Work Text:
FACILITIES
From: M. Morgan, Executive Assistant for Director Ramos
To: D. Tucker, Head of Facilities
Subject: Maintenance Request, Level 4 Room B
Dave,
When you get a chance, room B on level 4 needs a refresh, please see the attached request form detailing the damages.
We really are so sorry about this.
Thanks!
Madelyn
Dave needs a good ten minutes and another cup of coffee to regroup after he opens the attachment. He dials the extension for Assistant Morgan's desk then waits as the phone rings. If she’s surprised to see the facilities ID on the screen, she doesn’t let on, and Dave barely waits for her standard phone greeting before barreling ahead.
“Mads, what the hell? A “refresh,” seriously? I thought you guys just used that room for conducting interviews. How does anyone put almost a dozen holes in a goddamn wall during an interview? You...that was part of the interview? Jesus Christ, who the hell did Ramos hire?”
As he listens to her explanation, Dave’s eyes grow progressively wider. His own hiring experience at Deep Sky had been pretty normal as far as these things go, certainly nothing he might not have walked away from. Should he be feeling grateful that no one locked him in a room with a burst pipe and told him to fix it before he drowned? His apprenticeship was a long time ago and it definitely never covered that contingency.
“Okay, well that was certainly a choice. We might as well just rip everything out and put in whole new panels, I guess, the drywall is gonna look uneven as hell if we just patch it up. Never mind the broken lamps, we're lucky he left the electrical alone.” He takes another gulp of his coffee, already composing a strongly worded memo to Ramos that he'll chicken out of sending. A little extra work is usually the lesser evil compared to having his department be noticed in the way that tends to result in performance evaluations and surprise audits.
“Fine, I'll have to make sure we still have some paint in that color. Someone else can deal with the furniture. Seriously, Maddie, you owe me for this one. Tell Ramos to come up with some normal ways to interview people, okay?”
He pauses, making a mental note to check that nothing was damaged when whatever was done to the HVAC system happened. Presumably Ramos wouldn’t let any candidates actually die during an interview, he’s at least eighty-five percent sure of that, but the thought lingers regardless. “Clearance level E, you said? Right, so I'm guessing he passed. Just for the record, if anyone ever doesn't pass, I don't want to be the one called to deal with the cleanup.”
Dave shakes his head as he hangs up, mentally tallying up the materials he’ll need for this one. This job is so weird. This place is so weird, with its moody lighting and its mixture of sleek technology and brutalist architecture. He keeps telling Director Ramos that all the glass office walls are an expensive way to not have a secure workplace, that they really need railings on all those open balconies to be up to code, and for the love of fuck, stop asking him to try and improve the “astral projection room” layout unless someone is going to give him clearer directions. He doesn’t know how to look at building schematics and magically make them be more attuned to the harmonies of the universe. Besides, no one’s used that space in ages and it’s not like it’ll ever be an essential part of whatever it is everyone else does around here. He can probably turn it into an extra break room and no one will ever notice. How anyone can relax in this building enough to meditate is beyond him, anyway.
IT STAFF
Weekly IT staff meetings at Deep Sky were usually dull affairs, unless Elon Musk had done something new for them to make fun of or someone got Elliot going about AI “art” again, but this meeting is strained. Subdued. Shit has hit the proverbial fan and no one wants to be the first one to speak.
Five minutes in, Gary gives up. This is the kind of bullshit department heads get paid to deal with, after all. He's not afraid of a pretty boy ex-airman. He's not.
“Okay, so we got hacked.” His lip curls at the term, years of bad movie clichés about computers and teenage hackers flashing through his head. “By the newbie, who we really should have been briefed on during the hiring process, considering his background. Clearance levels aside, anyone with that much NSA training was gonna run circles around us given the first opportunity. But hey, no one died and Ramos is too busy with his long-lost nephew or whatever to remember that we told him those databases were unhackable. We can fix this before anyone reminds him.”
Cassie looks up, dark circles under her eyes. “We still don't really understand how he accessed the network anyway, he's so new he doesn't even have an email account yet. And when I very gently suggested we shouldn't allow personal cell phones on campus he just raised an eyebrow at me and ignored it. Forget clearance level E, just give him whatever Ramos has and be done with it. He'll get in anyway and this way we don't waste anymore energy trying to keep him out.”
