The Lent Torment
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John never gave anything up for Lent, ever. It wasn't his scene. However, he loved to watch his coworkers suffer and discuss the ramifications of their chosen restrictions. Moreover, John liked to tempt people observing Lent, which wasn't a very nice thing to do. If his mother was alive and watching, he'd have the good sense to look embarrassed.
He was quite happy when he discovered through eavesdropping on office gossip that Rudy had given up sugar this year, Richard promised to lay off caffeine, and the captain was attempting not to curse or yell. John thought all of this was far too easy.
Every morning, John had doughnuts or other sweets delivered to Rudy's lab. He was considerate, always making sure the sugary snacks were paid in full. Then he'd send waves of MXs to Richard with coffee throughout the day, watching the angry, short detective get increasingly frustrated with each delivery. As for Maldonado, John sent a fake report across her desk, outlining various mishaps in the field each day. Each one, increasingly alarming, would send her into a frenzy until she called and discovered it simply wasn't true.
By the end of the first week, the workplace had turned hostile.
Rudy was experiencing high levels of frustration with the cake deliveries and pink boxes of snacks constantly turning up in his laboratory. As a result, he was growing increasingly belligerent with each passing day. On Friday, when a young man entered the lab with a tray of muffins from the bakery down the street, Rudy loudly instructed the poor delivery boy to "go fuck off and die." Never in his life had such language escaped his lips, and certainly never directed at another person.
Richard was beginning to respond violently any time he saw an MX holding a cup and had started eating copious amounts of the doughnuts and cookies that Rudy rejected each day.
Maldonado was on the prowl to find the prankster who was making her life a living hell, and in the meantime she was guzzling coffee like it was going out of style. She was so jittery that the normally perfect bun atop her head was lopsided and loose strands fell in wisps around her face.
John admired his handiwork. He hadn't convinced any of them to break their own promises yet, but he had managed to get each of them to pick up a nasty new habit.
Over the weekend, Dorian commented that the work week seemed rougher than usual and wondered if it was due to the vernal equinox.
Watching TV with his head perched on Dorian's thigh and his body along the length of the couch, John snickered. "You think the length of the day has that kind of an effect on humans, Dee?" he scoffed, annoyed that his brilliant scheme might be credited to the path of the planet.
Dorian shrugged. Humans were complicated at times, affected by the strangest things.
Unable to contain himself, John propped himself up on the couch and laid out his brilliant plan to Dorian, cackling at the details and slapping his own knee in glee.
The android listened in absolute horror, his mouth open and his eyebrows knitting closer together with each newly revealed detail.
The next week, no pink boxes arrived in Rudy's lab, no MXs handed coffee to Richard, and no false reports passed Maldonado's desk. It was much easier for everyone to keep their Lenten promises with added encouragement from Dorian.
John, however, had a terrible week. Banned from caffeine, sugar, and cursing under the all-too-vigilant eye of his DRN boyfriend, he was forced to eat sugar-free oatmeal (which tasted like a bowl of craft paste), drink water like a chump, and he chewed his bottom lip raw in an attempt to keep from swearing - a useless endeavor.
After a few days of torture and penance, John dared to ask his watchful lover how long he had to keep up with this elaborate sanctioning of his language and intake. Dorian felt no pity for John when he told him his ban on sugar, caffeine, and curse words would end on Easter morning.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" John shouted, appalled that he had twenty days of purgatory left to endure.
"John," Dorian admonished, "that's fifty." He withdrew the steepest penalty for swearing from John's coin account while the human pushed a heavy sigh out his nose in disgust. With John's track record, come Easter, Dorian was going to be rich.