Duality - Chapter 2 (Novel Commission for Code-Shark101)

TAGS: Anthro, Transformation/TF, Slice-Of-Life (ish)

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Making sense of what she thought of Beth was… difficult. On the one hand, Linda had promised herself not to get entangled with anything or anyone, period, as her current life situation was simply too precarious for her to afford to start new relationships on anything more than a surface level; if not for her, then for the other person’s sake. Plus, workplace romances hardly ever worked out from what she knew, more often than not leading to budding awkwardness turning into outright hostility and then someone was thrown out into the streets without a paycheck or means to support themselves; and given her status as Rivtech’s premiere guinea pig, Linda doubted she’d be the one to be sent home with a goodbye letter stuffed in her pocket.

On the other hand, Beth was the nicest of all of her coworkers, and some days was single-handedly responsible for keeping her spirits up. Jovial, eternally peppy and always ready with a terrible pun that made the panda gal want to slap her as punishment, it’d be disingenuous to claim she never had… thoughts. But those were just that: thoughts. Not convictions, not certainties, absolutely not promises or plans, just errant, stray, glancing hits to her consciousness that occasionally spawned some mildly uncomfortable ideas and, very rarely, forced her to confront her sexuality.

Did she like the sudden intimacy? Yes, absolutely. Did she want it to continue, though? That was a far harder question to answer, especially given the circumstances of her employment. Perhaps, she thought to herself, the two could exchange furtive looks during work hours, nodding towards one another when no one else was looking, knowing that when the clock ran out they could enjoy a few secretive moments away from prying eyes. An interspecies romance, in that part of the country? It’d be so scandalous that it would probably be on the news beyond being just a local oddity, and who knew what would happen then? They’d have to find better and better places to hide, to enjoy one another’s company, until passcodes and spycraft were needed to avoid the glint of cameras or poisoned words. And yet all of that would be worth it once they felt their touch again, silky-smooth, warm as a hearth during the height of winter, promising comfort and love and the endless support of two lovers for whom the other was their whole world.

Linda found herself thinking these things, and only after snapping out of it did she realize she’d been bent over the same table for the past five minutes, attracting the attention of several of her coworkers, one of which had gone the full mile and asked her what she was supposed to be doing. The luminescent blush on the panda girl’s face answered a great many questions, as did the fact that her legs were shaking, causing the young man who approached her to turn around and vacate her proximity as quickly as he could.

Did she just spend five minutes fantasizing about a dream scenario with Beth? Because that’s exactly what it looked like, and it left her feeling so unbelievably embarrassed that she was getting hot all over just from trying to push it all down, trying to forget it ever happened. It wasn’t happening though, and thus Linda had to find something better to distract herself with; with not much else left, and Ruth clearly visible in the kitchen area whispering into her colleague’s ears (drawing several uncomfortable giggles in the process), the panda gal turned to the one thing she had: the customers.

God help her.

Linda hated to buy into stereotypes, but she had to admit that it was depressing how many people looked at her, Ruth especially,  and assumed she was going to start spontaneously growing bigger tits or a male package just because she had fur all over, or made lewd comments as to her ursine nature that were better left unremembered. Worse, they probably thought that she wouldn’t mind! Linda was sure that in any proper establishment, the management would crack down on that kind of behavior as soon as it reared its ugly head, but instead her boss seemed to be, at best, entirely indifferent most of the time, or worse, viewed her as little more than a “sideshow attraction” he could use to bring in more customers; an unfortunate expression she had heard him use on the phone once, and had sent her crying to the break room until Beth was able to calm her down. Despite her multiple complaints, her boss seemed to do little more than promise to address the problems before sending her back out to the floor and doing nothing to resolve the issue, inevitably leaving Linda to learn how to live with it on her own.

On occasion her temper would flare and she would slap hands away or threaten to bash a skull in with whatever she was carrying if they ever tried touching her again; this earned her both the silent admiration and occasional discrete applause from the more liberal customers around her, who viewed her as a person first, and a hybrid second. Still, every day was a challenge, especially with Ruth and her boss being as eager as they were to hold any “incidents” over her head for far longer than they were remotely relevant. Things, thankfully, would still slowly become a routine, with Linda finding some solace in her ability to immerse herself in the mindless, repetitive activities and tasks expected of her.