Gary considers her, squinting slightly. She's right, fights over digital security have traditionally not gone the way he wanted, and Ramos obviously sees this kid as his new golden boy if absolutely zero consequences have resulted from any of this renegade behavior. They're lucky no one at the DOD has traced anything back to their location – Manes is evidently just that good, out of their league entirely, and if he wasn't so intimidated by the idea, Gary would be asking him what he'd done and how he'd done it. “Fine. We'll call that clearance level F, for 'Fuck this, it's pointless.' Let's try and move on. I'm not saying to pretend this week never happened, but we can learn from it and get back to normal.”
Less than a week later, the team is back around the table, sullen faces back on display. They are so not getting that pizza party at the end of the fiscal year this time, not after another fiasco. He'd personally assured Ramos those security cameras were foolproof, sector two was supposed to be the most secure part of the facility, and not only had they been hacked again, but no one who had access to the archive even noticed one of the artifact locker doors hanging ajar for days or Manes hauling the damn machine up so many levels looking like death warmed over. Security is getting their own earful about now, most likely.
Gary sighs, pushing aside the feeling of déja vu.
“Okay, we all know what happened and who the problem is. I'm not going to point any fingers, because I know there's literally nothing we could have done to keep him out of the system. Starting today we're moving to a diagnostic schedule consisting of daily checks, not weekly, and we're scheduling some additional training this year so start thinking about your developmental goals before it's evaluation time.”
He frowns, trying to sound stern but knowing his heart really isn't in this.
“Last thing. I've seen the chat logs, and some healthy bitching is fine, you know I'm not going to stop that, but whoever hung up the dart board with Manes' picture, that's a step too far. Take it down before Ramos sees it and pink slips every last one of us. Dismissed.”
SECURITY
This was supposed to be an easy job. Watch the gates, keep people out of the building, take turns being on the response team for any actual emergencies if they ever happen. Nothing ever seems to happen, so usually it's just running drills and kicking back to watch the monitors. Yolanda brings her knitting sometimes, Tim reads his trashy romance novels, and Stan can usually get away with watching the game on his phone; being shift leaders gets them a few perks, after all. It's been quiet, maybe they've gotten soft, but when an Air Force Captain comes in for an interview they really don't think much of it. Sure, Stan raises an eyebrow when the same guy is escorted from the building at gunpoint a few days later, but Ramos looks like he's handling it so he doesn't interfere. He's not paid to fish in the Director's pond unless invited, so really, his only thought other than “huh, wonder what he did” is that Yolanda is going to be upset – she really liked watching new guy coming and going.
Only for some reason, Yolanda's eye candy is back again the next day like nothing ever happened. Theories start flying, ranging from the salacious – he's Ramos's boytoy and the whole thing was a part of some kinky roleplay – to the more boring idea that maybe Stan had fallen asleep and hallucinated the whole thing, despite what the cameras say. He chalks it up to more of those weird hiring tests Ramos likes to use and slowly starts to relax on night shift again, until some rando cowboy with a headful of wild curls just swaggers right up and flashes the camera at the main gate. Luckily, the move is to show off a message written on his shirt and not any exposed body parts, so Stan just calls up the Director to let him deal with it, relieved he won’t have to waste more of his game time trying to convince another drunk, naked redneck that they're just very, very lost, no secret bases to see here.
When the cowboy comes back out hours later, hand in hand with none other than Captain Eye Candy, he probably shouldn't be surprised, though it does put a few holes in his “Manes is Ramos’ bit on the side” theory. He spends the rest of his shift forming half a dozen new theories that he figures will make for some entertaining chit chat at the next security briefing.
Instead, the next briefing mostly consists of Ramos reading them the riot act for completely missing what turns out to have been a series of security breaches involving a highly restricted artifact and (of fucking course) the mysterious ex-Captain Manes. Rather than taking Stan's perfectly reasonable suggestion that they knock Manes down a few clearance levels in response, Ramos makes them walk extra patrols and liaise with IT to put together a tighter surveillance camera protocol, which just feels unfair.
To add insult to professional injury, Manes himself shows up to the interdepartmental meeting to point out all of the flaws in their security and what they should do to fix them. He doesn't even sound sorry for running circles around them at every turn or being the cause of so much extra work.
