Work Text:
Samantha was busy making a spreadsheet when Mr. Cheezle called her into his office.
“Samantha, I need your help,” Mr. Cheezle said, his hands folded like in a prayer. “The production of Eternal Death Slayer 3 is at its end stage, and I’m more than a little worried.”
“Why? We’re on schedule,” Samantha frowned.
“We are, thanks to you,” Mr. Cheezle smiled. “But it’s crunch time. The testers might be struggling. Last Friday, I saw Jeff sit at his desk, same position, for several hours straight. And Barry is subsisting on nothing but ramen lately. Can you make sure none of them get gamer lung or something? And make sure they eat fruits and vegetables once in a while?”
“You want me to be a babysitter,” Samantha raised an eyebrow.
“More like.. Team Wellness Coordinator.”
“That’s alright,” Samantha smiled at Mr. Cheezle’s diplomatic choice of words. “But first I just need to make sure it’s reflected in my compensation.”
“Of course,” Mr. Cheezle smiled. “Oh, and another thing…” he stopped as he was turning to his desk. “It’s not just the testers. JP is making a new masterpiece and I think …he might be behind schedule. He’s not looking so good lately. Can you keep an eye on him?”
“No problem,” Samantha smiled professionally.
Samantha went around the office, handing out healthy snacks and reminding the testers to get up every hour, much to their delight and gratitude.
She stopped by JP’s office and inhaled. This was it. Her task was to make sure the resident “genius” didn’t implode and take the game studio down with him. Why the studio only had one developer making all these games was beyond her comprehension. It was stupid, and impractical. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. She opened it a crack and was blasted by annoying music. Grimacing, she let herself inside and waved at JP sitting at the computer, who was bent like a question mark, his trench coat pooling around him. His foot tapped nervously as he muttered to himself, trying to debug an especially difficult problem in the code. He looked pale, irritable and twitchy, one arm clutching his stomach. A few hair strands escaped hair gel prison and stuck out at odd angles.
“You didn’t knock,” he muttered without looking, after pausing the music. “Oh! Samantha, sorry, I didn’t realize you were coming,” his tone changed from annoyed to soft immediately upon seeing her, and he tried to straighten up.
“Hey,” she pressed her lips together in a tight smile. “You okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” he responded, squirming in his chair.
Samantha sighed. “Sure doesn’t look like it. Here, I brought you some fruit, water and carrots,” she put the food box and a water bottle on the desk next to him. “Is this all you’ve been eating?..” she pointed to the candy wrappers and grey protein sludge on the desk next to him. “This studio would be in trouble if you ran yourself into the ground. So… take a short break? Hydrate? Eat a carrot?”
JP froze. “I .. appreciate it, but I’m not very hungry,” he said, hiding a brief grimace, then turning back to the screen. “But.. Don’t worry about it. I’m functioning at peak efficiently on this,” he pointed at the questionable energy bars and supplements on his desk. “No need for human intervention.”
Samantha frowned. He seemed to want her gone, and it wasn’t his usual behavior.
“Do you have a stomachache?” Samantha asked, gesturing to his arm draped over his stomach, pretending to be there for warmth.
“Oh, that,” he grimaced, and rolled his eyes dismissively. “Nothing to worry about it. My body has been running some uh, background processes .. for the past few days. It’ll resolve itself eventually.”
Sam arched an eyebrow. “So… you’re constipated.”
JP whipped around, horrified. “Wh—no! How dare you! I am an optimized biomechanical construction, incapable of such… plebeian malfunctions!”
Sam shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Hold on,” she said and exited JP’s office. She returned with a steaming mug of herbal tea and placed it on his desk. “Drink this. Lie down. Let’s fix this before you optimize yourself into a crisis.”
He stared at her. “…You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Couch. Now.”
JP let her lead him to a small foldable cot he sometimes used to sleep in his office. “What are you going to do?”
