Fic, Death and Taxes, Becker/Jess, 15
Jun. 13th, 2014 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Death and Taxes
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker/Jess
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : There are few certainties in life, but one of them is the fact the Becker will get into a tangle trying to submit his tax return.
A/N : Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clea2011 who a) is a brave little soldier and b) gave me a prompt along these lines after she completed her second ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial bingo card blackout. I hope it fits the bill!
Becker stared at the computer screen and seriously considered banging his head on the desk in front of him. It seemed a wholly proportionate response to the seemingly insuperable problems presented by the HM Revenue & Customs website, but he didn’t want to add ‘bad hair’ to his list of other problems, such as ‘computer illiterate’ and ‘really couldn’t give a fuck about income tax’.
On the upside, the large increase in salary he’d received since working for the ARC as a private military contractor – don’t mention the word ‘mercenary’ in his mother’s hearing, please, not if you value your eardrums – had finally taken him into the higher rate tax band, but on the downside, he now had to fill in forms of a level of complexity that he hadn’t had to deal with since his kit requisition days in the regular army.
The remains of four mugs of strong coffee and an empty packet of chocolate biscuits testified to his level of trauma. He was now hopping like the energiser bunny on a caffeine OD and totally incapable of concentrating, but he’d left the whole thing so sodding late that if he didn’t get the bastard return completed by tomorrow, he’d be shelling out for a mandatory penalty.
He had numerous pieces of paper spread around him on the desk, including his pay slips, his last P60, something incomprehensible by the name of a P11D, a pension statement, various things from his bank showing in one case that he had earned gross interest of £90.75, had tax deducted of £18.10 and earned net interest of £72.65, which didn’t seem too bad when compared by the one from his building society that proudly proclaimed he’d received gross interest – aka the wholly paltry sum – of £1.78, been swindled out of £.0.35p tax and ended up with £1.43 net interest, enough (just) to buy him another packet of biscuits to replace the one he’d just scoffed. Life didn’t get much better than that. Or not, as the case might be.
Becker stared at the screen and decided that he must have earned some Brownie points for effort as he’d managed to fill in his name and address. Did you still get a mark these days for putting your name on the exam paper? He hoped so. It might be the only point he managed to score in this whole exercise.
He drew in a deep breath, laid a hand on the extremely comforting weight of the SIG Sauer P226 strapped to his right thigh and started to transpose the information on the various bits of paper to the boxes under the heading ‘Did you receive any income from UK savings and investments?’, wondering if there was a comment box somewhere where he could record his views on the bankers (yes, he did type it with a b, he could be restrained, despite what the others usually said about him, thank you very much). However, HM Revenue & Customs appeared to be supremely indifferent to his views on the state of the UK economy.
Luckily for his sanity, he’d also received and kept a copy of the dividend statement for the shares in the dodgy South American mining company he’d been given by Great-Aunt Grace on his 18th birthday. That had netted him £554, which was better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish, as the same ancient relative had often seen fit to inform him, but the thieving swine in the Revenue would no doubt see it to relieve him of some of that. Next time they ended up with a pack of velociraptors in their bloody offices in Bootle, he’d make sure he was washing his hair. All day. So there.
The next section was easier. The short answer was ‘no’ to the lot, although there were times when he felt like he bloody well should be entitled to a Carer’s Allowance for what he had to put up with, babysitting a motley crew of bleeding-heart liberals. Looking further down the list, he quite liked the sound of Industrial Death Benefit Pension. He probably nearly qualified for that every time he went out into the field.
He reached absently for his latest mug of coffee, took a large mouthful and grimaced at the fact that it was now distinctly tepid. Maybe he would just bang his head on the desk after all. It wasn’t as if anyone was around to see the wreckage of his hair afterwards. It was 9pm on a Thursday evening and the rest of the team would have gone home by now.
By the time he’d reached the screen that want details of his expenses, Becker really was beyond caring and had even started to run his fingers through his hair as he tried to figure out whether claiming for gun oil was a legitimate business expense and whether his various magazine subscriptions could be counted as an expenses incurred in doing his job.
“Coffee and cake?” demanded an obscenely cheerful voice from the doorway.
Becker turned around quickly, doing his best to smooth down his disordered hair and present the noble and stoic demeanour he’d spent years cultivating rather than simply letting his inner five-year-old out to have the tantrum to end all tantrums, which was what he actually felt like doing.