Seriously, what a dick.
Even worse, Ramos gives the cowboy an upper level clearance to match. The cowboy charms Yolanda within a week and soon even Stan has to admit the guy isn’t so bad to have around, giving up all pretense of dislike after he fixes one of the electric carts they use for conducting perimeter checks. There are much worse visitors to deal with than a slightly scruffy mechanic who sometimes bakes them “Sorry my boyfriend embarrassed you during your routine lockdown drill again” cupcakes as an olive branch.
JANITORIAL
Carl exits the elevator on level 10, pushing a heavily laden cleaning cart and bopping along to music blaring from his phone. He pauses almost immediately, shivering from the unexpected shock of a cold draft, and stares at a sea of broken glass. This is…not what the upper levels usually require in terms of cleaning. Shit has gone down and no one has thought to inform any of the janitors, as usual.
“Aw, hell, how did they break all these windows? They're not even taped off! The safety committee is gonna have someone's ass for this.” Snow is blowing into the room, for fuck’s sake. He was supposed to just grab the trash, wipe away any fingerprints or smudges left on the glass surfaces, maybe dust a keyboard or two. Now it's going to take the rest of the evening to clear up, probably involve several more trips to the dumpsters. In the dark. At least someone else is responsible for replacing the actual windows - Dave’s gonna be pissed, considering they just finished with the ones cracked by all those weird bats.
Leaving the cart by the elevator, he considers the full extent of the damage. There’s a sad crunch as safety glass compresses under Carl's foot, tiny pieces scattered around like a blast zone. He heaves a full body sigh, resigned. After killing the music he reaches for a walkie talkie, his dreams of an easy shift evaporating into the night along with his good mood.
“Yeah, hey Bob, I'm gonna need some help up on ten. This is more of a mess than usual.” He scans the debris, notes the splashes of blood on some of the glass, and sighs again. “Bring hazmat bags and a sharps container, would you? No, I mean the big box one, this is...a lot. Oh, and grab some caution tape if you have it. Yeah, thanks.”
He hooks the walkie back on his belt, then frowns as he spots something lying amidst the glass and utters a soft but colorful curse. He’s used to idiots thoughtlessly leaving trash lying around, random hair ties dropped on the floor or on one memorable occasion a single sock that was never claimed, but this is a new low.
“Who the fuck left a used syringe on the floor?” Carl gingerly prods the thing with his boot, still muttering to himself and wondering which asshole is shooting up on the job this time. “I thought they canned the dude who got caught doing coke in his office. Every day it's something, I swear to god. Fucking scientists are worse than lawyers.”
STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT
Staff meetings in Deep Sky's Strategic Development department - office slogan “No, this is not a marketing department, stop suggesting we advertise” - have always been weird, but ever since Director Ramos started hiring in Roswell, it's been Weird. Weird even for a clandestine organization that studies UFOs and hides that fact from a good two-thirds of its staff. Enough heavy sighs can be heard regularly around the office to fill dozens of party balloons, to the point where it's starting to sound like a yoga class instead of a professional meeting space.
Winston, the long-suffering department head, looks more like a linebacker than a yoga instructor, not to mention infinitely less zen. His expression tells the rest of them that it’s not going to be a fun meeting. “Okay. I know Ramos has been handing out Level E Clearances like they're candy and wants this place to be all “we're a family” instead of actually treating it like a secure facility that handles classified information, but can we at least make them sign something that says they'll stop talking about aliens in public places where anyone could overhear? Because we've kept an eye on Roswell and the townies think Ms. DeLuca runs some sort of drug ring out of the Wild Pony. They’ve decided all the alien talk just means they're speaking in code.”
“What, seriously?” A pause. Someone bounces their pen on the table top, already fidgeting. They've all had way too much caffeine before this meeting; it was probably a bad idea to have it at all. “What sorts of drugs?”
Winston makes an unimpressed face, obviously annoyed that this conversation is even happening, let alone continuing. This entire thing seems expressly designed to ruin his day. Week. Probably his month. The year might be salvageable, but he's not counting on it. Maybe he should take up goat yoga - he hears that’s a thing now. Animals sound a lot easier to wrangle than these people.
