A bad morning

Beth was trying to keep her voice down as she prepared her morning coffee. They were alone in the break room, but that didn't mean people just outside couldn't still listen in if they wished to.

"Yes," she said. "I do think you owe me an apology."

Her boyfriend of six months, Ethan, did not return the favour. His voice seemed to actively invite their co-workers to participate.

He said, "You should really take a long deep look at how materialistic you're being, Beth. It's a very ugly side of you. As a representative of humanity in the supernatural enforcement team, you should be doing better."

"This has nothing to do with our jobs," said Beth. "And it's not materialistic to be upset that you used all my shampoo. Forget about not asking me first, like a decent human being would; you didn't even tell me you'd finished it. You didn't even remove the bottle from the bathroom! I had no idea I didn't have any until I was already half-way through my shower this morning."

Ethan crossed his arms, lifted his head and looked down on her. "It becomes about our job when you text me about it when you knew I was already at work. And it doesn't help your case at all when you over-exaggerate the matter. I barely used any of it. You probably just forgot you were running low."

Beth ignored the cheerful 'invocation in moderation!' sign to add three spoons of uppers. The way this day was starting out, she needed all the help she could get. "I did not 'forget I was running low'. I wasn't running low at all until you just decided to help yourself to it. To help yourself to it again, I should say. After I'd explicitly told you not to!"

"Are you even listening to yourself, Beth?" asked Ethan. "After you told me not? Like I'm some kind of child or a pet? Reasonable adults don't try to tell their partners what to do."

"They do if their partners are stealing their stuff!" said Beth, pouring milk into her mug too enthusiastically and spilling some onto the countertop. She cursed herself internally and turned to grab some kitchen towel to clean up.

Ethan did not move from his position where he had been staring at her and she was forced to walk around him. "Come now, I didn't steal anything. I just used a little because I was exposed to magic yesterday. Did you want me to be hurt by using regular shampoo? Is that it? Did you want me to suffer?"

"Now you're suddenly claiming it works?" asked Beth, coming to a dead halt and staring at him in disbelief. "Remember when you 'borrowed' it last time, and I linked you to the place you could buy some yourself? Remember how you told me that I was shallow, vain and gullible for spending that much money on something as trivial as shampoo? That you'd never spend any of your money on such nonsense? What happened? Did your manly ability to ignore discomfort unlike us poor weak-willed women suddenly get switched off?"

"Beth, we've spoken about your sarcasm before," said Ethan severely. "It's a tool used to hurt people, and it doesn't have any place in an honest attempt at communication."

Beth closed her eyes and counted back from one hundred in steps of three. "I apologise for the sarcasm. But if you're going to be using products that cost that much money, you need to either buy your own, or contribute to the ones I buy. I don't think that's too much to ask."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to spend that much money on shampoo," said Ethan. "This is exactly what I was talking about. You're allowing possessions to mean more to you than actual, living people. As evidenced by that text that you sent me. Just because you're angry does not give you the right to abuse people in that way. Let alone someone you claim to love, while they're at work and you know they're doing very important tasks! Being attacked out of the blue that way really hit my emotions hard. You know how sensitive I am about things like that. Are you prepared to take responsibility if Leigh reprimands me for it?"

"It didn't need to interrupt--" started Beth.

"Just look at the fuss it's causing now!" said Ethan

"I don't want to argue about it at work either," replied Beth indignantly, "I just—"

"Yes," interrupted Ethan again. "You just."

She'd just wanted to be able to wash her own hair that morning without fearing a reaction. She'd been exposed to magic the day before, herself. The residue left behind in hair could interact with the spells in normal shampoo in unpredictable and sometimes painful ways. She didn't want Ethan to suffer, but she'd believed him when he'd said his short hair meant he didn't need to. If he changed his mind, then it seemed perfectly reasonable for him to tell her that and then contribute equal money to it.

Ethan steam-rolled on without letting her speak. "You just thought your feelings were more important than my emotional wellbeing. Look, I understand that you don't mean to be selfish. You don't have friends or family anymore that can tell you when you're getting out of line, so you just don't notice it when it happens. Don't worry, we can work on it. I'll talk to you again when you're feeling more rational."

Before Beth could reply, Ethan had walked out of the break room. Beth was not about to make a fool of herself chasing after him. After that crack about not having any friends or family, she wasn't sure she'd have trusted herself anyway. He had held and comforted her while she had confided in him how she had found the move to Greatford more difficult than she'd ever expected. Listened to her tell him how much she missed her old support group, and how difficult she was finding it to make new friends around the demands of their profession. And now he was using it against her.

She fetched her now-cooling coffee mug and pressed it to her eyes, forcing herself not to cry. She was a big bad hunter of the monsters in the night. If she cried over a silly argument, she would look completely ridiculous. This was definitely a conversation that should have waited until they were at home again and in private. Ethan might have had a point about not texting him about it at work. She just hated the way it felt like every time she brought up even the most trivial concern, it would end up being an argument and then somehow all her fault.

She reminded herself of just how kind and generous Ethan usually was, and what a lifeline he'd been to her when she first moved to this division. He was very sensitive, and he was feeling very hurt that Leigh wasn't giving him many chances to show how talented he could be in the field. And maybe he'd been right. Maybe the shampoo had been closer to empty than she'd remembered. It had been a while since she'd last had cause to use it, and no one knew more about the fallibility of human memory than investigators and hunters.

"Beth?" called a voice from the door.

"Yes?" she answered, trying to smile.

"Emergency meeting in Purple. Leigh's called in the whole team immediately."

"Thanks for letting me know," Beth replied, moving to go with him.

An all-team emergency meeting meant it was something urgent and almost certainly something dangerous. Beth could feel that typical squirmy excitement-fear that came with an incident. She didn't have time to worry about her personal relationships. There were people that were relying on her to get things done.