Greetings earthlings, this is a shorter chapter, but it is setting up for a longer one! Thanks for the comments, they always seem to push me in the right direction when I'm at a loss!
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AJ woke at six in the morning when her phone started to buzz, falling off the coffee table. Her back was starting to hurt from sleeping on the couch night after night. She reached down to the floor to find her phone and ended up landing on the ground with it.
She snatched the phone from under the couch and flipped it open, taking the call. "Hello?" she rasped, angry anyone would call her this early.
"Where are you?" came from the other end in a crackling voice.
AJ groaned and rubbed her eyes. "What?"
"I said, where are you?"
She blinked herself awake and looked at her phone. When she saw it read 'Dr. Evil', she rolled her eyes and sat up. "But I quit," she replied groggily.
She could hear him scoff over the phone and say, "You can't quit."
AJ tried to think of excuses, but her brain was still half-asleep. Perhaps that was the reason she was able to say, "No."
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence, but when she looked at the phone screen, she saw he had hung up. Not two minutes later she heard her door swing open and Oliver come marching in.
"Hey!" she whined while trying to brush her hair out of her eyes. She had accepted he had cut her loose and now she couldn't care less about defying him.
Oliver took her coat from her kitchen chair and walked to the living room. "Come on, you're going to work."
AJ huffed and hid under the blanket as if he would disappear if she didn't see him.
"Jesus AJ, get up."
He heard AJ's muffled reply, "No."
Oliver ran his hand through his hair and grumbled. When AJ didn't come out from the blanket he reached underneath and grabbed her ankle, pulling her out from under it. "Hey!" she whined again, trying to grab the couch cushions. But Oliver just tugged her ankle until she was at the end of the couch in front of him.
"Damnit get dressed," he said impatiently.
AJ raised her arms in defeat and said, "Fine!"
But she took her time, taking a shower and dressing as Oliver sat at her kitchen table smoking next to the window.
AJ rifled through her closet and found her single pair of nice pants, something other than her faded black jeans. When she came out dressed, Oliver gave her a look of disgust. "Oh hell no," he said and walked to the bedroom.
"Hey, you said I wear the same thing every day," she said stubbornly.
Oliver snorted and opened her monkwood dresser next to her closet and began to rummage through it. "That," he said, pointing to one of her skirts.
"Nope," she said, taking a step back from the dresser. She kept that skirt in her dresser because it didn't fit anymore. It was from her days when she was unhealthily skinny, there was no way that was going to fit.
"Put it on," he said impatiently, crossing his arms and tilting his head to the side. AJ sighed and wiggled it on, but instead of the waistband fitting nicely on her hips, it sat on her waist, making the skirt appear much shorter than it was.
She looked in her small mirror, turning around to see if she was exposing herself too much. It ended directly below her curvy butt, but if it were just an inch or two shorter, her lower half would be seen.
She turned to him with a scrunched face, shooting daggers into his eyes.
"That's better," he said and smacked her nearly naked cheeks.
Oliver walked her to work, somewhere she didn't expect to be again. But instead of leading her to her desk, he took her down the stairwell to the basement.
Right at the end of the staircase was a room she had never been in. She wasn't sure there was anything inside, she assumed it was used for storage. Oliver took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, turning on the lights and pushing her in.
It was an old office. Besides two desks and file cabinets line along the wall, it was pretty much empty. It looked like it hadn't been used in years.
Oliver walked to one of the desks and ran his fingers over it. "It's a little dusty, but it's quiet." That it was. Quiet and peaceful. "Well, go get your things and you can move down here with Kevin."
"I'm going to work down here?" she asked.
Oliver nodded and patted her head, giving her a key while she surveyed the room. "Have fun."
When he left AJ walked to the dusty desk and sat in the cushioned chair next to it. "Fuck yes," she said to herself, reveling in the peace and privacy. No more noisy agents and desk jockeys. And being in a basement? She practically had the floor to herself. She was like Fox Mulder, hiding in a basement in a government building. There could be some pretty strange things left in these abandoned file cabinets.
She nearly ran to her old temporary desk and gathered whatever she had left, taking it back down with her. For the next few hours she put off her boring work and started to clean the office, wiping the desks and dusting what she could with paper towels.
When everything was perfectly how she wanted, she plopped down in the chair and took in the sight of all of her hard work. The basement was her kingdom and she was its queen. She propped her legs up on the desk and thought of all of the possibilities of what she could accomplish here.
There was a musical tapping on the door and Kevin came in with a stack of his belongings.
"I thought you quit," he said as he dumped his stuff on the opposing desk.
AJ shrugged in her chair. "I thought so too."
"Is that how you got him to transfer you down here?"
AJ looked into the distance as if she would find her answers there. "I actually don't know. I mean he didn't tell me." She looked over, watching him unpack and get settled. "I'm sorry you have to come down here too." Other than herself, she didn't think working in a basement would be one's dream.
"Oh no, I came down here by choice."
"Aren't you an agent? Like Oliver?" She still had no idea what Oliver's position was at work, and thought maybe, just maybe he would tell her whether accidental or not.
"Ha! No. I'm not a field agent. I'm not one for adventures."
That was it. Oliver was a field agent. It made sense, but she had a feeling there was more. Or maybe her excessive knowledge of conspiracies made her believe there was something darker going on.
Kevin noticed AJ start to inspect the rows of file cabinets lined against the walls.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
Without turning away AJ replied, "Are you going to tell on me?"
Kevin snorted. "No. What are you looking for?"
"I don't know, something weird or strange," she said, forcing one of the old file cabinets open. Kevin's interest peaked and he joined her, flipping through whatever they could find.
After an hour of piling up anything from the cabinets they found interesting on AJ's desk, Kevin got a call. He answered but didn't say much. Without a word he left the office, not bothering to shut the door behind him.
AJ watched him leave and shrugged it off, continuing her search. If Oliver wanted her to come back to work so badly, he could deal with her being side-tracked for a while.
She opened one of the folders to see pictures of a disheveled couple. From what she read inside it looked like they had been claiming they saw bigfoot while huffing glue. Farfetched, but still interesting. Or at least humorous. This was a keeper.
As she leaned down over the cabinet, reading more about the paint sniffing loons, she heard the soft pattering of footsteps.
"Hey, look at this," she said, assuming it was Kevin. But her face dropped when she saw it was Oliver. The folder almost slipped out of her hands. She had learned her lesson about going through his stuff, but these were just dank abandoned folders. Plus Kevin was her partner in crime in this, so she shouldn't be in trouble.
But Oliver didn't scold her. He gave a little smirk and said, "Bend over again. That was a good view."
AJ's face turned red as she stood straight, clutching the folder to her chest. He walked to her, tugging his tie from his neck. "Let's make this quick," he said, snatching the folder from her hands and tossing it on her desk.
He took both wrists in one of his hands and began to bind them with his tie. She yelped as he pushed her on the desk, standing between her legs and trapping her with his long arms. "Did you honestly think I was just going to let you go, just like that?"
AJ looked at him, bewildered. "Yes?" she replied. She did believe that, she had already accepted it. He had been so cold the past few days she thought he had lost all interest in her. Which of course, had been fine by her, but confusing.
