“An incident has been brought to our attention by report from an involved party recently. We’d like to discuss the details and repercussions with you at your earliest convenience. Please come to the head of the Human and Anthro Resources’ office at 9am this morning.
Signed,
Jayce Rongeuse”
That was the email that was sitting in your inbox when you came in this morning. It seemed almost facetious the way it assigned you a time for your earliest convenience. Without even time to get a coffee you were striding down the halls towards the HAR department. You hadn’t been on this floor since you started the job, but you had imagined something like this might happen considering what you’d done last Friday. It was your first offense but not exactly a gray area offense.
Checking your watch as you hurried down the halls it seemed like you’d be late for sure, but surely they expected this asking you to come to a meeting at the very beginning of your shift with no notice. HAR was a small crop of cubicles, the company had only a hundred or so employees so the handful of Human and Anthros Resources personnel were plenty to handle all their needs. Aside from the cubes there was one fishbowl office where the head of the department worked. It was the department proudest of its ‘effective’ open door policy, even if the door was not actually open it could be treated as such. Just one of the many overly corporate ways that the department tried to make themselves seem like they were there to help.
Through the floor to ceiling windows you made eye contact with the head of the department, at least who you assumed was the one who sent you the email. He was a light gray mouse, maybe an inch or two over five feet including his round ears and his slender hourglass figure was accentuated by his gray dress pants being worn above his hips and kept up by a thin leather belt, keeping his white satin dress shirt tucked neatly in place.
“Good morning, take a seat please. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, anything?” Principally you wanted him to get to the point and tell you what the repercussions would be. But as the mouse gestured for you to sit down he stood up from his desk and approached the small refreshment area at the side of his office.
“I’ll take some coffee, cream too please.” If you were going to be forced to come first thing in the morning you’re going to eschew manners and take what you can get.
“Of course. Please make yourself comfortable.” It was a little hard to do that when there was the possibility you’d be getting fired or heavily reprimanded. He pushed some buttons on the single serve coffee maker and it started to gurgle ferociously. As he placed the mug on the desk in front of you he added, “Here you are, it’s my premium blend.” It seemed like the head of HAR should have a bit more tact at reading the room in situations like this, it was hardly the time to be bragging about being a coffee snob.
“Thanks.” He smiled at your lip service graciousness and sat back down across the desk from you. His diminutive stature looked almost humorous seated in the executive style chair, almost like he was a child playing in his dad’s office.
“So, about the incident I had mentioned in the email this morning…” He leaned over the desk, trying to engage you as if the situation wasn’t already serious enough. “Do you know to what I am referring?” You knew that situations like this you should never be offering up information to possibly incriminate yourself, but this was a pretty cut and dry situation. Not to mention it would be best to not let them think there was more than one incident making it possible to confuse them.
“Some comments that I made to a coworker the other day.” Even if you would volunteer something there was nothing to be gained by repeating exactly what’s gotten you in trouble to begin with. You also weren’t going to mention what part you hands played during the whole thing. The less they knew about that the better.
“That’s partially correct, and these comments, which you made to Mr. Cartwright could be considered to have been of a sexual nature. Do you understand how they could be interpreted this way?” It wasn’t like this was a stretch or anything, you had let your primitive urges get the better of you. It could be hard being the only human man in an office full of anthro guys. They all were so well groomed and it was just something about the pheromones that they pumped out… ‘Mr. Cartwright’, or Claude as you knew him, was a toy poodle that you worked with frequently. He was just such a pretty boy, it was hard to not have those thoughts about him and during a lapse in judgement, the opportunity to say what you would do to him went undenied.
“I understand.”
“You understand that Mr. Cartwright is not appreciative of being talked to this way?”
“I understand.”
“In the future will you refrain from directing these comments at him?”
“I will.” It felt like the next step would be to go to detention and write it on the blackboard one hundred times.
“Okay, I’m glad we could talk about this.”
“Is that it?” Either the department was entirely toothless or there was some misunderstanding about what you had done.
“It might be, to be really sure, I think we’ll need to recreate the scene so I can get a good idea of what really went down. How does that sound? Just for my own purposes I’d like to see some of the things that don’t come through in a written report. How you said it, the context, all those sorts of things. I’ll play Claude and you’ll be you of course.” He stood up and gestured for you stand as well, you really weren’t eager to repeat your slip of the tongue, especially after replaying it in your head all weekend. But it seemed like this was you being given the benefit of the doubt so it would be best to just go along with it and make yourself seem as sympathetic as possible.
“So Claude was standing in the break room, bending down to get something out of the lower cabinets and then I came in-”
“Like this?” The mouse was bending over at the waist, knees only slightly bent and pressing together, all in an attempt to stick out his shapely butt as much as possible, waggling his hips as he did so.
“Yea something like that…” It wasn’t that far from reality, you wouldn’t have been tempted if there wasn’t something of a show going on, but this was more like something you’d see in a porn movie where the washing machine was a key plot point and the majority of the comments were about the smoke detector beeping in the background.
“Okay, so I’m bent over here like this and then that’s when you come in?” His voice was playful and lilting, teasing you to make your next move. As if once you did he’d have all the evidence he needed to throw the book at you.
“Yea I come in and…” It was hard to focus on retelling the events, especially trying to cast yourself in a positive light, when he was shaking his little rump at you, his tail swishing and curling as if inviting you in. “I was coming in to get a bagel and I said…” He turned back to look at you, his round ears perked up and eager to hear you repeat what you had said in the moment, his backside still thrust out and waggling. “I said ‘There’s a butt I wouldn’t mind taking for a spin.’ or at least something to that effect.” You felt it was important to hedge in anyway you could, in reality all you really did was censor the word ‘ass’. If they had the report they probably knew exactly what happened already.
