Work Text:
You hadn’t intended to talk to her when she sat down at the lunch table, but you always do. You’re compelled by now, ‘s not your fault.
You watch her as you talk.
“You make your own lunch, Por?”
Green eyes flicker up, down again. You wrote her some of your best goddamn poetry about those eyes when you first met her, and the bitch still wouldn’t give you a chance.
What other man would write her poetry, you wanna know. If she’s not fallin’ for that, what’s the point being nice to her or pretending not to stare at that gorgeous ass. You were angry for a couple months straight. Hell, you still are, but somewhere in the middle you started bein’ okay with the anger.
Somehow that turned into this.
“You oughtta make lunch for me some time,” you say, and her shoulders tense up. Across the table from you, Rufioh puts his head in his hands.
“Fuck off, Ampora,” she says. Her lips twitch into a sneer, a square, black shape and you wish she wouldn’t wear that dark lipstick, it’s so fucking distracting. She’s distracting you.
…Hell, never mind, you’re distracting yourself.
“You could always go eat somewhere else,” you tell her, leaning in a bit closer than you know she’s comfortable with. “Nothin’ stoppin’ you, but you come over here and eat with us instead. I got a theory, Por. Babe.”
“That’s sexual harassment.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment, ain’t you?”
She punches you in the mouth, not hard enough to knock you down but hard enough to give you a little split in your lower lip. And that’s what gives you a boner for the rest of the lunch hour.
Across the table, Rufioh scratches the back of his neck and mumbles, “Should report—“
“No,” you and Porrim say at the same time, glaring at each other. Fuck knows how much trouble you could both get in, what with your flirting and her hitting and the fact that you’ve been keeping it under wraps for actual months. But…it’s not just that you don’t want to get in trouble.
It’s not that you like bein’ hit, it’s not like that—
Well it’s a little like that. Truth is…
Truth is, it’s the way her eyebrows lower and the little flash of bared teeth and the way her breath comes faster when she’s yellin’ and—you shuffle your feet under the table, knowing you got ten minutes until you have to stand up and get back to work—the fact she gets angry at you in particular, how her eyes burn when she looks at you.
“Cronus, come on.”
“Hell no,” you say. Your voice is tight and you cough a little, embarrassed, adjusting the crotch of your jeans as discreetly as you can. “I’m…gonna relax a little longer. Fuck the administration, you feel me?”
Rufioh squints at you, then grimaces and steps out. You put your head down on the table like you’re takin’ a nap and try to think about things that don’t turn you on.
Yeah, by all rights one of you shoulda reported the other by now. Or you shoulda fucked by now. By all rights. Just your opinion.
It sets you on fire ‘cause you know it ain’t normal, ain’t no way she’ll go for angry sex ‘cuz you’re basically everything she hates. Actual hates, not, like, fake-hates. And you can’t even feel gipped because fuck, you started off tryin’ to be nice, then makin’ her angry out of spite, but the spite’s all gone now. It’s all about the heat in your gut when she glares at you and the tone of her voice when she tells you she’ll kick your ass if you call her “babe” again.
You can’t blame her, really. Can’t expect anything. No sane woman’d want to hear how her anger kept a man warm on cold nights.
But when that ain’t enough, there’s always beer.
You need the money for art but when a sad romantic needs the comfort of a cold beverage, he’s gotta follow his heart. You’re already surrounded by empty bottles when the phone rings. Grumbling, you fumble around the floor by your patchy armchair. Things clink and then your hand bumps into the phone by chance.
“Cronus Ampora.”
You weren’t expecting the voice on the other end.
If she hadn’t called you when you were drunk, conversation might not have gotten out of hand. Other stuff might not have gotten in hand.
But you don’t have the presence of mind to wonder what the hell she’s up to when you hear her voice over the phone.
“Makin’ personal calls through th’ work phonebook?” you slur. “Had no idea you wanted me that bad, Por.”
“This was a bad idea,” she mutters. You make sloppy kissing noises into the phone, imagining her expression of disgust and shuddering, leaning back in your armchair.
“Whaddaya want, sweetie?”
“I want you…to tell me what you want to do to me.”
You don’t even think to wonder whether it’s a non-sexual request. You’re already there. You’re sweating, your vision blurs. You let a careless hand rest against your thigh and think muzzily back to all the pornos you’ve watched.
“Finally warmin’ up to me, huh? Man, you had me wonderin’, Maryam. You wan’—you wanna know—I wanna dress you up, bend you over a table, smack your ass an’ call you…all sorts of things, man, all that shit thass inappropriopriate for the fuckin’ workplace. Slut. Annnnn not have you talk back at me. Nnnnfuck it’d be hot if you’d just. Take it. Not bitch at me.”
