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forestwater87 · 7 years

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Nature Family

@ciphernetics did a very very good thing and came up with the best AU idea ever.

I ruined it. Enjoy the ruining.

“David?”

He glanced up, his eyes widening. “Yes, Nikki?”

She was one of the only campers left waiting at the pick-up spot, having wandered away from Max to explore a mysterious rustling from the bushes. (This, it turned out, was a squirrel; Quartermaster seemed more than capable of sorting it out and had pulled her away from the animal by her overalls.) But . . . Well, David had to admit that he'd been so worried about Max being lonely or upset about the summer ending that he'd almost forgotten about the adventurous young camper. So it was with no small amount of guilt that he met her eyes, watching anxiously as she scuffed her toes along the ground and glanced over her shoulder at Sleepy Peak Peak.

“Well, uh . . . I think my parents aren't coming?”

David sprang to his feet, leaving Max to continue drawing in the dirt and ignoring him. “Don't be silly! It's only noon, after all! And Max is still here,” he added, gesturing at him.

Max looked from David to Nikki, something almost like concern in his expression. “David, are you being fucking stupid again?” He stood, pouring as much resentment into the motion as possible. “What's up, Nik?”

She shrugged, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “It’s just that Mom said Dad was picking me up yesterday because of his Sunday Golf Tournaments, and he didn’t. So . . .”

“What?!” David tried to keep his voice calm, but he couldn’t help wincing as it leapt up to what Gwen called “dog-whistle levels.” “Wh . . . why didn’t you tell us that, Nikki?” As a matter of fact, why hadn’t her parents told them that? They were in charge, after all!

“I was gonna, but then Max and Neil decided to try and blow up the Supply Shed and that sounded like more fun!”

Oh, dear. David whipped out his phone and sent a quick text to Quartermaster and Gwen: ‘stay away from the supply shed might be dangerous’ Then he narrowed his eyes at the two of them, putting his hands on his hips. “Now, kids, that was very irresponsible of you --”

“Yeah yeah,” Max interrupted, rolling his eyes. “How about you just do your goddamn job and figure out where Nikki’s parents are?”

Oh. Of course, that made sense. “R-right. Thanks, Max!”

“Fucking idiot.”

He had all the campers’ parents saved in his contacts for easy access, just in case. So he didn’t have to leave their side as he looked up Mariana Zuckerman’s number and listened to the line ring.

And ring.

Finally there was a tiny click. “You’ve reached 555-0175. Dr. Zuckerman isn’t available right now, so please leave a message at the --”

He snapped the phone shut, shaking his head. “No worries,” he chirped to the kids; Nikki was watching a line of ants travel through the grass, but Max’s eyes were trained on him, tiny pinpricks of searing turquoise. “We’ll just try Mr. Sherwood then . . .”

Nikki’s dad didn’t pick up, either.

That was . . . well, of course it wasn’t troubling, David wouldn’t jump to conclusions so quickly! But he would have to give her parents a friendly reminder that it was important to have their phones on them at all times.

Then again, maybe they were driving. That made sense.

“Why didn’t they pick up?” Max demanded, startling David out of his thoughts and nearly making him drop the phone.

“Oh, I’m sure they’re on their way!”

He just stared for a few long moments. Then turned with a heavy sigh, shaking his head. “I’m gonna go find Gwen.”

“Max, don’t --” But it was too late; faster than he’d ever seen the boy move, Max was trotting across the small grassy clearing that served as Camp Campbell’s pick-up spot, over to where Gwen had her nose buried in a magazine about . . . something or other, he didn’t really understand most of what she read.

Maybe Max had the right idea, though. Gwen would know what to do, even if she was a bit of a worrywart. He straightened, feeling better already as he tried dialing Nikki’s mother again. There was no point in panicking, which meant he’d just ignore the niggling worming sickness in his stomach until it went away.

That usually worked.

“You’ve reached 555-0175. Dr. Zucker --”

“David.” He glanced up from his fifth failed attempt to get ahold of either of Nikki’s parents to see Gwen, her phone clutched in white knuckles. Max hovered at her elbow, glancing between them and where Nikki had fallen asleep in the grass. Gwen held her phone out to him, her hand shaking slightly. “Look at this.”

The screen was a news site. Spectrum News: Capital Region -- oh, she’d looked up Nikki’s hometown paper! That was clever of her. He opened his mouth to congratulate her when his eyes landed on a picture of a woman with hair the color of creamy coffee, the only resemblance to her daughter in their large pink eyes.

Then the headline: “Rensselaer Woman Dies in Auto Crash on I-87 N.”

