Chapter Text
It’s the first week of winter, and Sebastian is having a bad day.
He wakes up at six, nearly an hour and a half before sunrise— too early, in his opinion, but his boss is a morning person, so their standup meeting is at eight (spirits, really, who’s awake at eight in the morning?)— and he spends thirty minutes hitting snooze on his alarm before he hauls himself out of bed. Brushes his teeth. Hops into his little five-square-foot excuse for a shower, which has absurdly low water pressure, and then tries not to freeze as he towels off, because baseboard heaters are useless against the cold, and the windows in his studio apartment are drafty.
This apartment may suck, he reminds himself with chattering teeth, but it’s his.
He punches in his daily coffee order on his way to the elevator, which, as it turns out, is out of commission. Again. Thirteen flights of stairs later, he’s out of breath and vaguely sweaty. He doesn’t have time for that cigarette he was planning on as he books it towards the subway station two blocks away.
(He’s been smoking more, lately. He doesn’t want to consider why.)
He makes it to the station with time to spare, mostly because the train is late. He could have taken that smoke break, after all, but he didn’t, and now he’s in a worse mood than usual. The platform is crowded with dozens of other dead-eyed commuters who have the same zest for life he does (read: none), and the chilled, damp air smells faintly of mildew and metal.
He tugs the hood of his dark jacket up over his head, pops in his crappy wired earbuds, and queues up a mid-2000s pop-punk playlist, turning it up to full blast. Mostly because he likes it, but also because his earbuds and carefully-curated air of detachment are what protect him from being harassed by strangers on public transit. He boards the packed train car, rides four stops, and disembarks. He trudges four-and-a-half blocks through half-frozen slush, music still blaring.
Holiday lights and baubles sparkle and glint in carefully-curated shop windows. Shiny glass skyscrapers tower overhead. The buildings had awed him when he’d first arrived in Zuzu City, but three years in, they’ve lost their novelty. All he notices now is the traffic, and the crowds, and how even though the first snowfall was only a few days ago, the snow’s already ruined, bits of asphalt and trash embedded in the ice.
He thinks of the snow in the mountains, back home. He used to sit beside the lake and gaze out across the landscape: Pristine, quiet, hushed. The sun would cast long shadows through the pines as it slipped below the horizon, catching on the ice encasing the frozen branches. He remembers feeling like the only person left in the world.
A passing car splashes dirty, ice-cold water onto the curb, soaking him from the knees down and yanking him out of his daydream. He curses under his breath and shakes his boots out, like that will make his thick woolen socks any less squelchy and waterlogged, and then, when that doesn’t help, he begrudgingly sloshes his way towards the coffee shop to pick up his latte and croissant, cringing at the way the wet, cold denim of his jeans chafes against his calves.
At least this city has decent coffee, he consoles himself, shivering.
.
His company recently moved to a bigger office space, after they were acquired by JojaCo. This is a good thing, he reminds himself for the hundredth time as he pushes open tall glass doors and trudges into the lobby, because the old place was objectively worse. It was cluttered and dingy, with low ceilings and lots of dust. It was right underneath another company’s office (either a machine shop or a testing facility for bowling equipment, if the constant industrial banging and heavy footfalls were anything to go by). The windows had rattled whenever the train passed by. The pipes had leaked. The temperature had always been either frigid or furnace-hot.
The new offices, on the other hand, are big and spacious, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the sunlight. There’s lots of concrete. There are lots of plants. The sleek new company logo is mounted on a bright teal statement wall. Plastic and particleboard desks are arranged in a modern open office layout, with waist-high half-dividers between the cubicles. There’s a water feature in the lobby.
If he’s honest, Sebastian was more comfortable in the old building.
He makes his way through the maze of desks to his own cubicle, stepping carefully so his ice-water socks squelch as little as possible, and then settles in at the fancy standing desk they bought for him last year. It’s still in the sitting position. He hasn’t used it standing even once.
He cracks open his laptop, takes a swig of his latte, and starts his day.
.
Sebastian’s morning is long and grueling, and his timecard looks about like this:
8:00 AM — Attend standup (useless).
8:34 AM — Answer two customer support emails (torture).
8:50 AM — Fix bugs that other people made.
9:37 AM — Field a frantic call from HR about the website forms.
9:42 AM — Look for the person who’s supposed to be in charge of the website forms.
10:01 AM — Give up on the website forms guy. Fix the bug without him.
10:31 AM — Submit a pull request for the bugfix.
10:45 AM — Write a strongly-worded email to Jason (website forms guy) asking why the hell he chose not to add input sanitization to the website forms that feed into their customer database, because everyone knows that’s a massive security vulnerability, Jason!
