Chapter Text
Dawn on the planet Nunki filters through the half-open blinds into your shitty rented one-bedroom apartment in the form of eerie blue light and the roars and whistles of the local birdlife.
You’re not one-hundred percent sure if you could even call it ‘birdlife’, because even after almost a decade spent as veteran space-nomad for hire your definition of what a bird is still does not involve fang-like protrusions on the beak or four extra arms in possession of claws, but your planet guide tells you these charming fliers are considered an avian species, so birdlife it is.
The air around you feels heavy and stale, rolling over you like an invasive, uninvited blanket. Apparently the locals thrive in the hot, humid, windless summers on this planet. Your earth-mammal human physiology, however, is inclined to disagree with their preferences.
Reluctantly, you crack your eyes open, lifting your hand to wipe the gunk amassed in the corners away. While it isn’t exactly unusal for you to begin counting the cons of sticking around any one planet for extended periods relatively early on in your stay, you don’t think you’ve ever amassed such a convincing list as fast as you have for Nunki.
Luckily, you’ve no real need to stick around much longer. Another two delivery contracts to fulfill and you’ll be free to go. There is a pretty strong anti-human bias on Nunki, and your flagging strength and will to live is making it pretty obvious why; the human body is just not made for this kind of climate.
You roll out of bed with a groan and amble over to your miniature bathroom. You’ve never been one for showers, because between Bro and Dirk your old apartment on earth was out of warm water roughly, well, always, and in your years spent planet-hopping you’ve grown an untameable love for bathtubs instead. But Nunkinians do not care for submerging their body into water because, being reptilians, they do not sweat, so you’re lucky enough that you managed to find a place equipped with a shower at all. You’re not sure if you could have stuck out even through your first assignment on this steaming pile of dogturds without the promise of personal hygiene awaiting you at home.
You make the mistake of looking into the mirror before you step under the water.
Long term exposure to the ridiculous humidity and heat has fritzed your naturally thin, straight hair into the likeness of a platinum blond hedgehog with psychopathic tendencies. The fact that it’s been a while since the last haircut you’ve had isn’t helping any, leaving longer strands swooping into odd directions.
Adding it to the list of reasons you definitely don’t want to be here any longer, you crank the cold water tap open as far as it goes and step under the lukewarm stream. It’s not the shock of frost your system could probably use to get rid of the heat-crud, but it’s the best you can get and at the very least it’s not uncomfortable, being a slightly more manageable temperature than the sweltering humidity you have to deal with the rest of the day.
One shower, refreshing but not as refreshing as you wish it would have been, and several prayers to the gods of expensive blond hair care produce and useless vanity later your hair appears to be less of a middle school chemistry gone horribly wrong and more of a persian cat with issues and brush fright, and you’re ready to set out to deliver the second-last large box of the pile of pending deliveries scattered through your living room. Technically there is no rush, but you’ve just about reached the point where you want the whole gig to be over and done with so you can leave and pretend Nunki never happened at all.
Then, just as you’re about to head out, your comm vibrates.
It’s an ancient model, clunky and ugly as balls, but it comes with a decent (if somewhat dated) contract that allows for interstellar communication at actually affordable rates compared to any of the swanky, sleek little things you’ve seen offers on in the last couple of years. Considering your wanderlust that makes it irreplaceable.
The outdated LED display (so 21st century, jeeze) lights up, flashing an ugly muted orange spelling out the word ‘BRO’.
You consider hanging up on him out of spite, but decide against it. Bro never picks up his comm and you’re never entirely sure if he actually listens to messages, but you have an inkling that ignoring him right back isn’t really going to benefit anyone. Plus, Bro’s not really one for schmoozing, so you’re at least relatively sure this isn’t a social call.
“Dave Strider, professional space-hazard endangering your ass-backwards non-commercial planets and terrorising their inhabitants with his monstrous bedhair at your service, what the fuck do you want?”
You think he might be giving you an odd look through the little camera screen, but the display is too tiny to see, and the spotty connection is interfering with the stream quality. “Weren’t you playing dockworker at some kind of gemini spaceport? Did the definition of ass-backwards non-commercial change without me noticing? Kids these days with their slang, can’t even bother to keep it the same long enough for us elderly to keep up with them.”
You flip off the camera and roll your eyes. “‘Last time’ was like a year ago, asshat. Maybe if the elderly want to keep up so badly, they should keep their fucking comms in hobbling range of their walking-aids and pick up some hearing aids to catch the thing ringing.”
Bro pauses for a long while, but you have no idea whether he is somehow seriously considering what you are saying or if he is just forcing the conversation to flow to his whims. Knowing him it could be either. Could be something else entirely. The audio feed crackles back to life. “Sorry, got a message. Anyways, yeah yeah pick up the comm more often blah blah, usual complaints, we’ve had this conversation, man. Moving on.”
You’ve reached the point in your life where you honestly don’t give a shit about Bro’s shitty social habits anymore, but years of habitual nagging have made the same old argument kind of a tradition; Bro doesn’t want to feel tied to you and Dirk like some kind of replacement parent because he feels like he’s done enough by stepping in and raising you both till adulthood after your real parents died. On top of that, or so he claims, normal cousins just ‘don’t do the whole calling twice a week and tea on sundays deal’.You and Dirk counter that that doesn’t mean he has to shut communications down all the way to eternally misdated christmas card level.
Deciding against forcing the conversation, you remain silent and wait for Bro to make his point.
“Yeah so, I’m actually calling because I’ve got a gig you might be interested in. Travelling expenses included, as long as you manage to crawl out of ass-backwards and into any spaceport big enough to allow long-distance fare.”
You perk up. It’s not that you’re especially worried about finding work wherever the fuck you end up next, but travelling is expensive and if there’s any chance of getting a direct travel route instead of buying fare on local supply-run crawlers you’re so on board with that. Combined with the promise of getting off planet hellfire and gloom, this is sounding like whatever gods the locals believe in heard your prayers and took pity on you.
“I’m listening. Though, just so we’re clear, if it’s got decent enough wages I can live somewhere with a bathtub, I’m probably won over. I am a weak man and the tropics are doing terrible things to my complexion. And my hair.”