“Coffee and cake would be lovely,” he said through gritted teeth. “Thank you, Jess.”
Her sharp eyes took in the wreckage of his desk and the numerous blood vessels he’d no doubt burst over the last two hours. She hurried over with the tray while he struggled to clear space for it. “You poor baby,” she said, without any noticeable irony. God, this girl was good. And at least she hadn’t called him diddums, so clearly he hadn’t fallen quite as low as Lester after a meeting with the Minister.
“I think I’m winning,” he said.
“Like the Romans did at Cannae?” she enquired.
Becker stared at her with narrowed eyes. She’d clearly been reading the book of great military disasters that he kept in the loo in his flat.
“Or maybe the way the Scots did at Solway Moss? You do look a bit like you’ve got stuck in a bog.”
Yes, she’d definitely been reading his books. Becker wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or terrified by the thought.
“Don’t mock the afflicted,” he muttered, doing his best not to sound petulant.
She reached out a delicate hand and smoothed his hair back into place. “Aw, diddums.”
Damn, the whole not sounding petulant thing had clearly been an abject failure. He consoled himself with an extremely large and very sticky piece of chocolate cake. He deserved it. Obviously. Maybe if he ate enough cake he might gain enough energy to work out what the hell Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction was. He didn’t think it could apply to him, but nothing about this form from hell was obvious, and he had ended up in a rowing boat on the Serpentine at some point last year, much against his better judgment.
“Would you like some help?” Jess enquired, an amused smile on her face. “I did mine a couple of months ago.”
Becker seized the offer with open – and distinctly chocolatey – hands, employing what he hoped was his best puppy-dog eyes look. Sod the big tough soldier act, he knew when he’d just lost, three falls and one submission, to whichever faceless bureaucrat had designed this particular type of death-by-incomprehensible-form. Another hour of this and he’d be willing to crawl over broken glass to beg Lester for a reduction in pay just so he didn’t have to live through this again.
Jess pulled up another chair, nudged him in the ribs to make some space for her, and started to work her way through what he’d done so far, tut-tutting at the transcription errors that had managed to completely screw up even the sections he’d thought he’d got right, smiling brightly when he’d managed to get something right – usually more by luck than judgement – and even making sense of his expenses. The disappointment at not being able to claim for gun oil as it was supplied by his employers was greatly alleviated by admiration for the sure way Jess’s fingers flew over the keyboard, eliminating his errors, bringing order out of chaos, and metaphorically soothing his extremely fevered brow.
Half an hour later, she swivelled around to face him, a bright smile on her face that belied the fact that she’d been in the office for at least 12 hours. “Done!”
Becker wiped a large lump of gooey chocolate off the plate and held it up to her lips. “You’re an angel in human form. Have I told you that recently?”
A delicate pink tongue reached out and licked his finger clean. Becker’s ordinarily loose-fitting black combat trousers suddenly started to feel rather tight in certain places.
“Yes, last week, when I sorted out the mess you’d made of your expenses claim after the shout at Alton Towers.”
Becker squirmed slightly. Lester hadn’t looked favourably on his claim for hotdogs and chips for the entire military team. Or maybe it had been the toffee apples he’d objected to. Or possibly the doughnuts…..
Jess sucked the tip of his finger into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it in what Becker sincerely hoped was a promise of things to come.
He smiled his very best winning smile. “I owe you, big time.”
She beamed at him. “I know, and it’s my birthday next week.”
Becker pulled her into a warm, chocolate-flavoured kiss. She’d saved him from a fate worth than death at the hands of HM Revenue & Customs. Nothing was too good for her after that.
He’d even go shoe-shopping without grumbling.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker/Jess
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : There are few certainties in life, but one of them is the fact the Becker will get into a tangle trying to submit his tax return.
A/N : Written for
clea2011 who a) is a brave little soldier and b) gave me a prompt along these lines after she completed her second primeval_denial bingo card blackout. I hope it fits the bill!Becker stared at the computer screen and seriously considered banging his head on the desk in front of him. It seemed a wholly proportionate response to the seemingly insuperable problems presented by the HM Revenue & Customs website, but he didn’t want to add ‘bad hair’ to his list of other problems, such as ‘computer illiterate’ and ‘really couldn’t give a fuck about income tax’.