“Mhmm, and then what?” He had on an almost devilish smile. That was enough to tell you that he certainly knew what was coming next.
“Well then I cupped my hands like this and put them on his butt.”
“Could you reenact that for me?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The point of the exercise is to show me exactly how things happened as best as you can, if you were aiming for a pat on the back and missed that’s something that we should clear up right?”
“Okay…” Considering he was literally asking for it you felt there was no choice. You cupped your hands, fingertips pointing down and scooped up each cheek of his waiting backside. You could swear you heard him make a noise, likely surprised by just how much of his rump you were getting your hands on. “And then I might have squeezed a bit.”
“Go on…” His tail flicked impatiently, reminding you to do exactly as you recall. You do so, feeling his rear squish around your fingers and he made another small yelping noise. “In my defense, at the time his tail was wagging.”
“Noted. Now tell me, you did things exactly as you did them at the time of the incident in question?”
“As well as I could do.”
“Just for context, would you say your grip was any different between then and just now?”
“Maybe it ended up being a bit more forceful just now, I felt like I got a hold of more at the very least.”
“Is that so now?”
“With Claude I mostly just felt fluff and fur, whereas just now with you…”
“Hmm? What’s that you were going to say about my rump?”
“Well it felt like I got more to grab onto.” You could still feel the gentle squish of his butt on your palms, the way it squeezed between your fingers under his silky high waisted dress pants. Somewhere around the heel of your palm you could feel the seam of his skintight briefs.
“Mmm, I am rather shapely around the waist. I take it as a compliment really.” He wrapped his tail around his midsection to accentuate the curve of his hips and the plumpness of his rear. His face was beaming with pride and a matter of fact hand gesture underlined the point he was making about enjoying hearing that. “But this was a very helpful exercise, I think I have a much better understanding of how everything went.”
“Is that a good thing? Helpful in what way?”
“I think we can put this issue to bed.” He sat back down in his chair, sauntering the way back still confident that his butt had been groped harder.
“That’s all then, no reprimand or any disciplinary action? Didn’t I break the rules we had all those trainings about?”
“Well of course we aren’t happy about the way things played out, there are plenty of others in this office that would be much more appropriate to make these sorts of comments to and advances on.” That seemed like a strange thing to say, even if you weren’t in any trouble it was hard to focus on that. What was this supposed to mean?
“I’m sorry, what’s this about?” He gave a haughty laugh, covering his chin with the back of his wrist. He looked down his pointed pink nose as if he found it amusing that you’d possibly misunderstand.
“You know, just because your comments weren’t appreciated by Mr. Cartwright doesn’t mean that you need to censor yourself completely.” This was your first experience with Human and Anthro Resources but from all the stories you’d heard that was a very uncharacteristic thing to say.
“Are you saying I just shouldn’t do it again?”
“Not with that coworker, no.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing it again at all.”
“Ooooh, come on now, there’s no need to be a stick in the mud.” He seemed set to throw a small tantrum at the suggestion that you would be putting this behavior behind you. “Work is work, a little flirting here and there just makes it a little more exciting doesn’t it?”
“I… I guess it does.”
“It’s just a matter of, you know, finding someone who’s receptive of your advances.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his legs thigh over thigh, fingers tenting under his chin. “It’s clear that Cartwright wouldn’t be able to handle you anyway. Move on and find someone more deserving would be my advice.”
“Yea I’m sorry it’s not even like I have serious feelings for him or anything, just kinda let something I was thinking slip out. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to date a coworker anyway.”
“Well sure, on the books we have a policy against it, but sometimes we can just let things slide. Especially, say, if this person worked in a different department than you. And if anyone did complain then it would be at my discretion as head of the Human Resources department whether anything need be done about it.” He leaned forward in his chair getting his face as close to yours as possible, his chin hovering over the middle of the desk. Only now did you have a chance to notice how loosely his white button up hung off his slender frame, hanging now in a way that gave you ample opportunity to look down his flat fuzzy chest. Was he wearing nipple tape? While it was the question you were more eager to hear the explanation of, you decided to go with the one that felt more important given what was just said.
“Doesn’t that kind of qualify as an abuse of power?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If it does, where are you gonna report it?” That was definitely reeked of an abuse of power.
“Are you just saying that you pretty much get the final word on all intraoffice romances?”
“I don’t go wielding it willy-nilly now! Just, when I see something that shouldn’t be. That can be when it creates problems in the workplace or I think that one party should be with someone else…”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, we’ve all had those ideas of two people who should end up together. I just get to have a little bit of a hand in it. Is that so wrong?” It kind of sounded like it from where you were sitting. “And someone like you… well I have my own idea about who you should be with.”
“Really?” There was an unmistakable incredulousness in your voice that you were sure he heard from his expression. But the response was not one that was about to try and downplay what he had said.
“Well sure, you’re a good looking guy, I know exactly who I’d want to see you with. It should be someone that could make you happy, not like that Claude.” He huffed at the idea of you being with him, somewhere between finding the idea preposterous and upsetting.
“Sir, are-”
“Oh please, call me Jayce.”
“Jayce… are you coming on to me?”
“Oh no, no, no! Since my position is above yours on the org chart that would be a fireable offense even without my department getting involved! But if you were to make a move on me then things would be much more defensible. If you understand what I’m saying here.” It would be kind of hard to miss at this point.
“So you’re only not coming on to me because that’s your idea of crossing a line of professionalism.”
“That’s the kind of thing I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“I see…” Taking a look into Jayce’s glinting and eager eyes. “I think we might need to do another roleplay scenario, I need to see if something I’m thinking about doing would be acceptable or not.” Before you were even done he was standing and assuming a position bent over the desk.