Then the date: August 19th, 2016.

Then the first sentence: “Dr. Marianna Zuckerman, 35, passed away at 8:15 p.m. on Friday evening in an accident . . .”

“Oh no. Gwen . . .” His vision blurring, he looked over at Nikki, who’d started pawing at the air and growling in her sleep. “Poor Nikki.”

“It’s, um . . .” She cleared her throat, her voice roughening the way it only did when she was trying not to cry, and scrolled down the story a bit. “It’s . . . her dad, too.”

“How?” Shaking his head to dismiss the dumb question, he turned to the story. Dr. Zuckerman had been on her way to Ellis Hospital to visit Norman Sherwood, who’d been admitted that afternoon for a heart attack. “They are survived by their daughter, Nicole Ellen Sherwood . . .” “What do we do, Gwen?”

“I . . . fuck.” She pressed a fist to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “Okay, okay,” she muttered. “First we gotta call the hospital, make sure this shit’s real. Then, uh . . . the police?”

David nodded, feeling his heart rate slow as Gwen traced out a plan. “That’s a good idea. I’ll call Sal. Would you . . .” He trailed off as she nodded, taking her phone back and tapping at it rapidly. “Thanks.”

“You’ve gotta tell her.” The voice startled them both, and they both looked down at Max. He was glaring up at them, his hands clenched into fists and his lips trembling just slightly. “You can’t just sit here and make plans and not tell her, like this isn’t about her, like . . . like . . .”

“It’s okay, Max,” Gwen said, putting a hand nervously on his shoulder; he jerked away, turning his murderous gaze to the ground instead and scrubbing at his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. “We’re going to get all of this sorted out, and then we’ll talk to her. But we want to make sure we have all the facts first.” Her voice was soothing, a tone he’d never heard her take with Max before. “How about we just let her sleep for right now, okay?”

He just growled and stalked away, over to where Nikki had rolled onto her side. For a second David thought he was going to wake her, but to his surprise Max just plopped onto the grass next to her, shoving his hands in his hoodie and watching her run in her sleep.

“He’s a good kid,” Gwen finally murmured, pulling them both to the tasks at hand. “Guess you were right, David.”

Despite himself, he managed a weak smile. It wasn’t often his coworker had something nice to say about the campers, after all -- or about him, for that matter. “I’m glad he’s here, so she’s not alone when . . .” He cut off, turning his attention to the number for the local police (he had them saved on his speedial).

Now wasn’t the time to be sad for Nikki.

Now, they had to take care of her.

“Dead?” Nikki cocked her head to the side, her nose wrinkling. “Like they’re not coming to pick me up?”

David glanced nervously at Gwen. Nikki was only nine years old, of course, but he’d expected her to understand the whole concept of death a bit more than this. “I’m . . . afraid not.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her shoes thoughtfully. Then her head snapped up, her eyes widening and a grin spreading across her face. “Does this mean I get to be raised by wolves?!”

“Um . . .” Before he could come up with an answer she’d rushed off toward the trees, howling like she could just summon a wolf pack that very instant. (Which . . . maybe she could. He’d seen her do more impossible things.)

“It’s shock,” Gwen explained quietly, as they watched her drop to her hands and knees and start sniffing at the ground. “I think she’s processing it the best she can.”

It didn’t look like she was processing at all, but David could hardly blame her. “Now what?”

“Now I make another thirty billion phone calls.”

“David!” He turned to see Max dragging his parents over to them, nearly tripping over himself in his hurry. “Where’s Nikki? Mom and Dad are here to take her home.”

Rey Sahni sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in a move that was uncannily similar to his son. “Max, it’s not that we don’t want to help your friend, but it’s not that simple. She’ll need --”

“She needs fucking parents, Dad!” he insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. “She can stay in Kayla’s room.”

Max’s mother knelt down so she was at eye level, running a hand through his hair tenderly. “Sweetie, of course we’ll have Nikki visit as soon as things are sorted out, but first --”

“We can afford it! It’s not like you guys didn’t want another kid, anyway.” He glanced over at Nikki, who’d climbed into a tree and was stalking a chipmunk. “She’s weird, but she’ll be way less of a pain in the ass than Kayla or me.”

His father let out a long, weary sigh. “It’s not like picking up a stray dog, Max.”

“It’s exactly like picking up a stray dog! She even sniffs butts sometimes!”

“She needs to live with her family.” Max’s mother looked up at David. “Have you heard from her guardian?”