Bro lifts a hand up to his own hair in what you assume is some kind of solemn sympathy reflex. He’s always been a touch more sensitive about his looks than anyone else in the family, even though you know he’ll try and deny his own vanity till the day he dies. Or possibly after. If anyone could come back from the grave to haunt people for talking shit about his hair, it would be Bro.
“Right, I don’t think I even want to know where you ended up this time. You don’t have to worry about renting anything, it’s an in-house job. On millionaire pissing-contest planet Ancha, so you definitely don’t need to be worrying about any missing facilities. Or about your hair. Live-in place’s bathroom isn’t the fanciest thing ever, but there is a tub.”
Bro works on Ancha, you knew that much. You’re fuzzy on the details because he is a wily fucker who doesn’t bother with small-talk, but you know he works for some big shot, and that he does something that allows him to wear sunglasses at work.
“So, are you going to tell me what mystery job x entails, or is this some kind of guessing game? Because if it is, I’m just going to guess ‘donuts’ until you give in and tell me. I’ve spent the past three weeks slowly cooking in my own sweat, my brain isn’t at full capacity right now.”
Bro takes another long pause, but this time you’re at least reasonably sure he is judging you. It’s not necessarily a disapproving vibe you are catching onto, but it is awakening old, worn insecurities that you would have liked to believe faded away years ago, and it is making you uncomfortable.
“It’s a bodyguarding gig for the same family I work for. It’s a good job, and I know I’ve taught you well enough that you’re qualified. All you need to do is look properly groomed, stand still and try not to look bored while your ward does public stuff, and make sure nobody tries to kill him. It’s got good pay, and you get your own bedroom and bathroom in a ridiculously swanky Ancha penthouse. Win-win, really.”
It does sound like a very good offer. A little bit too good, in fact, to be handing out to down-on-their-luck family members with a reputation for flimsiness. You’re the recycled ductape member of the family, and you know it; good enough to keep things sticking together in an emergency, but it never takes long before you lose interest and have to be replaced.
“I’m assuming this is where you tell me what the catch is.”
Even the crap quality of your video feed cannot hide the shit eating grin spreading over your brother’s face. He’s already hooked you, and he knows it. You are fairly certain you should be worried.
“The catch would be that little prince drama queen disagrees with the notion of needing a bodyguard, and has proven very competent at driving even the most professional meatshields into throwing in the towel. Also, his dad literally owns like one-tenth of the galaxy.”
---
The Ampora family is an old, noble Lusca family with an almost unparalleled trade-network to their name. Their fiscal empire does not, as Bro said, extend to one-tenth of the galaxy; it extends to over six different galaxies, three of which the Ampora family holds a complete trade monopoly over and all of which they more political sway in than any ‘neutrally aligned’ private party should be allowed to, regardless of whether or not they technically own the deeds to most planets there.
They’re the head supplier to both the Alternian and Beforan Empires, and apparently the family has ‘friendly ties’ to the royals and nobles of both sides of that particular conflict. And it’s not just weaponry they sell to the uncivil troll war efforts according to the websource you’re using to get yourself up to speed. Having started out as a pharmaceutical company back in the early days of their own species’ space travelling days, before their home star went kaboom, they apparently managed to license not only an incredibly large number of medicines but also the chemical components most of them are made up of.
Out of the deceptively small list of financially and politically influential families you’ve managed to dig up (which included, to your surprise, Crocker, which is unnerving because you know Jane Crocker and you never had any idea she already owned more planets when she was just a tod in her diapers than you ever owned shoes in your lifetime; and also because you never really considered humanity as one of the actual power players on the intergalactic scope), the Ampora name comes up as the most financially secure, as well as the only one completely politically neutral.
And through some strange whim of fate, as well as some fortune in familial connections, you’ve landed the job as bodyguard to the youngest scion of the Ampora family, who is, apparently, through old Lusca traditions, also the prince heir to his family’s massive empire.
Because that’s not intimidating at all.
It’s not really that surprising, knowing this, that the transport to Ancha your new employer sprung on you is a touch more on the sophisticated side than you are used to. While most of the people on the flight, which you gather is some sort of premium trip, are polite enough not to stare openly, you feel drastically underdressed.
You are wearing a fucking suit, and you are still feeling feeling underdressed.
Ancha is known for it’s extravagance, that much you know. It’s Space Vegas if Space Vegas had less hookers (prostitution is apparently banned on-planet) and more very fancy red carpet events. Tour guidebooks like calling it ‘glamorous’ or ‘exclusive’, and considering you’re pretty sure you could buy your own spaceship for the same price just travelling there costs you think you can see where the exclusivity is coming from.
But above all of that, Ancha is the cradle of power from which the Ampora dynasty operates. It’s smack dab in the centre of Ampora owned space, surrounded by colonised planets protected by government-funded armies belonging to governments funded by Amporas. Ancha itself has a government-funded army, one of the most lauded automatical defense systems and some kind of privately funded special protection, the details on which are too suspiciously vague to look entirely legal.
It’s quite a ways from your usual low-end manual labour class visitation spots, and you’re not sure what you are supposed to expect.
You readjust yourself in your comfy lounge chair and take another sip of your coffee as you look at the stars passing by faster than light outside of the ship. Whatever, you’ll worry about all of that when you get there. You’ve already agreed to the job, so there’s not much that doubting things now would change.
---
It’s been a little over eight years since you’ve actually seen your brother in the flesh, and he is a lot shorter than you remember him being. You’d like to credit some deep existential metamorphosis, say it’s because seeing more of the universe has changed your perspective or something like that, but if you’re honest it’s probably just that you’ve stopped slouching.
He’s also dressed a lot better than you’ve ever noticed him being. You remember him as a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy with a preference for accessories handpicked to make him look like as much of a douche as possible, but right now he actually looks presentable. More presentable than you, actually, considering his outfit looks tailored to fit and expensive down to the last seam, if somewhat on the more casual side.
Not for the first time today your suit feels two sizes too big and three too small at the same time. You like formalwear, you really do. There is nothing that makes you flaunt your ass like an overgrown peacock the way putting on a well-tailored blazer over a nice blouse does. But considering your general line of work over the past couple of years has floundered between interplanetary delivery boy and ‘that one asshole on the docks who hauls heavy cargo’, getting your only suit refitted has not been very high on your list of priorities.