“Rumor is there's a new party drug called Alien Glass but no one seems to know what it looks like, what it does, or how to get it. What they do have are lots of assumptions that acting as the hub for dealing it is what finally pushed the Pony into actual solvency. For a while there were questions about that new mead some guy called Bert was selling, too, something about werewolves? But that one is actually legit.” Thank god, because looking into Bert's Mead had left him with a howling headache, pun fully intended, and a new drinking problem. The stuff was seriously, surprisingly good.
“Well, we could...” The speaker trails off into uncertainty, silence settling over the table like the deep space so much of the building spends their time studying. No one else volunteers to fill it.
“Okay, fine, if any actual suggestions come to you, you know where I am. Otherwise, you know what? Let's just use it. Drugs are easier to explain than aliens and it is so not my turn to deal with the Roswell Tourism Board.”
LAB
Darby loves her job at Deep Sky. Adores it, despite what her coworkers might say about her resting bitch face. Running the medical laboratory there is better than dealing with asshole PIs at any given university, better than working insane overtime for private labs where the number of samples you could run mattered more than your precision and accuracy (or your value as a person), and way, way better than working for the State where idiots with zero benchwork experience got promoted over you just because they knew the right people and had put in the expected number of years in the department. Also, not to give brownie points for the most basic accessibility accommodations, but literally everything in her lab space at Deep Sky is suited to her needs or can be adjusted to be so, something she can't say about anywhere else she'd ever worked.
Oh, yeah, and she supposes the state-of-the-art, secret, “no one else has this, seriously they have no idea” lab equipment has a lot to do with it. One of the incubators at her old job had to be shut using two bungee cords and a prayer, another place had had mold in the cabinets thanks to generations of analysts not drying glassware properly before storing it, and the interpersonal drama at one company was the kind of material more suited to a soap opera than a place of business. No one at Deep Sky is stealing supplies to make meth; she doesn’t have to know more than she wants to about anyone’s sex life; and the instruments can run a DNA analysis in minutes with only minimal pipetting on her part, or identify proprietary amnesia drugs with the press of a few buttons. Absolute dream.
Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses, even on a good day. She's still smarting from the lecture Ramos gave her about running his DNA – “Alex Manes is not a good liar, Dr Gonzalez, how did you fall for that?” – and adjusting to having Liz Ortecho suddenly sharing lab space in the same building is a challenge all on its own. Sure, it's fun showing her Deep Sky's toys, but the glint she gets in her eyes sometimes, something well past typical scientific curiosity, is...unsettling. It always leaves Darby with the feeling that she's missing something, like there's a lot going on after hours that her level C clearance just doesn't let her see. Honestly, she'd rather deal with the chemists and their ridiculous homemade phosphate soda obsession than with Ortecho, who is probably going to destroy their Injury on Duty record if she keeps playing with dangerous shit without wearing any PPE whatsoever. Ramos gets a twitch in one eye every time OSHA standards are brought up and she doesn't want to go through another surprise audit from the safety committee.
Rolling her eyes at the latest all-staff email, Darby wheels over to check on one of her analysts, an older gentleman who moves slower these days but still has a steady hand and doesn't mind doing most of the rote quality control checks that she finds rather boring. Saul nods to her but doesn't look up from his task of testing a new lot of media. “One of the fume hoods is busted again. I left the report on your desk, but it's not urgent. Dunno why that one keeps going out.”
Darby's eyebrows go up. “Don't you? If it's not the one in Ortecho's lab again, I'll eat that ratty hat of yours. The only actual mystery is what exactly she keeps doing to the damn thing to short it out.” She swears the electricity in the building hasn't been the same since Ramos started hiring so many freaks from Roswell, and lab equipment and electrical surges are never two things that should go together, even with backup power systems in place.
He nods again, conceding the point. "No idea, but one of her magnetic stirrers is dead, too, so I’ve tagged it for repair and notified the QA/QC officer.” Darby hums in acknowledgment and makes yet another mental note to never let Ortecho touch any of her favorite equipment.
Saul is quiet for a few moments, scribbling away in the media preparation logbook.
“The food thief struck again, by the way, so you're out of emergency cheese."
