Corporation XIII PSL

[melodiouspacifist]

Demyx's tie was crooked.

Every single morning when he arrived to work, it was too loose and slightly left of center, which made it look like he didn't especially care for what he looked like at work. It wouldn't be a wrong assumption, his passion was more leaning towards leisure activities, and work only interrupted those.

He had dark blue earbuds that often appeared when they shouldn't.

If no one was paying particular attention to him, he often had the telltale cord trailing up from his pocket which told everyone around him he was secretly listening to music. His head would bob lightly when a good song was on, but the music tended to make him slightly more productive, typing each word to the beat of the tune in his ear.

He used the water cooler as an excuse to get up from his desk.

When called out on something like that he quirked a smile and shrugged. "I'm just thirsty today!"

Demyx was fine coasting in the role he was in, not terribly motivated to rise to the occasion and demonstrate any special aptitude for anything. If he had potential anywhere, he was keeping it to himself.

That particular day when most people had trailed out for lunch, he put his feet up on his desk, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, earbuds in both ears as he simply relaxed. He figured everyone would go to lunch and he'd be left to his own devices.

Comments

[illicitresearch]

Zexion was the youngest of them, back when the company was just an ambitious little startup that had managed to sieze upon his foster father's assets. He was still being homeschooled at the time, right out of the office, and was so very steeped in the world of the workforce that some said he had scarcely ever experienced much of a life outside of the hi-rise. He was always there on time, laptop case in hand, notes in tidy, leatherbound folios all ready to present. He didn't have the aggressive look of a corporate hotshot about him, but seemed comfortably cooled and at home under the flourescent lighting of the clean, grey carpet-and-cubicle world. He didn't have a private office, but sometimes cloistered himself off in the boardroom when it wasn't being used for meetings.

The CEO used to take him along on business trips, back when Xemnas was invested in grooming him to become head of the east coast headquarters. Nowadays, there were doubts that would ever come to pass- joke around the office was that their long-delayed expansion had been pushed off into oblivion. Rumor was that new wealthy, well-polished and ambitious hire, Marluxia, and Saix the loathesome middle manager were also angling for that spot.

But Zexion deserved it. He adapted to meet whatever the company needed, floating easily between departments, changing roles, organizing projects, finishing up the loose ends late into the night when other people failed to meet their deadlines, and someone was stuck picking up the slack. He tried his very damnedest to be a model of efficiency, and wrote scathing memos to the head of Human Resources about their newer employees, failing to see any of the same dedication to the job in them

His appearances could sometimes be a little unkempt too- bangs brushed long and haphazardly across his eyes to hide at least half of the sunken circles beneath them. But he always looked smooth shaven, kept cleanly pressed creases in his charcoal grey trousers and ironed his shirts, never wore loud ties... wore pullover sweaters in the winter months, which made him look like a smartly dressed University student.

He'd lived with the head of R&D for many years, who treated him much like any stringent, overbearing parent might, right up until their great tiff last quarter, when he'd moved out and in with that big security guard downstairs he also seemed warmly familiar with. They were often seen together taking coffee breaks together, or muttering about the state of the company in the corners of the parking garage, after hours.

Tolerating Demyx weighed tremendously on his patience, particularly when so many of those all-nighters, stuck late in the office far past closing with Lexaeus looming over his shoulder encouraging him to just head home, could be traced back to the same notorious slacker's procrastination, again and again.

Today, like most days when he had far too much to do to be dallying at the cafe around the corner for that precious extra hour, and too frugal to order in, he took lunch at his desk in an immaculately packed bento box. Retrieving it from the office fridge, he paused at the mouth of Demyx's cubicle with a little cluck of dismay, for the way he was lounging.

"You could, at the very least, try to respect the furniture." Zexion said smoothly, and moved on after the remark as if that was that.

[melodiouspacifist]

He was really in the zone by then, tapping his fingers on his knee, his feet tapping the air with all the solemn respect of the workplace that was expected of him. While Zexion had lingered, he'd opened up a sucker and stuck it into his mouth, licking it and the little stick bobbing much like his foot.

He opened his eyes at the words that were interrupting a very awesome song and he pulled out one of his earbuds with one hand and the sucker with another.

"What's that? I didn't hear you."

Demyx sometimes didn't know what to think about Zexion, he seemed like the stuffy, ladder-climbing type and he didn't know why. He should have been having fun, like he was. He'd gotten in on a summer internship and just hadn't left, oddly enough. No one had really made him, either. Xigbar seemed to think he had some sort of potential or aptitude, which was the kind of thing they talked about when they were reviewing his performance.

He wasn't entirely sure he did, honestly, he didn't see the same thing Xigbar did, obviously.