Hi @middletails I was your Tales of Secret Santa for this year! I hope you enjoy!
Wednesday
Eizen is seeing double when he finally sends off the super mega ultra urgent proposal to Eleanor for a quick review. Seeing double while wearing his glasses.
He risks taking an eye break. For a second, his eyes aren’t quite sure what to focus on without a laptop screen, brighter than the sun in the darkness? of his office, no longer in their view. His focus swings in and out before finally settling on the clock on the other side of the room.
Shit is it eight already?
Behind him the door creaks slowly open and Edna wanders in.
“Brother? Are you ready for dinner?”
His laptop pings with Eleanor’s response, then again with Gaius’s response because of course Eleanor would cc their manager on her response like they are supposed to be doing. But damn if Eizen hadn’t sent her that in confidence, just to get a second pair of eyes.
When Eizen opens the report again, he sees Eleanor’s handiwork, updated stats and figures and she reworked one of his calculations based on the new numbers. Eizen doesn’t know where she gets them from because he just checked those numbers this morning how could they be wrong already?
The President follows up with a response that is literally nothing but gifs. Richard Windor of Windor Consulting everyone.
“Not right now,” he says. “I have one last thing to finish up.”
“You said that the last three times I’ve come up here,” Edna says. Eizen isn’t paying her much attention or he would have heard the edge of warning in her words.
Eizen doesn’t reply and instead opens an email from Leia, which also contains gifs and also fonts of different colors but there is a scarily accurate and thorough earnings report attached so Eizen deals. Leia’s source is a mystery to everyone in the office, even Gaius.
He doesn’t hear Edna leave but he quickly gets into the zone, which is spoiled when a living, breathing shitstorm crashes through his office door, pulling him bodily from his chair.
“What the FUCK Zaveid?” he chokes out through Zaveid’s grip on his throat.
No one really knows what Zaveid does but he’s got these arm muscles and Eizen can’t break free. They do come in handy, keeping Eizen from falling down the stairs when Zaveid insists on dragging him to the kitchen like that.
“One wayward workaholic brother, as ordered,” he says, depositing Eizen at the kitchen table.
When Eizen looks up, still wheezing, Edna is sitting in front of a full dinner, a glare on her face. Zaveid sits down next to Eizen whistling.
“Eat,” she orders, and Eizen is shoveling potatoes into his mouth before he can think about it.
“I can’t believe you called Zaveid,” he mutters under his breath.
“I can’t believe you made me call Zaveid,” she retorts.
“I can’t believe Edna called me on purpose to ask for help,” Zaveid chimes in with a smirk. “You must’ve been in there for, like, weeks for her to break down like that.”
“Only three days,” Eizen says.
“The office is being remodeled,” Edna says. “Normally I confiscate his laptop when he gets home but it’s harder to do that when he needs it for work.”
Eizen wishes she were joking. The thing about Edna coming to live with him, he’s found, is that it’s much harder to ignore her demands for him to take care of himself and get a proper amount of sleep and stuff when he can’t just put his phone on silent.
“Well eat up, ‘cause after this we’re going out,” Zaveid says. “Little sister’s orders.”
“Have fun,” Edna says with a smirk when he trails out behind Zaveid a bit later.
Eizen knows his laptop will be gone when he gets home and resigns himself to Zaveid’s idea of socializing. Mostly because he has no other choice.
When they arrive at the bar, the bartender greets Zaveid by name, which isn’t exactly a surprise. Zaveid seems to know pretty much everyone. Her name is Rose and she acts just like Zaveid and something deep in Eizen’s soul is screaming in terror.
What is a surprise is the man at the bar. Gaius meets Eizen’s eyes for a long second before glancing away and apparently pretending they don’t know each other. Eizen goes along with it because the idea of Gaius drinking and socializing like a normal person breaks something in his brain.
Unfortunately Gaius’s drinking partner has other ideas because Alvin waves both of them down beside him.
“Get them the strongest thing you’ve got,” he tells Rose. “Really mess them up.”
“You got it!” she replies with a grin.
Eizen thinks about protesting – it’s the middle of the week, they have work tomorrow – but he’s also got a reputation to protect.
“You’re on Svent,” he says.
“Oi, that is not my name!”
“Since when?”
“I told you, I don’t talk to my family any more!”
“Your cousin Balen comes by the office at least once a week.”
“Except him!”
No one knows why Alvin broke away from the famous Svint Inc. family business to work for Windor consulting. No one here meaning everyone because Leia has everyone’s secrets and plus she’s best friends with the young doctor that seems to be causing the main tension there.
“Shut up and drink,” Rose orders, placing three glasses on the counter in front of them. “Also drink a lot because I have a vacation coming up soon and plane tickets are expensive.”
“You could drive,” Eizen says into his drink.
“Alisha gets carsick.”
“I know a guy who can get you great tickets,” Zaveid says. “I can hook you up in exchange for free beer.”
“Not on your life,” Rose says, plucking his credit card from Zaveid’s fingers. “One, it will set a precedent and two, I don’t feel like being in debt to the mob.”
“I don’t work for the mob!” Zaveid says.
Zaveid doesn’t always tell the truth, but he also never lies. Eizen takes a book from his pocket and scratches out the word ‘mob runner’.
“This is only, like, 30% alcohol,” Alvin says. “Surely you’ve got something heavier than this!”
Rose sighs and mixes a couple of drinks together. She pours it into four separate glasses and sets one in front of each of them, including Gaius. Eizen can smell the alcohol and quickly glances around to make sure no one has a lighter because this stuff smells like it would explode.
“This is the worst I have,” she says. “I accept no responsibility for your actions if you drink this. Have fun.”
Eizen looks Alvin straight in the eyes and downs the glass in one go.
The next thing he knows, someone is kicking him awake.
He opens his eyes a crack only to immediately shut them again.
“Wake the fuck up. I’ve got better things to do then clean up after your mess,” Rose’s voice says from above him.
Everything is painful and loud and Eizen can’t remember what happened after that last drink. Zaveid is sitting at the bar, nursing a glass of water and looking like someone just ran over him with a truck.
Rose and Gaius are over by the front door, looking at something on Gaius’s phone. Gaius looks completely normal, which is blatantly unfair since Eizen remembers him keeping up with them, glass for glass.
“I want that for advertising purposes. Or maybe as a warning sign,” Rose says.
“Of course,” Gaius says. He fiddles with his phone but ends up passing it to Rose so she can do it herself.
“Honestly, how do you live in the modern world?” she says.
Gaius’s assistant probably has the most to do with that.
“Glgh…” comes from someone laying on top of him. Eizen looks down to find that Alvin has his face pressed into Eizen’s legs. “Turn off the sun…”
“Off, Svent.”
“Remind me never to do this again on a work night,” Alvin says, as though this doesn’t happen at least once a month.
“Up and at ‘em boys!” Rose says with a grin. “Don’t you all have work to be getting to?”
That’s when Eizen remembers that yesterday was Wednesday which means that today is Thursday and he has a presentation to give to another company on the other side of town.
When he stands up, he immediately falls over again. Eventually, with Zaveid and Rose’s assistance, he and Alvin get themselves upright.
“Who won?” he asks because there’s no way he’s loosing to Svent.
“The Salaryman Slayer, as always” Rose says. “I have a wall of shame. Want to see it?”
Eizen declines, mostly because he just knows there are going to be pictures of him up there soon and he’d rather remain in ignorance.
‘NEVER AGAIN’ he texts Edna as they leave, shuffling to the bus stop like some particularly nasty zombies.
‘Next time when I say come to dinner, you come to dinner,’ she sends in reply.
