Thomas settled into his new home quite quickly. Dropping his suitcase off by the door, he took a quick tour around the apartment.

It was modestly small, but it was big enough for the bodyguard to live in for the next 2 weeks.

The accomodation was better than what he was used to, especially compared to the last job where he had a single mattress on a cold floor.

This apartment had a king size bed, with a functioning kitchen and bathroom too. Even though the apartment was barely furnished, Thomas was happy.

It was around 6pm when Thomas left his new temporary home. Using the car given to him by Javier, Thomas entered the Shelton building's address into the navigation system.

Driving to the Shelton building gave Thomas some time to assess the situation. Given that Ethan didn't even know he had a bodyguard, Thomas thought it would be better to ease the guy into the idea of it.

Thomas was honest to himself when he didn't think he would like the kind of person Javier described his son as. Ethan sounded a bit too cocky for Thomas' liking, the guy had a history of acting before thinking, and apparently Ethan is very spontaneous.

Thomas on the other hand always found himself to be humble no matter what. He enjoyed having structure and routine in his life, and Thomas would identify himself as slightly introverted compared to Ethan.

But their opposite personalities had to be ignored, because Thomas was here for a job. He decided to forget his initial assessment of the guy, and meet Ethan in person - to determine the kind of man Ethan Shelton really was.

'I should give the guy some credit and not automatically dislike him - maybe he will surprise me.'

Parking his car in one of the spacious reserved areas, Thomas made his way into the Shelton lobby. On the outside the building looked intimidating, with the building being a skyscraper that overflowed power and status amongst the smaller surrounding buildings.

Thomas already knew the floor where Ethan's office was located at. He used the master lanyard key given by Javier to access the elevator, and he listened to the elevator music as he watched the numbers on the panel glow as it rises.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Ethan had already tossed his suit jacket onto his chair as he was ready to pull his hair out. His tie was disheveled and his crisp white shirt was now all wrinkled up.

Files, reports, texture samples, and test products were scattered on his desk as Ethan tried his best to organise his thoughts onto the mess in front of him.

Ethan pressed down on the speaker phone to call the general secretary. "Tamsen? Is everyone down there yet?"

A high pitched voice came from the speaker phone as Tamsen answered her boss. "Not yet Ethan. The photographer went to the wrong building, the people sorting out the lights forgot half of their equipment, and most of the models have gone AWOL, and are wandering around the building somewhere."

Ethan heavily sighed as he rubbed his face tiredly. "This practice show needs to go down well. I have a lot of things I need to be doing right now, and that doesn't include babysitting half of the people in the building!"

"We'll get right on it!" Tamsen responded as she ended the call.

As Ethan disconnected the phone call with Tamsen, his eyes looked up at the man standing in his doorway. "Are you lost?"

Ethan studied the guy's features, and processed them in his mind. The tall guy stood in front of him had broad shoulders underneath the pressed, sharp suit. He was clean shaven which highlighted his chiseled jaw, and the brown eyes looking back at him looked dark and alluring.

"No I'm-"

"You must be one of the models..." Ethan deduced. His anger and frustration resurfaced as he lashed out at the guy for his tardiness, "What are you doing here!? You're meant to be down on floor 7 and trying out the new line of clothes for the model shoot 20 minutes ago!"

"I'm Thom-"

"Save it!" Ethan interrupted once again, "I don't need your life story. Just strip out of those clothes and put this on."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thomas caught the object that was thrown at him by Ethan. He straightened the material out, and identified that he was given compression shorts that could be worn as underwear.

His eyes were bulging out of the socket as he continued to hear Ethan speak about the thinly designed clothing in front of him.

"Hurry up and strip out of the suit! I want to see if that colour will go better with your skin tone, or if we should just go with the dark navy ones." Ethan told him, as he then threw Thomas another pair.

Thomas' eyes were still blinking wildly as he noticed the compression shorts were extremely short, transparent around the thighs, and only modestly covering the crotch.

Out of curiosity Thomas held it over his trousers, and they were indeed cut really short. In fact they were only one third the length of his thighs, and the fact that they were half transparent were a confusing design choice.

"Hey genius, the underwear goes underneath your clothes." Ethan mocked, "Plus you're not wearing any other clothes when you're doing the walk."

