Title: Nobody In Particular

Author: Oliver Harpst

Rating: T, for mild language and sexual references

Summary: Twenty-eight year old Gabriella Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. Until a new boss shows up and throws her entire world upside down...

Disclaimer: I only wish that I owned HSM. I only wish. :sigh:

Author's Note: This story will be updated very slowly. I'm sorry, but I work over 30 hours a week and I just don't have time to update a chaptered story every day. Please be patient with me, and enjoy the many one-shots I'll throw your way. Thanks!

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Gabriella Maria Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. At twenty-eight she was the only of her old friends not yet married and, aside from not participating in matrimonial bliss, Gabriella had not had anything even resembling a boyfriend since Brandon Metcalf in the ninth grade. Their relationship, rocky from the start, had lasted a grand total of two dances at the Winter Ball and three weeks of rumors and speculations. Since then, she had lost her taste in relationships, and the few men she had considered potential and had expressed interest in had never worked out. One had joined a monastery in Tibet after their first date, swearing both vows of celibacy and silence until his death, which came four years later in a freak yak stampede. Another had agreed to a second date only minutes before throwing himself in front of a bus, killing him instantly as well as blocking four lanes of traffic for the next hour and half. And the third, only last week, had stolen her car and left her, freezing and wet in the rain, outside of the bar as he decided he much preferred the company of the cute waiter in the leather pants to hers.

Gabriella was not quite sure whether she was cursed, or if she just had truly atrocious taste in men, but had decided recently -- while standing in the rain watching man number three speed off in her Toyota Camry with the firm-assed, tight-pants waiter sucking on his earlobe -- that she was done with dating. Forever. Not that she was quite happy in this revelation, really, it had just seemed the right thing to do; after all, two-thirds of her track record had died painfully, and the third-third would die as well the second she finally tracked him down. She had steeled herself for a cold and lonely life from here on out, and contented herself by telling herself, over and over again because she had not yet convinced herself, that she could be quite happy alone. It was day number three of her new life, a Monday, and she woke up hating the world.

She rose unhappily, first spending a few minutes beating the pillow-that-was not-a-man and the screaming at the alarm clock-that-was-not-Prince-Charming, and staggered into the shower, realizing half way through her shampooing that she had not reset said alarm clock for daylight saving's time, and that she was running an hour behind. Still lathered and cranky she rushed from the bathroom, flinging on the first clothes that came to hand when she reached into her closet and promising God she would attend church every weekend until she died if only the outfit was both matching and appropriate for work. Then it was slipping into a pair of shoes and out the door, hauling ass for the subway station and wondering if the 7:15 was running just a few minutes late.

The train was running on time, in fact, and pulled away from the station just as she ran onto the platform, waving her arms and screaming like the crazy woman who lived in the alley behind the coffee shop -- the one who told everyone about how she had been abducted by aliens who were secretly Elvis, and then crowned queen of the moon. As she sat to wait the 7:20, Gabriella had her second unhappy realization of the day; the skirt and shirt she had grabbed from her closet did not match, and may have been work appropriate had she perhaps been an intern in the seventies. The skirt was long and billowy, somewhat Bohemian, a relic from college, and still wrinkled from the long time spent shoved in the back of the closet. It was also a strange patchwork of different colors and patterns that clashed with anything, but even more so with the striped Oxford shirt she had managed to pick out. The clock, which she only checked when discovering she had left her watch at home, read that it was 7:23, and that the next train was delayed. "Hell," she muttered viciously. She was going to be late for work.

Not that she minded, really, but it would be nice to not be fired. Gabriella had a glamorous job to go with her glamorous lifestyle; she was the secretary for an independent law firm that, as of today, was under newer and stricter management. The hours were long, the pay was minimal, the respect was nonexistent, and now she was going to be late on the first day with the new boss. "I might as well just sit here on this bench and wait for the day to end," she said to nobody in particular.

"Mind if I sit with you?" Nobody in Particular responded.

Gabriella shrieked in surprise -- the station had been empty just moments before -- and leapt to her feet, prepared to run for the exit if Nobody in Particular turned out to be a mugger or one of Manhattan's creepier inhabitants. Nobody in Particular turned out to be a young man in an expensive suit, maybe about five years younger than herself judging by the lack of crows-feet around his eyes that most businessmen -- he was wearing a suit, after all -- had by the age of thirty. He smiled warmly and sat on the other end of the bench she had just vacated, setting an even more expensive looking briefcase beside him. The brass nametag had the initials "T.A.B." engraved in flowing script, which she took a single second to giggle over.

"The train won't be here for awhile, according to the signs," Nobody began again. "You can sit." She was still startled from the surprise of finding herself not alone, and now of finding herself alone with a man in a New York subway station, and told him as much. He laughed, showing a brilliant white smile that was nearly as expensive as his suit and briefcase, and held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I promise I'm not a creep."

Gabriella didn't even hear him -- she was too fascinated with his hands. They were delicate and pristine, without a scar or callous to mar the flesh, and even the nails were perfectly manicured and cleaned; his hands were just as expensive as the rest of him, she noticed. "You have the most feminine hands I have ever seen."

"Pardon?" God, she thought, he even sounds expensively surprised.

"Your hands. Your nails... Do you see a manicurist?" When he opened his mouth to reply she ignored him, plowing ahead with the complete disregard for decorum that she had recently discovered, when discovering that she no longer needed to impress any man. "You have nicer nails than most women I've met." He tried to fit a word in for the second time and, for the second time, she ignored his, still babbling on in morbid fascination. "It makes sense, you know. The rest of you is so clean and tidy, why wouldn't you have perfect nails." She sat easily beside him, no longer afraid that he might attack her; if he did, she had the amusing suspicion that she would be able to master him in a fight.

"I thought you were afraid of me."

She couldn't tell if he was angry or just bemused, but she laughed anyway. "I find it hard to be afraid of a gay man with a better French manicure than mine. You'd be too worried about breaking it to hurt me. Oh, look! The train came!" Still chattering happily on, she linked arms with him and escorted him onto the train, now fully prepared for the workday.

Whatever it brought with it.