Of course clothes don’t always make the man, as Bro demonstrates when he reaches his hand out in greeting only to dodge your brofist and dive straight for your hair, messing it up as best he can in the split second he has before you squawk like a scorned chicken and ninja your way to the other side of the room, frantically soothing your poor, abused locks.
You glare at him, maybe a little vindicated about the sudden familiar treatment after his self-imposed exile, and try to fix your hair best you can with only your reflection in a window to aid you. The darkness outside helps, but it only helps to let you see that your hair has not recovered from it’s trauma and that, without the assistance of tools and product, the fritz your Bro has mussed it back into will probably not subside on it’s own.
In your head Bro is tall, imposing and stone-faced; the adult of all adults. He taught you swordplay and martial arts, he taught you not to take anyone’s shit, he taught you responsibility is for chumps and he taught you that whoever gets the nice-brand noodles out of the grocery bag first gets to eat them, but only if he can protect them from other interested parties throughout the duration of the dreaded three minutes it takes to get them squishy.
The reality has a vividity to him that memory doesn’t do justice. When he laughs at you he does so without holding back. You watch his shoulders shake and notice there are lines next to his mouth and the corners of his eye that were not there before. Your childhood guardian was cold, too young for raising children but too old to justify acting the way he did. He smiled with the same reservation Dirk does now, a rare expression on an otherwise blank slate.
The contrast with the man in front of you is stark and disorienting.
He walks over to you and punches you in the shoulder lightly, as far as anything likely to leave bruises can be considered ‘light’, and you’re not really sure how to think of being treated like a bro instead of a brother. Maybe, you think, he’s not really sure of what to do with himself either.
“C’mon, let’s go,” he tells you as he turns around with a flourish and a weird little bow, motioning for you to come along. Then, belatedly, he seems to realise that you are an adult and are going to be wanting more information than that. “You’re staying at my place for the mo’. Tomorrow’s the interview, but y’got my recommendation so you’re good. When you’ve got the job you’re getting a room of your own, I think.”
Apparently you are not going to be doing the long time no see’s or the how have you beens. You suppose that suits you just fine while you’re still trying to figure out where you and Bro stand.
---
It’s not quite that no attempts at small-talk are made on your way to the Ampora villa, but conversation is stilted and awkward and you’re tired from a two-day trip and slightly overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of Ancha, which is not quite like any planet you’ve been to at all.
You’re heading to your destination in a small but fancy black hoover that is inconspicuous enough for you to assume it’s probably not Bro’s, unless he’s changed his preferences from the top down over the years or it is some kind of bodyguard thing. It zooms through what apparently counts as local back alleys in near-silence.
You weren’t much of a cars kind of guy on earth, and your opinion on whatever local transportation you come by tends to not really judge beyond how fast it can get you to your destination and how agreeable your stomach is going to be to it’s execution of duty, but even you can appreciate that where hoovers are notorious for making a fuckton of noise, this one is almost disquietingly silent.
While you’re not exactly being toured down the scenic route, nothing’s stopping you from taking in your surroundings. You can see the cultural highlights blinking at you from a distance, not-quite-neon winking at you flavoured the exact kind of tacky that ancha seems to favour, where everything is toned down just enough to not feel overly in-your face until you take a look at the details and realise everything is overcrafted and expensive.
You’ve grown so used to chrome and glass over the years in spaceports that it is odd to come across a planet that favours low-rise buildings and organic materials even in it’s intergalactic trade centre. On the crawler here you already learned that Ancha doesn’t have confined cities or living areas to keep it’s populace in one place, but you are still in the most heavily populated area of the planet and the lack of any kind of towering skyline is foreign to you.
Instead there are lush gardens and parks with villas scattered throughout the endless green, a calm, idyllic scenery only broken by the occasional brightly lit dome-shaped hotspots. Casinos, entertainment parks, shopping centres; in the darkness of the night they are winking, seductive eye-catchers in a world that seems otherwise still and tranquil.
Your destination is a large, rounded building that seems to be built to look like it is slowly emerging out of the lake it is built on. Its structure is deeply ingrained with the surrounding garden, a mess of winding outdoor pathways, stairways and waterfalls, and you’re a little ashamed to confess it takes you a moment to realise that the sheer amount of water involved in the landscaping most likely has to do with the fact that your employer is a Lusca rather than some odd preferential treatment.
Who can blame an aquatic species for having a preference for their natural environment?
It’ll be interesting to see Ancha by daylight, you think as you step out of the hoover. Local architecture seems to be less about hiding things like garages away underground or inside buildings, and more about covering everything in layers upon layers of plants. A neatly woven net of wide-leaved plants coils over the parking space, clearly well-tended. Jade would be in love.
You follow your Bro through the garden over some winding pathways leading to what you are assuming is a servant’s entrance of sorts in what you hope is a companionable silence, but what feels mostly awkward. What few attempts you’ve made at conversation fell flat pretty fast, and you’re just not sure if you and Bro can idly talk about nothing at all while you’re still floundering in between falling back on old familiarity and accepting that you’re missing almost every piece of current vital information on the man next to you.
Bro doesn’t give you much of an opportunity to look around inside, and considering you are supposed to be working here for the near future you suppose that’s not so strange. The house seems smaller than you expected as you trail after him, trying to match his brusque, goal-oriented pace.
It’s not a very long trek. The side-entrance you used lead into the kitchen, which turns out to be directly attached to the main ground-floor hallway, where the entrance to Bro’s room is hiding right behind one of two massive staircases.
“I am considering screaming like a little girl and running for the hills,” you tell him dryly once you realise your mistake in entering the room. It’s not an especially large space but Bro has thoroughly made it his, and the beady eyes of a pair of smuppets stare at you from the couch where they sit next to one another, noses gently touching.
You are fairly certain you are supposed to be sleeping on that couch.
Bro gives you a look the judgemental weight of which penetrates even his stupid pointy shades and walks over to the couch to gently cradle his pair of smuppets in his arms. Their noses caress one another scandalously. You feel very tired all of a sudden.
“So, the interview is what, tomorrow morning?” you ask Bro, if only to derail from the subject of smuppets. You got tired of that angle right around the time you hit puberty, and re-opening that particular avenue of conversation is the literal last thing you want to do.
