THE SMITHS

Chapter Twenty-one

“Do you know who Midas considers to be the most important person in this house?” The words make another round in his head for what felt like the hundredth time since the night before.

Iris's surprise borders on horror as she finds the boss sitting in a slouched position, a stark contrast to his usual straight backed, high shouldered posture. The surprise grows when she gets close enough to his table, even dropping a file without any form of an acknowledgement. This wasn't his usual general lack of regard for anyone, he just continues to stare into nothingness, looking lost in thoughts.

It was after a little deliberation that she takes small steps closer, leaning against the table.

"Sir?" She whispers -no response.

"Boss!" She calls louder this time and he finally seems to jolt back to reality. On noticing her presence, he sits right back up.

"Yes. You're here"

Iris makes a small 'Ah' sound as she takes steps back, folding her hands in front of her, "Yes Sir, Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if I could get your signature on these because I need to take them back" she explains, gesturing at the papers on his table and that causes his eyes to finally drift toward them.

He nods, pushing his chair closer to the table, "Yes, very well" is all he says, already bringing the files closer to examine them with his sleek ballpoint pen in hand.

Iris remains unmoving in front of the desk, it wasn't unusual for her because of the urgency of certain proposals and with time, she'd gotten used to it. She usually keeps herself entertained by just looking around the office as slowly as she could -she wouldn't want to distract the cranky boss of course, -and try to put a price on all the no doubt, ridiculously expensive pieces of decorations, heck, the boss even had an award cabinet. But it got progressively boring, skipping the two days she missed due to being fired, it's been a little over a month with the company now and nothing in his office was exactly new to her anymore.

'Except the boss, of course' she hears a part of her subconscious say and she immediately shuts it up, because, what the hell does that even mean.

But it seemed he was taking his sweet time with these particular documents today, so it was taking a bit of time. Sighing as silently as she could, Iris lets her eyes trail higher from the table to the boss' fingers where they leisurely grips unto the pen, they were long and slender, every part of his body looked very well taken care of and not even his fingers were an exception. Her eyes move even higher, to his eyes that were solely focused on the paper, to his perfectly carved brows that furrows whenever he was concentrating on something.

When her eyes trail higher to his hair, she couldn't help but appreciate just how well put together he always looked, the boss was clean cut in every sense of the word. On one part, the hair lays slicked back, away from his forehead while the other part falls a little over his brows, it always looked like that, not a single strand out of place. Although, he had looked a little out of his element today, that would not explain the rolled up sleeves. The boss did that, although on rare occasions and when he was sure he wasn't having any visitors over. Iris thinks that must be one of his ways of letting loose, even by a little, there was nothing easy about having to call the shots and make potentially damning or progressive decisions. It wasn't like Cameron could loosen his tie or take off his oxfords to let lose, no, he was too much of a perfectionist for that. So, whenever he did things like take his suit jacket off and proceeds to roll up his sleeves, Iris takes that as his way of saying 'the stress is killing me.' poor guy.

Anyways, back to the present. Iris blames the idleness of her mind and body for the way her eyes takes it's time in slowly taking in the sight of the crisp white shirt rolled around the boss' bicep, and oh- he must have resumed putting his pen to work because his bicep flexes with the pressure on his wrist and fingers and wow, his arms really were bulky. Iris takes a second to thank her stars that he wasn't the violent kind, because imagine he had swung for her when she threw that envelope on his face a few days ago? That slap would've had her reeling for days. She wonders what those arms must look like without the shield that was the long sleeved shirt, probably smooth, fair skin like the rest of his face, but maybe with angry veins scattered along the sides, yes, they looked to be exactly that way. Iris had not exactly been seeing a lot of naked arms but she was sure of this assumption.