There’s a muted noise from the other end of the line and then a heavy inhale-exhale. “God I hate you,” she says, and it ends in a fucking moan. She sounds out of breath. The fuck is she doing. She getting off on this?
You’re already gripping the crotch of your jeans and the little noise electrifies your drunk brain. Blood throbs between your legs.
“You wan’ me to keep talkin’?” You keep your voice as smooth as you can make it with a hand frantically undoing your belt, and she growls No but she doesn’t hang up.
Doesn’t hang up when you keep talking either. Asks you questions. What do you want her wearing, how hard are you gonna fuck her exactly, and you do tell her exactly, fuck you’re so drunk and it feels so good and you’re gonna make her beg, you’re gonna go until you’re done and not stop to ask her, you’re gonna—
You’re gonna…
…need to wash your boxers in the morning, fuck.
On the other end of the line there’s a throaty final gasp that collapses into heavy breathing, and then a click.
She hung up.
When you’re still drunk you have plans to gloat at work the next day.
Then it’s the next day and you can’t even fuckin’ look at her. She should be the one embarrassed, she’s the one who called, but no. She just smirks at you, lookin’ down on you, and there’s all this hot, oily rage in you and it still just turns you on.
When she sits down at the lunch table you get up, leave the building, and go to McDonalds. You don’t understand.
You call her a couple nights later, not drunk at all but too mad to care. You’ve been stewing over it for too long and you can’t stand it anymore.
“Hey, sweetie,” you grind out, and the annoyed sigh from the other end of the line is enough to make you squirm a little, sitting at your dinner table.
“Cronus, I swear to god if you don’t hang up right—“
“What?” you ask, painfully aware she can probably hear how breathless you are. Fuck. Fuuuuuck. “What…are you going to do about it?”
In the staticky silence, you can hear a movie playing on her end. When that sound cuts off, her voice gets louder in your ear, like she’s whispering to you. You breathe heavy through your nose.
“Ampora. I really don’t think you want to hear my answer to that, it doesn’t involve any sandwiches or frilly little maid costumes.”
“No, I got you,” you manage to choke out. “I like it…when you’re mad. I, like—look, Maryam. Porrim.”
“I’m well aware of that, you self-righteous little shit,” she says, and you shift uncomfortably in the kitchen chair—you’re gonna have to move to your bed or something if this keeps up, fuck, what’s wrong with you, fuuuuuck— “You spend every work day harassing me, what do you think I—“
“No, no, I mean—I mean, I like it. When you’re mad at me. ‘s why…all the stuff I said the other night… ‘Cuz you’d be angry’s fuck if I treated you like that, you’d hate it…”
You trail off, knowing you’re screwed, you wrecked this whole thing, whatever it was, ‘cuz there’s no way she missed the way you said hate. She knows now.
“So if I said…when you look at me like I’m a whore, like a hole to fuck, it makes me want to shove you against a wall and smack that stupid fucking cigarette out of your mouth—“
“Jesus fuck,” you practically whimper, and she laughs in a disbelieving way that makes your face go red, you’re furious but so, so turned on. You remember hazily, stumbling in the direction of your bedroom, the way she told you she hated you over the phone, when she called you. And it makes sense, you get turned on when she’s mad at you, and being mad at you gets her—
“—and every time you give me that greasy fake smile all I can think about is getting you on the floor and stepping on you, holding you down—just letting you know now, you’ll never have me bent over a fucking table moaning and begging, alright?”
“You’d do it--for me--though,” you pant, pulling your jeans down. “You know you would, you want it like that, like any girl—“
“No, you want it like that. I could…leave pink lines…all up and down you with my fingernails…and if you think—I’m only going to slap you in the face you’ve got another thing coming.”
You’re basically certain you’re both going now, you can hear her breathing heavier, this has to be the worst phone sex ever. Or the best, fuck. “You—hhhhn!—you—think about this a lot, babe? You wanna make me happy?”
“Fuck you,” she slurs. There’s a kind of rhythm—you spew your sexist, macho clichés between moans and grunts, and she tells you exactly how she feels about that, and both of you just get more infuriated until it all just gets lost in a rustle of heavy breathing that eventually slows.
“Porrim,” you say after a while, lying on the floor with your eyes closed and your free hand situated awkwardly to one side, “you wanna…you wanna go on a date sometime?”
“Absolutely not,” she says, still a little breathless. And then, before you can protest, she says, “I don’t want to have dinner with you, I want to fuck you. I’m free tomorrow.”
“I think you mean you want me to fuck you,” you grumble, sitting up slowly. She laughs, deep in her throat, and if you hadn’t just finished jerking off you’d probably be hard again. You swallow hard.
“We’ll see,” she says, and hangs up. You absolutely hate her.
You can’t wait for tomorrow.