10:53 AM — Reword the email.
10:59 AM — Reword the email again.
11:12 AM — Save the email to drafts for later review (when he feels less like screaming).
11:39 AM — Adds several completely unnecessary unit tests to his earlier pull request, because Jason insisted on it. Where Jason has been for the last hour and a half, and why Jason is incapable of just adding the tests himself, is beyond him.
It’s nearly noon, and Sebastian has yet to look at a single line of code in the module he is supposed to be working on.
He decides it’s time for a coffee break.
He makes his way to the coffee station in the lobby, toting a black ceramic mug with a Grampleton Hiking Society logo emblazoned on the side. The company has a proper coffee kiosk, now, with a neatly-arranged line of fancy-looking espresso machines. Their fake chrome accents gleam in the light. He can see whole coffee beans in the glass canisters at the top, because apparently, pre-ground coffee is beneath them. Two of the five espresso machines are out of order.
He really preferred the ancient coffee machine that used to live in the old break room, a dinosaur four decades old with yellowing plastic that was sturdy enough to survive an apocalypse. After the merger, their new CEO had insisted that new coffee machines were better for morale.
He selects “French Roast” on the screen, puts his mug in, and scrolls through his phone as the too-fancy machine grinds up the beans and brews his coffee. It buzzes as he turns off Do Not Disturb. One of the text notifications is from his mom.
.
Mom — 10:42 AM
Hi Sebby! Hope your workday is going well :)
Have you thought at all about whether you’re coming home for Winter Star yet?
We’d love to have you, and I’m sure Sam and Abigail would—
.
“Sebastian!”
He looks up halfway through reading the text to find that his boss is making a beeline towards him, toting his laptop, a plastic lunchbox, and a travel mug. He’s smiling, which means he’s in a chatty mood. Sebastian cringes and braces himself for small talk.
“Hey, Menton.”
“Great morning, isn’t it?” He’s still smiling. Sebastian avoids looking directly at his teeth. He doesn’t want to risk being blinded. “Sure is chilly out, but that just makes the indoors more cozy, am I right?”
“Mm,” Sebastian hums.
“Of course, the snow’s always a nightmare to drive in, but…”
Sebastian tries his best to nod along and pretend like he’s processing what Menton’s saying as he monologues about the snow— nearly slipped on my driveway this morning and gonna affect holiday travel if it keeps up like this, that’s for sure— but he must not do a good enough job with his listening face, because a little crease appears between Menton’s eyebrows.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just a long morning, you know?” He takes a sip of his still-too-hot coffee and searches frantically for another topic of conversation, because Menton’s generally a decent boss, and he doesn’t want him to feel put out. “Are you, uh… Doing anything? For the holidays?”
Menton lights up. “Oh, thanks for asking! Diedre and I are actually taking the kids up to Wumpus World right before the new year. It’s gonna be a hoot!” (Menton is the only person Sebastian knows who can use the word ‘hoot’ in a casual conversation and not come across as completely unhinged.) (He still seems a little unhinged.) “Are you doing anything fun?”
“I dunno. My mom’s trying to get me to go home for a couple of days.” He sighs, shoving his phone in his pocket. “I told her I’d think about it, but…”
“You should go,” Menton says, filling his mug. “Everyone needs a break once in a while!”
Sebastian shrugs and makes a noncommittal noise. “I guess.”
Menton frowns. His expression goes very somber. He claps his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder and looks into his eyes in a way that Sebastian guesses is probably supposed to convey some level of gravity. This serious of an expression feels a little unnatural on Menton’s face.
“You know, there’s a limit on how much vacation time rolls over at the end of the year. I saw your file the other day. You’ve got a lot of hours saved up. It’s a lot of paperwork on management’s end to pay those hours out, if your comp time goes over. A lot of money for the company, too.”
Sebastian fights the urge to shrug his hand off. “Yeah, I know.”
“So, go! Spend it! Be with your family!”
That’s what I’m trying to avoid, Sebastian almost says, except that would call for a bit more emotional vulnerability than he really wants to have with his boss at 11:45 AM on a Thursday.
“I, uh…” The eye contact is getting uncomfortably intense. “Sure?”
“Perfect!” Menton enthuses, all smiles again. His watch beeps insistently, and he glances down. “Oh, darn! Well, it was great seeing you, but I’ve got a meeting at noon, and I still need to get my steps in! Have a super awesome time with your family! I want your PTO request on my desk by EOD today!”
Before Sebastian can reply, or try to make an excuse for why he needs to stay here, actually, Menton is already hurrying off towards the revolving doors.
“Right,” Sebastian mutters. “Will do.”