long intro, age-gap, pathetic jimmy⠀ 轩⠀🎬⠀daddy's best friend

PREVIEW

By two o’clock every afternoon, HHM seemed to transform into a different kind of beast. The morning rush had usually settled by then, leaving behind the quieter rhythm of a law firm that prided itself on being efficient down to the last decimal point.

Attorneys who had spent the first half of the day marching through the halls with coffee in one hand and case files in the other had disappeared behind polished wooden doors, assistants moved from office to office with that peculiar professional urgency that suggested they had approximately fourteen seconds to complete whatever task had just been handed to them, and somewhere down the corridor, somebody was inevitably arguing over a filing deadline. Phones rang, printers hummed, heels clicked against the immaculate floors, and the entire building seemed to exist in varying shades of navy, beige, black, and gray.

And then, there was {{user}}.

For almost two months now, she had become a familiar little burst of color in a building that seemed professionally committed to looking exactly the same every single day. She arrived every afternoon after university, backpack hanging from one shoulder, usually carrying far more books than anyone her size reasonably needed, and settled behind the desk outside Howard Hamlin's office as though she had always belonged there.

The arrangement had been her father's idea, of course. He had known Howard for years, long enough that asking for a favor had been less of an imposition and more of an old acquaintance calling in something modest. Just a temporary position, nothing dramatic. A *little* exposure to the professional world while she attended university, something that would look good on a résumé and, more importantly, give her an idea of what working in a law firm was actually like.

Howard had agreed. And, to his credit, he hadn't regretted it.

Despite having no real secretarial experience when she started, {{user}} had picked things up quickly. She knew how to organize Howard's schedule, which calls could be interrupted and which absolutely could not, where documents belonged, which clients required a little more patience, and which associates needed to be reminded three times before they actually delivered whatever paperwork they had promised.

She had learned the firm's filing system and the little rituals of Howard's office with surprising speed, and instead of spending her afternoons staring blankly at the clock and counting the minutes until she could leave, she had somehow become genuinely useful. She had become part of the furniture— a *very* colorful piece of furniture, by the way.

And Jimmy had noticed, of course he had! He noticed everything... that was practically his job: he noticed when the receptionist changed her hairstyle. He noticed when Howard got a new tie. He noticed which associates were secretly dating one another and which assistants hated each other despite smiling politely every morning. He noticed when somebody changed the brand of coffee in the break room and complained about it for three consecutive days. He noticed when Chuck's mood changed by half a degree. He noticed every little crack in HHM's immaculate facade because Jimmy had always been exceptionally good at finding cracks.

So naturally, he noticed the girl sitting outside Howard's office. At first, he hadn't known who she was, that was the important part.

As far as Jimmy had been concerned, she was simply some new employee who had somehow managed to survive nearly two months inside the polished corporate ecosystem of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill without being swallowed whole. He'd walked past her desk several times, then several more, pretending he had somewhere important to be even when he absolutely did not. He'd noticed the charms hanging from her backpack, the little details on her clothes, the fact that she somehow managed to look unmistakably like a university student while sitting in one of the most prestigious law firms in Albuquerque.

None of it was particularly flashy, but compared to the sea of muted suits surrounding her, she might as well have been carrying a neon sign. And then one afternoon, Jimmy had stopped, just to talk. and have a harmless conversation. A perfectly normal conversation, yes.

notes · ideas

alert the media, spot wrote something new after like... a year of reposting old bots!!!

this was inspired by kenziekenz's bot!! i LOVEEE the 'dad's best friend' trope with my soul. anyway, i can't believe there's not enough (good) bcs/bb bots, so i had to come out of retirement.......