Chapter Text
Fallon woke up on Tuesday morning with a crick in her neck so severe that she was convinced she was paralyzed, unable to lift her head or roll over to reach for her phone to turn off her ‘last chance before you’re late’ alarm. Still, she convinced herself as she rushed through her shower and applied her makeup with adrenaline-shaking hands that it would be a better day than the previous had been.
Calling Monday a disaster would have been polite and gentle when compared with the reality of what it was. One of her meetings with a potential investor had cancelled for the third time, which she was sure was a sign that she was being blown off completely in the most cowardly way possible; Allison’s work phone needed to be replaced, and the replacement came damaged; and then, at the end of the day, legs aching and mind exhausted, Fallon had trekked down to the ground floor of the Fallon Unlimited office on her own, because the elevator had broken down.
Sweating, and uncomfortably sticky in her then-itchy clothing, she’d gotten to her car to find a parking ticket for improperly placing her pass in her window, which while inexpensive was an additional errand to add to her planner for the upcoming week. She'd gone to her room without dinner once she was home, trying desperately to wash away some of the bad energy that had clearly been stuck to her all day in a hot bubble bath with a glass - or three - of wine, and even though she was comfortably tipsy and warm by the time she crawled hungrily into her bed to fall asleep early, this morning it still seemed like Fallon hadn't quite managed to shake off the negativity.
She burned the roof of her mouth as she chugged her coffee waiting for her on the dining room table, nearly breaking the empty mug in her haste to set it back down and juggle her jacket, purse, and phone.
Kirby didn't even look up from her newspaper when Fallon rushed in, her eyes staying trained on the page as she addressed her.
"Have a good day."
Fallon paused, straightening up to her full height and regarding the other woman with a tired sort of attempt to seem haughty.
"I doubt it."
Making a sympathetic clicking noise in the back of her throat, Kirby reached blindly for her own coffee and took a leisurely sip. The audacity for her to be so relaxed - without a place to be or a care in the world - nearly made Fallon want to slap her, but she reined it in, taking a deep calming breath. It wasn't Kirby's fault that Fallon had been so out of sorts.
"You're not eating?" She asked.
"I'm late," Fallon replied shortly. She pulled her jacket onto her shoulders, juggling her other items, then turned to head out, only to be stopped by Kirby's next words.
"I'll bring you something in a little bit. I have to go downtown, anyway."
Softening, Fallon paused her rushing movements for a moment and then nodded, albeit a little surprisedly.
"I - thank you." Checking her phone one more time, she groaned at the time and turned on her heel. "I have to go. I'll see you later."
Even though her car had just been brought around and the hood was still hot, it wouldn't start once Fallon climbed into the passenger seat until she'd tried to turn the engine over three separate times. Finally getting it going, and praying that when she left the office at the end of the day it wouldn't give her similar trouble, she headed off of the sprawling Carrington property towards her office space downtown.
Mercifully, the morning was uneventful.
Staving off her hunger from missing breakfast with multiple cups of tea and coffee, along with throwing herself into her work, Fallon was pleased to realize that she had nearly doubled her productivity, making up for the day before and helping ease her lingering guilt and anxiety about falling behind. Her email inbox was refreshing faster than she could keep up, though - even with Allison screening and sorting all of the incoming messages before they reached Fallon, there was still a lot to work through, and it kept her mind busy enough to lose track of the time.
As if her prayers for some less-boring correspondence to come through were being answered, Fallon refreshed her email one more time and quickly clicked on the newest message without pausing to read the subject. She realized immediately what it was - proofs for a shoot that they'd done almost a month prior for an upcoming issue of the print magazine.
She clicked through each photo one by one, squinting critically at each to check for any flaws that the retoucher had missed out on. The photographer they'd hired had a good eye, though - and the couple that they'd shot had on-camera chemistry that would have been impossible to fake if Fallon had gone with her first choice of models; it seemed that deal falling through had been a blessing in disguise.
On her screen, a woman and her new husband watched each other in adoration, faces frozen in an almost-laugh; in the next photo it was spilling out of her, her husband's unshaven face tucked into the side of her neck.
' NO COMPROMISE ,' read the minimalist italic title superimposed over the next photo, ' Giving it up without giving up '.
An article on maintaining a fulfilling sex life and a Fortune 500 company - the idea had seemed a little too late-2000s Cosmopolitan for Fallon when it had been pitched to her at first, but it had tested well, and she wasn't in any position to deny a good market trend.
Not to mention how bitter she would have sounded if she'd turned it down.
It wasn't that she didn't have options. She could have walked into any after-hours spot and picked whoever she wanted from the crowd like it were a catalogue, and she'd thought about doing it often, but the problem was that she continued to be so exhausted after work that there wasn't any time to go out. Even if she did manage to squeeze herself into something low-cut and short, she was pretty sure she'd fall asleep halfway through the act - assuming she found anyone she even wanted to bring home in the first place.
The next problem that was presented in this particular hypothesis was that, even if she did manage to jump through all of the hoops of finding someone suitable - and getting them home while staying awake - there was the added, horrifying fear of the entire thing being unsatisfying anyway. Despite the other disappointments that her previous lovers had presented her with, she'd had a string of very good luck in finding multiple people that had managed to hit the sweet spot of being both attractive to her and able to perform. Even with those men, it had taken them a little trial-and-error to get to know her - and she certainly wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted - and even worse was the work on her end to get to know them. She wasn’t selfish . She’d received more than her fair share of good press about how giving and accommodating she could be behind closed doors, but the mere thought of having to start over and learn an entire new person was exhausting.
What she needed was a break from her under-performing, abused jackrabbit. She’d stopped letting herself keep track of how many days it had been since she’d managed to even satisfy herself, which was a separate humiliation all on its own.
What she needed was chemistry like in the photos on her screen that she had been staring at until her eyes glazed over.
The underlying frustration of her personal-record dry spell was certainly at least one of the causes of the string of bad days she’d been having, and deep down she knew that. She was high-strung and jumpy, and all of it only made it more difficult to manage all of the inconveniences she’d been faced with that she would have been able to handle much more easily were she getting the right kind of de-stressing treatment.
“ Ms. Carrington? ”
Allison’s voice through her desktop intercom made Fallon stiffen in her seat - that jumpiness, again - before she scrambled to exit the email she’d been looking at as though being caught doing something wrong.
“Uh - yes. Allison. What is it?”
“Kirby Anders is here to see you.”
Her stomach lurched hungrily as she remembered the redhead's promise that morning, and she felt her mood instantly improve as she pushed her seat back and stood up from her desk.
"Tell her I'll be right out to bring her in."
Closing her laptop and reaching for her now-empty coffee cup, she swiped it into the trash can beside her seat and straightened her skirt, heading for the door. If only one thing went right for the day, it would be Kirby keeping her promise; at least she had that.