Bro hums in agreement. “Real early morning yeah. Bossman is never around for long, so you got shoved in the earliest slot on the schedule since you’re in the house already anyways. Hey, I gotta check that Cro hasn’t killed himself in the what, hour and a half I’ve been gone. Want me to bring you something back? Coffee? Something stronger? I can check for AJ, but you’re probably gonna have to ask requisitions about it if you want anything imported.”
“Coffee’s fine.”
You’re not looking forward to the rest of the evening.
---
Spending a night in the same room as your Bro is not your idea of fun. On top of having to deal with his unique brand of asshole (you had almost purged Lil’ Cal’s vacant, piercing stare from your nightmares, goddamnit) the guy is a neurotic twat.
You’d never really noticed it before, maybe because teen Dave had better things to do than behaviour policing his cousin slash legal guardian slash adoptive brotherfather, but Bro’s twitchiness gets on your nerves enough that you’re sorely tempted to just knock him out flat after two hours of his constant getting up and walking around while you try to sleep.
It’s probably a good thing you’re wearing shades, because combined with the travel dreck you’re still feeling after your two-day adventure spent in faster than light travel you’re pretty sure you’re nearing panda tier on the scale of ‘boss’ to ‘beat’ by the time Bro points you to your employer to be’s office.
It strikes you that it might be kind of a social faux-pas not to know your potential new boss’ first name about three seconds too late. You’ve already knocked, so there’s no running back to kick Bro in the back of the head and demand information now.
The door is opened by a short, stocky reptilian you quickly peg as an Antruscian who is dressed similarly to the way your Bro was: well-tailored, but just casual enough that she -you’re pretty sure it’s the female Antrusces who wear the warpaint, but not quite sure enough that you’d take any bets on it- would not be mistaken for business folk.
You’re going to assume this would be Ampora senior’s personal bodyguard.
Your assumption is proven correct when she silently (you recall something about Antrusces being mute, or incapable of producing the kind of noises the translator needs or something like that) slips around you and looks you over top to bottom. There is absolutely no way to tell whether this is part of the interview or if she is just checking for weapons, so you stand around like a tool and try not to fidget until she gives you a solemn nod and lets you go inside.
As a species, Lusca are not numerous. You’ve seen a few come by in vids during your lifetime, but due to what is only generally described as ‘breeding complications’ they’ve only recently crawled out of near-extinction and it shows in their level of representation in media.
This leaves you grossly underprepared for how human your boss to be looks. When you enter, Mr. Ampora is seated on the couch and sipping something that does not look like anything you recognise from a large mug while he looks over some digipads.
He is a tall man, at least by human standards, and seems to be fitting most human standards beyond that; two arms, two legs, one head with a face sporting two eyes and ears, one nose and a mouth. No eyebrows though, even if he does have a neatly styled mop of pitch black hair on top of his head. His limbs look normal enough, with five-fingered hands and unremarkably sized feet, even if he does look somewhat elongated at the neck and forearms.
His eyes flicker over towards you, and you try not to flinch as he gives you a slow once-over. You’re not sure if it’s the bluish green hue of the ambient light but his skin looks pale as death, and it makes his dark eyes look more menacing than probably intended.
There is a moment of silence where you wonder if maybe this is where you’re supposed to say your greetings, but then Ampora puts his digipad down on the coffee table and waves you in.
“Sit,” he tells you with an oddly breathy voice that is a little higher in pitch than you would expect from a guy you’re pretty sure is at least a full head taller than you. “Eridan isn’t here yet, but I’m sure he will show his face eventually.”
There is an interesting lilt to his v and w noises and you’re silently curious if that’s a translator thing or some kind of accent, but you figure that is probably not the right kind of tangent to start on during a job interview. Instead of commenting on it you take a seat on the couch across the coffee table from him and try not to wince when the plush below your ass gives way more than you were expecting, almost causing you to lose your balance.
Ampora leans forward and laces his fingers together in front of him, which does absolutely nothing to alleviate the sense of saturday morning cartoon villain vampire you got from him in the first place, not in the least because of the massive scars running down his face. Although, you have to admit, a very well-dressed, scarred up cartoon vampire villain. With fins sticking out from his ears and forearms and a love for gold that has been thoroughly indulged in.
Okay maybe vampire isn’t really the right mythological comparison, but it’s pretty hard to look past the skin which, in the current light, looks as close to stark white as it gets.
“Your brother has told me a lot about your skills as a swordsman,” he starts. You’re considering telling him that you and Bro are not actually brothers but cousins, but then you figure you don’t know much about Lusca family structures anyhow so maybe Bro actually used the term ‘brother’ for culturally sensitive reasons rather than just to feed whatever weird family image ideal he’s got stuck in his head.
You nod, not sure what to say in response, and that seems to be enough to please Ampora, who continues on. “We’ve worked generations to make Ancha one of the safest places in the universe, but that does not completely eliminate the possibility of people intending harm to my nephew’s person crossing his path. Plus, the likelihood that he will-”
His… Nephew? You are definitely going to have to grill Bro on your charge’s family structure later.
“-have to leave the safety of the more guarded areas of the galaxy at times as a representative of the company and brand name is very high. For all that we have objectively few enemies because of our politically neutral alignment, this is not a safe job. You understand the risks you would take as a personal guardian to a household name?”
You nod and open your mouth to respond. Bro’d made some vague mention that he got good use out of the massive amounts of martial art skills he passed down to you during your teens when he first comm’d you about the job, along with a douchey offhand comment that he probably would have contacted Dirk, who’d been the better swordsman when the two of you were still suffering under Bro’s tutelage, except he actually had a life to attend to so you would have to do.
Before you can say anything the door slams open and you catch your first actual view of Eridan Ampora, dramatically silhouetted in front of the brighter hallway lights.
You don’t get much of an opportunity to consider his dramatic entrance as he strides into the room with an angry, solid gait that you think could probably make a catwalk model jealous if only his expression said ‘better than you but too good to say so to your face’ rather than ‘thunder clouds moving in, more news at eleven’, slamming the door behind him with a bang.
You were warned, you tell yourself as you try not to look too put off. You were warned that Eridan Ampora was going to be a handful, and that he was not going to be happy with your being here. You are going to be stuck babysitting an alien teenaged manchild with anger management issues and a preference for grand gestures, and you’ve only yourself to blame.