Gwen sighed, returning to his side in time to hear this question. “I’ve been talking to . . . everyone, it feels like,” she said with a sigh. “She doesn’t have any family. Sal says she’ll probably have to go into foster care or something.”

“Then we can foster her!” Max turned to his parents again, clenching his hands into fists. His eyes were just the tiniest bit shiny, and David realized with shock that this was the first time he’d ever seen Max close to crying. “Please. She’s one of my best friends.”

His mother’s hands were over her mouth, and his father turned to David with a helpless shrug. “We can’t . . .”

“I understand, Mr. Sahni.” David bent down until his eyes were at level with Max’s. “Listen, we’re gonna make sure Nikki’s fine, okay, Max?”

He just pulled away, turning his back on all of them with a quiet “fuck you” and stomping over to Nikki.

David straightened with a sigh. “He’ll . . .” But there was no way to end that sentence, so he didn’t bother trying. “They’ve gotten close.”

He stumbled through the necessary pleasantries, not fully aware of what he was saying and more than happy to let Gwen take over being the adult for a few minutes. He couldn’t stop watching the kids: Max as he paced back and forth in front of Nikki, raging at something they couldn’t hear. Nikki, who was laughing and tossing pinecones in the hood of Max’s sweatshirt every time he stalked past her.

Until her smile faltered.

Her hand fell to her chest, curling in the light yellow fabric of her shirt. Her eyes landed on Max’s parents, huddled by the car and whispering anxiously with their eyes following Max’s every movement with concern and exasperation and undeniable love.

When Max finally stuttered to a stop and pulled her into a brusque, almost-violent hug, it was the least-energetic David had ever seen Nikki. When Max pulled away, looking embarrassed and furious at nothing in particular, her smile was small and wobbly as she waved away his muttered . . . somethings. Whatever it was, it was between the two of them.

When the Sahni’s car disappeared down the mountain, she drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees and staring at nothing.

“Adopting her would take a lot of work, you know.”

David jumped at Gwen’s voice, chuckling nervously. “What’re you talking about?”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You’re not hard to read, Greenwood,” she said. “You have puppy-dog eyes.”

He swallowed, his throat tickling and tight. “I just want to help.”

“Do you even know all the legal bullshit you’d have to go through?” When he didn’t reply, she sighed and pulled out her phone again.

“What are you --” he began, but Gwen cut him off with a raised finger.

“Hey, Dree. Yeah, I haven’t left yet. Listen, I’m gonna be staying up here for a couple weeks. There’s kinda been a . . . emergency? I can explain later. Like, maybe a month. I know, I know, they’ll kill me. That’s why I want you to tell them, sis.” She shook her head with a quiet laugh. “No, I’ve got nothing to get fired from. If they wanna send money up . . . Yeah, I figured.” She gave him a small, hesitant smile. “No, it’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it. Thanks, love you.” She hung up, pocketing her phone without meeting his eyes. “Okay, this is fine. We’ll get it sorted out.”

“I . . . what just happened?”

She punched his shoulder, harder than was strictly necessary. “Come on, I’m not gonna let you fuck this up just because you suck at paperwork.”

“Thank you, Gwen.”

She shrugged, glancing back toward where the Campmobile was waiting. “Don’t thank me. I’ll be the one crashing on your couch. Anyway, Sal wants us to be at the station to . . . god, I don’t even remember, I’ve talked to too many fucking people today, it’s all running together.” She rubbed her forehead with the pads of her fingers and started toward the car, tossing over her shoulder, “Go get your wild child, daddy.”

“Please never call me that again.”

Gwen turned, flashing him a quick grin. “Nature daddy?”

“Absolutely not!” But his heart was just the tiniest bit lighter as he crossed over to where Nikki was sitting, crouching down in front of her.

“I don’t wanna be raised by wolves,” she whispered into her knees. Her eyes were huge and wet and dark, and it was against every rule in the Employee Handbook but David wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug, because there were things he wasn’t strong enough to resist and this was one of them. She clung to his shirt with hands that felt like claws, her tears burning through his shirt and making his own eyes sting.

“It’s okay,” he kept murmuring, rubbing her back because he didn’t know what else to do. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d keep that promise, but damned if he wasn’t gonna die trying.

“I can’t fucking believe this.” Max groaned, laying back in the grass and frowning up at the sky. “All the people you could’ve gotten stuck with and you picked David?”

Nikki laughed, picking at a dandelion and shredding the stem, smearing the milky-sticky fluid across her fingers. “He’s not that bad,” she said. “He takes me on hikes a lot. And he said we might be able to get a dog this year!”

