while digging through my wips, I found a whole fully finished ficlet so here's that I suppose!
a frinfran corporate office au
*
While her fellows in the office yearn for the weekend with a religious sort of zeal, moaning and gnashing their teeth less and less as their pitiful two days off from their corporate hell finally approach, Fringilla has always dreaded Fridays.
There is never enough time in the work week to do everything that needs doing, always one more memo to write and one more report to look over. Contrary to her coworker’s apparent belief, the world does not stop turning over the weekend, and every Monday brings a backlog of briefs and voicemails and messages to slogs through.
She frets over falling behind, always seeming to miss her next promotion, always landing just shy of the accolades that others achieve, offered formulaic praise for her tireless work but never more than that.
She has already fallen behind, her dear family so quick to remind her of the successful lives of her older siblings and cousins. Her mother calls her each Sunday night with news and gossip, and Fringilla sits in her pristine kitchen with the phone crooked against her ear and makes the appropriate noises in the right places and feels her dread grow all the while.
Fridays also allow for business casual office wear. Fringilla does not observe the practice, keeping to her rotating wardrobe of neutral-toned power suits and simple jewelry, but sometimes, she looks at how the women and even the men in the office dress each Friday and wonders how exactly they make the simple act of wearing clothing seem so effortless.
She fears there has been some memo she missed, not just about fashion but about socializing at all and about hobbies and music and TV shows. About friendship and romance. About life.
In the evenings, Fringilla goes home to her luxury apartment alone and looks out over the glittering lights of the city and sips at a glass of red wine while her microwave low calorie meal heats up and frets and dreads and wonders.
Then, there is Francesca.