Welcome to Gaia! ::

Zeke was there, frowning over something on his phone, his free hand holding pen loosely over a sheet of notes. He blinked at the tapping, glancing up to the door as Melvin poked his head in. "Hey." It came with a slow smile, the phone lowering until it touched the desk, and Zeke set it down, powering down the screen as he nudged it away from him.

It wasn't the biggest office, but it was big enough to hold a large desk, and a smaller one. Shelves lined most of the walls, and those held various books, binders, and notebooks. There was a tank closer to where zeke was sitting, filled with a combination of aquatic and surface plants, the area inside split so the inhabitant could swim or crawl around on a little island. In the upper right hand corner of the tank there was a sticker of a taco.

Zeke turned in his chair. "What's up?"

Zeke's brows arched at the laptop Melvin had in his hands, then back to the man in question before holding a hand out for the tablet so he could sign it.

"Not as hard as you'd think, actually." He noted as he clicked his pen a couple of times and scribbled out his name. The tablet was offered back. "You need to have a viable reason to need one, and a specialty, but beyond that they didn't seem too hard to talk them into making one available."

He held his hands out the laptop. "For the moment, other than Taco." Taco was the maidmer Melvin had given him when he'd gone down to visit the other man in Atlantis. The mini moved in the tank, as if it could hear Zeke talking about it, and pressed it's little hands to the glass as it looked up at both of them. "Harley is out...somewhere," he said with a shrug. "And Lex is on watch somewhere, I think."

"Sure, if you want." It wasn't too unusual for Zeke to be the only one around. Harley and Lex, still trainees, had other duties they had to worry about on top of working with him. It meant it got very quiet in the office, unless Zeke felt like playing music.

"Why do you want to avoid going back to the labs?" He took the laptop and laid it on the desk beside his notebook.

"Ah," he said. The music alone was really answer enough. "I don't blame you for hiding out. Who the ******** likes country?" He snorted softly.

Brows quirked at the question. "Not really. It's not any different from when I was working in my dorm, to be honest." He shrugged. "It's actually kind of nice, since half the time I'm in the infirmary, dealing with emergency s**t. The quiet is nice."

That made him smile, and he shook his head. "No, not usually. If I'm actually there, I usually have company." If he wasn't, and he wasn't working, he was probably in the neighboring room with Ever. There just weren't many moments that Zeke found himself alone anymore, especially outside one or the other job.

"You don't like quiet?"

He supposed he could see the appeal of noise if that was what you'd grown up with. "I was an only child in a fairly quiet home." It hadn't really ever bothered him, not even when he'd started seeing things in shadows and at the corners of his vision. He liked music, and there were plenty of times when it played the backdrop to his work or research, but if he forgot, it just slipped his mind.

Leaning to the side, Zeke propped his elbow on the desk and sank his cheek down into his upturned hand, meeting those pale eyes. "I usually think about my work, since that's the only time I'm really only anymore."

Zeke gave a an amused sniff, nose wrinkling just a bit. "I don't mind the quiet time I have, when I have it. I'm not really interested in increasing it." There was a certain comfortable balance to things now that he quite liked.

"I'm not looking to get away from anything. I like the people in my life and the relationships I have with them. I like my job," he tipped his head, amending. "Jobs. There's no reason to want to go anywhere."