All Men Are Dogs

There was nothing worse than a Monday.

It was not the promise of another workweek filled with unpaid overtime hours or the consumption of cafeteria food that made the day so miserable but rather her coworkers. Much like the Valentines Day phenomenon where the most annoying were the girls who complained about the holiday, Mondays misery could be mostly attributed to those dim-witted cubicle workers who liked to make comments like "Gotta hate Mondays, right?" Yes. Irene did hate Mondays but more than that she just hated you.

Okay, perhaps that was a bit melodramatic but day by day, year by year, she had been growing impatient with the inadequacies of her fellow Ministry employees. The lawyers weren't so bad, seeing as they'd all had extra training but as for the other departments they were just stepping off the train from Hogwarts as far as Irene could tell. And she could always tell, especially when it came to incompetence. With a sigh, the witch shut her folder on Mr. Haymich Westwood, self proclaimed 'King of the Vampires' and rested her head of the back of her chair. As far as Irene was aware, Haymich was more or less a complete loner who no one looked up to enough to loan some money or share an apartment with, much less rule over an entire species.

"Have a good day, Mr. Westwood. You can pick up your wand and complementary blood bag on the way out." The skinny man stood and shuffled towards the door, mumbling something that sounded like "see you next month" as he exited. Irene's office had been moved to the Magical Creatures Department a little over a year ago and she still couldn't decide if it's convince of position was worth the slight oder of wet dog that always seemed to linger about the place.

Truth be told, Irene could barely remember how she had come to be here in the first place. Beyond Rufus, she had never had any strong connection or attraction to working with half breeds or creatures. She had just sort of fallen into this job, treating it like a legal position in any part of the Ministry. Irene dealt with the same murders and attacks that any of her colleges might with the only difference being she spent much of her time comparing teeth and claw marks. Of course there was also the more boring work like that involving Mr. Westwood. She took on some of the responsibility of a case worker, meeting with and keeping track of half breeds files, whereabouts, and the threats they might pose to society.

The mundane paperwork could be frustrating and time consuming but Irene didn't mind being kept busy. It was just that she would have rather been kept busy on a murder or kidnapping charge than keeping track of wolfsbane orders. It was only just past noon and Irene had an afternoon with several meetings ahead of her. There was always more on Mondays after a weekend with almost no staff. Only a few of them remained at the Ministry on a daily basis and all were there for different reasons. Some hated their husbands/wives, some were just behind and feared getting fired, and some dreamed of that promotion that always dangled just beyond reach.

Irene simply hated the empty house.

Gabby did not hate Irene Norwood.

He wanted to make that perfectly clear. Gabby did not hate women – he refused to. He could not claim to be a lover of all ladies if he hated one. He could strongly dislike one who annoyed him, but he refused to hate a woman.

So, no, Gabby did not hate Irene Norwood.

That said…

Now did he hate the institution she so dutifully work for? Obviously. Did he hate that she was one of the few to, on occasion, call him by his full given name? Naturally. Did he hate that she seemed impervious to his wonderfully crafted flirtations? A bit. Did he hate that she did not often rise to bite back when he taunted and prodded and teased? Well, of course. And did he hate that he was required, by law, to meet with her on occasion to discuss werewolf-y things that he would rather handle all on his own, with only the support of a few select trusted allies? Most definitely yes.

Still. He did not hate Irene Norwood.

But he was definitely not happy to see her.

As he approached her door, a familiar face exited. “Hey, Mitchy. How’s Ms. Laws and Regulations?” The roll of the vampire’s eyes came as no surprise to the cynic in the light werewolf. He let out the loudest groan he could, certain that Irene could hear him from inside her perfectly kept office, and he slowly dragged his feet inside.

“Morning, Norwood. I’m sure you won’t be happy with me today. I’ve been working really hard to make sure that you’d be all but ready to lock me up. Utter Disappointment was my goal.”