Not exactly the most glamorous of professions, and seemingly every other day was broken up with a surprise medical check-up by Rivtech’s medical staff. The company refused to tell her what they were seeing in those exams, maintaining the line that everything was just fine... for a panda-human hybrid no one knew anything about. Linda, however, knew enough to be able to decode the expressions hidden behind their medical masks, and what they told her did very little to assuage her fears. The tests were becoming increasingly stranger, and with the increased frequency of them, so too did her anxiety begin to rise and match them.

“Why do I need to get a biopsy of my liver again?” she remembered asking during one of her ‘routine’ examinations, “I don’t even drink!”

“We need to make sure your body is still handling impurities correctly,” was the technician’s response, delivered in the driest tone possible, “the last thing we want is for your body to start acting like you actually are a panda.”

“And what, start demanding bamboo?”

She recalled the techie’s face when she asked that, looking at her like she’d just said something of actual worth, rather than a dumb joke, and forcing Linda to clarify that no, she wasn’t having bamboo stick cravings, nor did she spend her whole day munching on whatever was nearest to her.

Medical checkups aside, her horrible experiences at the diner all came to a head at the end of the weekend. The place was busier than usual, which was itself predictable at that point, and her coworkers seemed agitated about something, falling silent when she flicked her ears in their direction. Linda’s work shift had started off normally enough, with the regulars showing up and asking for the same things they always did; her boss was the same-old self, barely grunting at her as she entered the staff room, and her fellow waitresses remained about as polite and detached as they’d always been. Beth, at least, had taken the previous run-in with Ruth in stride, and in fact had made it evident that she didn’t hold Linda’s sudden and unannounced departure against her; how could she, when they were technically breaking several rules in a moment of passion? If anything, the young woman was the only stable ground the panda girl could rely on having, always ready to give her a helping hand, a warm smile, or a stealthy kiss whenever the cameras weren’t looking.

What wasn’t usual was the sudden appearance of the asshole that came crashing into the lobby after deliberately leaving his car between two empty parking spaces.

It was hard to tell what his job was supposed to be, on account of the garish mixture of a formal shirt and beach shorts, carrying with him a tie and a pair of extremely tacky sunglasses; if not for his ride being obnoxiously expensive, Linda might have mistaken him for an insane person who got their hands on some ironed-out clothing. The man sat down and very loudly began talking over the phone with someone who was as adept at piercing eardrums as their interlocutor was; this caused more than one of the diner’s patrons to look back at the man, staring at him with equal parts anger and annoyance. Being the helpful and attentive individual that his attitude seemed to indicate, he thus proceeded to completely ignore everyone and keep shouting into the phone.

Everyone except Linda, of course.

That day was already shaping up to be the worst to date. Her alarm had failed to go off earlier, making her wake up half an hour later than normal and forcing her to skip most of the morning routine. At least the bus route was busy enough that she could hop on one practically right after arriving at the stop, even if she had to deal with so many people as to feel like a sardine in a can. And to top off, because things weren’t bad enough, her favourite shirt had caught on an outlying nail and torn the moment she took it off in the changing room, leaving her mood fouled even before her shift started. And then he had to step inside and sat down.

“Hey, honeybear, get over here,” he loudly called out, drawing an indignant gasp out of the panda.

“Sir, I’m n-”

“Listen darlin’, I need to take this, you just hold there and I’ll be right back to give you your treat, alright?” the man interrupted her, turning to talk into his phone again and leaving Linda to wonder just where exactly that guy had come from.

“Sir, I’m going to need you t-” she tried to speak up again.

“Listen to me when I speak to you,” the customer growled, “you will wait until I’m done. And that’s if you want me not to make a fuss, honeytits. Now wait for five minutes, will ya?”

Oh. Oh, that wasn’t good. The kind of rhetoric and attitude she had to take from her boss was something that, while she didn’t particularly appreciate, she could still live with; enduring stupidity was par for the course in her chosen academic career, and nothing those kinds of assholes could do would ever equate to the stress of working in a hospital. But what she couldn’t, wouldn’t tolerate, nor had the ability to withstand properly, were the belligerent bigots with superiority complexes. She could tell just by looking at him, that all he saw her as was a piece of meat to be pinched, gawked at or, in one unfortunate occasion a few days prior, licked.

And she hated dealing with that kind of person.

