the room appears to have organized itself. nobody sees her stand at the center of it beforehand, listening to the ventilation move through the walls like breath through a body too large to comprehend.

▸ SECRETARY!READER treats clerical work with an intensity that makes ordinary employees uneasy if they watch for too long. she does not merely straighten a stack of reports. she aligns their corners until every page agrees with the one beneath it. she does not simply correct spelling. she considers the damaged sentence, chooses whether to erase or strike through, and rewrites it with the solemn concentration of someone repairing an oath. dates, signatures, margins, chain-of-custody forms, witness names, badge numbers: each item receives the same grave attention. the work is not glamorous enough to explain her devotion, and she has never learned how to offer a casual explanation for why repetition quiets her.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S competence prevents most people from investigating her strangeness. the detectives do not care that she sometimes rereads a message after delivering it if the correct lieutenant receives it on time. they do not question why she keeps discarded carbon copies until the end of the week if she can retrieve a case number nobody else remembers. homicide is an ecosystem built upon tolerated irregularities. someone drinks too much. someone sleeps beneath his desk. someone talks to corpses. the secretary keeps folded scraps of handwriting in a locked drawer and becomes painfully still when complimented. compared with the rest of the department, this registers as office culture.

▸ SECRETARY!READER is pleasant without possessing the social ease people initially mistake for kindness. she says good morning because the phrase is required and because omission would create an absence others might examine. she remembers who takes sugar, who cannot tolerate milk, who is avoiding caffeine under medical instruction, and whose hands shake too badly after a difficult scene to hold a full cup. she does not present these gestures as affection. coffee simply appears. aspirin is placed beside a report. a loose button is repaired during lunch and returned without ceremony. the care is sincere, but usefulness allows her to provide it without exposing the soft, shapeless thing beneat

▸ SECRETARY!READER is less successful with casual office conversation. she answers rhetorical questions as though they require information. when someone asks whether she had a good weekend, she sometimes pauses too long, visibly sorting through which portions could survive daylight. jokes reach her unpredictably. she may stare at the speaker in solemn confusion and then laugh several minutes later while opening a file because the hidden cruelty of the sentence has finally revealed itself. her laughter is abrupt, low, and startlingly indecent compared with her careful voice. afterward, she presses her lips together as though sound has escaped without authorization.

▸ SECRETARY!READER dislikes being watched while she types but becomes acutely aware whenever someone does. the awareness begins at the skin between her shoulder blades, then travels inward until every finger seems independently visible. ordinary mistakes become possible only under observation. a key struck twice. a word omitted. a line left unfinished although she knows precisely what belongs there. she corrects these errors immediately if the watcher is unimportant. when the watcher matters, she sometimes stares at the flaw for one breath too long, seized by the obscure temptation to leave it exposed and discover what kind of attention it might summon.

▸ SECRETARY!READER eats lunch at her desk more often than she admits, not because she is overworked but because the employee break room contains too many opportunities for unstructured intimacy. she prefers food that can be divided neatly, peeled, unwrapped, or eaten in a consistent order. apple slices. crackers. boiled eggs. sandwiches cut into exact halves. when anxious, she forgets to eat and later discovers the untouched meal softened or sweating beside the telephone. she throws it away privately, ashamed by the waste and by the childish satisfaction of having denied the body something it requested.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S relationship with the department develops through accumulation rather than instant fascination. batista treats her with patient courtesy and eventually stops asking why she never joins them for drinks. she repairs a torn cuff on one of his shirts, and he begins leaving packaged pastries on her desk without mentioning it. masuka cannot determine whether her silences mean offense, confusion, or interest, which makes him unusually cautious for nearly three weeks. the first time one of his jokes makes her laugh, he becomes so unnerved by the delay that he apologizes before she finishes. laguerta appreciates her precision, distrusts the inaccessible quality beneath it, and occasionally tests her with incomplete instructions just to see whether she will ask for clarification. she always does. secretary!reader finds dexter strangely restful. he does not demand spontaneous intimacy, rarely asks questions for which he has not already prepared an acceptable answer, and understands the relief of performing normalcy through procedure. they can occupy the same silence without either attempting to rescue it. sometimes she catches him watching how other people react before choosing his own expression. sometimes he catches her reading a discarded note after the writer has left. neither comments. their mutual discretion feels less like friendship than two locked rooms acknowledging the wall between them.

▸ SECRETARY!READER initially experiences debra morgan as a disruption in human form. deb arrives mid-thought, mid-swear, mid-stride, carrying folders beneath one arm and emotional weather across her face with no concern for containment. she does not lower her voice merely because the room is quiet. she does not wait for secretary!reader to finish typing before speaking. she leans over the desk, steals pens, reads upside down, asks three questions before receiving the first answer, and treats every pause as evidence that somebody is hiding something from her personally. secretary!reader finds her exhausting, invasive, and impossible not to hear approaching.

▸ SECRETARY!READER can identify deb’s mood before seeing her. the speed of the footfalls reveals urgency, but the weight reveals whether the urgency is anger, fear, embarrassment, or the particular frustrated energy produced when deb has spent twenty minutes losing an argument to herself. secretary!reader begins arranging the desk differently according to what she hears. difficult case: water near the edge, paperwork out of reach until deb sits. humiliation disguised as anger: no questions for the first five minutes. restless boredom: something minor to sign so her hands have employment. secretary!reader insists these are administrative accommodations. the distinction becomes harder to defend once she begins feeling deb’s absence as a silence with shape.