God damn it. "Again, seriously? We need to get our own fridge, this communal shit is overrated." Honestly, this is why she keeps her chocolate stash close at hand. Darby knows they're not really supposed to store people food in the same areas where lab supplies are kept, but chocolate is a necessity. Practically everyone does it, anyway. If she went through all the drawers in this place, she'd probably find enough snacks for a full buffet.
"Yeah. I think the chemists are this close to spiking some of their leftovers with something and seeing who gets sick from it." From the faint smirk on Saul's face, he's probably in charge of the betting pool on who the culprit is.
"Hm. I didn’t say this, but tell them I can look the other way if they happen to need a nice healthy bacteria culture for some reason." For once, the biology and chemistry departments can set aside their petty rivalries and find some common ground. Hell, maybe Ortecho will turn out to be the food thief and solve two problems with one dose of E. coli .
HR
Nicole is taking a nice break with her fruit smoothie and a snack plate of pilfered cheese and crackers when yet another request involving the name “Alex Manes” hits her inbox. Since being hired, he's been the cause of one pile of paperwork after another, starting with a now-infamous interview that had honestly skirted the boundaries of legality on multiple fronts and resulted in a new entire section being written into their hiring policies regarding acceptable practices. They were lucky that a job offer and a shiny alien mystery device had distracted him from leveling any (justified) accusations of unlawful imprisonment and attempted murder. They were even luckier that further alien complications ensured Manes forgave and forgot - or maybe just forgot; it had been a seriously busy few weeks, after all - that Ramos had abducted him at gunpoint before the ink was even dry on his access badge.
By the time his payroll account had been set up, he'd hacked their system again, nearly taken a dive off an upper floor balcony, and cracked the mystery no one else had made headway on in decades, causing even more paperwork. For the next six months, every new clearance request for visitors and half of the ones for new contracted associates had come with his name attached. Everyone from the new hot doctor to the sheriff of fucking Roswell were suddenly wandering in at all hours, with Director Ramos just handing everyone Manes vouched for the keys to the kingdom, no questions asked.
She'd finally marked his personnel file as complete, and now he wants a full update to his personal information including change of name and marital status, plus benefits. He's going to need his own drawer in the filing cabinet at this rate.
Nicole looks again at the request and frowns. There's a note attached from Ramos asking for a special status denoting Manes (now Captain Guerin, ret) as a spouse of an Oasian refugee and by the way, could his access badge reflect that somehow.
She sighs in frustration and turns to her officemate.
“What am I supposed to do, Dennis, put a sparkly little alien head on it? We just redesigned those badges last year! You know, when Ramos hired him and suddenly there were all those rumors about him going through a midlife crisis because obviously he'd just hired a pretty protégé to 'mentor' I thought it was just sour grapes and bored gossiping. Now I'm half wondering if there's another kink at play here entirely and I don't want to be a part of it. We're supposed to be a 'secret' operation, but now he wants to flaunt the whole 'My favorite employee married an alien' thing to the world?”
Dennis nods along, more than used to Manes related ranting by now. It had been a long six months.
Once it's obvious Nicole is actually waiting for an answer this time, he considers it seriously for a moment before shrugging. “Well, just make it a sparkly star or something? Maybe a letter code to stick after his name that people won't look too closely at? We already have the different colors for the borders, so add a secondary one for his, or whatever. Easy.”
“Ugh, fine, but this had better be the last weird request.” She makes the face that tells him she's about to say something an HR professional shouldn't say. “I hate him. I'd honestly push him down the stairs if it wouldn't cause even more paperwork.”
“He's a disabled vet, Nicki, you can't say that. Just fix the badge and make Ramos happy. C'mon, it's not like we're gonna end up with any other employees who need this particular designation, so it probably won't even matter after today.”
Two years later Nicole marches over, gives Dennis the stink-eye, and dumps the Valenti and Ortecho personnel files on his desk. Let him deal with the accompanying sticky note this time.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES
In a quiet office tucked away towards the back of the library, Julie settles into her chair, sipping a mug of steaming tea and sighing softly. Her officemate, Erin, sits across from her and stirs her coffee, the bright mug advising everyone to “Be kind to archivists, they can erase you from history.” She smiles over at Julie, fondly sympathetic.
“Still trying to figure out where you're going to add all those entomology journals that got requested, huh?”
