A/N: Human AU written haphazardly as a snippet that grew out of proportion. Repost from my tumblr blog bloodonthebattlefield. Ludwig (Germany) is the VP of Personnel at a large corporation. His personal assistant (and sister-in-law) Elizaveta (Hungary) has found him the 'perfect' summer intern, Feliciano (Italy). Cue antics. GerIta and background PruHun.

The Art of Managing People
(GerIta modern office AU, human names)

(the more accurate title would be:
Elizaveta Knows What's Best for You, So Don't You Forget It—
And Buy Her Something Nice for Christmas...
a Car...or a SWORD...Use Your Imagination)

by crashedtimemachine

Managing people was an art, and while Ludwig Beilschmidt had never been much of a social person, he had been known to excel at whipping subordinates into shape. The promotion he'd received nearly three years ago had come with many benefits—for instance, there was a very fancy VP of Personnel after his name on his business card, written in delicate scrolling script that clashed with the severe miniature portrait of the man, himself—but it had also brought no end of frustration. Ludwig—who preferred to do things himself, sure that he was the only person who would do it right—was required to complete stacks of compliance paperwork each day, manage a small team of recruiters, and delegate tasks to his personal assistant.

A knock at his door interrupted his daily cycle of resigned thoughts. (How he longed for the days when he sat in a cubicle with the rest of his team and merely scoured the incoming resumes for potential candidates or conducted tough, hard-hitting interviews that ensured they only hired the best. Anything but this paperwork and the constant knocking. on. his. door.)

"Enter," he called, his naturally loud voice carrying despite his not having looked up from the form he was filling in.

"Sir, ze new intern has arrived...und he's very pretty!" Elizaveta giggled when Ludwig finally looked up from his work. "Just kidding!" If he didn't know she was poking fun at him (and wasn't actually sexually harassing the poor kid on his first day), he would have given his sister-in-law a stern reprimand, but...that was just how she was, always trying to push his buttons under the guise of improving his mood or some such.

So she ushered in a boy who didn't look nearly old enough to be in college (or really even high school), and then closed the door behind him—but not before winking at Ludwig suspiciously. What could she up to?

Ludwig eyed the boy up and down, his instincts immediately skeptical thanks to Elizaveta's odd behavior. But he looked normal enough in his brown slacks and white button-up shirt. His tie was straight and tied properly, and his hair was mostly groomed, aside from one curl that Ludwig suspected was impossible to tame. The intern was clutching a portfolio under one arm, along with a notepad, and his fingers were wrapped mercilessly around a pen that was probably fearing for its life at just that moment.

The boy was nervous. Of course.

Ludwig knew he could be intimidating, so he consciously focused on softening his expression the way his brother and Elizaveta had tried to teach him and cleared his throat. "Vhat was your name? She didn't introduce you..."

"Good morning, Mr. Beilschmidt! I'm Feliciano Vargas, and I'm going to be working for you all summer!" The previously petrified intern suddenly became animated and started flitting around the room. He picked up various objects from the shelves, spun in Ludwig's chair, and even sat on the corner of his desk, all the while explaining the kind of human resources management program he came from and his high credentials. It had been Elizaveta who had approved the boy's application; it was yet another job Ludwig had been forced to delegate to his personal assistant that he would have rather taken care of himself.

"How many floors are there in this building? It's HUGE! And—" The boy talked...a lot, but it let Ludwig assess him without interruption, and it seemed his suspicions about this Feliciano Vargas were beginning to materialize: Elizaveta had purposefully picked the most annoying candidate from the batch.

"Feliciano, you say?" Ludwig worked his mouth around the unfamiliar name, trying to pronounce it properly. People appreciated that kind of attention to detail.

"Oh, that's right, Feliciano Vargas. I'm your summer intern. I'm twenty-two years old. My favorite foods are pasta and pizza, and I love espresso any time of the day. I—"

"That's enough." Best to head him off before he repeated everything all over again, Ludwig thought, holding up a silencing hand.

What was he going to do with this boy? He really didn't know.

"Feliciano...vhat are you doing?" Ludwig peered over the intern's shoulder at the resume he was supposed to be reviewing. It was a perfect example of the type of candidates who should be weeded out before anyone from the recruiting team saw them. Instead of reviewing the words on the page, Feliciano was doodling on the back.

It was a fairly accurate sketch of Ludwig, actually, but...that was beside the point.

"Oh, see, I finished early, so I thought I'd draw a picture. I tried drawing you but, well, I don't think it's right. Hmmmmmm. There's something missing..." The strange boy peered up at Ludwig, and for the first time in his life, Ludwig felt himself squirm slightly under such heavy scrutiny. Feliciano was examining every detail of his face and making little noises of "hm" and "ah" and...it was all very awkward. That was why Ludwig's cheeks suddenly heated up; he hated awkwardness. So...he blushed.

"AHA!" Feliciano clapped like a small child and suddenly Ludwig's face was being poked and prodded by his thin, warm fingers. They were soft, as if the boy hadn't done a day's work in his life, but occasionally a well-formed callous brushed against Ludwig's cheek. What had caused that in such an odd place? Drawing?

Wait, why was he allowing this to continue...? It was all very unprofessional.

"Feliciano." Ludwig pushed the boy away and took a step back. "In the professional world, there are personal boundaries. I'm not sure vhat you're used to, but this von't do." He made a vague gesture around his body to indicate the no-touching zone. "If you're done reviewing that candidate, please tell me vhy they should be discounted for the position in question."

They spent the rest of the afternoon 'training,' if you could call it that. It consisted of Ludwig trying to explain things to Feliciano, and Feliciano bringing everything back around to the weirdest subjects—

"Does the cafeteria serve pasta?"

