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rainbowfic2021-02-28 09:16 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2021-02-28 09:16 pm
Ecru #5, Snow White #4 [Divide & Rule]
Name: Hidden Design
Story: Divide & Rule/Heroes of the Revolution
Colors: Ecru #5 (search); Snow White #4 (glass slipper)
Supplies and Styles: Eraser + Graffiti (February TV Tropes Challenge – Feigning Intelligence, Prompting Nudge, The Long Game (if it counts as long enough) and also Miracle Rally and Unorthdox Reload on the side. It's all a bit silly.)
Word Count: 2283
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Notes: Business AU for the list; Edward Iveson/Julia Graves.
Summary: Edward’s been looking for Julia for a while, but this certainly isn’t where he expected to find her.
***
Edward halted in the doorway to the main office of Jotters Stationery Supplies with his briefcase in hand. Someone was already here stealing his sales pitch and he recognised her voice. He’d been looking for her for months, ever since she’d left CB packaging, but he hadn’t expected to find her selling rival products she didn’t know anything about, as far as he could tell.
“So, as you’ll see,” Julia Graves was saying, “our paper is highly affordable but remains excellent quality, thanks to the unique process of pressing and drying involved. I helped to perfect it myself – we’re a very small firm, but competitive, I assure you.” She adjusted glasses Edward knew for a fact she had no need to wear. He thought she also flickered a nervous glance in his direction, but he said nothing. First things first – he must discover what she was doing here. It might even play to his advantage in the end.
Edward leant against the wall and observed her technique. She appeared to him to be reading from her clipboard. The office staff were thin on the ground in any case – it was just past Friday lunch hour and the local team was playing. He’d seen at least six of them lurking in the staff room when he’d passed, all glued to the radio. He’d heard muted cries of agony as he’d walked on by, so he assumed their team was busy losing.
“We offer a range of thicknesses and a selection of watermarks,” Julia continued. “But, of course, I won’t bore you with that – I’ll save that for the manager. If you want some samples – here.”
A couple of the nearest men leant forward to take sheets of patterned paper intended for letter writing sets.
“Iveson,” said Mr Jones, Jotters’ manager, whom Edward had met a number of times before. He stepped in through the door, and offered his hand. Edward took it. “Who’s this?” he said, nodding towards Julia.
Julia looked up and crossed over, holding out her hand and giving a bright smile. “Mr Jones, isn’t it? Your secretary was kind enough to book me in for two fifteen, although given that you must have heard Mr Iveson wax lyrical about CB enough times you could recite his spiel yourself, perhaps you’ll want to skip that part and make it two?”
Edward was prevented from responding to that cut by the sight of the man nearest to him making an unwise attempt to reload a staple gun by flipping the staples up from his thumb, onto his nose and into the correct slot in the staple gun. The inevitable happened: the staples missed, hit him in the face and fell to the floor.
“Miles,” said Jones without even turning. “Pick that up and go and see if the massacre is over yet.” He turned back to Edward. “Our local team,” he added. “Not doing well.”
“So I’d gathered.” Edward glanced at Julia. She had a militant light in her eyes and he had to bite down the corners of his mouth to smother his amusement. “Jones, I’ve no objection to sharing my time with Miss Graves. Indeed, I’ll be extremely interested to hear what her company has to offer. Ladies first, after all.”
Jones shrugged. “Shall we? Although fair warning, Miss Graves. We have a standing account with CB and Mr Iveson’s always dealt fairly with us.”
“If only I could say the same,” said Julia.
Once inside the inner office, Mr Jones sat down at his desk and gestured to Edward and Julia to take the available seats on the opposite side.
An awkward silence ensued.
Edward glanced at Julia and coughed. When she still didn’t move, he elbowed her.
“Oh!” she said. Then she shot him a dark look and shifted her chair away from him. “Am I going first?”
“Please do.”
Julia swallowed. “Well, as I was saying before, our new process is unique, resulting in improved quality at much the same price as CB. We’re a small company, but competitive and for luxury sheets of writing paper, we’re as good as handmade.”
