☼ tyrus things ☼

Winter Winds

'Winter Winds' by Mumford & Sons

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"Oh the warmth in your eyes swept me into your arms,"

TJ stood rubbing his hands together to keep warm in the icy London air as he waited for his boss to unlock the doors of the building before them. His breath was fogging up the reading glasses he had forgotten to take off after having been reading on the bus.

"Will you heading home for the holidays?" his Boss asked, as he finally opened the door and TJ followed him inside. His eyes landed on the Christmas decorations that hung up around the lobby, they must have been put up over the weekend or late on Friday he thought to himself.

The Santa figurines were watching him smugly as if they knew how much he hated Christmas. There was a weak looking miniature Christmas tree decorated in lights and cheap plastic baubles. The rest of the lobby had thin strings of tinsel hung around it. The whole effort was pretty pathetic, much like Christmas in TJ's house back home.

TJ suddenly remembered his conversation and shook his head at his boss as the two of them stepped into the elevator "No, not this year Paul." he replied dryly, not bothering to disclose the fact that he wasn't going home due to the fact that he was not on speaking terms with any of his living family members.

The older man nodded "Good then, I can keep you on for the Christmas Eve shift, eh?" he joked and TJ gave a thin-lipped smile while he attempted not to grit his teeth. "Where was it you said you were from again? Alabama?" Paul asked absentmindedly, stepping out of the elevator with TJ close behind him.

"Utah." TJ replied shortly as he brushed the snow out of his hair and began making his way towards his desk only for his boss to speak again.

"Ah right , I suppose you don't get snow in Arizona a do you?" he asked, despite how obvious it was that he didn't care a bit about where TJ was from.

"Nope, not much snow in Utah but I better get to work." he stated firmly before walking straight towards his desk and putting his bag down. He glanced down at the stack of papers on his desk and sighed- Happy Holidays indeed- he thought sarcastically to himself.

He noticed Paul stand awkwardly in the office before turning and walking into his office mumbling something to himself. TJ just sighed and got to work as more of his colleagues began to arrive. He had decided coming in early and having to talk to Paul alone really wasn't worth the extra work he got done.

He made it out of the office at about 10:30 that night and he had never been more relieved to get out of there. TJ loved the part of his job that included actually picking books he liked to be published but a lot of his job was having to disapprove shitty novels and deal with shit from angry people who think they should be published. Unfortunately he needed to keep working in the shitty job to get the job he really wanted. He stepped out into the cold, the snow crunching under his feet as he walked away from the office building behind him.

TJ cringed as he heard a group of Christmas Carollers up ahead, the were blocking his path and he was already in a rush to catch the earliest possible train home. He had already had to walk further due to his usual Underground station being closed. He attempted to make his was around them without being asked for a donation, unfortunately he wasn't paying attention to much else. He bumped into a person in front of him and the person went stumbling backwards and fell, knocking over several of the carollers which resulted in a lot of angry muttering and swearing.