Linda was accustomed to rude customers; they were the bread and butter for the food service industry, and even a place as small as the one she worked in was no stranger to the occasional idiot or jackass who needed to externalize their own frustrations on the staff. This man was different, though; every time she tried to walk away, he’d loudly call for her using increasingly aggravating names: “honey bear” became “honey tits”, until eventually he just started calling her “tits” like it was somehow acceptable, demanding she wait until he finished his call. Every time she tried to come up with an excuse for why she needed to make her rounds, he’d proclaim that “someone else” could get it, while pointing towards one of the other waitresses, loudly complaining about how “the customer is always right”.

Great. One of these.

Despite her near endless supply of patience usually being enough, Linda found this person in particular to be especially painful to deal with. It was unnatural even; she’d had far worse individuals lobbed at her, sometimes several people in a row thanks to the whole being a non-human thing, and it never affected her to the degree the man before her did. Looking back to the staff counter, she silently begged for someone to relieve her, for anyone to come around and take this one guy off her hands. Unsurprisingly, no one did; in fact, the more Linda looked back, the more she noticed her coworkers were trying their best to look busy, none of them wanting to be the unlucky one who had to deal with that day’s “that guy”. And in that moment she suddenly felt incredibly alone, which didn’t really help with her overall situation. Hardening her resolve, she was determined to try and end this interaction as fast as possible.

“Sir, I need you to make your order, otherwise I’ll have to go,” she declared, shuffling her feet before straightening her back and holding firm.

“You’re not going any-hold on, Jake, I’ll get to you-you’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stand there and wait until I’m done, because I didn’t come all the way here just to have the house pet decide to blow me off.”

‘Excuse me?’

“You fuckin’ heard me, I’m not gonna have a housebroken pet bear tell me what to fuckin’ do.”

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“Or what, you’ll growl at me?”

“Sir, I…” - it was difficult for Linda to keep her cool; those words of theirs were starting to hit buttons she wasn’t even aware she had. It had been years since she felt that angry about anything, much less wanted to punch someone so hard - “I’m going to ask you to leave. We do not tolerate customers harassing the staff.”

“Pfft, staff,” the man blew her off, unashamedly winking at her in the process, “you keep tellin’ yourself that, honeytits, I’m sure your boss loves to have his pet around just ‘cuz she can take down orders.”

“Sir, I’m not going to ask this again. Please leave before I have to speak to my manager:”

Perhaps it was the certainty and confidence with which she spoke those words, or maybe it was the fact her eyes were as bright as two coal pits lit on fire, but finally she managed to get through to the man in front of her… even if he did nothing but scoff again and turn aside, facing his phone and pretending not to hear her anymore. He was intent on remaining in the diner… but at least he wasn’t talking anymore.

It would be a victory, if not for something he said. Something that stuck to her like glue, despite how flippantly the words were spoken.

House pet.

Two words that Linda had never heard directed at her, not even on her worst of days. She’d gotten “furball”, “panda ass”, even “fucking furry” every once in a while, but not once had anyone, not even the hyper-thirtsty would-be suitors who were desperate for her attention, referred to her as a pet.

Somehow, that comment, combined with her already bad day, set off a lot of triggered reactions she was unaware she had bottled up. The man’s words didn’t push her metaphorical buttons so much as they grazed them, letting her feel what it was like to be well and truly objectified for the first time in her life. Hell, not just objectified, but worse; that man clearly saw her as little more than window dressing for the business! And considering how he was looking at her, there was no compassion or attraction behind those cold eyes. Just disgust, and a deep, fundamental disapproval of her very existence.

“Are you going to behave, sir?” she dared to question.

“Do bears shit in the woods?”

There were so many ways she could reply to that; at some level, Linda kind of wanted to issue a threat that no, bears didn’t shit in the woods, they shat upon pieces of crap like him; instead, the panda girl huffed, turned around, and muttered something to the tune of “Fuck this, I’m done,” before storming off and slamming the door to the staff changing area behind her.

Linda wanted to scream that at the man’s face, but knew better than to push her luck when her boss was keeping a close eye on her; doubly so since she had been late for work that day, right after her boss had warned her the week before that “the bus wasn’t there” was no excuse, and she’d be out on the streets if she ever showed up “after hours” again. That miserable thought rolling around in her head only added to the turmoil she was experiencing, and as she sat down and took a deep breath, she felt something crumble inside of her, a wall that she’d erected around herself that had finally, at long last, began to give in.

And that’s when she felt it.