On the upside, the large increase in salary he’d received since working for the ARC as a private military contractor – don’t mention the word ‘mercenary’ in his mother’s hearing, please, not if you value your eardrums – had finally taken him into the higher rate tax band, but on the downside, he now had to fill in forms of a level of complexity that he hadn’t had to deal with since his kit requisition days in the regular army.
The remains of four mugs of strong coffee and an empty packet of chocolate biscuits testified to his level of trauma. He was now hopping like the energiser bunny on a caffeine OD and totally incapable of concentrating, but he’d left the whole thing so sodding late that if he didn’t get the bastard return completed by tomorrow, he’d be shelling out for a mandatory penalty.
He had numerous pieces of paper spread around him on the desk, including his pay slips, his last P60, something incomprehensible by the name of a P11D, a pension statement, various things from his bank showing in one case that he had earned gross interest of £90.75, had tax deducted of £18.10 and earned net interest of £72.65, which didn’t seem too bad when compared by the one from his building society that proudly proclaimed he’d received gross interest – aka the wholly paltry sum – of £1.78, been swindled out of £.0.35p tax and ended up with £1.43 net interest, enough (just) to buy him another packet of biscuits to replace the one he’d just scoffed. Life didn’t get much better than that. Or not, as the case might be.
Becker stared at the screen and decided that he must have earned some Brownie points for effort as he’d managed to fill in his name and address. Did you still get a mark these days for putting your name on the exam paper? He hoped so. It might be the only point he managed to score in this whole exercise.
He drew in a deep breath, laid a hand on the extremely comforting weight of the SIG Sauer P226 strapped to his right thigh and started to transpose the information on the various bits of paper to the boxes under the heading ‘Did you receive any income from UK savings and investments?’, wondering if there was a comment box somewhere where he could record his views on the bankers (yes, he did type it with a b, he could be restrained, despite what the others usually said about him, thank you very much). However, HM Revenue & Customs appeared to be supremely indifferent to his views on the state of the UK economy.
Luckily for his sanity, he’d also received and kept a copy of the dividend statement for the shares in the dodgy South American mining company he’d been given by Great-Aunt Grace on his 18th birthday. That had netted him £554, which was better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish, as the same ancient relative had often seen fit to inform him, but the thieving swine in the Revenue would no doubt see it to relieve him of some of that. Next time they ended up with a pack of velociraptors in their bloody offices in Bootle, he’d make sure he was washing his hair. All day. So there.
The next section was easier. The short answer was ‘no’ to the lot, although there were times when he felt like he bloody well should be entitled to a Carer’s Allowance for what he had to put up with, babysitting a motley crew of bleeding-heart liberals. Looking further down the list, he quite liked the sound of Industrial Death Benefit Pension. He probably nearly qualified for that every time he went out into the field.
He reached absently for his latest mug of coffee, took a large mouthful and grimaced at the fact that it was now distinctly tepid. Maybe he would just bang his head on the desk after all. It wasn’t as if anyone was around to see the wreckage of his hair afterwards. It was 9pm on a Thursday evening and the rest of the team would have gone home by now.
By the time he’d reached the screen that want details of his expenses, Becker really was beyond caring and had even started to run his fingers through his hair as he tried to figure out whether claiming for gun oil was a legitimate business expense and whether his various magazine subscriptions could be counted as an expenses incurred in doing his job.
“Coffee and cake?” demanded an obscenely cheerful voice from the doorway.
Becker turned around quickly, doing his best to smooth down his disordered hair and present the noble and stoic demeanour he’d spent years cultivating rather than simply letting his inner five-year-old out to have the tantrum to end all tantrums, which was what he actually felt like doing.
“Coffee and cake would be lovely,” he said through gritted teeth. “Thank you, Jess.”
Her sharp eyes took in the wreckage of his desk and the numerous blood vessels he’d no doubt burst over the last two hours. She hurried over with the tray while he struggled to clear space for it. “You poor baby,” she said, without any noticeable irony. God, this girl was good. And at least she hadn’t called him diddums, so clearly he hadn’t fallen quite as low as Lester after a meeting with the Minister.
“I think I’m winning,” he said.
“Like the Romans did at Cannae?” she enquired.
Becker stared at her with narrowed eyes. She’d clearly been reading the book of great military disasters that he kept in the loo in his flat.
“Or maybe the way the Scots did at Solway Moss? You do look a bit like you’ve got stuck in a bog.”
Yes, she’d definitely been reading his books. Becker wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or terrified by the thought.