Irene heard voices outside of the door and she let out an internal groan. Either Haymich had been running late on his meeting or Gabriel was a few minutes early. Either way, the woman had no interest in seeing two of her least favorite men in succession on a Monday of all days. Irene heard a load groan from outside of the office and she pursed her lips dryly, though she couldn't help but appreciate someone vocalizing exactly what she was feeling.

A few seconds later her door was opened by the all-too familiar face of Mr. Short. She had been seeing the werewolf for almost as long as she had been with the Ministry and over their entire working relationship she would never have described it as.. pleasant. There had been several occasions where resisting the urge to punch the man had been a challenge but she had always managed to keep her external cool and ignore his idiotic ramblings.

Most of her clients, while jaw-clenchingly boring, didn't have the same ability to rub her the wrong way that Gabriel Short did. Maybe it was his utter disrespect for every guideline the Ministry had laid out for werewolves or maybe it was just his insistence on one-sidedly flirting despite the golden wedding band that hung on a chain around her neck. She had stopped wearing it on her finger months ago, preferring the feel of the cold metal against her chest.

Gabriel had settled himself into the chair across from her. The only reason these meetings could be considered slightly bearable was the presence of the large, wooden desk between them. A constant reminder to Irene that no matter how unpleasant the other man was, she was the one in charge. He didn't like her rules? He could go to prison. She could destroy his life and somehow that made his cheeky talk a lot more bearable.

"Good morning, Mr. Short." she replied lightly, though there was no amusement in her eyes. "Please, tell. What have you got for me today?" She clasped her hands together and rested them on the desk, looking across the short distance to Gabriel. Irene wasn't sure if he was right. She was never disappointed with the werewolf - that would imply he didn't meet her expectations. And she always expected him to be entirely rude and obnoxious. On the contrary, Irene expected that Gabriel Short would meet every one of her expectations for him today.

Wouldn't a little bit of utter disappointment be wonderful?

Gabby would only admit one thing he liked about Norwood’s office. The chair that he was always expected to sit in had the best cushion. Something about it was perfect for his arse, and he always found himself sinking into it, trying out several poses to find a way that made it uncomfortable. He had not yet found a way to sit in the chair that made it uncomfortable. He entered the office and immediately collapsed into the chair, spinning so he was sitting sideways in it, his feet lolling over one side, his head hanging over the arm of the chair. One hand came up and lightly rubbed the leather of the chair.

Yep. He liked this chair.

Gabby glanced around the room and spotted a newly framed Certificate of Training Completion hanging on the wall. He completely ignored her and pointed at it. “That’s new. What happened to your old one? Did you renew it or something?”

Nope. It was hanging in his bathroom.

He let out a hefty sigh and reached out, picking up a pencil cup and dumped out the pencils and pens onto her desk. He turned the cup in his hands and overturned it, before carefully balancing it on the top of his head. “This is my crown. I claim this office as my own.  I am your King.”

This pencil cup was coming home with him. And hopefully the chair.

Gabriel settled himself in her chair and she straitened herself up, as if her perfect posture could compensate for his strange angle of sitting. Maybe it was his casual attitude that bothered her so much, especially in her place of business. No other creature - werewolf, vampire, human, or otherwise - displayed quite so little respect for her cleanly kept space. She watched him half-heartedly and followed his gaze to the wall behind her as he spoke.

"I misplaced mine." she responded testily. The paper's disappearance was still a great mystery to Irene as it was worth nothing to a thief but had still managed to vanish off her wall like it had never existed. For an extremely organized person, things in Irene's office seemed to evaporate into nothingness unnaturally frequently. It bothered her on the most personal level, pushing her to sort everything all the more carefully and deliberately as she went about her day.

The pens and pencils fell across her desk with a clatter. Her hands immediately unclasped to contain the mess that was quickly scattering and she managed to grab a couple pens before they rolled off the edge of her desk. Her jaw clenched with irritation as she delicately picked up the writing utensils, leaving them in a small pile off to the side of the desk, just under where her cup had sat so peacefully moments before.

