Tanvi caught my wrist before the rejected prototype even cleared the crate.
“You voted that one down at standup,” she said. “Why is it in your hands now?”
The demo bay on the sixth floor of our Pune office smelled of packing foam and lemon cleaner. Sun cut a bright strip across the table we were supposed to dress for tomorrow’s visit.
The white unit sat in its open nest like a decision already made. Putting the black one back would have ended the minute. Setting it on the cloth did the opposite.
“The white unit still stutters when you switch profiles,” I told her. “You know it. You just do not want to reopen the vote.”
She let go and laughed once, short. “I do not want to reopen a vote we already lost in front of the whole floor.”
We were the two people left on the wing. Half the team had gone to a vendor lunch near Koregaon Park, a Pune habit that still felt like a test to people who had transferred from other cities in India.
Tomorrow’s buyer was flying in from Delhi to see the west-region kit built for the India launch. Tanvi and I had drawn the short task: dress the table, choose one unit, and keep the peace.
Peace was already gone.
She lifted the white prototype, the one standup had blessed, and set it down hard enough to make the clips rattle.
“If you put the black one out, I look like I cannot hold a line,” she said. “You sat there this morning and called white cleaner. I heard you.”
“I said it looked cleaner. I did not say it was ready.”
“Then you should have said that when it counted, Kabir.”
A crumb of foam sat on the sleeve of her navy kurta. Reaching for it would have been too much like an excuse. Credit had been circling us for weeks, two people on the same grade, same reviews, same stubbornness.
Behind the Morning Vote
“Why does it matter so much that I look inconsistent?” I asked.
That question changed the work. She went still, fingers on the white unit.
“Because you only contradict me when nobody else is in the room,” she said. “In standup you agree. In this bay you undo it. What is that?”
No client sentence would cover it. The AC clicked. Down the corridor a printer coughed and died.
“It is not about the buyer.”
“Then what is it about?”
Looking at her mouth was a mistake. She saw it.
“You have got to be joking.”
“I am not putting the black unit out to make you look small.”
“Then stop putting your hands on my work like it is yours to reverse.”
She stepped in to take the black prototype. My hand stayed. Our fingers met on the cool shell, and neither of us did the polite colleague thing and pulled away.
The frosting on the glass hid most of the corridor. The door was already shut from the argument, not from some clever plan.
“Tanvi.”
She turned my hand over on the cloth. “If this is what you have been doing, say it. Do not hide it under a prototype.”
“I have wanted you since you joined this floor. That is not a pitch. Walk if you want.”
She kissed me instead.
The kiss was not gentle. Mint from the tin in her drawer cut through leftover irritation. Her other hand fisted in my shirt and dragged me in until my hip hit the table edge and the white unit wobbled. Catching it with the free hand, I shoved it aside so it would not fall.
“Leave it,” she muttered against my mouth.
Heat Under the Frosted Glass
Work clothes made a clumsy first minute. The kurta rode up when a palm slid up her back. The trousers had a neat office hook-and-bar that fought until she opened it herself, impatient, and pushed my hand lower. Cotton underwear, already damp. The sound she made into my collar did not belong in a client bay.
Her throat tasted of warmth under the gold chain. She pulled my belt. The buckle knocked the crate and we both froze, listening. Nothing. Only the AC and a distant lift chime.
A quieter laugh this time, then my zip. Hard already, trapped, then free in her fist. She stroked once, thumb at the head, watching my face like she was still scoring a debate.
Trousers and underwear went down together to mid-thigh, then further when she kicked one shoe free and stepped out of the left leg so she could open her stance. The table was the wrong height and the right one. Lifting her just enough seated her on the edge, demo cloth bunching under her. The black prototype lay by her hip. She shoved it toward the crate without looking.
“Condom,” she said, practical even now.
The jacket hung on the visitor chair. Wallet, foil. I tore it and rolled it on while she watched, bottom lip between her teeth, kurta bunched at her waist, one trouser leg still dangling from the other ankle.
When I stepped in, she hooked that free leg around me. The head rubbed against her, found how wet she was, and pushed in slow because the angle was tight and she was hot enough to make my vision skip.
“Fuck,” she said, plain, and pulled my ass in with both hands.
That first thrust seated me deep. Her forehead dropped to my shoulder. Stillness held until she moved, a small roll of hips that told me to go. Then the table tapping the wall in a rhythm I tried to shorten so the sound would not carry.
Fingers dug into my shirt. A hand between us found her clit, rubbing in time, and her breath broke into the kind of noise she tried to swallow. Navy fabric stuck to her chest. The neckline tugged down enough for a mouth on the upper curve of her breast, then the nipple when the bra cup yielded.
She came first, sudden, clenching hard, a bitten-off curse in Marathi I only half caught. Going through it slower lasted until she yanked my hair and said, “Don’t you dare stop.”
The demo cloth slipped. A cable clip hit the floor. Grip on her hip and the back of her neck, I drove in until the heat at the base of my spine snapped and I came into the condom with my mouth open against her temple.
We stayed like that, breathing, her calf still hooked behind me. The white unit had survived. The black one sat half in the crate where her shove had left it.
Pulling out carefully, I tied the condom, wrapped it in tissue from the side counter, and dropped it in the small bin under the counter, deep, under paper. She watched without comment, then reached for her underwear.
White Stays
Getting dressed in a client bay is an unpretty job. She stood, stepped back into the trousers, hooked them, smoothed the kurta. The belt went back. The shirt got tucked. The foam crumb was still on her sleeve, and this time brushing it off was allowed. She let me.
“You still have not answered the vote,” she said.
Not another round. The work sat there, waiting, as if the cloth had only been wrinkled by argument.
The black prototype felt heavier than the fight had made it. I set it fully into the crate and closed the lid. Then the white unit went to the center of the cloth, cables aligned the way she liked, the clean face toward the visitor chair.
“White stays,” I said.
Tanvi looked at the table, then at me, and nodded once, a small, finished motion. Extra clips went into the tray. No speech about later. She reached past me for the door handle, paused with it in her fingers, and said, “If the white one stutters tomorrow, you will own that sentence in the room.”
“I will.”
She opened the door onto the ordinary corridor light. Squaring the cloth took a few seconds. Then I followed her out with the crate lid shut and the chosen unit shining under the strip of sun.
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