“Fucking great.” Alex grumbled as he went downstairs, heading towards the reception’s front desk, the usual receptionist having already left. It was bad enough he was being shoved out of the way by the company, but did he have to put up with the asshole clients as well? He got behind the desk, sitting down and waiting for someone to show up so that he could pretend to be polite to them.
Alex, by all accounts, should have been content with his position. He was in his early thirties, he had a decent desk job, and good pay. The problem was, at some point, he had just stopped caring. He showed up to work late and in an old shirt and pants rather than a proper business suit, didn’t bother keeping up his appearance, unshaven and with short, poorly cut greasy blonde hair, and it was only the fact that he was still the most competent one in his department that had stopped him from getting fired, and the fact that he still managed to pull through for them in time, albeit reluctantly and unhelpfully for the most part.
The company naturally wasn’t happy with him, but had put up with him for the most part, but today, they were working with some very important clients, and couldn’t afford to have Alex in their way. The solution had been to kick him out of the way for the day to a disposable position where he couldn’t do any damage, settling on the receptionist, who had just left on maternity leave, and had her position open.
While he was pissed off by the change to his usual schedule of showing up, putting off doing work and then quickly getting it done to an acceptable level towards the end of the day, he couldn’t complain about it, hence why he was currently lying through his teeth about how he was happy to help serve the third person to come up to him that morning.
“Second floor, office number four, thank you for your services.” He said in a forced tone, the woman he was serving easily seeing through his half-assed attempt at politeness, quickly making to leave to avoid having to deal with him any longer. Just how he preferred it.
Alex, having waved them through to another department rather than making a call to them like he should have, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, bored and tired. He looked around for something on the desk to keep him awake and ignoring the pile of documents that he was supposed to take upstairs, a magazine or something, coming up empty.
He made sure nobody was watching, and ducked underneath the desk, finding a mini-fridge underneath it, opening it and hoping to find a coke or something with enough sugar to get him through his shift. He instead found it packed with cans of some weird energy drink he had never heard of, labelled in Japanese or Chinese or something, he didn’t recognise it or know enough to tell the two languages apart.
Evidently, the old receptionist was too cheap to buy a recognisable brand, he thought to himself as he picked one out, cracking it open and sniffing it. What was that, lime and orange? What kind of flavour was in this thing? Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite pin it down, and figured that whatever it was, it wasn’t unappealing, and he quickly downed it, taking the whole thing in one go.
He quickly almost jumped off his chair from the rush, the drink being far stronger than he had expected. Half the can must have been pure caffeine, considering how he reacted to most energy drinks. It lasted a fair while too, long enough for another person to come in, and his “being helpful” act was even a bit more natural than it had been before. What he didn’t notice was that his messy and greasy hair had become straighter and had more of a well-kept shine to it.
Unfortunately though, less than an hour later, he crashed, and hard, the fact that he had stayed up all night becoming extremely apparent to him. To his credit, he managed to last one quiet hour before he ducked back under the desk to grab another one, figuring it was the only way he’d get through this crap. Besides, there was like twenty cans in there, they must have been pretty cheap if the receptionist had been having these every day. He took it slower this time, refraining from draining it too quickly.
The slower sips meant that he didn’t notice his stubble fading away with each one, leaving him completely clean-shaven by the end of the can. He naturally also didn’t notice that when he put on a smile that was slightly less fake each time, his usually somewhat yellowed teeth were a bright and well-maintained white, an old filling having vanished from sight. He didn’t immediately grab another one, since although the cans weren’t particularly big, being more energetic wasn’t a good trade-off for a ruptured stomach and having to constantly go to the bathroom.
A few more clients came and went, Alex actually being helpful for a change and not just waving them past, something that actually surprised him, and he just put down to the overload of caffeine not making him want to cave his skull in at the monotony of dealing with people who had no idea where to go. He took a few sips from his next can, looking past and over to the paperwork he was supposed to have dealt with twenty minutes ago, and for some reason, actually felt guilty about having not handed it up immediately.
It was an unfamiliar feeling, and while he tried to ignore it, it eventually got to him, and he picked it up and went upstairs to hand it to the proper department, dropping it off and legging it back to the reception before they asked him to do anything else with it. At least he wasn’t feeling guilty anymore.
He checked the time, and noticed that he only had an hour left in his shift, and then it was time to head home. Finally, he thought, as he directed a call to another department. He really wasn’t cut out for this crap, and the sooner he got back to his regular job, the better.
--
Alex dragged himself out of bed, not completely exhausted for once, and went through his morning routine of breakfast, shower, teeth and shaving, not noticing that shaving wasn’t actually in it, his face looking like it was freshly shaved the moment he climbed out of bed. He was about to change into his regular casual and unironed attire, until he noticed the still fresh-looking business suit gathering dust in his closet.
He tried to ignore it, but that damn feeling of guilt was back again, like he should be trying to present himself properly. After all, he was working in the reception, and he had to give a good first impression for his company for any prospective clients! Wait, when did he give a crap about his company’s image? Either way, the guilt was there, and it resisted his attempts to remove it from his mind with coffee. He sighed, and headed for his room, not pleased with what he was about to do.