“Stomach massage. Gets things moving. ILU pattern, like the type I’ve used on toddlers I used to babysit as a teenager,” she smirked as she gently pressed her hand against his abdomen and pushed him to lie down. Reluctantly, he obeyed.
JP covered his face with his arms and groaned. Samantha thought of him as a toddler. “You’re killing my dignity in cold blood right now,” he complained, but as Samantha’s hands began to work their magic, little by little, the tension began to escape his body almost against his will.
Sam pressed her palms lightly against JP’s abdomen, drawing slow circles. It was impossible not to notice how tense he was. His abdominal muscles were tight with tension and he breathed with his shoulders.
“You’re tense,” she sighed. “You hold on to a lot, don’t you,” she smirked.
“Not funny,” JP snapped, voice tight.
“Sorry, just wanted to lighten the mood.. badly,” Samantha snorted apologetically. “Breathe with your stomach for me,” she said softly. He drew a shuddering breath, as if unsure how to. She let her palm rise and fall with his abdomen, applying light pressure with every outbreath. Soon his muscles relaxed, allowing her to assess the extent of the problem.
She felt around his waist with her hands. His skinny build didn’t offer much padding between her hands and his guts, in which she could already feel every hard, uncomfortable knot. He flinched and complained of dignity assassination when her hand brushed over every bubble of gas, but he stayed put, his hand gripping the side of the cot and his eyes averted to the wall. In this state, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Of course this would happen. He’s been living off of protein sludge and Skittles. What did he expect?”
Sam sighed, smoothing her hand in the “I” stroke, then the “L” over JP’s cramped belly. She could feel the knots softening little by little, his body betraying him by relaxing even while he muttered denials.
JP stopped talking. He dared to unclench his fingers and close his eyes. Sure the situation was weird, but it was actually not bad. He felt things shifting inside him into a more comfortable configuration, and he allowed himself to relax.
It was a mistake.
It was then his body finally felt safe enough to release the pressure it’s been holding onto for days. Loudly and undeniably.
His eyes went wide as the offending sound cut through the silence. His face went white, then red.
“I-it wasn’t me!..” he stuttered before he could think. It was a useless defense that only made things worse.
He fully expected her to make a disgusted face. Laugh at him. Or at least walk out and let him die in peace. Instead, she smiled softly.
“Good sign. Means it’s working,” she said, completely unfazed, and continued massaging like she was a pro technician and he was a jammed printer.
JP covered his face with both hands, wishing to fall through the crust of the earth right there and then. “I can never look you in the eye again,” he said.
Sam smirked. “Sure you can… well, maybe not right now.”
JP kept his eyes shut, the remains of his destroyed dignity rattling in its last death throes. His face burned. His brain screamed. But his body slowly melted under her hand anyway.
“Don’t enjoy this. Don’t enjoy this. You’re supposed to be a futuristic technoentity, not…”
The warmth of her arms seeped into his core and stayed there on loop. His traitorous body sighed in relief, flooded with oxytocin. His shoulders dropped. His jaw unclenched. The pain in his gut eased. He cracked. An involuntary, shuddering sigh escaped his throat.
Sam finished the massage, then gently patted his arm. “All done. Feeling better?”
JP swallowed hard, face pink. “…Yes… very… better…”
“Well, see you around,” Samantha chirped, and left his office, leaving him alone sitting on the edge of the seat, his head in his hands, wondering what just happened.
The next day, when his system finally “rebooted”, his relief was so great he almost forgot his shame. He sipped herbal tea, trying to wrap his mind around what happened. He wasn’t sure what was more shocking — that Samantha went out of her way to help him through the most humiliating moment of his life, or that it warmed his soul instead of crushing it.
He replayed the massage over and over in his head, each motion carved into his memory. His chest tightened in a way that felt… dangerous. New.
He took out his phone and opened Reddit, where he found r/relationships and started typing.
“My office crush massaged my intestines. …is this love?”