Affliction | ✓

v | him | 2

2.5 months before NY, 2016

he doesn't know why he's working out at 2 am in the night but this is the only way to combat his insomnia. sleep is out of the question despite how tired he is; he's tired of seeing his dead mother in his dreams.

he does around 20 more pushups before he gets bored and starts pacing his room. there's still three hours till it's dawn and he's run out of ideas to pass the time.

his eyes wander across his room and it lands on a sheet of plain paper. no, his mind tells him, no way, it's been ages.

he pushes it out of mind for a few more minutes but his eyes keep trailing back to the sheet of papers. who the hell cares? it's not like he had anything to lose anyway.

he grabs them and a pencil from his desk. he hadn't sketched anyone or anything in ages, always unsure. but right now, he just draws, doesn't think about the pencil strokes and let's his motor skills take him.

he takes a break and looks at the chaos that he had created. there were lines all around, grey and black throughout and he's drawn a man, a man with his head in his hands. he tosses the sketchpad to one side. stupid idiot, he thinks.

he huffs and spends the rest of the night watching dumb sitcoms till the first rays of the sun illuminate his dreary room.

***

it's the weekend and the office atmosphere is lax, there's another two weeks before the merger is all drawn up and the offices will seperate so he's stuck with her negative presence for another 14 days. he wouldn't mind since he's desperate to make amends but she wants to hear none of it so it makes their shared space a little tense and frankly, a lot awkward.

he generally works in silence so it's not out of the ordinary for this level of quiet to be surrounding him but he knows it's driving her crazy judging by hey antsy tapping of her fingers.

he's about to ask her a question just to ease her mind when a loud presence barges in their space. the intern who's name he forgets, swings by with lunch in her hands.

"ok babe, i'm here!" she says with gusto and he could see her smile gratefully.

"chicken salami?" the intern offers, holding out a tin towards him. he can see her frowning at the new girl in the corner of his eyes. he shakes his head with a murmured "no, thank you."

"you don't speak much, do you?" the intern (andrea, he sees written on her label) says. she gets comfortable on a chair, rotating around whilst he continues pretending to type, all of which is garbled nonsense at this point.

"hm, you're a weird one." andrea mutters. the intern finally turns towards her friend who had been steadily eating her lunch at this point. "so how's work, babe?"

"gr-" she takes a big bite of her food, "great, marvellous, simply stunning!"

"woah, slow down with the sarcasm." andrea is wry. "what's gotten you in a sourpuss mood?"

"it's just this... thing, okay? that i'm supposed to be going to and my boyfriend's out of town and i don't really have other options. wait, would you be free on the 27th of this month?"

"aw, um." andrea begins and he can almost feel the sheepish smile on her face. "babe, i'd love to help you out but sugar daddy number 2 is taking me to bora bora on that weekend."

"i have a million follow-up questions. one, wow bora bora? score! two, sugar daddy number two? explain. why on earth do you have more than one sugar daddy?"