“So tell me. Are you single?” 

“Excuse me?” Percy asked, not quite believing either his ears or the nerve of the middle aged woman (stuffed into an outfit better suited for someone half her age - and likely half her size) who’d asked him that.

“Are you single?” the woman repeated again a bit slower this time; her voice taking on the edge of the kind of aggravated and patronizing tone that is usually reserved for someone thought to be a bit thick.

“I don’t believe that is an appropriate question to ask.” Percy replied. The hair on the back of his neck rose as he began to subtly look for an out for what was no doubt going to be an uncomfortable conversation. Intuition (or was it previous experiences) told him that it was unlikely that the woman would back off.

“Oh come now; don’t be such a stick in the mud.” the woman said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “If you’re worried about getting into trouble don’t be; I won’t be telling on you. This could be our little secret.”

“I really must insist.” Percy said, suppressing a shudder at just how wrong what the woman had said was.

“I just wanted to introduce you to my cousin. She’s such a brilliant and lovely young woman; I’m sure that the two of you would get on quite well.” the woman said with a sniff; as if mortally offended that Percy wasn’t willing to divulge all the juicy details of his personal life to someone who was virtually a stranger to him (how dare he not only have boundaries, but have the gall to actually enforce them).

Percy didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t that he doubted the nature or the character of the woman’s cousin (or her existence for that matter); he just wasn’t interested in being set up on a blind date with her - or anyone at all really - like it seemed that the woman was doing. He used the act of taking a sip of the drink in his hand as an excuse to look around to see if he could make a quick and clean exit, but discarded the idea almost as soon as he’d thought it. Given how bad she was at respecting boundaries, she’d probably follow him if he excused himself to take care of something else on the opposite side of the party hall (and while he was confident that she wouldn’t follow him into the men’s room if he used that as an excuse, he was also confident that she’d simply wait for him outside the loo and continue with her plan to set him and her cousin up after he was done in there. After all, he could only stay in there for so long).

“Ah. Percy! Just the man I was looking for. Have you met Bob?” Percy’s savior (his supervisor, Tony) called out jovially as he steered a nervous looking young man who Percy had never seen before over to where Percy was being cornered. Percy excused himself and made his way to meet Tony and Bob part way. He was grateful for the rescue even though he didn’t know why Tony wanted to introduce Bob to him.

“I don’t believe we met.” Percy said once he reached Tony and Bob, “It’s nice to meet you Bob.”

“See Bob here started a few weeks ago, and well he’s doing alright so far when it comes to the work itself, but he hasn’t really been doing so good making connections with his coworkers. And I thought to myself, Bob’s a good kid; I’d really like to see him succeed. What can I do to help him fit in better. And then I remembered him saying something about liking to play games in his free time. So I thought, Percy, now Percy’s a good man; always willing to help a person out. And he’s got that little board game - or was it card games; never could remember which it was - group going after hours. It’s even gone all interdepartmental so there’s people from all over the firm in there; not just the actuary department.” Tony said, clapping both Percy and Bob on the shoulder. Bob just kind of sunk into himself in embarrassment as Percy shot him an apologetic look. Tony meant well - he truly did - but he was one of those socially oblivious extroverts who tended to look at introverts (or really anyone who wasn’t cut from the same cloth as them) like a puppy who’d just been told to solve an advanced algebraic formula. (And yes, much like the woman who’d accosted Percy earlier - and from whom his timely rescue was appreciated, he had difficulty accepting and respecting other people’s boundaries. He at least tried his hardest not to do so, but in the end ended up doing so accidentally. It seemed to Percy that the woman had been doing it on purpose, which was way worse in his (and pretty much everyone else’s) opinion since she knew full well what she was doing and could just as easily choose not to), “Well I’ve got to see a man about a horse, so I’ll leave you two to it.”

“Sorry about that.” Percy apologized sheepishly as Tony wandered off in the vague direction of the bar (instead of the loo like his parting words would’ve indicated).

“It’s okay.” Bob said softly. He went to say something but then thought better of it and said nothing further.

Percy was not the kind of person to insult someone higher up in the hierarchy (particularly where said insult had a chance of getting back to the person being insulted), and Tony wasn’t a person he’d want to insult even if he was. For all his faults, Tony was one hell of a good manager. Yes he could be hard on those below him (he expected a lot from those working under him and had little patience for anyone who purposely did a shoddy job or tried to push off their work on others), but he worked just as hard as anyone else in the actuary; often jumping to give an active helping hand when and where it was needed - even meant that he ended up having to do some of the so called grunt work that other managers might think of as being beneath them. And god help anyone who went after one of his actuaries. It didn’t matter how high up in the firm you were or how big a client you were; he had his department’s back (provided it wasn’t a certified deliberate cock-up - in which case you wouldn’t exactly be one of his actuaries on account of being either transferred into a position more suited to your abilities (like junior mail room intern) or out right fired if the offense was bad enough) and that was that. 

“He means well...” Percy offered feebly when he couldn’t really come up with a way to excuse Tony’s cluelessness without treading into insubordination territory (and feeling like he was kicking a somewhat dim puppy while he was at it). 

“I get it.” Bob said. 

The two of them lapsed into an awkward silence for a while before Bob seemed to gather up enough courage to say what he’d wanted to say earlier but hadn’t. “About your board game club...?” Bob began, just kind of trailing off as he wasn’t sure how to finish out that sentence (or was it a question).

“Err... It’s actually a tabletop role playing group; not a board game or card game club. Tony (because of course he was the type of boss who insisted that you use his given name despite it not being entirely appropriate. He wouldn’t get mad if you referred to him as Mr. Sitwell; he’d just be a bit disappointed in you and kind of look at you like a kicked puppy) isn’t very familiar with RPGs so he tends to equate them with the types of games he is familiar with.”

“What are you running?” Bob said, brightening up at the mention of RPGs.

“Right now we’re running a home brew out of the current Dungeons and Dragons edition, but we dabble in some of the other systems - like Vampire the Masquerade - from time to time.” Percy replied, starting to warm up both to Bob and the subject at hand. It wasn’t something he had much opportunity to talk about beyond his small circle of fellow gamers and occasionally his brother (Ron did have a bit of a vague interest in the hobby thanks to his quirk, but he’d found out after playing in a couple of games that it just really wasn’t his thing. At least as far as pastimes went). 

“That sounds pretty cool. What’s the home brew about?” Bob asked.

“It’s kind of your typical seafaring adventure, searching out treasure and such, but there are a couple of twists. Instead of having to navigate the high seas you’re flying around on an airship of sorts between floating islands, and there’s this whole new class - or four classes depending on how you look at it - of elementally aligned magic that you can pick.” Percy said.

“That sounds amazing.” Bob admitted.

“It is.” Percy said, “Right now we’re trying to find this one sky island that has a special type of medicinal sake that would be able to heal the son of this corrupt governor who’s holding one of the NPCs of our crew hostage for it. There’s always room for new players, if you’re interested.”

“Fuck yeah I am.” Bob exclaimed (quietly), before catching himself and pulling back into himself over his faux pas.

“In that case, why don’t I introduce you to Susan and some of the others involved in the group. I’m sure they’d love to meet you, and we can go a bit more into detail about the campaign.” Percy said, choosing to ignore Bob’s excited outburst.