The look on Julie’s face tells her she’s hit the mark. “I was hoping most of them would be available digitally but of course not, he wanted some so old none of them have ever been scanned into any of the databases, so I've got to find shelf space somewhere. I knew this job would be a challenge, but honestly, what non-profit library has this many topics to cover when they're not attached to a university? One day I'm acquiring biomedical titles for the lab and the next it's freaking locusts, like who expects that? Doctor Valenti is lucky he's hot and knows how to say please.”
The small private library at Deep Sky had originally started out as an informal aggregation of articles, scientific journals, and one of the most exhaustive collections of UFO and alien related books and pamphlets ever published. Now, it’s become a sprawling behemoth with its own wing of the facility, housing materials on topics as varied as quantum physics, meteorology, history, and now the migrational habits of swarming insects native to New Mexico. Sure, this makes it a satisfying sort of challenge and means very little actual boredom, but if some of their researchers could manage to search the journal subscriptions on their own a little more and require the use of inter-library loan a little less, Julie's job would be a lot less fraught.
“The head librarian has one foot out the door into retirement, which leaves just two of us to wrangle all these random requests. Half of them are from people who don't have the authorization to see the kinds of classified materials they're asking about, and the other half always want physical copies we're not allowed to provide. If one more person asks me if they have the right clearance to see something, like the answer is suddenly gonna be what they want to hear instead of what reality is, I'll...” Breaking off before any threats can be quantified in ways that would belie her chill librarian facade, she takes a breath and a sip of tea, features calming a little. “Sorry, I know you wanted to rant about Long taking off and leaving you with that scanning project.”
“Oh, trust me, I have plenty of rant left.” Erin waves a hand, scowling at the mention of her former coworker. “Sometimes I wish we didn't hire anyone in at the lower clearance levels, they just end up leaving before they see any of the cool stuff. Also, not to be petty, but anyone who believes in 'Nazi spies in Roswell' doesn't deserve to know about the aliens. Who signs on to help study the mysteries of the universe but holds onto a boringly mundane theory like that instead?”
“Fair. That little obsession was weird, and I definitely don't know how he got a book deal out of it. Still, there are records and artifacts from the Long Farm we wouldn't have if it wasn't for him. That's something.”
Another scowl. “Maybe, but it's not like he knew what it was, and he didn't exactly go about it by the book. That paper fragment should have been preserved before he handed it to someone who didn't know to use acid-free tape on it. And I still didn't get to keep the original for the archive, just a scan of it.” The scowl deepens. “A scan with tape marks. Yay.”
Julie reaches over to pat her friend's hand. “I know, but you know the rules. Actual aliens get first rights over actual alien artifacts now, whenever possible. That was part of the deal. Plus, y'know, his husband works here and has a lot of influence with Ramos.” Julie likes Captain Guerin a lot, especially considering he generally finds his own research materials and so far hasn't presented her with a 500 page thesis alongside a request for color printing and binding like his predecessor.
Erin nods. “Yeah. I don't mean to be a bitch, and I do agree with that. Mostly. On my good days.” For a moment it seems like she might be all ranted out, but...“I just can't stand the idea of these things degrading just because they're not in stable, temperature and moisture controlled settings...”
Recognizing the well-trodden conversational ground Erin is heading for, Julie agrees and makes supportive noises, almost on autopilot, until the all too familiar diatribe runs out of steam. The two finally settle into a companionable silence, quiet alternating sips the only sounds in the room until their break nears its end. Erin puts down her mug and frowns, contemplative.
“You think some archival quality scrapbooking supplies and a how-to guide would be an acceptable late wedding present, or is that too passive aggressive?”
“Erin. No.”
“Oh, come on, I bet he'd like that a hell of a lot more than all those alien themed tchotchkes everyone else got him.”
“Now, you say that, but honestly you didn't see the way he grinned about it. Someone got him a mug that says “alien fucker” on it and he actually uses it, like all the time. I think he leans into the weird.”
