RaStro FicS

Feelings Unknown (1)

A/N: Might be a little mature for you :p

Rhian groaned softly as she settled back at her desk, reaching down surreptitiously to massage one of her calves.

"Too many trips to the copier again, Rhian?" Her boss Glaiza asked her sympathetically on her way by with her third cup of coffee.

Rhian heaved a deep sigh, starting to respond, but she was already back through her office door, letting it swing mostly closed as she settled in, sipping her coffee. Rhian shook her head and shifted the massage to her sore feet. It certainly wasn't her fault they installed the copier on the far side of the floor – and it wasn't Glaiza's fault that she needed things copied a hundred times a day.

Rhian had been Glaiza's assistant for not quite a year, her fifth attempt at finding a steady job in the field. Her first boss had been a kindly older man, but his second heart attack had forced his retirement, and there'd been no other job open for her that wouldn't have required more sucking up than she was willing to do. Her second boss had tried to convince her that assistants always worked until 3 am Don't get her wrong – she doesn't mind long hours. She admitted she doesn't have a life for them to interfere with anyway. Still, if she wanted to work an eighteen-hour day seven days a week, she could have gone to law school – and then she wouldn't be holding down assistant jobs for crap pay and no benefits. The third and fourth jobs...well, the less said about those, the better.

Then she had come to Galura and Associates, a tiny law firm that consisted of Glaiza Galura and her partner, the elderly man whose practice she had taken over. He was near retirement, but apparently didn't like his wife all that much – so a young, ambitious lawyer who could take over his practice while not making him work too hard fit him like a glove.

Glaiza also had two paralegals who worked for her, but Rhian rarely saw them much. They worked on another floor of the office building where the law firm had its offices, and they shared them with two other such firms, so Rhian basically only knew them as names on interoffice mail envelopes.

Glaiza Galura had made a reputation for herself as a trial lawyer in her late twenties, she practiced mostly as a trial consultant to larger firms. She cut quite an imposing figure on the rare occasions she actually went to a trial, though – tall, fit, short black hair, long legs, cold big brown eyes – she was the very image of a ruthless, bloodsucking lawyer. Rhian thought she was actually a pretty nice woman, herself – quiet and private about herself, but always composed, with a ready smile. She was also one of the few lawyers she'd met that didn't treat their assistants like slaves – she wasn't one of those fruity saccharine types either. When she asked you to call her Glaiza, it wasn't patronizing. When she asked you to get coffee for her, it was because she couldn't get it herself at the moment, being stuck on a conference call or coming in a bit late and needing to rush straight to a meeting.

Of course, by this point in Rhian's career with her, she'd barely gotten up the courage to call her anything at all. She's what you'd call the shy type. Very petite from head to toe, long brunette hair, brown eyes, still suffering from Rosacea for a girl of twenty-five, and a body that she worked hard on but seemed capable of attracting attention only from married men a quarter-century older than her. The fact that she hadn't been on a date with a boy since college didn't help with that at all. She couldn't even take advantage of it, for crying out loud – She have known she was gay since she was sixteen, when she realized that her masturbatory fantasies hadn't involved a boy in quite some time and weren't likely to any time soon. It hadn't taken very many dates with women to seal things more or less in stone for her. She was lucky, though – she came out in college, her friends were supportive, her mom seemed relieved that she had finally figured it out, and her dad's reaction consisted of one piece of advice: "Just remember, honey, a woman can be just as much of a prick as any man." Thanks, Dad – not bad advice, though.