Page 7 of Under Construction

His arms are crossed, legs crossed too with the toe of his work boot pressed to the industrial carpet. Muscles strain against his T-shirt, dark hair curling at his temples from sweat.

He must've actually been working for once, the sheen on his skin proof of the day's labor.

"Rough day, princess?" Chris's smirk widens, like he can smell weakness. "Daddy still not appreciating your artistic vision?"

He strolls in without waiting for an answer, his boots heavy on the floor.

A new stack of papers, creased down the middle from Chris's back pocket, appears on Dennis's desk.

"Permit modifications," Chris says leaning in. He tap-taps on it with a finger, thumb hooked through his belt loop. "Need your signature. You know, the fancy one daddy's lawyers taught you."

"Haven't you got some scaffolding to fall off from?" Dennis snips.

"Nah." He drops into the chair across from Dennis, the metal creaking under his weight. Puts his boots up on the edge of Dennis’s desk, legs crossed. The soles leave marks on the pristine plastic.

Designer boots, Dennis notices, the realization edging out the need to stab Chris with a fountain pen. Probably costs more than his crew makes in a week.

Snort. The hypocrisy of Chris's working-class hero act should be funny, except Dennis is too filled with hatred to laugh.

"Still got a few hours left on my shift. Thought I'd check on our resident genius. Make sure you haven't invented any new ways to complicate my life."

"That's nice,” Dennis says as mildly as he can, which isn't very. “Why don’t you go use them somewhere else." He turns back to his tablet, the screen glaring in the dim light of the office.

Another message from his father flashes:The board expects updates. Where are they?

"Don't worry, princess,” he hears, while his dad’s message pounds in the back of his neck. “I'm sure daddy will find you another project to play with when this one succeeds despite you."

Dennis’s jaw bites down on its own. Between Chris and his dad, that scaffolding’s looking real good right now.

"Oh, by the way," Chris adds, "had to adjust your sustainability calculations again. Turns out theoretical models don't account for actual material behavior. But you'd know that if you had ever actually built anything instead of just drawing pretty pictures."

Dennis can feel it—the heat racing up his spine, overtaking his skin, prickling every nerve.

Offuckingcourse he’s making mistakes—hard not to when some douchebag spends all day hovering like a vulture waiting for him to screw up. Flustering him. Making Dennis see red so he can’t fucking focus.

He’s always had a temper.

His mom had shipped him off to martial arts classes to practice self-control. The instructors promised he could compete if he managed it.

Now, with a fourth-degree black belt in Taekwondo and a shelf full of MMA trophies crowding his childhood room, he’d mastered keeping it in check.

It’s something he’s proud of, proof that he’s better than this.

And he can prove it again, right here.

"Get out," Dennis says, voice level.

"What's wrong, princess?

"You can't just—"

"Can't what? Do your job better than you?" Chris stretches, arms over his head, fitted T-shirt riding up to show a strip of tanned skin. Perfectly casual about undermining Dennis’s authority

Dennis forces his eyes away. Absolutely does not look. He has better things to do than ogle detestable assholes who make his life hell, no matter how badly their jeans fit and how tight their shirts cling.

Unprofessional asshat. It’s not like Dennis wouldn’t have rock-hard abs like that if all he did was make his superior’s life hell and hang out at the gym all damn day instead of doing any fucking work.

Except Chris does work, and does it well, a traitorous thought whispers in his mind’s ear before he can silence it.

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