“Which part of ‘I do not need another one of your pet hounds hangin’ off my ass at all times’ did you not understand? Why do you keep pullin’ this BS on me?” he all but shrieks at his uncle(?), and yes, that is definitely an acronym he is fully spelling out there. You’re already feeling a headache coming up.
“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Ampora the elder bites back with a sudden venom you wouldn’t have expected from a man with his earlier, more professional facade. “Sit down, boy, and for the goddess’ sake, stop questioning my judgement. If I say you need a bodyguard, you’re getting a bodyguard so quit yapping and stop behaving like a child.”
“Maybe I’d stop ‘behavin’ like a child’-,” you don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone using air quotes quite so passionately. You kind of want to sit this guy down and tell him to cool it on the theatrics, because he looks like a total tool. “-if you stopped treatin’ me like I’m about to trip off a’ the next best set a’ stairs an’ instantly break my fuckin’ assbone!”
You have to try really hard to bite back your commentary on that particular tangent, because the stairs joke is probably getting stale by now. Also you’re still supposed to be at a job interview.
“Damnit Eridan, this is not a maturity contest! We’ve had this conversation before. Unless you suddenly attain immortality or magical instant regeneration abilities I will not let you irresponsibly run about without anyone watching your back. Now sit the fuck down while I talk to Strider’s younger sibling.” Ampora senior is sounding put out, but his face has remained oddly neutral. “An interview, I might add, that I wouldn’t be having at all if you stopped throwing tantrums every time I try to find you protection and just did as you were told.”
You are now apparently in the middle of a soap opera. Somewhere someone laughs at your misery.
“I am an adult!” Eridan screeches back while stomping his foot and looking anything but. “I know you’ve got micromanagement issues but cockfuckin’ herrings, get your stinkin’ fingers out of my business!”
“As long as I’m the family patriarch and you’re living under my roof, I get to decide what is good for you, legal adult or no.” Uncle Ampora is sounding tortured and worn, and you wonder exactly how often they have had this argument and if it sounds this ridiculous every single time. “And I say you’re getting a new bodyguard, and it’s probably going to be this one. End of the story.”
Eridan looks like he is going to protest, but you decide to step in before things devolve into high-strung sitcom-style family arguments because you are just flat out not down for that kind of bullshit without the promise of a paycheck to pull you through it. “Yo, I don’t mean to interrupt this absolutely fascinating verbal annihilation session, but I’m kind of in the middle of an interview here? It’d be really ace if you’d keep your reign of terror off until I’ve signed the forms and everything.”
Straightening his shoulders to look even taller than he already is -and he is taller than you anyhow, you can tell as much even while sitting down- Eridan turns to face you. His mouth is already open in what no doubt is going to be a truly majestic sling of curses of epic proportions when he suddenly pauses. His fins, both the ones on his ears and the ones on his forearms, flare from a pale, muddy pink into a bright purple and he blinks at you like he’s only just realised you’re there.
He can’t actually only just have realised this, you are aware. The sole reason he came here at all was to prevent you, specifically, from getting hired today. Unless he has some type of acute memory issues you’re not aware of yet there should be no reason for him to gape at you like you are some exotic type of animal newly displayed at a zoo.
You’re still waiting for the proverbial bombshell to drop and the unavoidable explosion afterwards when his shoulders slump and the dark, angry mood that he brought into the room with him dissipates like snow in the earth-summer sun.
He huffs at you, and without even giving you the chance to properly process what is happening he has turned on his heels and is storming out of the room.
Ampora senior stares at the door with a bemused expression for almost half a minute before he turns back to you with a surprisingly pleasant expression on his face, all things considered. “Well then, where were we? Ah, yes, I was going to explain some of the terms of the job to you-”
You have absolutely no idea what just happened, but you have the faint sense that you just landed yourself a job.
---
An hour and a half later you have waived away a significant portion of your private life, signed non-disclosure forms on subjects you think you’re just not going to be thinking about too much and combed through the fine-print of your contract, and now you have made your way onto the incredibly generous Ampora payroll. Even if it’s only a month-long trial period, the compensation you’ll be receiving is, you think, enough even for having to deal with the haughty prince of Ancha.
(Eridan is not actually royalty, of course, but the way you’re understanding it Ancha’s governing body is stuffed practically entirely in the Amporas’ pockets anyhow, so considering him a prince hardly even feels like an exaggeration.)
Ampora senior’s bodyguard, who you learn is called Maeichi Tassan Lesreus (you’re not sure if that’s her full name or if her species just favors long-ass personal names because they don’t need to bother pronouncing them anyways, but you’re sticking with calling her Maeichi), shows you around the villa in a surprisingly amicable silence where she points at anything she deems important for you to see and then waits around patiently until you figure out the relevance of whatever she is pointing at through a game of ‘if this button explodes the known universe and everything in it please let me know before rather than after I push it to try and find out’.
The similarities between her outfit and Bro’s are, predictably, not coincidental. She takes you to ‘Requisitions’, which is really just an unassuming looking monitor hidden halfway inside of a hallway plant and makes you figure out your intergalactic measurement specifics in an epic showdown with a blank measuring tape that apparently works with some kind of scanner. Apparently Amporas like their deliveries fast, because the display tells you your uniform will arrive the next day.
After she has thoroughly stomped your ego into the floor, now frail due to it’s apparent lack of technological mastery after it’s merciless defeat at the wiles of the not-quite-traditional measuring tape, she shows you how to input special food requests, and where to get non-standard intergalactic wares. It’s probably going to be a while before you’ll fail to find the fact that apple juice is listed under “exotic wares” amusing.
Then you make a detour through the kitchen, where you try to figure out the differences in packaging between foods meant for consumption by different species. It’s at least somewhat of a comfort to learn that nothing your boss and his family puts into their mouths on daily basis is especially harmful or deadly to your person.
(Apparently what Maeichi eats is very much not for human consumption, however. She shows it to you, and considering it looks like it had scales sharp as daggers when it was still alive, you are not surprised.)
You’re not sure whether to be amused or annoyed that most of the human foods in stock at present are typical Bro foods, but you are very certain that you are going to be ordering something more nutritious the moment you can. If there’s one thing you’ve learned from years of low-end jobs it’s to take whatever chance to eat real people food you can get, and you’re not about to waste the free pass you’ve got to stock food on your boss’ paycheck.
