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."