“Really?” said Edward. “Perhaps you’d like to describe this magical process?”
Julia raised her chin. “Most of our paper is in fact made from cotton rather than wood, which is part of the trick, of course. The rest is in the solution used.”
“But of course you can’t give away trade secrets?” said Edward.
“Quite!”
“And the thickness?”
Julia shrugged. “Our standard paper is at least 12 thou, much better than your 9.”
“Absolutely, save that it would surely then be card?”
“It doesn’t have the weight,” she said, and glared.
“So,” said Edward, shifting his position in the chair, “is it specifically the furnish, the mould or the dreckle that’s so revolutionary here?”
Julia looked from him to Mr Jones. “Well, of course, I’m just the sales woman.”
“Who helped to perfect the process, “ Edward reminded her. “It being such a small company and chemistry being your area of expertise. Mr Jones, I fear that Miss Graves is wasting your time.”
Before Jones could speak, the door was flung open and the same member of staff who’d tried the stunt with the stapler, burst in. “You’ll never believe it,” he said, addressing Jones and ignoring Edward and Julia. “They equalized at the last minute and it’s gone to extra time. I think they’re in with a chance.”
Jones stood. “Be right with you, Kent – and I’ve told you before about interrupting meetings. This once I’ll forgive you.” As Kent left, the door swinging behind him, Jones looked down at the two sales people. “I suggest in the meantime that you two sort out your issues and when I come back, I’ll hear Miss Graves, if she’s got any samples and price lists. Otherwise, my usual order is with Chapman in the financial office, Iveson.” He nodded to them and then left, not quite preserving a dignified pace in his haste to see his team’s unlikely victory.
“You pig,” said Julia to Edward as soon as the door shut behind the other two. “Well, go, see Mr Chapman, and leave me to pack up with my tail between my legs, why don’t you?”
Edward rose, but hesitated before taking his leave. He had a lot of questions, particularly regarding the nature of her purpose here, which looked extremely suspicious if not downright illegal to him. The only one he chose to ask, however, was, “Are you in some sort of trouble? Perhaps I can help.”
“I don’t want any more of your help!” she said, drawing herself up. Her voice sounded thick, as if close to tears, but her eyes were dry. “You can go to hell and take all your little paper and pencil samples with you!”
Edward withdrew, but only back into the outer office. Once there, he positioned himself out of sight, and watched her movements within through the overlooking window. She seemed to be searching for something, trying to open the desk drawers, and then studying the wall intently.
Edward’s dilemma over whether to let her get on with it – she didn’t appear to being successful in her endeavour, whatever it was – or to return and catch her in the act before someone like Jones did was rendered redundant by the approaching noise of voices from the corridor, loud and excited over the team’s improbable victory. 6-3 after a penalty shoot out, by the sounds of it.
He hurried forward, and poked his head back into the room. “Whatever it is, you’re doing, you’ve got company. Just leave – I advise you not to talk to Jones again if you haven’t mastered the finer points of furnishes and thicknesses.”
Julia swung round, and then seemed to take his point, darting back over to her chair to retrieve her file. “I looked it up in the encyclopaedia,” she said defensively, as if it was his fault she wasn’t an expert on paper manufacture. “But it was rather long-winded and out of date – maybe even Victorian.”
“Come on,” said Edward, ushering her out. “Wait for me outside. I’ll speak to Mr Chapman – I’ll be ten minutes at the most. Then you can explain – and I’ll do my best to help, I promise.”
Julia followed him out of the door. “I haven’t changed my mind about your idea of help, thanks!”
“We can talk outside,” said Edward. He had a lot to say to Julia, starting with an apology, but he wasn’t about to try in here, with an office full of triumphant football supporters.
When he made it back to the front of the building, she had gone. Of course she had, he castigated himself. Any fool would have expected it. To have lost her again was so much worse than before, when she was clearly in trouble – and he didn’t want his next view of her to be in a police line-up.