Irene stood and reached across the desk to snatch the precariously balanced cup off of his head. She leaned over the werewolf and spoke much like a mother might to their ill-behaving child. "Dethroned." Irene gave Gabriel a fake smile and sat back down, regaining the comfortable distance that the desk provided them. She placed the mug back on the table and refilled it with the pens and pencils, moving it until it was back in it's home. Everything had it's proper place and Mr. Short did a wonderful job of destroying that order.

She made some attempt at getting their meeting on to something even slightly productive by continuing on to say - "Have you had any trouble this month? Had a safe moon last week?" Unless he admitted to any sort of murders or attacks, Irene couldn't have cared less how Gabriel spent his nights. She wasn't a therapist. Or, even worse, a friend. Far from it.

“Misplaced your documentation of credibility?” Gabby said, his face showing no expression of the joke that waited in the conversation. “That’s incredibly irresponsible of you. Now I have no certainty that I can even trust you to abide by the honor codes that bind us as social worker and poor, vulnerable subject. I have to say, I may need to report this lapse to your superiors. Give me the number to your most attractive female boss please.” He kept a serious look of concern upon his face, his brow wrinkling and his lips turning inward. He almost looked like her when he made such a serious face.

She snatched away the pencil cup and he frowned. His hand lazily swiped at the space that had once been occupied by the cup, though it was much too lazy and much too late to actually reclaim his crown. “Heeey,” he said, drawling with a lazy, annoyed voice. He sighed and dropped his hand, carefully allowing it to land partially on the desk. If Gabby was good at anything, he knew it was the art of misdirection. And sex. He was damn good at that too. Oh, and disappointing his father. Yes, he was very good at that. Very practiced.

She asked about trouble. Immediately, a smirk overtook his face. He never had any real trouble to report. He was much too skilled of a werewolf to allow for mistakes. Yes, there had been one, but only one. And he refused to let that drag him down… more than it already did. The mistakes he made now had nothing to do with him being a werewolf and had everything to do with him being Gabby Short, rich, easily-bored playboy brat.

“I pissed off the Spanish royalty by spurning Princess Isabella after a night of really kinky passion.” He twirled his wrist, seizing her nameplate and using it to scratch his back. “Besides that and some minor thefts, I’ve been a very good dog.”

Why was she here? As Irene stared across the table at Mr. Short she vaguely recalled law school and the practical applications that he secondary education had given her. There had never been a class on how to resist punching bratty werewolves and for good reason - most people with a law degree were above dealing with this. He grabbed her name tag and she grabbed after it with a slight delay, hand grasping at air. Pursing her lips, Irene drew her hand back and watched unhappily as he scratched his back and gave some story that she had heard some variation on countless times.

In an effort not to reach back across and strangle the man, Irene pushed back into her chair and gently gripped the arm rests. There was a certain amount of time that she was supposed to allot to each case but surely if Mr. Shorts got cut a little short it wouldn't be the end of the world? If she ignored the sarcasm and felonies there really wasn't anything in his brief report that required further questioning.

"Fine." She flipped through his file, glancing down at the unchanged details. "Unless we hear anything worth looking in to, I'll see you next month." Unfortunately for Gabriel it was very possible that he would be coming back into the Ministry earlier than expected. With the new public hysteria about the wolves the Ministry had begun to brand all half breeds if they were allowed to stay in Britain. While Irene wasn't involved in this process at all herself she had seen some of her clients come in with the black marks poking out from under their clothes.

Irene held out her hand to ask for the name tag back and gave Gabriel a sickly sweet fake smile. "Send Spain my regards."

Gabby was not used to people letting him go so easily in the Ministry. Maybe they kept him around because he was so easy to look at, or because he was so charming, or because their reputation gained value the more they enjoyed his presence... but mostly they held him late during these meetings because he was dealing with people who desperately just wanted to do their jobs properly and he had a bad tendency of preventing just that. Irene was usually one to do all she could with him. But she was also smart. So she knew better.