--
Alex shifted slightly uncomfortably in his presentable clothes, an hour into his day. Despite the fact that he had actually gotten a good night’s sleep, it still wasn’t enough to negate the effects of staying up late for days on end, and it was starting to catch up with him, rubbing his eyes and occasionally briefly losing attention. If it hadn’t been for him heading back and forth with paperwork, he probably would have zoned out by now. Luckily, he was forming an addiction to the energy drinks below, and couldn’t put off the temptation to get a quick boost, ducking below and grabbing a can.
As he drank it, his frame began to shrink, becoming a couple of inches shorter from his usually tall stature, while his shoulders quietly cracked as they shrank inwards, while his waist compacted in slightly as his hips grew slightly wider. His square jaw narrowed, his cheeks and overall face thinning as his nose shrank and his brow smoothed out, looking considerably prettier than he had been before. His voice rose a couple of octaves, not enough to make him sound high-pitched, but enough to make it sound like either a somewhat feminine man, or a very masculine woman.
With the drink finished, Alex casually discarded the can in a bin underneath his desk, just in time for a woman in her fifties or sixties to enter, her hair done up a tight bun above her thick-rimmed glasses, carrying a folder of files presumably to give to him, Alex giving a surprisingly natural smile as he waited for her to speak.
“Hello, I was hoping you could get these to Mr Edwards, um…” She hesitated for a second, like she was trying to decide on something, although Alex had no idea what. “Miss?”
“Mister.” Alex said in a mixture of confusion and indignation, his smile immediately fading. What the hell was that for? How the hell did she manage to screw that up? The shit he had to put up with, when he was just trying to be helpful, and then some idiotic old woman comes in with the wrong glasses on, and… He calmed down, fixing a more sterile smile on his face.
“Of course, I’ll get right on that.” He said as evenly as he could, the woman having realised her mistake. He took the files and took them upstairs to Edwards, his trip back delayed by him offering to take a report from one of his co-workers to the other end of the building. He put it down to him trying to cool off completely, ignoring the fact that he had offered to courier it for the man, rather than him requesting.
When he returned, his small commentary to himself over his addiction to the drink seemed to be a bit more accurate than he had thought, since he had taken to taking sips from a can of it over the next hour, not noticing the effects it had on him. His face smoothed out even more, although his jaw was still a bit masculine, along with his overall face, which, along with hair that could no longer be considered medium length, and a voice that leaned more on the feminine side, meant that he had to put up with a couple more addresses that were gender-confused by his unknowingly androgynous appearance.
It didn’t help that his shoulders had gotten even narrower, his hips only widening an inch or so, not that it was really visible to anyone looking at him while he was sitting down. His sleeves also hung more loosely on slender arms, Alex not noticing that his hands and fingers seemed to be a bit smaller than they had been before.
Eventually, he hit his lunch break, and made a quick toilet break along the way, making his way back to his desk before it completely ended, rather than waiting until the last moment and rushing back like he usually did. He took another look at the mini-fridge below him, and put off taking another drink. He wasn’t really that tired anymore, and it seemed to energise him less and less each time he had it. And should he really be drinking on the job? What if somebody got the wrong impression and thought he was unhelpful and unprofessional?
Later, after he got back from running around some more paperwork with an hour left in his shift, having given a slightly wider smile to the client who had guessed his gender correctly, having resigned it to something that he was going to have to deal with, even if it frustrated him when they called him ‘miss’, he was drawn back to it, and swore that this would be his last one, pushing the fridge a bit further away from him with his foot as he opened his final can. Since his last can hadn’t done much to energise him, he figured he might as well get a quick caffeine rush, and downed it quickly, bladder be damned.
As he drank it, his chest began to swell out, his nipples growing larger and longer, until his pectorals formed into what could be called small but definite breasts, barely enough to warrant a bra at first and not showing up at all under his clothes, but quickly growing to almost be considered a B-cup, giving a very slight curve to his chest underneath his business attire.
His ass plumped up slightly as well, his hips gaining another inch as his waist compacted in a bit, giving him what would be considered a very boyish figure on a girl, and as he drained the last part of the drink, the most important part of his body began to shrink, receding back into his body as it was replaced with a pair of very feminine lips, not noticing her new equipment as she noticed a new client coming, hiding the can before she could notice. It had barely made an impact on her this time, and she figured that she was going to have to stop using it as an energy drink, since she seemed to have gained an immunity to it. Did that happen with other energy drinks?
She patiently listened to the client, until he reached the part she had been waiting for and hesitated. Surprisingly, he directly asked her, albeit awkwardly, “I’m sorry, is it mister, or miss..?”
“It doesn’t really matter.” She said, getting ready to relay his concerns to the proper department. Her new job was actually growing on her, to be honest. She actually kind of liked the feeling of helping someone, and the satisfaction she got from it. And really, had she gotten any satisfaction from her job before, or had she just shown up, half-assed it, and went home? Maybe she could request a transfer…