Another Day At The Office (Closed for CoquetteWeaver)

[Firmhanded_Daddy]

He pulled the long Ethernet cable through the wire conduit and made sure he had a good extra ten inches of length in case she wanted to move to move her virtual terminal around a little and reorganize her desk just a bit. This allowed her a little flexibility. This done, he picked up the hand held screw driver and screwed the brackets down which secured the Ethernet cable along the support beam, covered by plastic conduit covering to keep it from being exposed, and then tamping down the conduit with friction locks that could be popped off with a flat head screw driver.

He rolled his broad shoulders with a soft groan, he had been at this for two hours already, but he was nearly done. Building an entire work area from scratch was a pain in the ass, but this was a special request from one of the department heads. His boss had handed him the assignment complete with pictures of the desk’s exterior current configuration to be copied in exact formation when it was relocated to the new location.

He had done most of the grunt work already, including running and fishing all new cable, and he was sore. He hated doing that; drop ceilings were nice for that, but still it was such a pain in the ass! His body was sore, and he had another hour of work at least to take care of before the day was done, and on his day off no less.

Ryan was not what you would expect a typical IT guy to be. Aside from the glasses all similarities ended there. He was built like a small house; broad shoulders that were well defined and thick. Beneath the smooth button down shirt the buttons strained against his pectoral muscles as well. He had thick spiraling bands of ink running down both arms almost to his wrists and they were identical on each arm. When asked he would only say it was smoke from the Dragon’s breath.

His ice blue eyes pierced through everything and saw every detail clear as day. At 6’2” he towered over most people and with his broad physique he was an intimidating sight. He looked like he belonged in a night club or a bar playing bouncer, rather than in a server room, or working on setting up monitors. He opened up his tablet and flipped it up to laptop mode, opening the picture of what the desk should look like. He began to start placing objects on the desk top just as she had them arranged previously.

As he worked he continued to check the picture for accuracy, to get it as close as possible to the original. He managed a very good likeness by the time he was done, and as he was done he added a third monitor to the system without disturbing the flow of the system. He bound all the cables in the back with tie wraps well enough so that they were out of the way, but loosely enough so that she could move things a little bit if she wanted too. However any big changes, she would need to call him to have them moved.

He logged into her account and made sure all the monitors were working, and that the virtual client was accepting the new monitor and the mouse was working with it properly. Everything seemed to be working in order. Satisfied with his work, he brushed his hands through his short blonde hair. He powered down the entire system, left his business card sitting on her keyboard with his full name and work cell number and a note to contact him with any issues or any help with moving anything.

With his job done, and the daylight gone, Ryan McMann went home and went to sleep.

*********************************************************

Monday Morning came with chaos. He received a call to come in due to a system wide network outage. Their internal network failed catastrophically. His supervisor suspected the work he did over the weekend but after looking it over it was found to be sound work which of course Ryan already knew to be the truth. After that they began tracing the problem to the source and found it. It was apparently something someone picked up over the weekend, but didn’t spread until the system updates were pushed up with the batch files this morning. After a few more hours of work the files were isolated and destroyed, then they pushed out a batch file

Finally the network was restored just as the employee’s began filing in for the start of the shift; the IT staff already looked worn out and haggard as if they had been running a marathon ; everyone except for Ryan whom was flushed with the elation. The battle had been difficult, but now he had won the victory. He was celebrating. How? By mobbing on to the next challenge.

 

[CoquetteWeaver]

http://i.imgur.com/8UtAxsz.jpg

Fiona sipped her coffee in bemusement, seeing the rest of the IT staff clean up the mess of equipment as the earlybirds filed into the lobby. Her tech knowledge was... woefully inadequate, so she couldn't even begin to guess at the source of the hubbub. She half-figured that it must've been serious enough to have everyone come in over the weekend before the Monday reports had to be sent, so who knows to what extent the system crashed. As long as she could put in her 9 to 5.

She corralled herself into an elevator, close to the reflective door, and took the opportunity for a last minute fix of her hair and blouse. She brushed her shoulder-length brown hair back, lightly teasing it to return some of its body. Her white blouse remained unbuttoned past the second from the top (she swore the thermostat was broken by her cubicle), and her black blazer felt askew over her 34C chest, so she rolled her shoulders into it. Her pencil skirt looked spectacular as always, covering her lovely ass in a professional way, and her new nylons hadn't developed a run just yet. Already today was a good day.

The doors parted with a ding, and the day officially began in Fiona's mind. The drones streamed to their cubicles, and Fiona did the same -- until he blocked her path. She ran headlong into him, bouncing off of his solid frame and fell on her but to the floor. Her briefcase and purse scattered their contents, and she rubbed her head. Her coffee spilled over the tile, but not before some splashed to her blouse.

"Shit!" she cursed, mad at herself for not paying attention, and suddenly mad at the day. "What could--"

She opened her eyes to Ryan's chiseled and imposing physique, and it caught her offguard. Her mind blanked momentarily, caught in fashioning a response.

 

[Firmhanded_Daddy]

He was heading for the elevators, mentally filing through the lists of things he needed to do before he would have to leave for the day. He knew he had to reimage several computers, and update several users in active directory, likely a slew of tickets to close out. He was starting to get a headache. He heard his phone chirp in his pocket telling him of yet another task to be done.

Just as he rounded the corner he had enough time to recognize the sight of an amazingly gorgeous woman as she bounced off of his chest and spiraled to the ground. She went down hard and he made an honest attempt to grab her and keep her from landing on her ass. Their fingertips even brushed on the way down but he just wasn’t quick enough. She was clearly not paying that much attention and he had rounded the corner a little tightly; they were both at fault. She started to swear up a storm and then halted when he loomed over her.

His deep voice rumbled in that broad chest as he stooped and reached out his hand, taking in the details of the disaster. “I am so sorry about that. I came around the corner too fast. Are you alright, darlin?” There was more than a hint of southern drawl in there as one hand wrapped around hers, the other scooped around her waist and with ease he more or less hoisted her to her feet.

He quickly went to gathering the papers before the coffee spill could ruin her documents. Many of the workers had stopped to gawk at the pair, some murmuring and talking. The good natured face hardened and those blue eyes of his turned to ice. Suddenly the crowd thinned and traffic began to flow again. As the rubber neckers left, his features returned to concern and he looked back to Fiona with an honest look of concern.

For himself Ryan came out of the collision no worse for the wear. Just a bit of coffee on his clothing that he had yet to even notice.

“I’m sorry, that was likely my fault. I have put in a good bit of overtime in the past two days. That is no excuse for this of course, just I am normally not a human bulldozer.”

He let out a low chuckle and ran his fingers through his short hair. His eyes finally giving her a full once over, realizing coffee spill and all just how good looking she was, now he felt more like an ass. “I spent most of the weekend assembling and moving a woman’s cubicle, and then the whole system crashed super early this morning. Long story short, I haven’t had much sleep and now I think I’ve ruined your shirt.”

He paused in thought. “I’ll replace it for you. You can either replace it and I will reimburse you the cost, or we can work something else out. However you want to handle it.”

All that being said he realized he had not yet introduced himself. Idiot. “Sorry, forgot to introduce myself. I’m Ryan McMann.”