A/N: Requested once by Riene after having had a difficult day.
How dare they, how dare they, after all he's done for them? Every bit of effort and work and agony, and now they do this? Who do they think they are? Have they learned nothing at all? If he has to listen to that- that thing one more time he might actually kill someone.
He has promised not to do so, he remembers just as his fingers wrap around his lasso, unless in self-defence, but surely she'll understand if it's in defence of his sanity and her career. Goddammit he warned them, in explicit terms that they could not possibly misinterpret, that if they were to do such a thing then he would have to take serious action. Did they seriously think that he might be joking? When has he ever been known to joke about something so very serious?
If he can't kill them, slowly and painfully, then he will have to write them a letter. A letter in highly considered terms expressing his displeasure and his requirement that they fix this mess immediately.
The pen scratches straight through the paper of the first draft, and he viciously tears it into minute pieces, throwing it into the fire and not waiting to watch the edges curl blackly into themselves before commencing the next one. That one, too, meets a similar fate, and his vial of ink meets the wall, shattering into crimson-stained shards. Pushing himself back from the table and sending his papers flying, he swirls out of the room, takes the steps two at a time, and very nearly pushes a pale Christine out of his way before he recognises her and slips past.
In minutes he is in the managers' office, and what exactly he says he does not re-call with the effort to not strangle both of them, though their panicked, emphatic nods and whimpered assurances of "yes, sir, anything you say, sir, our deepest apologies, sir" follow him back down the stairs and across the lake.
It is easier to breathe, now, the trembling slowly abating from his hands as he poles his way across the water. The constricting bands of iron around his chest have loosened, fallen away as he fled the office, and even now it all seems a haze, a wave of numbness spreading through his blood, into his brain and his fingers and his heart. He steps onto the bank, and Christine rushes into his arms, burying herself in him.
It takes a moment for her words to filter through to him, muffled as they are by his waistcoat, but he catches, "…didn't kill them, did…" and it's enough for him to piece together what she means, even if his mouth refuses to speak the words. She pulls back, and looks him straight in the eye, pleading with him for an answer but the words won't come and all he can do is shake his head. She shudders, and sighs, and kisses his bare cheek. "Thank God."