The tour ends in front of the door directly across the hallway from Bro’s, where you’ll be living for the foreseeable future. She sees you off with a little wave as she heads back to do whatever it is the bossman’s bodyguard does while he is holed up on his study.
Not surprisingly, your room turns out to be a slightly more sparse mirror of the room you spent the last night in. Piled on the bed are a number of educational pamphlets, house guidelines and instruction manuals, but other than that the room is a blank slate for you to do whatever with.
For all that it can’t have been empty for long, if the earlier argument was anything to go by, there are no real signs of previous inhabitants. No tacks stuck in the wall, no stains on the carpet. But then, if the cleanup crew is paid even a smidgen of the kind of compensation you're getting, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that they’re good at their job.
There is a knock on the door.
Maeichi went back to work and the only other person you know in the house is your Bro, which means there is a theoretical chance the only things behind the door are going to be Cal and a camera, but you’re technically on the clock now so you carefully slide the door open to greet your visitor.
You blink.
When you’d told Eridan that you’d appreciate it if he held off on terrorising you until you’d signed a contract you hadn’t really expected him to appear on your doorstep within the hour.
In the bright hallway lights it becomes obvious that it isn’t just that your new charge is pale; his skin is very much as pure white as they come, with a slightly velvet shine to it. His fins are still a vibrant purple rather than the rosy pink they’d been before, and he is looking at you with large, hauntingly dark eyes.
His face is set in a determined grimace, but he isn’t actually saying anything and you’re not entirely sure what to do. Technically you’re his bodyguard, but unless a very dangerous brand of space-cockroach broke out in the last twenty minutes or so, you’re pretty sure there isn’t any actual disaster he needs protecting from.
“Can I, uh, help you?” you ask him when it becomes obvious he isn’t actually going to say or do anything other than flounder in your doorway silently.
He blinks owlishly, the inky black of his sclera still clearly visible even when his eyelids are closed, and his earfins twitch helplessly. You really hope this isn’t some kind of pilot-flagging ear language that you’re going to have to be learning.
“Uh,” he starts dumbly, “I was thinkin’ I could possibly, like, help you? Settle in, or somethin’?” It looks like it almost physically pains him to ask.
What.
“What?”
His fingers twitch and he gives you a stern look, but you’re still too busy trying to figure out why he is here at all to really consider what his face is doing. Maybe he is trying to seize you up to think of a better battle-plan to bully you out of his hair sooner?
But then, you’re supposed to be this guy’s bodyguard. You’re going to be spending an uncomfortable amount of time near him anyways, so if he’s actually trying to play nice it’s probably for the better if you try to be sensitive to his explosive temper and play along. You think?
“Thanks for the offer man, but I’ve seriously only got one suitcase of stuff to unload, and it’s in Bro’s room so all I need to do is go get it. Unless you want to walk with me, or whatever.” Yes, walk with me, you think. Accompany me on the truly daunting trek spanning the hallway.
He looks surprised, and maybe a little bewildered. “Bro?”
It takes you good few seconds to decipher that that is a ‘who’ kind of question. Because you are honestly not sure what it means that he is asking at all, you just silently point over his shoulder, to the doorway across the hall from yours.
“Oh, you mean Strider,” he says sounding vaguely disappointed, and you feel a headache setting in. This has the potential to turn very confusing very fast.
“You know, if you’re going to call both him and me just ‘Strider’ even to each other this is probably going to devolve into something incredibly dumb and somewhat exasperating sometime real soon. Mistakes will be made. Someone will cry a single unmanly tear. It will not be awesome at all.”
And that is where you hit your first cultural rough patch.
It’s become somewhat of a tradition, over the years, that no matter how long you study any kind of new culture or species you’re going to be interacting with, you will always make a complete ass of yourself at least once. Being culturally insensitive can take many shapes and forms, as you’ve learned over many years of swapping stories between travellers and hitchhikers during commute, but you’ve always had a knack for finding the one innocuous little tidbit that happens to be highly offensive to whatever alien species you are dealing with.
The advantage to being a non-local in a multicultural universe rich in intergalactic travel is that you can play the unknowing alien card to soothe over hurt feelings most of the time. You love the unknowing alien card. It is your best friend, through thick and thin, and you would make sweet love to it if only you swung that way. Sadly for the unknowing alien card, however, your minimum requirement for any romantic entanglement is a pulse (and reproductive organs that are no direct threat to yours, but that is a memory you’d rather not waste too much thought on).
You think that whatever it is you said seems to have caused some degree of hurt feelings this time, because something in the way his inky black eyes widen reminds you of small mammals seeking an escape to lick their wounds in the aftermath. His earfins are drooping slightly, and you’re not sure when it started but they seem to be gradually fading from their initial vibrancy to a muddy lavender colour.
But luscans are rare, and information on their customs isn’t exactly written on the walls, being scarce to the extent that you’ve no idea where the root of the offense even lies. Or, for that matter, why someone you assumed was predetermined to hate your guts is acting like you kicked his favourite baby whatever kind of pet animals are kept around here instead of running to daddy to tell on you for being a douche.
It’s not like you pride yourself on being especially professional or having the best work ethic, but after a few seconds of watching shrinking violet Eridan you decide that you should probably at least try not to burn any bridges just yet.
“I’m not entirely sure how, but I think I just pulled a stupid and crammed my foot down my own throat, yeah? So how about we rewind and replay this whole shebang because I think we’ve skipped a couple of steps here.” You hold out your hand towards him. “Dave Strider, interplanetary entrepreneur to various degrees of success and your personal meatshield for the foreseeable future. Sup?”
The moments after you realise that maybe offering a human greeting might not have been your best move just then are torturous, but after a quizzical look that comes with a specific flavour of subtext you can’t quite place, Eridan reaches out and gives you a weak handshake. You are sorely tempted to squeeze down on his hand because Bro raised you to judge people by flimsy handshakes, but you are not sure how solid his bone structure is and you’re pretty sure hitting off your career by breaking your charge’s hand is probably a bad idea.
It takes a while for things to click, but he slowly seems to be reaching the conclusion that you’re expecting an introduction back. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, hand still sort of limply clamped around yours and then apparently figures out what to say.
“Eridan Ampora, the scion of the Ampora bloodline. I can call you Dave though, right?” his fins have regained some of their colour around the edges. You really need to figure out what’s up with the rainbow dumbo signal code because you are missing social cues by the boatloads.