Thomas looked back at Ethan confused, "The walk?"

Ethan smacked his forehead at Thomas' lack of understanding. Ethan's speech was slow as he deliberately dragged it out, so that the other guy could understand him.

"Strip naked... Put those on... And walk... Straight!"

Ethan then demonstrated the walk in front of Thomas. He held his head high as he straightened his back. Ethan's shoulders were pulled back and down so they looked relaxed.
He began to take long and smooth strides towards Thomas, and repeated it on his way back behind his desk. During this time his hips were straight, and Ethan was the definition of confidence with every step he took.

"You get that?" Ethan asked blankly, "Or did your brain cells weigh too much, and so they dropped down into your body muscles - just to make everything look bigger?"

Thomas was slightly taken back by Ethan's sharp tongue and snappy behaviour. "Do you always treat people like this?"

"Only the underwear models that exchange their brain cells for protein powder, and asks stupid questions..."

It dawned on Thomas that Ethan must have confused him for an underwear model. Suddenly this all made sense, and so Thomas understood why Ethan was talking to him about underwear during their first ever encounter.

"I'm not an underwear model..." Thomas chuckled, "I'm your-"

Ethan heard enough as he waved his hand around to silence Thomas. He then held his finger up to him as Ethan spoke into the speaker phone. "Tamsen? Call security to escort somebody out of my office."

Ethan walked up to Thomas and snatched the compression shorts out of his hands. He scoffed at the slightly taller guy in front of him, as Ethan then hid the shorts behind his back.

"Not going to lie, you're a major scumbag for sneaking into my office so that you could steal our ideas."

Thomas tried to laugh it off as a simple misunderstanding. These kind of things happen to people... sometimes.

Ethan continued berating Thomas with his harsh words. "You're a lowlife douchebag that should make better use of his time than snorting steroids as if they were pixie sticks."

Thomas bit back his tongue as he tried several breathing techniques to calm himself down from the rage inducing coma. "If you let me talk, then I can explain everything." Thomas said simply.

Ethan peeked past Thomas and saw a security guy already standing there. Talking to him instead, "Make sure this guy is kicked out of the building and isn't allowed back in. I've got to speak to your head of department, and try to beef security up near the entrance."

As Ethan quickly left the office, the security guy firmly grabbed Thomas' arm. "Just make my life easier and walk with me. I have kids at home and I'm too tired to deal with some creepy stalker with an underwear fetish."

Thomas easily detached the security guard's hand away from him, and forcefully shook it away from him. The angered look in the security guy's eyes were relinquished when Thomas pulled his lanyard out of his pocket.

"Mr Shelton, senior, gave me this pass to enter the building." Thomas explained thoroughly, "I'm Ethan Shelton's personal bodyguard. So if you don't mind me, I have a job to do."

The security guy sagged his shoulders as he looked down and apologised to Thomas. "I'm sorry sir, I was unaware of your relations to the Sheltons."

Thomas could have easily stayed mad at the guy for grabbing him, disrupting his job, and describing him using awful words. But Thomas took the moral high road as he smiled back politely. "It's okay, you're just doing what you're meant to do. It makes me glad that you're doing your job properly, so kudos."

The smile from Thomas was genuine as he saw the security guy take a deep breath out of relief. Thomas quickly waved goodbye as he tried to catch up with Ethan - who was making his way towards the elevator.

Ethan was inside the elevator when he turned around, and saw Thomas striding closer towards him. With a sigh and an exaggerated eye roll, Ethan repeatedly pressed the button to shut the door.

The last thing Thomas saw was a smirk on Ethan's face. The metal doors were closing between them, and one last sentence could be heard - making Thomas' blood pressure rise.

"Maybe you should have walked a little faster!"

Thomas wanted to give Ethan the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to assume that underneath the playful and snappy exterior Javier described, Ethan was a nice and thoughtful person.

But there was only one thing that came to Thomas' mind after his interaction with Ethan.

"What a gobby little shit!"

==========

Author's Note: Just in case people didn't know, I'm from the UK and we swear - a lot.

And even though this story is based in America (not super relevant to the plot), I can't be consistent with changing the words/spellings I use.

So sorry in advance, and I hope you enjoy the occasional excessive swearing!