Work Text:
It's all quiet on set. Everyone else has gone home—it's past 5 o'clock on a Friday, after all—but you can't bring yourself to leave while Tenna's still working. It's not as if you have anything more valuable you could be doing, since you live alone and barely have anything that can be considered a social life.
As you help Tenna with inventory, you chit-chat about lots of random things. You two ran out of normal boss-employee topics a long time ago, and while most people would just repeat those same conversations over and over again or move on from the idea that they needed to converse at all, Tenna wasn't like that. He wanted to talk, and you found yourself wanting to listen. You're both lonely and definitely don't have anyone better to talk to.
So while you make notes of what you need to order next week, Tenna discusses how he's been getting headaches lately, how he's considering firing one of the ShadowGuys as an example to the others, how a flier with that nasty mailman on it somehow ended up on his desk and how frustrating he found it, and whatever else is on his mind. The in-control (if hot-headed) demeanor he puts up for the other employees hadn't lasted long with you, and now the majority of conversations he has alone with you are sincere nearly to a fault.
And of course, you respond in kind. You never would have started being this open with him if he hadn't opened the floor, but you found that along with being a good talker, he was also a good listener. Most people who are good at one tend to lack in the other. So you discuss how your mental health's been worse than usual this month, and the details of an argument you had the other day with someone close to you, and a hilarious internet post you saw on the way to work that's definitely not safe for broadcast.
You finish your list and Tenna finishes noting what needs to be reordered, but he continues talking with you. You try to stay particularly still, to keep the conversation flowing, anything that'll keep the spell from breaking and causing Tenna to realize he can leave.
Tenna's always a wildcard, but the thing that strikes you most about your one-on-one discussions is his gentleness. Not in the sense of him avoiding passion or aggression, but in the sense that he genuinely cares about what you have to say. He doesn't nod and smile like he does for the other people he works with. He'll ask follow-ups and point out when he disagrees with you, as if he truly wants to understand you. When his opinions differ from yours, he makes a sincere effort to see your side, and then either accepts it (with far more humility than he'd show anyone else in the studio) or explains where he's coming from, in the hopes that even if you don't agree with him, you won't just find him to be illogical or incomprehensible.
It's pretty pathetic that your boss has become your best friend, but you can't complain. He's a nice guy.
"Oh, would you look at the TIME!" says Tenna. It's much closer to 7 o'clock than to 5. Despite his comment, he doesn't make any movement as if to leave.
"How will I have time to cook dinner now?" you sigh dramatically. Tenna laughs, because he knows you've just been heating up freezer meals lately. He also knows which one's your favorite, and which ones suck, and which flavor tasted really bad the first time you tried it, but when you ate the second box of it (which you almost threw out, but you'd bought the two on sale and didn't want to waste money) tasted really good, to the point that now the two of you are placing bets on which one was the fluke. He thinks the next box will be good, and you think it'll be bad.
It's crossed your mind that you've effectively been role-playing domesticity. However, it's been purely platonic. It's not like you'd be able to actually have anything more, anyway.
"Got any plans for the weekend?" Tenna asks.
"Same exciting stuff as always." Tenna knows that this means you have absolutely no plans. You sigh.
"Something wrong?"
You explain that you're just feeling kind of down. That it's annoying having your few friends feel like acquaintances, and not being able to lean on your family. That you're lonely.
In any other context, it would be a lot to dump onto someone and would likely read as a romantic invitation. But it's just a restatement of things that Tenna already knows about you, and he takes it in stride.
"Hey," says Tenna. "Would a hug make you feel better?"
It's the last thing you thought he'd say, and simultaneously exactly what you were expecting.
You tell him that it would.
And you're correct.
"I've been having a pretty rough week too," he remarks after a hug where he held you gently and you definitely squeezed too tight. "That made me feel a lot better. Thank you."
Somehow Tenna managed to make you truly believe that. That you made his life better just like he made yours better, just by existing and listening to his beautiful voice.
For now, that's enough.