It is the most pretentious introduction you’ve ever heard and it tells you absolutely nothing you didn’t already know, but you know an olive branch when you see one. Even if it is an awkward, tragically plucked one that has seen things that it will never be able to move on from.
The professional thing to do now if you were on earth would be decline and hope it would put up some kind of workplace barrier to keep things from going to shit, but you’re still not sure what it was you initially said that caused offense and you’re pretty piss poor at formalities anyhow, so you shrug your shoulders amicably. “Sure thing, keeps the double Strider heat from boiling over, too. I’m figuring the right form of address from my side here is supposed to be ‘sir’, yeah?”
The hand, which had been resting in yours in a slightly awkward fashion long beyond any point where it was possible to retract your arm without drawing attention to your discomfort, is snatched back with a sudden vehemence that is your only warning to little prince attitude problem’s shift in moods.
He gives you a flat, judgemental glare of the type that elderly ladies give small children when they turn out to not have a full grasp of current politics and advanced mathematics and crosses his arms over his chest, doing a funky little wrist-bendy thing to prevent the fins running from his mid-forearm to his elbow from getting caught in an awkward angle. “Eridan. My name is Eridan. Call me sir all you want but don’t refer to me the way you would the old man you rude lemurkin.”
Lemurkin. You’re not even sure what that means in this particular context, but you think it’s probably supposed to be insulting. You wonder how poorly it would be received if you tracked down some kind of physical tome on cultural sensitivity and the importance of both sides making an attempt, and then hit him in the face with it. Probably not very well.
Instead of doing anything drastic, you breathe out through your nose, resist the temptation to rub the bridge of your nose just in case he is culturally savvy enough to recognise human exasperation and straighten your shoulders. “Right, Eridan, sir. So did you wanna brave the daunting trek across the hallway with me or…?”
He steps aside with the same kind of dramatic flourish he’d put on display when waltzing into the bossman’s office and you waste no time striding past him.
You’re just about done with weird cross-cultural introduction sequences for the day.
---
It’s not that the couch in your Bro’s room was especially uncomfortable, because you’ve slept on far worse than a couch with a bit of an uncomfortably wide gap between the seating pillows, but it just doesn’t hold a candle to sleeping in your own, incredibly cozy waterbed (You think you might be able to bring it up in your shriveled little heart to forgive their water fetish when it comes to stuff like this. You’re generous like that.) located in a room that has no Bro in it to disturb you with his bizarre neuroses.
This doesn’t mean you’re actually sleeping easily, or especially well. It’s been a long day and turning the lights down isn’t enough to halt the flow of thoughts churning through your head at breakneck speed, so you lie on your back with your hands laced behind your head and stare at the ceiling.
Eridan spent the rest of your first afternoon hovering around you like a spooked horse, albeit one with the incessant need to make haughty remarks at absolutely everything, and you can’t help but wonder if his choices in vocabulary sound as garbled in his home language as they do after being run through the translator, because you just don’t think ‘vile rudimentary brack muckslump tripe’ describes the earth’s oceans very well for all that you wouldn’t defend it’s whistle-cleanness.
In the end you never did get the opportunity to wrangle more information from your Bro, because by the time you managed to escape Eridan’s plans to dominate your afternoon with his supreme reign of bizarre habits, your cousin and the other alien fishprince, Cronus, were apparently already on a crawler to an entirely different system for business. With it’s odd, deep voice the requisition station, which also functions as a general information distribution station, informed you they weren’t due back for another two months.
You’re trying not to feel too put out by that, you really are. But it was Bro who decided to shuttle you here in the first place, and while you understand the call of duty and the fact that he can’t always stick around and hold your hand as he walks you through things because you’re both adults now, you still would have appreciated some kind of warning that you were going to be nosediving headfirst into rich people madness on your own. A goddamn note would have sufficed.
In the back of your head lives a sullen eighteen-years-old who dared to hope that maybe contacting you was a first step toward mending the bridges Bro burnt when he vanished off the surface of earth, leaving only an apartment with three years of rent paid ahead of time and a bunch of junk behind, nothing to even hint at the why or the where until Dirk managed to get a hold of his comm almost two years later.
But of course it would be too much for Bro to realise that sometimes being family means leaving a post-it note on a doorway or a date scribbled in the margins. Of course it would be too much to assume that just because you’re technically living in the same house now anything would change or that you’d magically become a family again.
You have no idea where you and Bro even stand anymore at all, and it’s weighing on you. You kind of want to dial Dirk, get his thoughts on the matter, but it’s four in the morning in Houston and you don’t want to deal with AR’s bullshit, even if you’ve had to grudgingly accept him as an honorary Strider.
Reaching out to your bedside you fish the brand new comm you’ve been supplied with from your nightstand and twirl it around in between your fingers. Of course it’s not really yours until you sign something definite, but it’s still kind of a marvel to have in your hands what you’ve been mooning over for so long: a comm with a universal contract. Free access to people who you’ve, for the past couple of years, only been in contact with via spaceport terminals because the comm network was too cost heavy.
Maybe the voice of an old friend would get the old grudges weighing down your shoulders to lift enough that you can sleep tonight.
You put on your shades, and the glasses light up with a soft, non-obtrusive light. Neural tech makes you somewhat uncomfortable because you’ve always been more of a touch display and buttons kind of guy, but the way the shapes on the screen jump to fit your needs at lightning speed is, you gotta admit, pretty impressive.
Most of your contacts are grayed out, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. You credit the sullen feeling in your stomach to the long day behind you and try to swallow past it as you scroll by Rose, John and Jade’s grayed out usernames. They’re adults, with work hours and social lives and sleep schedules. Of course they can’t always be there to comfort you when you’re having a boo hoo.
You’re not making yourself feel any better.
There are several names blinking in colour, but they’re casual acquaintances you’d really rather not talk to outside of some irregular IM smalltalk, so you scroll through the list apathetically.
You must be more tired than you thought, because it takes you a good three seconds of staring at the bright cyan on the bottom of the list before you realise whose name you’re looking at, and then you find you’ve dialed audioconnect before even really realising. Damn neural tech.
“Dave Strider?” the voice on the other side asks carefully, a warm and nostalgic voice that fills you with exactly the kind of fondness you needed.