"Ludwig, why is Eliza so scary?" ("You should call me Mr. Beilschmidt.")

"Ludwig...you know, your eyelashes are really pretty."

That was the last straw, and a blushing, awkward Ludwig pushed Feliciano out of his office with gruff orders to find Elizaveta and ask if she needed help with anything. Surprisingly, Feliciano didn't come back for the rest of the day.

Ludwig was similarly surprised to find that he didn't get any work done the entire time he was gone.

My eyelashes? Ridiculous...

After three weeks of this, Ludwig wasn't sure whether to throw the boy out the window or do...well, similarly violent, but much more pleasurable things to him.

Not only had he invaded Ludwig's office and his personal space, but he had apparently also invaded his head.

And his dreams.

It was the dreams that were most disturbing. He wasn't sure, but he suspected that having those kinds of dreams about a coworker—even an intern—could count as sexual harassment. Especially dreams as vivid as his...

But he couldn't say that it wasn't at least partially Feliciano's fault. He blamed the way his intern refused to call him "Mr. Beilschmidt" after the first day and instead insisted on saying his name in a very particular, sultry way that set fire to Ludwig's cheeks and sang in his blood. He blamed Feliciano's way of ignoring personal space boundaries as if they didn't exist at all, and having no problem putting his hands on Ludwig while he was on the phone or pressing his body against his back to look over his shoulder—sometimes it was done quite innocently, but there were also those instances at which alarm bells would sound in Ludwig's mind (and he was ashamed to admit that he pretended to be deaf to their ringing).

When Feliciano came into his office that day, Ludwig made sure to keep his head down, eyes on the paper, and stay focused-focused-focused. He was lucky (or incredibly unlucky) that several things happened at once, otherwise he might have remained in this mode of avoidance forever.

First, Feliciano slammed the door a bit too hard in his excitement to arrive at work.

The framed diploma hanging behind Ludwig's chair was jostled from its hook and crashed to the floor. Glass went everywhere.

Immediately Ludwig started cleaning it up, loudly cursing Feliciano and his luck and his lousy morning, and Feliciano, himself, seemed frozen in place, just uselessly watching.

And then, Ludwig cut his finger on one of the pieces of glass.

And then...and then, Feliciano's mouth was wrapped around his finger, sucking gently at the wound. And the decision—violently killing him or violently giving in—became critical.

What little clutter resided on Ludwig's desk jingled and shook when Feliciano's back hit the surface.

If the boy (why did he keep thinking of him that way; Feliciano was 22 years old, mein got...) had looked at him then in fear or anger, if he had asked Ludwig to stop or resisted or even looked bored, Ludwig would have blushed and stood up to smooth the invisible wrinkles in his suit and apologized and...and somehow made it right. But Feliciano didn't look scared or even upset. He was smiling.

When Ludwig didn't do more than stare, suddenly taken aback by just how like his dream things were turning out, Feliciano must have gotten impatient because he dragged his lower lip through his teeth and reached up to touch Ludwig's cheek and moved his hips, which were conveniently situated just against Ludwig's.

The last shreds of Ludwig's self control fell away in tatters and the rest was a blur of hands and lips and teeth and sinful moans that, looking back, were hard to distinguish one from the other.

The only reason he didn't defile Feliciano's body then and there on his desk was because he didn't have any sort of lubrication and, in a somewhat disturbing scene of sibling overreaction, his brother barged into his office just as Ludwig managed to get Feliciano's pants down around his knees.

"OH MEIN GOTT! VHAT THE HELL, BRUDER! AHH! MY EYES!"

The door slammed closed, and Elizaveta could be heard on the other side yelling at Gilbert: "I told you not to go in zhere! I said they vere very BUSY! You never listen, you IDIÓTA!"

Ludwig shoved Feliciano away and quickly started to rearrange his own clothing. He would address Elizaveta and Gilbert and...what they saw...later.

He glanced at his intern to find him slowly getting dressed, a slightly stupid grin on his face. That ridiculous untamed curl was more prominent than usual and there was a faint blush dusting both of his cheeks.

Ludwig swallowed thickly and cleared his throat. "Ah...um...Feliciano, I—"

"Well, that was fun, don't you think, Ludwig? What's for lunch?" He met Ludwig's eyes and for once his expression wasn't vacant and dreamy. He might be asking stupid questions, but his eyes told a different story of strangely lucid understanding. Ludwig was grateful, so he didn't interrupt Feliciano's incessant stream of questions as they both tucked in their shirts and made themselves look presentable. "Do you know? Is it pizza day? Is it? Fridays are usually pizza day, right? Haha, maybe Gilbert and Eliza will want to go to lunch with us?"

Ludwig doubted it. His brother was going to be inconsolable for a while, and he was sure Elizaveta would be...ahem...busy dealing with her husband. On their way out of the office (he was right; no one was seated at her desk), Ludwig grabbed a sticky note pad and jotted down a quick set of instructions:

Take the rest of the day off.
And take care of mein bruder. -L

And thus, a relationship that started in the most inauspicious of ways—an annoying intern, a surly boss, and a case of inevitable workplace sexual harassment—managed, despite (or because of) the very little work being done in Ludwig's office that summer, to become something more. And the unlikely couple (whom Elizaveta knew would be perfect from the beginning when she had hand-picked Feliciano to be her brother-in-law's intern) grew into something more than an elicit office love affair.

Gilbert, of course, never let his brother forget the trauma of walking in on them that day. Christmas family get-togethers would never be the same again. (And after quite a lot of reflection, Ludwig decided he didn't mind the teasing. Now that Feliciano was by his side, he was surprised to find he didn't mind a lot of things.)

..