Chapter 14
The next three weeks were a whirlwind of activity for Dethklok and their managers, though not unpleasant. Charles, especially, was in a better mood than he had been in for nearly twenty years, with the exception of rare moments of inebriation.
It wasn't as though anything had happened between them romantically. Far from it. The morning after unmasking his assistant once again, Charles had awakened to a lack of joint pain, and a young woman snoozing with her head against his leg. It had made him feel slightly gleeful, seeing her first thing in the morning when he opened his eyes, though he would never admit it. Regardless, he'd scooped her up while a quirky little grin had sneaked its way onto his face, laid her out on the couch, and began his day quietly, while he waited for her to rise.
Generally, he felt all the stronger for having Zoe around and halfway back to normal. The trauma she'd suffered from assuming she was a cold-blooded killer was etched deeply into her personality, but more and more, her old self began to bubble through the still-stiff layers of his thankfully-broken brainwashing spell. He found that the more she healed and the more her personality recovered, the better and more efficient his own work became. It was as though a wall he hadn't known he was walking face first into had suddenly been removed, and he could continue on his way.
Charles felt an old side of his personality awakening. He thought he'd mashed it down and slain that beast many years ago, but here it was again, simmering just under the surface. In his mind, he'd been a regular pressure cooker with nowhere for the steam to go for quite some time. It had just kept building and making him more and more bitter, but, out of the blue, someone had finally lifted the lid. He still kept his empire running smoothly and held it in his steely grasp, working with all the crisp calculations of the most cunning serial killer, but behind that huge desk, a smile suddenly sat more often than not, usually tipped to one side and etching the gentle, becoming lines even deeper into his skin. Even his laugh was getting some exercise, which it very rarely ever did. It prompted him to do some almost unusual things.
He'd had to hide his most recent personal purchase carefully. He was on the fence about spending the money on himself, but…it was coming out of his pocket, not theirs, and he'd wanted one for a long time, regardless of what they thought about it. He was a little nervous that if his boys found it in his room or his office, they might give into the express desire to eject it from their presence through the nearest window, stairwell, or elevator shaft.
But it did fit in nicely with his others.
Zoe slowly brought herself around. Charles was treating her...well, she wasn't quite sure how to describe it. He wasn't being easy on her, but neither was he quite the same person he'd been when they'd first met. She wasn't sure what to make of it all. It never occurred to her that she had been the catalyst that created the change. All she knew was that two months of her life were a blur, and it was his fault, but she could forgive him with a little effort. He had only been trying to protect his assets, after all.
The first day she'd shown her face to them again, she'd made the mistake of just walking in the door and asking Skwisgaar whether or not he'd used protection for his most recent group of hookups, so that she had a head start on paternity suits. They had all been on their way to the studio, after much poking and prodding from Charles and Knubbler, and she'd practically crept up on them. Toki, being his overzealous self, had flung his arms around her, knocking them both off balance, and they'd both toppled into the hot tub fully clothed. She'd sputtered and surface, pulling the surprised Norwegian up by his hair before he forgot not to breathe.
Unfortunately for her, she'd chosen an off-white silk blouse that day. She felt much more like her old self after beating Murderface half to death with her clipboard after climbing out of the tub soaking wet- whoever told Charles that she was the one who sent the bassist to the infirmary for stitches would be next. And then she'd scurried out of there with the shreds of her pride falling away in the water that dripped from her clothes.
Aside from that little incident (for which she profusely apologized later), she slowly began to pick up the pieces that had been left on the floor of the seminar room in what felt like a lifetime ago. She ended up with her own desk settled in the anterior conference room attached to Charles' office, and devised a method of communication that kept him properly entertained.
What else was there to do when you already knew everything the middle school textbooks had to say, other than learn to make really great paper airplanes?
It started with just one, one day, when Charles been on the phone for over three hours, looking more and more perturbed as the minutes ticked by. She'd inched her foot out and cracked her door open, watching him with a satisfied smirk. It paid to have friends that worked at high-end companies- she could get them to transfer his calls around until he went off the deep end. It was simply her revenge, and she would have to remember to thank Mike again for the number of the guy she'd had drinks with once, in college.