“Hey there hot momma,” you greet her, voice as steady as you dare in a room you don’t know at two in the night. “Been a while, huh?”
The little laugh you get in return has a bit of a nervous undertone, and you can’t blame her for that. You haven’t openly sought her out in years, not since your embarrassing rejection and the couple of stupid episodes that came with that. “I can tell you’re charming as ever, Mister Strider! Was there something you needed?”
You shift your pillow so you’re sitting up a little while you figure out what to say to that. What you really wanted was to unload your Broblems on someone else, but your contact with Jane has been limited to terse hellos and how are yous for so long now that it feels unfair to use her like that, not while you can’t even recall the last memorable anything having occurred in her life. So instead you shrug a shrug she won’t be able to hear and relax.
“Nah, not really. Just figured it’s about time we caught up, yeah?”
---
Jane has never really been one of your friends insomuch as she was more one of Dirk’s buddies who liked to stay over for dinner and cook the lot of you dessert while maintaining a faux innocent facade as Strider after Strider tumbled headfirst into one of many boobytraps and pranks that magically appeared throughout the apartment whenever she happened to be over for any given amount of time.
As a teenager you were sorely convinced she was perfection, the antithesis of failed first love gone best friend Jade Harley. She was a solid presence in your life, neither so obtrusive you could grow tired of her being around or so absent that you could miss her, and in the months nearing your eighteenth birthday there was a period where you’d almost convinced yourself that you stood a chance. You’d give her flowers, she’d blush and grin at you and you believed, for a few short months, that you were getting somewhere.
Then Bro vanished and you spent the next weeks acting like a douchebag on grade-a dickmunch steroids, wherein the a stood for asshole, taking out your frustrations on everyone around you. Needless to say it kicked that particular venture in the teeth.
Hindsight, 20/20 in surreptitious stares thrown over your shoulder whenever you feel up to facing your own mistakes, tells you it wouldn’t have lasted anyway. For all that you held the little candlefire romance close to your heart for almost two years, most of what you loved about Jane Crocker was enclosed in the space between your ears or hiding in the corners of an apartment that was deceptively easy to leave behind.
Now, as you listen to her happily chattering on about company parties and goings-on on and around earth you can’t help but marvel about how little of the real Jane you actually knew.
“-and of course he never did figure out what poor servant ‘misjudged their importance in the face of their political views’ in order to place the spring under his plate,” Jane finishes telling you the story of how she pranked an apparently very important diplomat with an elaborate name you can’t be assed to remember. “And now you’re going to tell me what brought the social call on.”
Her voice has a commanding tone to it you don’t remember from days long past, and you suppose being a space-baroness has solidified the steel in her spine you always knew was there.
You sigh. “It’s nothing, really. Just… homesick, I guess.” It’s not quite the right word; you’re not longing for a specific place because it’s been a long time since you’ve had a place you wanted to actually stay, but there is a sense of groundedness that you’re missing and on nights like these it’s what makes the universe look so much bigger than it needs to be.
Jane makes a thoughtful humming noise. “Considering returning to earth, perhaps? I’m sure Dirk would be very happy to have you back home. I mean, he has his robots to keep him company of course, but…”
It’s a nice sentiment. You don’t think its quite true, because Dirk has his own life now and while he wouldn’t kick you out on the curb or anything like that you just don’t think there’s a place for you to settle there anymore, not the way there was when you were still a registered inhabitant of planet earth, but you appreciate the thought.
“Nah, it’s cool sister. Not that kind of homesickness. Besides, I’ve just started a new job. Bit early to kick the cradle and run for the stars, yeah?” You already miss the canorous sound of her mindless chatter to keep your mind focused, but Jane isn’t just your entertainment for the night and you suppose you owe her some honesty for not just hanging up on you.
“You started a new job?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Your brother told me you’ve become quite the handyman over the years. What kind of adventure is keeping the illustrious Mister Strider the younger busy this time, then?”
You snort, trying to imagine Dirk talking to her about your space expeditions and low-wage bullshit line of work and failing. You don’t think an engineering genius and a baroness would quite be able to capture the experience in all its gloryless existence. In a sense, you think as you take in the high-end design of the room around you, for all that you are galaxies apart you are now closer to Jane on the social ladder than you have ever been before in your life.
“Bro landed me a job at his super special, extremely secret workplace that must not be named. I’m currently stand-in bodyguard for Eridan Ampora until such a time as I sign a long-term contract or get chased off by his terrible terribleness,” you tell her. Bro always made it sound like his job was something he couldn’t talk about, but you’ve read the contract and waivers and come to the conclusion that he was mostly just being a dick. Again.
To your surprise Jane begins to laugh. It’s the same full body-and-soul laugh you remember from teenagerhood, and for three seconds you are in love again. Then your mind catches up with the present and you can’t help but wonder if she’s laughing at you.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she hiccups in between giggles. “Oh dear, Bro Strider works for that bunch.” Because the universe has only so many people who own planets, and you don’t know why it surprises you that they would somehow know each other. “Well that is just extraordinary. And you work for Eridan now? Oh goodness, what do you think, isn’t he just a special unicorn?”
You’re not sure if ‘unicorn’ is the word you would have used to describe the overlord of dramatics, and you open your mouth to say so but then you remember his bizarre afternoon visit, the wide-eyed tragedy that wibbled in your doorway because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut long enough to remember human customs might not fall well, and you think you maybe see what she’s talking about. Still.
“I would’ve gone with prince instead. Little lordling of fancy flourish. Think I might have spotted a little unicorn in there though. But it’s only my first day. I’ve got time to figure out whether I’m dealing with a prince or a unicorn yet.” And you do; you’ve got a month just for that. You wonder if you could make a game out of it.
Jane lets out another warm giggle and you can almost imagine the sparkle in those light blue eyes of hers while you wonder why it took you so long to try and talk to her again. “Well, I think you might be happily surprised just yet. Please do keep me updated on your quest to understanding the inner workings of Eridan’s mind though; I love a good mystery.”
You’re not sure what it is about her easy acceptance, her lack of questioning about whatever the fuck is going on with Bro, but you suddenly don’t feel quite like you’re standing to face whatever is to come alone.
Work calls Jane away not much later, and you can’t help but feel the call lifted a weight of your heart.
You are off in dreamland moments after your head sinks into the pillow.