“You wanted to be raised by wolves and got yourself adopted by a fucking puppy. Christ, Nikki.” He rolled onto his stomach so he could better glare at her, brushing his floppy dark hair out of his face. “It was bad enough having to see him every summer, now I have to deal with him whenever I wanna visit you, too?”

“Good thing I’m awesome enough to be worth it, huh, Max?” She laughed as he threw a handful of grass at her, shaking the dirt out of her hair and flopping onto her back. “Thanks for coming all the way up here.”

“Thank Neil, he’s the one whose parents drove us.” He sat up slightly, peering back toward a small, ivy-covered apartment building. “The fuck did he go, anyway?”

Nikki frowned. “I dunno. Maybe David kidnapped him and is trying to teach him knitting again.” She leapt to her feet, bouncing up on the balls of her toes and then rocking back onto her heels. “Let’s rescue him!”

Max rolled his eyes, but climbed to his feet anyway. “Sounds like an adventure,” he said sarcastically, smirking as she let out a warrior whoop and broke into a sprint.

David’s apartment was tiny, but filled to burst with . . . well, Max would call it “David bullshit.” Lots of embroidery and knitting, lots of framed motivational posters, lots of cute kitschy things that belonged in the home of a grandmother. But there were touches of Nikki, too, in the squirrel skull on the mantel, the Xbox under the television, the pictures on the wall: her half-buried under a fish as tall as she was, her next to a fire that she looked way too proud of not to have lit herself, sitting on David’s shoulders in a tree (that looked fucking safe).

Max hated to admit it, but . . . it made sense. Terrible, obnoxious sense, but sense nonetheless.

Neil was sitting at the kitchen table, watching Gwen and David argue over something that was bubbling on the stove. Nikki threw herself into the chair next to him. “What gives, Neil? Where’d you go?”

“Let’s see, heat stroke and bugs or watching idiots try to figure out how to make soup,” he replied, dryly, resting his cheek in one hand. “Guess which I thought sounded more fun.”

Gwen turned around just long enough to flip him off, earning a scandalized cry from David.

“The fuck is she even doing here, anyway?” Max asked. He was talking to Nikki, but he spoke loud enough for the adults to hear. “Exhausted all the nonexistent job opportunities in America and had to leave the country?”

“Suck a dick, Max.” (“Gwen!”)

Nikki shrugged. “She moved in to help David figure out the adoption stuff, and then just kinda . . . stayed.”

“David’s an idiot. He needed extra help.” She turned to roll her eyes at Max. “These two almost kill themselves twice a week.”

David pouted. “I think we’re doing just fine!”

“You tried to raise wolverines. In the apartment.”

“It could’ve worked!” When she just sighed and shook her head, his smile softened. “Well, we certainly appreciate it, Gwen.”

“Yeah! She made him let us buy video games!” Nikki leaned in, grinning like she was about to impart the location of a secret treasure. “Violent video games!”

“I’m still not very happy about that, by the way.”

“For fuck’s sake, it was one scene! It’s not like the rest of the game was like that!”

“Yes it was!”

“You’re not helping, Nikki.”

Max snorted, sitting back and watching them argue.

He had to admit, things could’ve ended up worse.

#campcamp #cc nikki #cc david #cc max #cc gwen #cc neil #this turned out super emo sorry #and max is kinda ooc #everyone is ooc #writing is hard okay #i'm not very good at it #and sometimes i just want feel-good fluff #gwenvid if you squint #also i didn't edit this even a little #not even to proofread #foster parent au #dadvid

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duaneodavila · 6 years

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Don’t Stand So Close To Me: Navigating The Physical Hazards Of Being An In-House Counsel

I love art. I love standing in front of vast, colorful masterpieces and wondering where the artist started on the canvas. Was it the main event like the toothsome predator in Copley’s “Watson and the Shark,” or something more subtle, more personal, like Rembrandt’s shoulder swag in his self-portrait? I could spend hours staring at paintings, their textures and messages changing with the shifting light. But you know what I never do? Touch them.

Why? Maybe it’s my aversion to being manhandled by museum guards. Maybe it’s out of a profound respect for not spoiling the medium with my grubby mitts. Or maybe, you know, it’s because you’re not supposed to.

My stint in Biglaw proved that most attorneys adhere to the “no touching unless there’s a medical emergency and even then” rule. I can count the number non-handshake touches I received from partners. Even at my going away shebang, only a few younger associates dared come in for the awkward back-pat, coworker half-hug. I let this slide since we’d all been in the trenches together. Once you watch the sun rise in your office with someone while waiting for pages to come back from the printer, boundaries naturally erode.