CAFETERIA AND SNACK BAR
Meredith loves it when Captain Guerin comes through to her line to get snacks or a coffee. Honestly, she just doesn't get why so many people bitch about him all the time. Sure, he's kind of the Director's pet and seems to leave trails of chaos in his wake, but a lot of it doesn't seem to be his fault, really, and he's just so nice. He always holds the elevator for people, says please and thank you no matter how many times she says it's not necessary, and lets her call him “Cap” without complaint despite giving her a gentle reminder every time that he's retired now. Plus, he has a blinding smile that would make anyone's knees melt. She'd put up with a lot for that smile, especially after a day of serving cranky researchers and lab techs, and she sees it a lot more now that there's an equally shining wedding ring on his finger.
For at least the first few months after he'd been hired, Manes (his last name pre-marriage, which always makes her wonder what the male equivalent of a maiden name is) had been kind of quiet and standoffish. Nothing truly rude or antagonizing, just...quiet. Watching everything with those big, dark eyes like he was conducting some sort of silent audit. Polite, but distant. No one had been sure what his job title even was, then the rumors had started flying about all the weird shit that started happening practically the second Manes had signed on in Applied Research and Development. Electrical fluctuations, some freaky thing with vampire bats she was glad to have missed – for at least a week one of the cooks, Jerome, had tried to convince her that Ramos had hired a literal vampire, something about the guy never being there during daylight hours, but it turned out he was just a workaholic and a bit of an emo type who simply liked to wear dark colors. She ignores Jerome in favor of chatting with Manes about 2000s music whenever he comes down to take a break from whatever project Ramos has him doing, and decides he can't be that bad if he still likes Panic! At the Disco that much.
The rumors don't stop flying, and whether it's his fault or not, that week or so of chaos supposedly leads to those extra mental health days Ramos had been so generous to give them. After the drama dies down and everyone is back to work, suddenly Manes seems a lot friendlier. He brings his partner and friends around on tours – Meredith's worked at Deep Sky for five years now and she's never seen anyone else be allowed to do that, so it's kind of weird, honestly – and starts working relatively normal hours. Once his friend Dr Valenti signs on, she even sees him be dragged to one of the trivia team building events Ramos likes to host at the snack bar. He makes a lot of faces during the game, those eyebrows working overtime as he mocks Valenti’s rather impressive lack of pop culture knowledge, but she hears him laugh, too, and it's pretty adorable. The gossip that always runs rampant around the campus starts to contain fewer harsh words and speculations of which ways he might be currying favor with the boss and more honest appreciation of having him on board.
Well, except for the IT staff, who all seem to scurry away when they see Manes approaching. And HR, but they don't really like most people in general. Come to think of it, security still watches him kind of funny, too...but it's better. Really, it is.
Okay, fine. She'll admit even a happily married Captain Guerin can be a little bitchy when he hasn't had enough coffee, and he has very little patience with incompetence, but he's never unkind to any of the support staff and his snarky asides always make her laugh. He eats in the break area now instead of always staying alone at his desk, sometimes even bringing brownies or cookies or other treats to share; supposedly that cowboy partner of his is an absolute whiz in the kitchen, unlike the Captain himself. He's joked to her that he can burn water if left to his own devices, and considering the way he once managed to get distracted enough to catch something on fire just microwaving his leftovers, she believes him. They’d had to get a new breakroom microwave entirely after that incident. Someone had even hung a little dedication sign next to the scorch marks on the wall, somehow convincing maintenance to leave everything as it is. Months later, the tiny tribute is still hanging. Valenti points it out every time he and Cap are in the break area together and the resulting show is always delightful, including the eyebrow acrobatics and the way they squabble like brothers over it. It’s cute. They’re cute, and a little entertainment helps make her day go by all the faster.
Meredith is busy sorting muffins in the display case when Jerome nudges her arm, nodding in the direction of the cafeteria doors. “Here comes your favorite troublemaker. Once again looking like he’s just gotten some, even though it’s the middle of the work day.”
She looks and yeah, that’s definitely some sex hair Cap has going on. She wonders if he honestly doesn’t notice or if it’s another one of those weird power plays with Ramos she keeps hearing people speculate about. Either way, she’s kind of envious.
“Hey, if I had a handsome cowboy at home to ride, I’d be coming in looking like that, too. Mind your own muffins, Jerome.”
APPLIED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Memo to all employees (except one):
Please do not engage with Alex Guerin directly unless your work specifically requires it and you have exhausted all other options. This is not bullying or creating a hostile work environment - it is self-preservation. – Mgmt