Until the Stars Fade Away [MxM - SaifahZon] [COMPLETED]

Night 6

ZON GLARED AT THE GIRL sitting across the room and pouted his lips. He couldn't believe his own eyes, and the longer he looked at her, the younger she seemed. He kept staring daggers at her pink tumbler and cute sticky notes, his fingers drumming on the desktop. Unbelievable, he thought. Just unbelievable. Even the computer screen was covered with those strawberry-shaped memos! What kind of sick game was she playing, marking her workspace like a territory?

Still oozing with silent disapproval, he pushed himself off the desk; the dark cloud above his head followed the whirring of the chair. He stopped in front of an older lady, who now raised her eyebrows in a quizzical look. As if she didn't love it when he did it!

"Maaaay," he started to whimper right off the bat, unbothered by the papers in her hands. "How could you give my desk to some intern, hm?" Despite everything, he tried to keep his voice as low as possible. The girl might've been nothing but a student, but hurting her feelings was not on his agenda. "An intern, May!" he hissed, trying to highlight how ridiculous it was.

And when the woman chuckled, he realised she felt the same—just not for the same reasons.

"Wait, wait, wait...Your desk?" She looked at him the way mothers look at their dim-witted children. "Honey, how long has it been since you stopped working here? After you left, the desk was Pim's, remember?"

"Yeah, but Pim's a friend. It's different. Duh." He flashed an innocent smile, glad to see her giggling, too. "Speaking of, how is she?"

"Good, enjoying her maternity leave. The baby girl is a cutesy bee now, but mark my words, she'll look like that lousy father of hers! And have you heard—"

Zon rested his chin on his hand and smiled, listening to that nasal voice he had learned to cherish. Ever since he had left his position as a junior editor, he visited his old office once a month; always with a small box from a high-end pâtisserie. It was a tradition he had to maintain—partially out of habit, mostly for his own sanity.

At first, he only did it to wrap the last things up, but as soon as he was done, he found it hard to leave the hustle and bustle of the publishing house behind. Even his colleagues were a family of sorts to him, and whom he had thought he would miss. That delusion did not last long, of course, and soon most of them became just ghosts of days gone by, a faded memory of good and bad. By that time, however, he was too used to visiting the place to stop. It was not only a habit, but a rare chance to interact with people beyond his closest circle and, as a freelancer, he could not allow himself to discard such an opportunity. After all, it was like salvation that maintained the illusion that he was not a complete hermit.

When May stopped her story, he started playing with a stapler and baited her with another question. "And how about that fling of Fiat's? Has his girlfriend found out?"

Although Zon used to be the last person to prick his ear about office rumours, now they were fuel to his creativity and new ideas. They also were the quickest way to catch up on everyone's life and make him feel like a part of the group—not that he would ever tell that to anyone.

Not even to Zen. Especially not Zen.

"Dude, stop bothering people." His friend decided to chasten him as soon as he was back from the kitchen, two steaming cups in his hands. "We have some work to do."

Zon took the cup from him and frowned. "Where's my coffee?" he asked, looking at the semi-transparent liquid inside. That was not a latte.

"You drink way too much caffeine. A tea from time to time won't kill you."

"Since when does tea have no caffeine in it?"

But his rhetorical question went unanswered. Instead, May joined the conversation, her voice as bubbly as always, "Oh, oh! It's that organic white one? Last week, I bought a pack with orange peels and it was even better, believe it or not. Even my Beam liked it!" She blabbed a few more sentences, gushing about how good it was, but Zon had stopped listening.