She asked for the nameplate and he easily obliged - he was a easy to get along with, after all, wasn't he? Her smile was sassy - he liked it. He wondered if he could get another one out of her. He had cancelled sleeping in this morning for this meeting anyway, and he wanted to make sure he got the most out of his cancelled appointment.

"Ooh, do I hear the edge of jealousy? Mrs Norwood, that's an absolutely scandalous sentiment your revealing. I'm flattered, but you've already chosen the man for you, so you'll have to be content to just dream of me."

((Sorry it's short. Also, sorry - I didn't expect angst to come out here, but I feel like it's going to))

The nameplate was returned to her waiting hand and promptly placed back to it's assigned location on the desk. Irene glanced up from her reorganization and frowned as she realized that Gabriel had not moved to leave. In fact he remained laying across the chair at the same infuriating angle as when he had first arrived and as he began to speak again she stared back without amusement. She was blatantly breaking the rules of conduct by sending him off so early but of course this would be the one day he would have any interest in sticking around.

The idea of having to listen to Gabriel for another minute was undesirable (to put it lightly). His unfiltered commentary rarely got under Irene's calloused skin but this time was different. She wasn't expecting those words and each hit her like it's own dagger. He was either an arse or a fool - either way, he had hit her with excellent aim.

Irene had straitened in her chair, shocked at her own vulnerability at his words. There were bad days, reminders, little triggers that sent her into old memories, all happening frequently enough that she had learned how to control herself and set pain away for later. It was rare that a mention of her husband came so bluntly, unceremoniously, and from such an unexpected source. For once in her life Irene was caught quite off guard and left more or less lost for words as she battled the emotions that threatened to bubble up.

Anger began to burn her stomach as Irene questioned what right the werewolf had to sit in front of her and say - No, Irene scolded. Pull yourself together. Gabriel hadn't said anything beyond his normal half-witted flirtations and she knew there was no reason to take it as anything more.

"You're free to go, Mr. Short." Irene responded flatly, her face hardened from the effort of concealing the effect his last comments had had on her. It was all shameful, really, that she could crumble at her own name. A simple Mrs. had thrown her more than any accounts of his sex life ever could and she hated herself for it. In some ways Irene Rutherford was much stronger than Irene Norwood.. a younger version of herself might have just hexed him, while she now demanded dignity from herself.

And for Irene dignity meant concealing, no matter how much you might be feeling.

The smug look on his face could not remain when Irene's expression changed so easily, so drastically. His smirk immediately turned into a deep frown, his eyebrows turned upwards from vain triumph into surprised confusion, and his feet began to slip from their perch. Irene Norwood had always been a hard ass - hadn't that been the little taunt he had given her? The hard ass with the nicest ass. But now, she was looking anything but hard, or tough, or cold. She was looking downright human, in a way she never had before.

Gabby supposed she ought to look human, though. He was the dog, after all.

In all their time working together, Gabby had never seen Irene looking anything other than professional or irritated. So, to see her looking suddenly so vulnerable was absolutely unnerving to the man. Gabby might be a prat, a pain, a ruffian, and a flirt, but that did not keep him from being a good guy when it came down to it. He liked to poke fun, pick fights, and pull stunts, but he also did not like to see anyone truly hurt - anyone who didn't deserve it, anyway. And pain she might be, Irene Norwood was just doing her job, and he would never want to cause her any real distress beyond irritation, frustration, and scattered loss of sleep.

His feet dropped to the ground and he stared at her. "What? What did I say?" She had never sent him home early, usually preferring to grill him for every scrap of information that she was sure he was keeping from her, so he could not figure out why she would let him go now. His voice seemed more sincere than it had before, but he could not keep a bit of a challenge out of it. She had surprised him after all - he was not used to being surprised and, in this instance, he wasn't sure he liked it at all.