"WILKES! The hell've you done to yourself!? We have an image to maintain here, goddammit!"

Kurt Vilks had long since given up correcting the boss on his name. At first that was because it only seemed to make him madder; but lately, it was because he had much, much bigger things to worry about.

Which was saying something, because the boss was a pretty big concern himself. The man had the build of a manatee and the looks of a warthog, but that really wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't have the temperament of a constipated bull moose; when he got off on a tear, there was no stopping him. Kurt didn't even bother giving him the answer, which was "nothing, I swear;" it would've had as much effect as a kazoo in a hurricane.

He wasn't even a year into the job, fresh out of college, and he was already feeling about ready to break. Looking at his fellow junior staffers, he had the feeling he wasn't alone, but he may as well have been; the boss made sure they were too buried by their own work to support each other, and made it plain that they were competing for the privilege of staying employed. He hadn't actually put Battle Royale collars on them, but being on the receiving end of the screaming rants certainly made Kurt's head feel like it was about to explode...but what else could they do? Quit?

As the weeks rolled by and the pressure and abuse got to him more and more, Kurt found himself taking shelter in reminisces about his last year of college - or, as he sometimes thought of it, the last time he could remember being happy. He'd gone as an exchange student to a university away up in the Great White North; he figured it was the furthest he could possibly get from the big city while still completing his degree, before he had to cut his hair, put on a tie, and spend the rest of his life chained to a desk in an office building.

It'd been Heaven. The pure air, the smell of the pines, the dazzling auroras, the Moon shining over the wilderness... He'd forsaken the dorms and rented a little cabin on the outskirts of town, right next door to the local werewolf colony. He found them a bit strange, with their canine mannerisms and disregard for civilized norms, their cultural in-jokes and shibboleths, and of course the part where everyone in the colony was stuck on four legs for a few days out of the month; but they were good people, and he often found his thoughts drifting back to them...

In fact, he couldn't get them out of his head, which was where those larger concerns came in. The more that he retreated within himself, the more he found something else beginning to slip out. No, not something else, but another side of himself, a side he'd never known about, never even suspected.

He couldn't make sense of it; nobody in the colony had ever bitten him, and he was pretty sure that was a myth anyway. He'd never had to deal with this before, and as far as he knew there wasn't any history of it in his family; so why now? Why him!? Regardless, now that this other-self had begun poking its nose out, it wasn't going away. Like most of the people at the colony, he found himself stuck with the ears and tail 24/7; if he focused he could get them to go away, but that just caused other things to pop out...because, as it turned out, the wolf-self was a she-wolf.

It was a vicious cycle; the stress it caused him at the office made him more prone to withdrawing, which left the wolf-self to fill the void, which led to more awkwardness at the office, which just caused him further stress, but then so did trying (and inevitably failing) to suppress it...

And yet, there was something freeing about it. It wasn't as if the wolf was some other person taking control away from him; rather, it was truly another side to himself, one that neither understood nor cared about the social conventions and power dynamics of the office. Handing the reins entirely over to her wasn't healthy, either, but as the days passed and her influence over him waxed with the Moon, Kurt found himself more or less forced to come to terms with it. However it'd happened, she was truly part of him...and if he was honest, a part of him that he was more comfortable with than he'd prefer to admit.

And strangely enough, as he grew more accustomed to this state of being, he found that not only was he feeling more confident and less fazed by the bull moose's angry bellowing, but the other junior staffers were starting to look up to her as well (even if she had very limited success in stopping herself from giving them a friendly lick on the face.) In spite of the boss's efforts to set them at each others' throats, they were developing a bond that her wolf-self understood instinctively.

Of course, things weren't going to change all at once, but she was sure their moment would come. Kurt had studied the human side of the business, and the she-wolf knew plenty about group tactics. She had full confidence in the abilities of her pack; they could handle a moose.

- - -

Gosh, is this the first time I've done a relatively traditional-ish werewolf type thing? (Okay, there's the gal from the "Wahrwilf" series, but that's strictly low-key slice-of-lifey territory...) This kinda came out of nowhere after Undead Murder Farce launched into a werewolf arc and I just had the urge to do something in that vein...kinda think I might like to do a longer-form story out of the concept at some point, but it'd have to be one of those office dramas that play kinda like a heist film, and that'd involve a lot more research and planning...

Anyway, the second frame ended up with kind of a watsup vibe, which I didn't consciously try for, but which I am nevertheless quite happy with :)