Back in his car and halfway down the road, he was on the point of deciding that there was nothing for it but to stop at the next pub and have a drink, he glimpsed a lone figure at an isolated bus stop on his left.
A smile lightened his face, and he pulled over.
“Julia,” he said, leaning across the empty seat to wind the window down. “Get in.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “No.”
“For God’s sake, Julia,” said Edward. “I need to apologise to you, you clearly need somebody’s help or you wouldn’t be trying to rob innocent bystanding stationery suppliers – and God only knows how often the buses come along this route.”
Julia hesitated and then, to his relief, she pulled open the door and sat down next to him. “You don’t understand. You’ve ruined everything! Isn’t it bad enough that you used to stand there and let Fields pass over me for Jemmings every time? No, you have to somehow arrive exactly where you’re least wanted and spoil everything.”
“I can’t let you try to rob people,” said Edward. “That would make me an accessory. I’m sorry about what happened at CB. I’ll explain presently, but I think your business is more urgent than mine. What were you doing there – and why?”
She stared out of the windscreen for a few moments before she turned towards him. “I can’t say.”
“Is there someone else you can turn to?” he asked, more quietly.
Julia closed her eyes.
“Then you’d better tell me. If I wanted you arrested, I’d have let Jones catch you in the act. What were you trying to do?”
She shrugged. “Oh, it was – I don’t know. There were some papers – some design or other – that they had in the safe, and I was supposed to photograph it. I did almost get one before you interrupted, but you made me jump. The thing is, someone I know is in trouble and if I do this, it’ll count in payment of his debts –”
“Will it?” said Edward, all trace of amusement lost now. He didn’t bother to go into how unlikely it sounded that Jotters should have designs worth stealing stashed in their safe, and that it sounded more like preparation for a straight-up robbery to him. “Is this someone your brother, by any chance? Gambling again, no?”
Julia didn’t reply, but she flushed.
“Once you’ve done something like this, you can be blackmailed on top of the rest. I doubt it’d be an end to anything. I think we need an alternative solution.”
She turned her head. “You – you – you’re the worst person I know! If it’s that hopeless, what good is any of it? And there is no ‘we’. You made that pretty clear before.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” said Edward. He studied the road ahead, looking for the next useful stopping point. “I meant to explain at the time, but then I had to go to Amsterdam on another sales jaunt and by the time I’d got back, you’d gone. I’ve been trying to find you ever since.”
“Have you? Whatever for?”
“I’ve been meaning to leave CB for years – start my own business. I let Fields take Jemmings’s design over yours because I think it was the most appropriate for Fields’s tiresomely conventional ranges – but also for selfish reasons. I wanted to offer you a job with me – I wanted those designs for us. I should have said long before that, I suppose, but I didn’t know if I could pull it off. I didn’t want to jinx anything by promising things I couldn’t deliver. Now it’s finally happening. I’m leaving CB after the end of next week.”
“You want me to be a designer in your new company?”
“I don’t think I’ll make it far without you,” he said, and gave her a wry smile. “Yes. I hope you’ll think about it at least. Now, about your brother – how much does he owe?”
“You can’t pay it!”
Edward indicated and pulled into a lay-by. “Not if it’s some truly outrageous sum, no. Otherwise, why not?”
“Last time you met him, you said to me he was a complete liability. He would try to repay you, but I don’t know how long it’d take him.”
Edward shrugged. “My business – and his. I’ll talk to him. And if you’ll take the job, I’ll count it a sound investment anyway.”
“I’m not sure I like you much any more,” Julia said. “Which isn’t to say that I’m not grateful for both offers, but –”
“Don’t let that stop you. Nobody likes their boss. I think it may be a rule.” Edward held out his hand to her.
Julia took it.
***
Story: Divide & Rule/Heroes of the Revolution
Colors: Ecru #5 (search); Snow White #4 (glass slipper)
Supplies and Styles: Eraser + Graffiti (February TV Tropes Challenge – Feigning Intelligence, Prompting Nudge, The Long Game (if it counts as long enough) and also Miracle Rally and Unorthdox Reload on the side. It's all a bit silly.)
