Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: Written for the April 3rd Cocktail Party prompt found here: gwcocktailfriday . tumblr .com(/)post/613840617413443584/cocktail-friday-post-responses-on-friday-april-3. (Without the spaces and parentheses.)
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Tough Love by luvsanime02
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Hilde blinks at the flower that arrives with her drink. In her drink, actually, just floating on top like the weirdest ice cube ever. Is she supposed to eat it? She doesn't think so.
Surreptitiously, Hilde glances at the people around her. Everyone has a 'complimentary drink' in their hand, which means that there are a lot of people carrying drinks with flowers in them around her. She's relieved to notice that, while no one's picking the flower out of their glass, no one's eating their flower, either.
Apparently, you're meant to ignore the flower completely. Well, who knows if that's what you're actually meant to do, but that's what everyone else around Hilde is doing, so she mentally shrugs and follows their example.
She really doesn't want to be at this mandatory retreat for work. One free drink doesn't make up for that.
It doesn't hurt, though, she admits, after taking a careful sip and being pleasantly surprised by the kick it contains.
"You know, for a drink with the word 'mother' in it, that's some pretty heavy alcohol," Hilde mutters, talking to herself.
"You don't think mothers are tough?" someone asks behind her. Apparently, Hilde wasn't as quiet as she thought.
She turns, already dreading being confronted by one of those overdramatic, offended people who seem to love to lurk around just waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
Instead, the woman behind Hilde looks relaxed and amused and comfortable. She's also Hilde's boss - which, crap. That's more alarming than being loudly ambushed in a place like this.
"Oh, hello, Ms. Une," Hilde says, somehow managing to sound not-panicked. She gives herself a mental pat on the back. "I was thinking more along the line of mothers not normally indulging in heavy alcohol," she explains. She's pretty sure that she's only digging herself into a deeper hole now, but she can't quite make herself shut up.
Ms. Une raises an eyebrow, tosses back her drink in two impressively large gulps, and then gives Hilde another amused look. "Trust me," she says dryly, "we can hold our own just fine."
She then walks away, which is a very good thing, because Hilde's struck speechless for a few long seconds. She'd had no idea that Ms. Une was a mother. Wow. Hilde has seen that woman chew people up and spit them out - metaphorically, of course - before eight in the morning. Just a sharp word from her is enough to send most people running away while cringing.
Mothers, huh. Hilde smiles and raises her cocktail in a silent toast before she takes a much larger drink from her own glass, hissing at the burn as it travels down her throat. She can't imagine chugging it down like Ms. Une just did, and recalls the popular office theory that their boss is somehow part-dragon.
Maybe this retreat won't be so boring, after all, with a mother like Ms. Une in charge of it all.