Jane and Nathan, Monday afternoon

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

An eavesdropping Nathan gets a look at his newest employee at work, and discovers she's very good at it. Unfortunately, in the process he finds out something a little worrisome - about himself, not Jane.


"Hi there! You've reached Elpis Westchester! I'm Jane, how may I direct your call today?" Jane grinned broadly at the phone. She'd heard somewhere that people could hear you smiling, even if they couldn't see it. Also, Jimmy her manager at the Hut had always insisted that she smile at every one of the customers that came in. It was hard, hard habit to break. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Yep!" She scribbled a couple of notes. Where the heck was Liechtenstein? "Okay! Well, Mr. Espinosa is out of the office right this second, so I'll have to put you through to his voicemail. Thanks so much for calling, and have a really great day!"

The door in the partition that separated the office from the rest of the boathouse was open, just a crack. It often was during the day; Nathan had long-ago made it clear that the office staff was more than welcome to raid the fridge in the kitchen whenever they wanted. More unusual, however, was the fact that there was someone standing just on the other side, watching through the crack.

Nathan smiled, very slightly, at Jane's chirpy handling of the phone call. The act of smiling felt odd, as if the muscles involved hadn't been used in months.

"Oooookay," Jane ran a finger down the day's checklist. Made the coffee (not that anyone was around who drank it,) watered the plants, filed the ginormous stack of reports that had been abandoned on her desk, sorted the mail... "Here we go. 'Please put together some info packets with the usual stuff in them and the presentations that are on your desk.' I can do that. Although I didn't see any presentations when I sat down...?" She stood and started sifting through the massive piles of paperwork that had built up at her workstation.

Nathan tried to get a better look at what she was looking at - and froze as the motion disturbed the door, which gave an alarmingly loud creak. It was as good as shouting 'Hey, I'm watching you from over here!'

The quiet sound made Jane look up. That was weird. No one was supposed to be in the office right now.

It was Jane. Surely he could talk to Jane. But Nathan found himself backing as carefully as he could away from the door, already plotting out his retreat to the stairs and the sanctuary of the upper floor.

Small shuffling noises followed the creak and Jane frowned. Was someone out in the hall? Why wouldn't they just come in? The weirdness of the last few days had put her nerves somewhat on edge. Maybe she should just check and see if someone was out there.

Trapped behind a stack of file boxes that were to big to jump, Jane quickly dissolved and floated to the door leading to the main boathouse. Drifting around the door, she could see a shadowy yet familiar figure making his way up the stairs. Oh. Jane felt silly. It was probably just Nathan wandering around. It was his house after all. Hey Nathan? Did you need something? she asked.

Nathan wheeled around in a moment of blind panic - and wound up sitting down hard on the stairs. "Ow," he said shakily, his heart thundering in his ears as he tried to figure out - oh, of course that was who it was. "Uh... Jane, can you... re-form, or whatever it is you do..."

Sure! Jane swirled back down to the floor and shifted. "Are you okay?"

Nathan blinked at her - and then closed his eyes. "I would be much better if you went back and got your clothes."

"Oh! Yeah, okay. " Jane turned and padded back into the office, rolling her eyes the whole way. People. Cripes.

Nathan stayed where he was, taking a few deep, shaky breaths. Trying to wrestle down the nausea the thoughts touching his own had provoked. That was... not a good reaction at all, and made him rather glad that he and Moira had decided Rachel would stay on the island for at least a few more days. Surely I won't do that with her. Surely. Moira had been careful about making contact through their link, and it hadn't been bad...

Jane pulled on her shirt and skirt and headed back out into the hall. "Seriously, are you okay?" Nathan actually looked anything but, in her opinion, but then what did she know?

He rubbed at his temples, swallowing and then forcing a faint, unsteady smile to his lips as he looked up at her. "Been a bad week," he said, somewhat unnecessarily. "Sorry for the spooky eavesdropping. I was just... watching. Didn't really have a chance to see you at work before this all happened."

Jane stopped at the base of the stairs and leaned up against the bannister with a shrug. "It's fine. I just wasn't expecting anyone." She chewed her lip. "You kinda look like someone dropped a truck on your head, though. Do you want me to run and get someone?"

"God no," Nathan said a bit vehemently. "I've worried Moira enough this week. This is just... nerves." It was a lot more than that, but he didn't think he really needed to explain to Jane what had really just happened. He didn't know that he wanted to think too hard about it, really. "It's just going to take a while. To get my head sorted out."

Jane nodded decided to drop the subject. Nathan presumably knew what was best for him even if it was freaking her out more than the checking up on her did. She just couldn't help worrying. Friends worried about friends, right?

"So," she asked, aiming for a lighter tone. "How long were you out here? Hopefully not long enough to catch my two-hour-long long-distance call to my fabulously rich boyfriend Pierre in Switzerland, I hope?"

"Those Swiss boys are trouble. You watch yourself." Nathan rubbed at the back of his neck, leaning back. He was still stiffer than he should be. A week of inactivity - confinement - did that, though. "Apart from running up my long-distance bill... how goes it?"

"Tell me about it. The last Swiss boy I date ran off with a girl named Monique and a boy named Richard, which he kept pronouncing as Ree-shard, which sounded really fake like it was from a cartoon..." Jane let the lame joke putter out. "It's going okay. I've stopped hanging up on people when I try to transfer them. You guys have a lot of filing to do. Also boxes and boxes of old stuff that I've been told you don't use anymore, but you can't throw out, and you don't have anywhere else to put it, so it's lying around everywhere. We've got to figure something out because it's getting to be a fire hazard and I do lighting, not rain. But otherwise, we're going fine. It's fun." She gave him a crooked smile.

Nathan nodded slowly. "The filing is a constant trial," he said. "We really need a small army. I keep trying to encourage this whole paperless office thing but somehow it just never works." Such a normal sort of conversation, at least since she'd put her clothes back on. He wanted to hug the conversation and kiss it and call it George.

Jane snorted. "You couldn't fit a whole army in there. Not even one made up of Smurfs. But we've got to do something about the boxes before we lose someone permanently in there. Can I check around and see if there's somewhere else we can store them? Do they have to be here?"

"There might be some extra space in one of the storage rooms in the mansion," Nathan said after a moment. "There's certainly not the space out here..."

"Keen! I'm on it." Jane poised herself to swing around the newel post and onto one of the step when the office phone rang. "Duty calls, boss," she tossed over her shoulder, changing direction and heading toward it. "Let me know what happens on 'The Young and the Restless', okay?"

Nathan looked mildly affronted, almost despite himself. "I don't... watch soaps," he said, almost sputtering. Then it struck him just how ridiculous a comment it was, and he couldn't help a slight smile, letting his head rest in one hand for a moment. "Really."

"Of course not," Jane's disembodied voice replied, with the faintest trace of disbelief before switching to perkier tone. "Hi there! You've reached Elpis Westchester! I'm Jane, how can I help you today?"

Comments

[x-rahne.livejournal.com]

He wanted to hug the conversation and kiss it and call it George.

I hate to tell you this, Nathan, but if you manage that it will definitely have ceased to be a normal conversation.