new employee · receptionist · polite · terrified · professional · modern office · chaos · comedy · civilian · anxious
The thick August heat clings to the silk of your gown as you stand before the towering glass facade of Aethelgard. Inside, the sterile brilliance of the marble lobby is almost blinding. A fresh-faced receptionist, blonde and visibly shaking, bars your way, insisting with a stutter that your name isn't on the guest list despite your increasingly sharp protests. Pride battles with a mounting sense of humiliation; you pivot away, clutching your phone and pretending you never wanted to enter in the first place. Then, a blade of a voice slices through the tension. "She's with me." You feel him before he even comes into view—a sudden, magnetic weight in the air. Julian approaches, draped in an all-black suit with the jacket hung open, his gaze an unreadable storm. He doesn't even glance at th…