“Don’t mock the afflicted,” he muttered, doing his best not to sound petulant.
She reached out a delicate hand and smoothed his hair back into place. “Aw, diddums.”
Damn, the whole not sounding petulant thing had clearly been an abject failure. He consoled himself with an extremely large and very sticky piece of chocolate cake. He deserved it. Obviously. Maybe if he ate enough cake he might gain enough energy to work out what the hell Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction was. He didn’t think it could apply to him, but nothing about this form from hell was obvious, and he had ended up in a rowing boat on the Serpentine at some point last year, much against his better judgment.
“Would you like some help?” Jess enquired, an amused smile on her face. “I did mine a couple of months ago.”
Becker seized the offer with open – and distinctly chocolatey – hands, employing what he hoped was his best puppy-dog eyes look. Sod the big tough soldier act, he knew when he’d just lost, three falls and one submission, to whichever faceless bureaucrat had designed this particular type of death-by-incomprehensible-form. Another hour of this and he’d be willing to crawl over broken glass to beg Lester for a reduction in pay just so he didn’t have to live through this again.
Jess pulled up another chair, nudged him in the ribs to make some space for her, and started to work her way through what he’d done so far, tut-tutting at the transcription errors that had managed to completely screw up even the sections he’d thought he’d got right, smiling brightly when he’d managed to get something right – usually more by luck than judgement – and even making sense of his expenses. The disappointment at not being able to claim for gun oil as it was supplied by his employers was greatly alleviated by admiration for the sure way Jess’s fingers flew over the keyboard, eliminating his errors, bringing order out of chaos, and metaphorically soothing his extremely fevered brow.
Half an hour later, she swivelled around to face him, a bright smile on her face that belied the fact that she’d been in the office for at least 12 hours. “Done!”
Becker wiped a large lump of gooey chocolate off the plate and held it up to her lips. “You’re an angel in human form. Have I told you that recently?”
A delicate pink tongue reached out and licked his finger clean. Becker’s ordinarily loose-fitting black combat trousers suddenly started to feel rather tight in certain places.
“Yes, last week, when I sorted out the mess you’d made of your expenses claim after the shout at Alton Towers.”
Becker squirmed slightly. Lester hadn’t looked favourably on his claim for hotdogs and chips for the entire military team. Or maybe it had been the toffee apples he’d objected to. Or possibly the doughnuts…..
Jess sucked the tip of his finger into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it in what Becker sincerely hoped was a promise of things to come.
He smiled his very best winning smile. “I owe you, big time.”
She beamed at him. “I know, and it’s my birthday next week.”
Becker pulled her into a warm, chocolate-flavoured kiss. She’d saved him from a fate worth than death at the hands of HM Revenue & Customs. Nothing was too good for her after that.
He’d even go shoe-shopping without grumbling.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 10:51 am (UTC)I love Becker's final concession. Shoe-shopping! Shoe-shopping with Jess! That's true bravery.
I am currently wrestling with a different set of forms and documents that need collecting and collating, so this was perfectly timed. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 07:43 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed it!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 12:41 pm (UTC)UK tax forms sound like the Dutch ones ;-) Luckily I have a life saver too *g*
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Date: 2014-06-13 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-06-13 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-13 09:53 pm (UTC)I liked his various expenses claims - nice of them to make the most of the trip to alton towers!
And lol at jess reading his books on the loo!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 11:17 am (UTC)Glad you enjoyed it!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-14 03:04 am (UTC)Poor Becker!
If it's any consolation, US taxes are just as ridiculously complex.
Love how Becker finally just throws his hands up, and Jess makes sense of everything in only half an hour.
LOL for the gun oil - one wonders what he was using it for!
Although I must say that he's really going to be paying for her help. Shoe shopping. *shudders*
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Date: 2014-06-17 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-14 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-15 04:43 pm (UTC)the one from his building society that proudly proclaimed he’d received gross interest – aka the wholly paltry sum – of £1.78, been swindled out of £.0.35p tax and ended up with £1.43 net interest, enough (just) to buy him another packet of biscuits to replace the one he’d just scoffed.
*SNORT* Sounds familiar.
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Date: 2014-06-17 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-06-18 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-01 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-25 09:42 pm (UTC)Of course, perish the thought of Becker's problems extending to bad hair!
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Date: 2014-07-01 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 06:41 am (UTC)