This luxurious personal space concept left me ill-prepared to go in-house. Going in-house should really come with a warning label and a manual or a pamphlet or something (because who has time for manuals) and one of the salient warnings in bold should be “EXPECT TO BE TOUCHED. A LOT.”

To be clear, I’m not talking about “this is clearly unwanted touching that amounts to harassment, let’s go have a meaningful conversation with HR present” stuff. That’s not funny in the slightest. And if this is happening, then by all means, report them and get their asses fired if you can.

I’m talking about the random gray area of touching, which rises to the level of weird and annoying, but not harassment territory touching. And just like bullshit, everybody’s tolerance for it is a little different.

My company is overwhelmingly male, from entry-level to C-suite and there are times I feel like I’ve stumbled into some sort of bizarre sporting event, only everybody is wearing business casual and coming to term with male pattern baldness of some sort of another. I am a routine recipient of back slaps, shoulder squeezes, arm stroking, and even the occasional head pat. Yes, that’s right. I once had a VP pat me on the head while I was seated at my desk as he told me to keep up the good work. I think it’s worth pointing out that I’m still here and he’s not.

In my experience, I find business people to be natural pushers of boundaries, whether it’s our company’s risk profile or standard procedures and practices they find too cumbersome to bother following, so I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised that they would be routine and shameless invaders of personal space.

I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about what spurs people to touch one another in a professional environment. Is it just the boundary thing? Or is it a lady parts thing? I think it must be some of column A and some of column B to be sure, but I think it’s something more than that. I think attorneys are inherently unknown quantities to business people and they’re looking for reassurance, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not.

Remember when you touched that snake during the zoo demonstration in the third grade, you bad ass? That feeling of cool dry scales over your fingertips? You wanted to know that you could do it. That there was nothing to be afraid of. Well, I think we’re the snakes in this analogy.

I often find touching paired with searching questions from business people. “Are we good, Kay?” “Is this going to come back and bite us in the ass?” “I think it was a good deal, right?” That pat on the arm and the shoulder squeeze is a touch point. I get it. I don’t like it and I feel absolutely no qualms about mocking anyone who touches me, but I think I get it.

That doesn’t mean that when touching feels particularly egregious, I ignore it. My preferred response is when someone lays hands on me, I look slowly at the offending digits and then drag my eyes up the business person, giving them the blank stare of the carrion crow and perhaps, the eyebrow arch. I find this non-verbal particularly effective because it leaves the business partner to wonder what I would have done if the touching had continued. Nothing good, I can assure you.

Occasionally, when I feel like someone has really crossed the line (recent example, a senior manager who insisted on clasping my hand as he told me that “I’d find a way to get this deal done” and he wasn’t talking about time constraints, but risk tolerance concerns), I will have a private, closed-door conversation with the business partner and woe to the guy who has a kid that I know about or have glimpsed in a picture frame on the desk, because nothing creates that look of dumbstruck horror when you ask a father how they would feel if a teacher or a coach put their hands on little Brantley. I know, it’s a cheap shot, but an instructive one I take to stop the behavior because really, if we’ve gotten this far on my annoyance scale, we’re in HR territory.

So what’s the big deal about touching in the workplace? I harken back to the concept of tolerance. I have a pretty high threshold for a lot of things, you have to when you’re juggling shifting priorities and deadlines and the occasional less than truthful business partner. But touching throws me off my game. As reassuring as it might be for a partner to clasp their hand on my shoulder, I find it unsettling. I never have the urge to touch anyone at work. And while I’ll generally give a business partner the benefit of the doubt (it’s just a reassurance thing, right?), I do sometimes wonder if it’s an attempt to assert control over someone else, mainly me. And if that’s the case, then as my grandma used to say, that really frosts my pumpkin.

For me, people who invade my personal space are slightly worse than people who cut the line, but less annoying than those who insist that Jimi Hendrix wrote “All Along the Watchtower.” (Try again, children. Bob Dylan. Scout’s honor. And while I’m on the lyrical soap box, Cat Stevens didn’t write “Cat’s Cradle.” Harry Chapin did. So there.) But again, like the half-truths and fictitious deadlines our business partners try to con us into on a regular basis, everyone must decide for themselves what their tolerance level is. And for me, I readily admit that I am the freaking Mona Lisa of attorneys. Keep your grubby mitts off.

Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.

Don’t Stand So Close To Me: Navigating The Physical Hazards Of Being An In-House Counsel republished via Above the Law

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