Finally, she decided he'd had enough, but was too lazy to get up, and didn't want to break the comfortable silence between them, lest he shush her in the hopes that he would be taken off hold. So Zoe grabbed a piece of plain printer paper and a black Sharpie, jotted down a quick message, and slyly began to crease her note into shape. Charles wasn't paying attention to her one bit, and hadn't been all day. She hoped this would change that, as her tongue peeped out from between her lips and she eyeballed an angle.
And change it did. He almost jumped out of his skin (of course, it didn't look like it, from her end) when something white wafted into his peripheral vision. He looked up from his work with a slightly surprised look on his face, and Zoe watched as the airplane skidded to a gentle halt on top of his blotter. He looked up at her through the door, and she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand and then leaning forward on her threaded fingers. Charles unfolded the airplane good-naturedly and read the note.
"I finalized the order you're waiting on through email two hours ago. :P"
With a disgusted expression, Charles punched in another number on his phone and made a show of crumpling the airplane and tossing it in the trashcan. To his hidden amusement, another one came breezing through his office three minutes later. He leaned his face into his left hand and bemusedly watched it land in exactly the same spot as the last one.
"You mad?"
He shook his head and bit his lip, furiously writing something on a notepad, and then held it up for her to see.
"Get back to work."
Zoe saluted from her desk and appeared to dive back into her accounting, but once again, a neat, perfectly constructed paper airplane landed right in front of him. He blinked at it and couldn't stop the low, miffed chuckle that followed. He could both hear and see that she was definitely still writing. He read the message on the third airplane, the nose of it having been perfectly in alignment with the other two.
"I could say the same to you. You're the one wasting time reading these. Now quit giving me that look and focus. What are you waiting for? Stop reading and get busy!"
He had to read it twice, because he had indeed looked up again after the first two lines. He didn't even bother to write his response back this time, just stood and leaned over his desk.
"How are you doing that?"
His only reply was another giggle.
Charles didn't throw that airplane away, instead refolding it along the creases and leaving it on his desk. It amused and baffled him at the same time. He moved out from his chair and gathered his things, on his way to a briefing, and had just settled his hand on the doorknob when something lightly tapped him in the back of the head. He turned around, half expecting her to be standing there, but the only thing he saw was the flutter of white dive-bombing his feet.
"How did she even…" He muttered to himself when he noticed the angle between him and her door, and he stooped to pick up the last of the office aeronautics. This one was written in both a black and a red pen.
"I could show you sometime. It's pretty easy. Have a good meeting."
He didn't stop to ponder why he felt drawn to the fact that she'd signed the airplane with a little, very non-metal, red Sharpie heart. It may have been bleeding slightly from the ink seeping into the paper, which made it almost bearable, but it was still too ridiculously girly for him to openly a damn. That kind of fluffy nonsense had no place in his domain. And yet…
Perhaps it was just the toxic fumes from the markers getting to him.
He really hoped so.
Charles was half-tempted to ask her to show him how to make the perfect paper airplane (he'd never been good at them- they always fell at his feet when he threw them) as soon as he got back, but he'd been out dealing with a near-disaster from the Doritos company deciding to use Nathan's image as an endorsement on their new line of chips without permission, (the boots had been put to a few executives) and he'd waltzed in well after she'd gone to bed. He'd putted around his office for a bit, but really wasn't able to work anymore. He was too interested in getting back to playing with his new toy. So he pulled it from its hiding place and locked the door, pulling off his suit coat, taking off his tie, and rolling up his sleeves.
Charles settled himself on the edge of his desk, his feet dangling just a bit off the ground, and set the beautiful quilt-top acoustic on his lap. It had been a while since he'd owned one, and regardless of what the band thought of them, he liked them. This one was the most high end, custom, hand-tailored model money could buy. It fit against his body perfectly, and the shiny mother-of-pearl fret inlay shimmered while he tuned up by ear. He felt he was going to enjoy the Florentine cut-out as he fingered a few quick runs, getting a feel for the large dreadnought. It had a thick, rich tone, not too bright, but not exactly mellow, either.
