Lyov Predav was not amused.

"Did you crawl here?"

The other workers watched nuncle's temper flare from their desks with ill-disguised amusement. A trickle of nervous wet tickled the back of Petre's neck as he tried to ignore their smiles.

"I... I came as fast as I could," he said, which was a lie.

Petre had made it halfway to his nuncle's office (Which coincidentally was where Foka's Egg sold the finest breakfast sandwiches with homemade black bread) when his stomach demanded satisfaction. He had stopped for a small bite to eat, but the long line meant he had to wait an extra ten minutes for the next bus.

"I believe that," Lyov said without even a hint of a smile. "Have you eaten?"

"Only a little," Petre said as he looked down at his feet. Before nuncle could offer he added, "But I am not hungry, no. Sick, you'll remember. I mentioned over the phone that I was- "

"Very sick," Lyov finished. "Well. Keep to your desk then. I will bring you some hot water."

"Oh? Oh, thank you," Petre said, and he bobbed his head in thanks as nuncle stomped away.

Petre could scarcely believe his luck. He loosed a relieved huff as he looked over his nuncle's cramped office. He had expected a worse tongue-lashing than that, and it did not seem like Manya was in today. It was not that he did not like his cuz, but he always felt miserable and small (Once upon a time, Petre had thought himself a cool big brother to Manya) whenever the two of them met.

Family likened Manya to a firecracker. Family liked not to talk about Petre.

"Morning," he said as he squeezed past a few cramped and cluttered desks. His own desk was pushed into the farthest corner of the cigarette smoke filled room.

Nada, Georgii, and Foka all returned the hello with one of their own. Julija smiled at him in a way that made Petre blush and look away (Nevermind that Julija was twice-divorced and twice Petre's age).

"Moooorning, Petty-re."

Petre stiffened as Yakov stuck out one of his swollen legs into the empty space between the desks like some schoolyard bully.

"Morning..." Petre muttered under his breath. He tried to push down a wont to sneer.

Yakov was built much like nuncle with a brute's squashed face, an excess of hair (Aside from the top of his head, which had been shaven clean and polished to a shine), and an excess of gut. Yakov made everything on his desk look small, and made everyone in the office look smaller.

"It jusht amazshes me," Yakov said, leaning forward in muted excitement. "The ballsh shomone like you can have, coming into the offish thish late."

Petre nodded, but did not rise to the bait. Yakov was a rather unpleasant person, but he bored easily.

"Noshing?" Yakov asked. He leaned further still and his desk groaned under his weight. "Be that way."

Petre smiled an insincere smile as Yakov withdrew his leg from the way. The boar wore a malicious smile his own, full of rotten and misaligned teeth (Yakov actually had teeth white as pearls and straight as a fence).

"All right," Petre said to himself as he plopped down at his desk. It had been almost four days since he had come into the office, so for a moment he simply stared blankly at the stack of papers that filled his plastic cubbie.

"Some tea," Lyov said from behind him.

Petre turned around just in time to jerk away from his desk as his nuncle slammed a steaming mug onto it with a metallic clang. A few drops of the boiling hot tea stung Petre's hands and stained his new pants.

"Nuncle, I am sorry," he said, almost instinctively. He should have known the tongue-lashing had not ended.

"We are busy, nephew," Lyov said, each word the slamming of a coffin's lid. He jabbed at the papers in the plastic cubbie. "Get to it!"

Petre bobbed his head like a fool. He tried his best not to notice Yakov's slimy smirk from the corner of his eye.

His nuncle grunted and stomped off towards his own desk, never the one to hide inside an office.

"All right then," Petre said as he hurriedly emptied out the plastic cubbie (There was enough kindling on his desk to burn the whole building down) and tried to make sense of the various documents.

And the hours passed as if in a trance while he worked.

The office was a small publishing house, and while Petre could not write a lick himself, he had always found it easy to improve on the writing of others. Be it fiction, non-fiction, academia, or smut, Petre threw himself into his review.

Cleaning up grammar and typos for some clients. Transcribing the handwritten scribbles of another. The hours would tick away as the stacks on his desk dwindled and dwindled. Petre did not think himself a hard worker (He made an active effort not to come into work), but the world's distractions seemed to turn to mist when he had a task in-front of him.

That was not to say his mind did not wander from time to time.

Nobody had commented on his new clothes. His nuncle had seemed scarcely to even notice. On the bus ride to the office, Petre had imagined (And imagined and imagined) how aghast Georgii would be when he heard about Petre's ordeal at the mall. Julija would smother him between her breasts like someone's mother (She was old enough to play the part) as she promised violent justice.

All imaginations because he remained quietly at his desk, the tip of his nose almost pressed against the sheen of his computer screen. Until...

"Good, good, good," Petre said as he emailed nuncle his third revisions for a horror themed cookbook. He glanced up from his work in time to see both Georgii and Yakov look hastily away.

"Odd..."

Petre scratched himself absently as he stared back at the two of them, suddenly aware of his many aches. He stretched his legs as far as his cramped desk would allow, reached down to massage the numbness of his thigh, and his hand came away wet.

He looked down between his legs and his chest tightened as if caught between a vice.

[ Yip! ]

Blurb had followed him to work.