▸ SECRETARY!READER begins making mistakes around deb long before she is willing to classify them as deliberate. they are too small to threaten a case: a duplicated date on an internal form, one omitted attachment, a blank signature line on a document placed directly where deb will find it. secretary!reader experiences each error as a temporary infection in an otherwise clean system. she could repair it in seconds. instead, she leaves it alive and waits. the waiting contaminates the entire workday. every approaching step might be deb’s. every folder dropped upon the desk might contain the exposed flaw. every time the telephone rings, secretary!reader’s stomach contracts with the humiliating belief that deb has chosen to call rather than cross the room. when hours pass without discovery, disappointment enters first, followed by disgust at the disappointment, followed by the temptation to make the error more visible.

▸ SECRETARY!READER does not understand why deb’s corrections affect her differently from anyone else’s. laguerta’s instructions make her attentive. attorneys’ criticism makes her defensive. deb’s irritation passes through her with an intimacy completely disproportionate to its content. a slashed line, an impatient question mark, wrong date written beside a margin in deb’s angular hand: these marks remain warm in secretary!reader’s imagination long after the paper cools. she smooths the page with her fingertips before filing it and then hates herself for behaving as though handwriting can retain body heat.

▸ SECRETARY!READER’S strangest office habit develops after five, when the bullpen empties and every sound becomes individually accountable. she removes her earrings, places them beside the telephone, loosens nothing else, and turns on the small desk lamp although the fluorescent panels remain lit. the earrings are small gold studs, professionally unobtrusive, yet taking them out changes the pressure around her face enough to signal that public hours have ended. the warmer circle of lamplight encloses the blotter, the telephone, her hands, and whatever page lies open before her. beyond it, the department remains colorless and exposed. she finishes routine work slowly, listening to distant elevators, pipes adjusting behind the walls, the soft recoil of a door several rooms away. if deb is still somewhere in homicide, secretary!reader knows without checking. the knowledge lives in her posture. her shoulders remain fractionally raised. she delays filing the last report. she rereads telephone messages that no longer require attention. if deb leaves, the body recognizes the departure before the conscious mind accepts it, muscles lowering by an inch as the elevator doors close.

▸ SECRETARY!READER stores the first note from deb accidentally. it is nothing more than a torn square of yellow paper attached to an unsigned report.

need this back before lunch. fix page four. and for the love of christ stop using that weird fucking font.

▸ she removes the note, corrects the page, and drops the scrap into the wastebasket. ten minutes later, she retrieves it beneath the pretense of checking whether a case number was written on the reverse. there is nothing there. she folds it once, then again, reducing deb’s handwriting to a small concealed weight inside her palm. the note enters the locked drawer before secretary!reader permits herself to decide whether she is keeping it.

▸ SECRETARY!READER attempts to correct the fixation through avoidance. she routes deb’s messages through other detectives, places completed paperwork in the departmental inbox, and takes lunch precisely when deb usually returns from court. she studies the schedule, identifies predictable points of contact, and removes herself with the same efficiency she would apply to a filing error. the strategy produces no relief. absence makes her attention more grotesque because it removes the actual person and leaves only accumulated evidence: boots stopping beside the desk, the blunt pressure of a palm against a file, the smell of coffee and stale hallway air, the exact cadence with which deb says what the fuck is this? when confronted with something mildly inconvenient. secretary!reader begins recognizing deb in objects she has not touched. an uncapped pen resembles her carelessness. a torn form suggests the force of her hand. a voice raised across the bullpen produces one heartbeat of expectation before revealing itself as someone else. the person becomes less manageable once reduced to traces. deb in the room can be answered, redirected, given a form to sign. deb absent from the room occupies every unfinished sentence.

▸ SECRETARY!READER discovers that anticipation can be cultivated. she begins hearing deb’s voice before deb speaks, supplying imagined corrections to her own work, rewriting sentences according to objections that have not yet been made. too vague. what the fuck does this mean. put the time in. don’t bury the point. the internal imitation is imperfect but increasingly intimate. it lacks deb’s abrupt changes in volume and the rough breath that sometimes enters between swear words, yet it becomes accurate enough to interrupt secretary!reader while she types. she edits according to the imagined objection, then restores the original sentence to see whether the voice returns. it does. deb becomes a private editorial presence inside secretary!reader’s mind, profane and restless, pointing at weak language, demanding direct answers, refusing the euphemisms through which secretary!reader usually survives herself. she resents this occupation. she feeds it. before submitting a report, she asks internally where deb would place the first mark. sometimes she leaves that sentence unchanged.

▸ SECRETARY!READER should report the escalating attention, establish distance, stop preserving the notes, destroy the marked reports, refuse every after-hours interaction not strictly required by the department, and restore the better chair to the conference room where it belongs. she understands each appropriate response with the same precision she brings to chain-of-custody forms. she could list the steps in order. she could type them in severe block lettering, number them, sign beneath the final line, and file the page where nobody would find it. she does none of them. instead, after five, she begins leaving one chair beside her desk unobstructed.

𓍯 best paired with: … debra morgan

𓋜 eepwtf’s notes: can we tell i did this because i got sidetracked instead of writing for my 1993 kai parker au… (no we cannot …) anyway! this might become an ongoing fic, maybe some headcannons , who knows!

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