Word Count: 2283
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Notes: Business AU for the list; Edward Iveson/Julia Graves.
Summary: Edward’s been looking for Julia for a while, but this certainly isn’t where he expected to find her.
***
Edward halted in the doorway to the main office of Jotters Stationery Supplies with his briefcase in hand. Someone was already here stealing his sales pitch and he recognised her voice. He’d been looking for her for months, ever since she’d left CB packaging, but he hadn’t expected to find her selling rival products she didn’t know anything about, as far as he could tell.
“So, as you’ll see,” Julia Graves was saying, “our paper is highly affordable but remains excellent quality, thanks to the unique process of pressing and drying involved. I helped to perfect it myself – we’re a very small firm, but competitive, I assure you.” She adjusted glasses Edward knew for a fact she had no need to wear. He thought she also flickered a nervous glance in his direction, but he said nothing. First things first – he must discover what she was doing here. It might even play to his advantage in the end.
Edward leant against the wall and observed her technique. She appeared to him to be reading from her clipboard. The office staff were thin on the ground in any case – it was just past Friday lunch hour and the local team was playing. He’d seen at least six of them lurking in the staff room when he’d passed, all glued to the radio. He’d heard muted cries of agony as he’d walked on by, so he assumed their team was busy losing.
“We offer a range of thicknesses and a selection of watermarks,” Julia continued. “But, of course, I won’t bore you with that – I’ll save that for the manager. If you want some samples – here.”
A couple of the nearest men leant forward to take sheets of patterned paper intended for letter writing sets.
“Iveson,” said Mr Jones, Jotters’ manager, whom Edward had met a number of times before. He stepped in through the door, and offered his hand. Edward took it. “Who’s this?” he said, nodding towards Julia.
Julia looked up and crossed over, holding out her hand and giving a bright smile. “Mr Jones, isn’t it? Your secretary was kind enough to book me in for two fifteen, although given that you must have heard Mr Iveson wax lyrical about CB enough times you could recite his spiel yourself, perhaps you’ll want to skip that part and make it two?”
Edward was prevented from responding to that cut by the sight of the man nearest to him making an unwise attempt to reload a staple gun by flipping the staples up from his thumb, onto his nose and into the correct slot in the staple gun. The inevitable happened: the staples missed, hit him in the face and fell to the floor.
“Miles,” said Jones without even turning. “Pick that up and go and see if the massacre is over yet.” He turned back to Edward. “Our local team,” he added. “Not doing well.”
“So I’d gathered.” Edward glanced at Julia. She had a militant light in her eyes and he had to bite down the corners of his mouth to smother his amusement. “Jones, I’ve no objection to sharing my time with Miss Graves. Indeed, I’ll be extremely interested to hear what her company has to offer. Ladies first, after all.”
Jones shrugged. “Shall we? Although fair warning, Miss Graves. We have a standing account with CB and Mr Iveson’s always dealt fairly with us.”
“If only I could say the same,” said Julia.
Once inside the inner office, Mr Jones sat down at his desk and gestured to Edward and Julia to take the available seats on the opposite side.
An awkward silence ensued.
Edward glanced at Julia and coughed. When she still didn’t move, he elbowed her.
“Oh!” she said. Then she shot him a dark look and shifted her chair away from him. “Am I going first?”
“Please do.”
Julia swallowed. “Well, as I was saying before, our new process is unique, resulting in improved quality at much the same price as CB. We’re a small company, but competitive and for luxury sheets of writing paper, we’re as good as handmade.”
“Really?” said Edward. “Perhaps you’d like to describe this magical process?”
Julia raised her chin. “Most of our paper is in fact made from cotton rather than wood, which is part of the trick, of course. The rest is in the solution used.”
“But of course you can’t give away trade secrets?” said Edward.
“Quite!”
“And the thickness?”
Julia shrugged. “Our standard paper is at least 12 thou, much better than your 9.”