Now the only question that plagued him was what he was going to play.
He started a few songs, but they didn't quite feel right for the moment. He kept making mistakes and his grand barres were buzzing. He was so used to his army of vintage Gibsons, it was hard for him to play anything else. It began to frustrate him. He leaned back, wrinkling his nose in distaste and looking around in the half-light cast by a single lamp and the exterior glow cast by the runner lights outside his window. His mind felt blank.
Sighing, he was just about to put the instrument back in its case and squirrel it away again, until the hand he was leaning back on brushed something on his desk. He picked up the airplane he'd left out on top the blotter, turning it over and over between his fingers, contemplating just how he'd gotten into this intra-office airplane affair with someone who, by all accounts, should've been stone dead by then. In the darkness, he took a moment to reflect on their recent behavior, but old habits died hard, and he kept himself from any real revelations, instead just musing over the fact that he didn't feel as alone anymore, even when surrounded by a sea of people willing to do anything for him.
It was…nice.
Maybe…just maybe, he actually had a friend.
How was that even possible? How the hell did someone like her end up befriending someone like him? It didn't make any sense. Why was she even here? What had possessed her to go to work for Crystal Mountain, anyway? He had wanted to ask for a long time, but never quite know how to do so without sounding too interested. She was just too much of a regular young lady for someone like him to be hanging around with outside work terms, and yet the proof of something just a little deeper than having an assistant was scrawled in dark ink across a bright white flying machine.
He made a bit of a noise in the back of his throat, putting the airplane down again and settling into another chord formation. He'd never really thought to ask why she was so nice to him. Maybe that was easier than all that personal junk. Maybe he should just start fresh with that in the morning.
Because he couldn't keep it out of his mind for any prolonged amount of time.
The song that had slammed into his brain like a trainwreck when he'd first felt the plane behind him suddenly escaped in the form of almost-perfect playing. He was pretty sure no one had heard that song anywhere in years. He didn't even know why he remembered the words, and if anyone caught him singing and playing it, he was sure to be sent packing. He couldn't help it, though. They weren't goofy teenagers, but it still sort of, almost fit his mood. He changed almost all of the words on the fly, but simply kept on rocking out, oblivious to the fact that his mind might've had a deeper reason for picking that song out of all the ones he could have remembered.
Tenor that he was, he wasn't so great at hitting the high notes anymore. He was really out of practice, but after a few scratchy notes, he flew threw them like they were nothing, and it actually made him happy.
"Her name is Zoe, I have a dream about her."
Author's Notes: Yes, I did actually rewrite that entire Wheatus song ("Teenage Dirtbag," for those that don't know), and so, because this is a brand new chapter, I figure, aw, what the heck? Here ya go, Charles' rewritten version, "Corporate Douchebag."
Her name is Zoe
I have a dream about her
Her planes remind me,
Got a meeting in half an hour
Oh how she rocks
In suits and ascots
But she doesn't know who I am
And she doesn't give a damn about me
Cause I'm just a corporate douchebag baby
Yeah I'm just a corporate douchebag baby
Listen to some Dethklok now, baby with me, Oooh
Her boss is a dick
And he knows that he's a tfool
And he'd simply kick
Her ass if she broke the rules
He's usually tough,
And awfully rough,
But nobody knows who he is
And he doesn't give a damn about this
Cause I'm just a corporate douchebag baby
Yeah I'm just a corporate douchebag baby
Listen to some Dethklok now, baby with me, Oooh
Yeeah, douchebag, but she doesn't know what she's missin'
Yeeah, douchebag, but she doesn't know what she's missin'
Man, I feel so old,
At midnight I'm always lonely
Lo and behold
She's faxing over to me
This must be fake
My pen starts to shake
How does she know who I am
And why does she give a damn about
I've got two tickets to Huey Lewis, baby
Come with me Friday, don't say maybe
I'm just a corporate douchebag baby like you, Oooh
Yeeah, douchebag, but she doesn't know what she's missin'
Yeeah, douchebag, but she doesn't know what she's missin'