Short Stories (Multifandom)

You Put Your Right Foot In

"Hello Brendon! How are you today?"

"Oh.. you know, I'm doing just fine."

"Good! So I want to bring something to your attention. Every year we have this get together at the bowling alley and every year we have somebody from each team chip in and participate to make sure everything is going to be up to everyone's standards,"

"Oh.. ok?" Brendon was stood wringing his hands together, fiddling with the zipper on the company's bright blue jumpsuit, turning the forklift on and off, pressing buttons...

"Well, every year we ask the new guy to be apart of the chip in and, well you're the new guy this year." Brendon's boss laughs and it's the kind of that sounds off putting. Brendon doesn't like it.

"Oh ok, sure!"

"Great! We'll see you tomorrow, I'll have somebody send you to the conference room once it's time."

"Yeah, thanks!"

"This is big, Brendon, congratulations!"

His boss walks away and Brendon is back to taping boxes shut with bright blue labeling tape with his other coworkers then transferring those boxes to delivery trucks outside.

"Do me a favor," somebody says to him as soon as he goes to clock out, "go up to HR and give this to Ryan, he's been asking for it all day and I've got a date to go to."

Brendon takes a manila folder from a coworker he's never spoken to before, clocks out then begins to make his way up the two flights of stairs to the top floor. "Uhh, where's Ryan?"

People are bustling back and forth from room to room, a copying machine going off every other second. So this was HR.

"Ryan Ross? Yeah, he's back there." Somebody points to a room at the far end of the room. A room within a room, Brendon thinks.

"Ryan? This is for you, I don't know the person who gave it to me but this is for you. He said you've been asking for it all day and here you go, something you've been asking for all day." That's the most Brendon has talked since this morning.

A man with tousled brown hair lifts his head up from his computer. "You're the new guy, I remember going over your resume and doing your background check."

"Oh! Yeah, sure!" Brendon put on a bright smile.

"You're helping out with the party aren't you? You brining the food?"

"I think I'm supplying the music... Do you have any requests?" Brendon twiddled with his fingers, then the zipper, then the... Well, he just kept talking. "I personally like The Beach Boys, I was the thinking about adding Kokomo to the playlist and maybe something by The Strokes. I like any band with the word 'the' in the beginning. I-In fact I think I like the word 'the,'"

Ryan held a small smile, a crooked one. One that was agape, just a smidge, his left index finger flipping the corner of the packet Brendon had given him, back and forth. "So you like music,"

"Oh, I love music," Brendon laughs.

"You like The Fratellis?"

"I love them!"

"Great, why don't you add Henrietta and Whisky Saga to that playlist?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Brendon was ecstatic, nobody here had the same music taste as him and whenever he would sing along to the songs playing in his ears during work hours, he'd get told to 'shut up!'

"Awesome, well I'm Ryan, but you already knew that. You're... Brendan?"

"No, no Brendon, with an O."