“Absolutely, save that it would surely then be card?”
“It doesn’t have the weight,” she said, and glared.
“So,” said Edward, shifting his position in the chair, “is it specifically the furnish, the mould or the dreckle that’s so revolutionary here?”
Julia looked from him to Mr Jones. “Well, of course, I’m just the sales woman.”
“Who helped to perfect the process, “ Edward reminded her. “It being such a small company and chemistry being your area of expertise. Mr Jones, I fear that Miss Graves is wasting your time.”
Before Jones could speak, the door was flung open and the same member of staff who’d tried the stunt with the stapler, burst in. “You’ll never believe it,” he said, addressing Jones and ignoring Edward and Julia. “They equalized at the last minute and it’s gone to extra time. I think they’re in with a chance.”
Jones stood. “Be right with you, Kent – and I’ve told you before about interrupting meetings. This once I’ll forgive you.” As Kent left, the door swinging behind him, Jones looked down at the two sales people. “I suggest in the meantime that you two sort out your issues and when I come back, I’ll hear Miss Graves, if she’s got any samples and price lists. Otherwise, my usual order is with Chapman in the financial office, Iveson.” He nodded to them and then left, not quite preserving a dignified pace in his haste to see his team’s unlikely victory.
“You pig,” said Julia to Edward as soon as the door shut behind the other two. “Well, go, see Mr Chapman, and leave me to pack up with my tail between my legs, why don’t you?”
Edward rose, but hesitated before taking his leave. He had a lot of questions, particularly regarding the nature of her purpose here, which looked extremely suspicious if not downright illegal to him. The only one he chose to ask, however, was, “Are you in some sort of trouble? Perhaps I can help.”
“I don’t want any more of your help!” she said, drawing herself up. Her voice sounded thick, as if close to tears, but her eyes were dry. “You can go to hell and take all your little paper and pencil samples with you!”
Edward withdrew, but only back into the outer office. Once there, he positioned himself out of sight, and watched her movements within through the overlooking window. She seemed to be searching for something, trying to open the desk drawers, and then studying the wall intently.
Edward’s dilemma over whether to let her get on with it – she didn’t appear to being successful in her endeavour, whatever it was – or to return and catch her in the act before someone like Jones did was rendered redundant by the approaching noise of voices from the corridor, loud and excited over the team’s improbable victory. 6-3 after a penalty shoot out, by the sounds of it.
He hurried forward, and poked his head back into the room. “Whatever it is, you’re doing, you’ve got company. Just leave – I advise you not to talk to Jones again if you haven’t mastered the finer points of furnishes and thicknesses.”
Julia swung round, and then seemed to take his point, darting back over to her chair to retrieve her file. “I looked it up in the encyclopaedia,” she said defensively, as if it was his fault she wasn’t an expert on paper manufacture. “But it was rather long-winded and out of date – maybe even Victorian.”
“Come on,” said Edward, ushering her out. “Wait for me outside. I’ll speak to Mr Chapman – I’ll be ten minutes at the most. Then you can explain – and I’ll do my best to help, I promise.”
Julia followed him out of the door. “I haven’t changed my mind about your idea of help, thanks!”
“We can talk outside,” said Edward. He had a lot to say to Julia, starting with an apology, but he wasn’t about to try in here, with an office full of triumphant football supporters.
When he made it back to the front of the building, she had gone. Of course she had, he castigated himself. Any fool would have expected it. To have lost her again was so much worse than before, when she was clearly in trouble – and he didn’t want his next view of her to be in a police line-up.
Back in his car and halfway down the road, he was on the point of deciding that there was nothing for it but to stop at the next pub and have a drink, he glimpsed a lone figure at an isolated bus stop on his left.
A smile lightened his face, and he pulled over.
“Julia,” he said, leaning across the empty seat to wind the window down. “Get in.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “No.”
“For God’s sake, Julia,” said Edward. “I need to apologise to you, you clearly need somebody’s help or you wouldn’t be trying to rob innocent bystanding stationery suppliers – and God only knows how often the buses come along this route.”
Julia hesitated and then, to his relief, she pulled open the door and sat down next to him. “You don’t understand. You’ve ruined everything! Isn’t it bad enough that you used to stand there and let Fields pass over me for Jemmings every time? No, you have to somehow arrive exactly where you’re least wanted and spoil everything.”
“I can’t let you try to rob people,” said Edward. “That would make me an accessory. I’m sorry about what happened at CB. I’ll explain presently, but I think your business is more urgent than mine. What were you doing there – and why?”
She stared out of the windscreen for a few moments before she turned towards him. “I can’t say.”
“Is there someone else you can turn to?” he asked, more quietly.
Julia closed her eyes.
“Then you’d better tell me. If I wanted you arrested, I’d have let Jones catch you in the act. What were you trying to do?”
She shrugged. “Oh, it was – I don’t know. There were some papers – some design or other – that they had in the safe, and I was supposed to photograph it. I did almost get one before you interrupted, but you made me jump. The thing is, someone I know is in trouble and if I do this, it’ll count in payment of his debts –”
“Will it?” said Edward, all trace of amusement lost now. He didn’t bother to go into how unlikely it sounded that Jotters should have designs worth stealing stashed in their safe, and that it sounded more like preparation for a straight-up robbery to him. “Is this someone your brother, by any chance? Gambling again, no?”
Julia didn’t reply, but she flushed.
“Once you’ve done something like this, you can be blackmailed on top of the rest. I doubt it’d be an end to anything. I think we need an alternative solution.”
She turned her head. “You – you – you’re the worst person I know! If it’s that hopeless, what good is any of it? And there is no ‘we’. You made that pretty clear before.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” said Edward. He studied the road ahead, looking for the next useful stopping point. “I meant to explain at the time, but then I had to go to Amsterdam on another sales jaunt and by the time I’d got back, you’d gone. I’ve been trying to find you ever since.”
“Have you? Whatever for?”
“I’ve been meaning to leave CB for years – start my own business. I let Fields take Jemmings’s design over yours because I think it was the most appropriate for Fields’s tiresomely conventional ranges – but also for selfish reasons. I wanted to offer you a job with me – I wanted those designs for us. I should have said long before that, I suppose, but I didn’t know if I could pull it off. I didn’t want to jinx anything by promising things I couldn’t deliver. Now it’s finally happening. I’m leaving CB after the end of next week.”
“You want me to be a designer in your new company?”
“I don’t think I’ll make it far without you,” he said, and gave her a wry smile. “Yes. I hope you’ll think about it at least. Now, about your brother – how much does he owe?”
“You can’t pay it!”
Edward indicated and pulled into a lay-by. “Not if it’s some truly outrageous sum, no. Otherwise, why not?”
“Last time you met him, you said to me he was a complete liability. He would try to repay you, but I don’t know how long it’d take him.”
Edward shrugged. “My business – and his. I’ll talk to him. And if you’ll take the job, I’ll count it a sound investment anyway.”
“I’m not sure I like you much any more,” Julia said. “Which isn’t to say that I’m not grateful for both offers, but –”
“Don’t let that stop you. Nobody likes their boss. I think it may be a rule.” Edward held out his hand to her.
Julia took it.
***
no subject
You earned eight novelty beads! Here they are:
1. http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5xo9h5X3E1qgfdhto1_500.gif
2. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdmbwpfJA11qkpz0fo1_1280.jpg
3. https://i.pinimg.com/564x/41/ec/8c/41ec8ce48351de471fe0e70ba4ff32f5.jpg
4. "Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to." George Orwell
5. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/00/09/8b/00098b9d3a37c21ed8bd3ee00da58c7c.jpg
6. https://31.media.tumblr.com/750d60c5edb1a7f927c27b21b54685f4/tumblr_inline_ninheuIrpZ1rg1b0q.gif
7. you and i
8. reach high
no subject
Aw, thank you! I may have got a tad over-determined to get all the prompts in somehow... XD