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Rain buckets down outside, past the overhang Rhys stands beneath. Though his ECHOeye reassures him that the rain on Hestias is perfectly non-toxic and just this side of icy, he would much rather be indoors. He spent way too long styling his hair to let it be ruined, and the longer he stands outside, the more tempting fidgeting becomes.
It’s not like there’s nothing to do. There’s always work to be done, with emails to sift through, grunt work to delegate, etc. But there’s not much to do while waiting for Jack outside a hotel, for a corporate function they’re both expected to be at, on time. If Rhys is on his comm and doesn’t notice Jack, the CEO might very well walk straight past him, because ‘it’s funny, pumpkin, what’s got you in such a sour mood?’. Once is enough; lesson learnt.
Rhys turns his comm over in his left hand, because he can’t stand still, not when he’s running on four hours of sleep and attending an event that’s a goddamn sea of corporate sharks. Or, other corporate sharks.
The flashiest car Hyperion owns on Hestias zooms around the street corner, tyres almost slipping on the rain-slick asphalt. It cuts someone off—isn’t manually overriding safety systems great?—and stops in the middle of the roundabout driveway. The driver’s side door flies open and sure enough, it’s Jack.
After a brief exchange, Jack flings his keys in the general direction of the valet, but Rhys can’t bring himself to care. Jack snickers at the valet’s panicked expression and mild flailing, then turns on his heel and strides towards the hotel.
Rhys pockets his comm with a sigh. “You’re late.”
“Fashionably late is my M.O., sweetheart, how many times do I have to tell you that?” Jack gives Rhys’ left arm a companionable whack and stops dead in his tracks. “Is your suit friggin’ green?” he asks, running a bit of the fabric between his thumb and forefinger.
Rhys doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a close thing. “It’s teal, actually.” He shrugs out of Jack’s reach, so the fabric of his sleeve doesn’t wrinkle. “And I figured you’d be on-brand enough for the both of us. If that’s what you’re getting at,” he says, waving a hand at Jack’s suit as he gives it a once-over.
It’s a change from his usual get-up, thank goodness. Navy jacket and trousers, white shirt, gold-embroidered vest, and—
“Are those sneakers?”
Jack scoffs and starts walking again. He’s still sporting the thigh holster and gun, but considering Rhys is none too handy with weapons himself, he’s not about to argue against Jack being armed. And the pocket watch device, well; you never know when that could come in handy. But Rhys draws the line at the ugly sneakers.
Jack, of course, doesn’t agree. “Better than your shitty skag skin boots. Back to my point, yes, I’ll let the ‘teal’ get-up slide. Not what I’d spend my bonus on but hey, guess you gotta show off those legs of yours somehow,” he adds with a leer. “Definite improvement on the stripes, babe.”
“Thanks,” Rhys says, if only so they can drop the subject. In his opinion, there’s nothing wrong with the stripes, or any of his wardrobe, but it'd be no use telling Jack that. And the pseudo-compliments, well. They're a lot easier to ignore than to try to unpack, regardless of the way they still get under his skin, even after the better part of a year.
Just past the automatic doors, the security guard tries to wave them down, to no avail. Jack keeps on walking, heedless of the water he’s tracked onto the carpet, and makes a beeline for the elevators. Rhys keeps up with relative ease and double-checks the skyscraper’s blueprints. They seem to be going in the right direction. Jack must’ve caved and read the event invite and related info, after demanding the thirty-second version from Rhys. Which mostly consisted of repeating the same stuff twice, and trying to emphasise that yeah, it might be a Maliwan-hosted thing, but no-one likes visiting Helios—after a few unfortunate incidents—so they have to compromise.
Luckily, there’s no queue for the elevators at the moment. One of the few advantages of being ‘fashionably late’, Rhys supposes.
Jack hits the button for the eleventh floor. “Oh, did ya get the memo I sent you?” He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the mirror-panelled wall. The elevator whirs to life and moves skyward.
“I haven’t gotten any memos from you, no.” Rhys frowns and rolls his right shoulder, idly testing that his latest prosthetic upgrade survived the rain. “Too late now, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Jack shrugs. “I reworked some stuff on the new Thrace deal with Maliwan. No biggie.”
Rhys narrows his eyes at Jack. “What’d you change?” They’d been over the paperwork a hundred times, changing bits and pieces at a time to try to get the Maliwan execs to finally sign off on it. Rhys was sure—until about five seconds ago—that the contract was as good as it was going to get.
“Expanded some of the locations, that’s all. They’ll agree to it, don’t worry.”
The elevator stops with an electronic chime and they both walk off down the hallway in search of the function room. Crystal-blue carpet lines the narrow hall while the odd landscape painting breaks the monotonous eggshell-painted walls.
Rhys believes Jack, but grabs the file from the company server anyway. It takes time to bounce through the relays and satellites and the like, but soon enough, he has the newest version of the document downloaded. Rhys turns his right hand palm-up and powers up the small holographic display. He runs a scan through the document, looking for changes from the last version, of which there are only a few.
Jack clamps a hand on Rhys’ shoulder and steers him out of the way of a fire hose box. “Watch it, princess,” he says, less than impressed.
“Thanks,” Rhys mutters, out of habit. “Jack, wait.”
“What?” He doesn’t wait, per se, but he slows down, and that’s enough.
“This…” Rhys points with his free hand to the mini-map, illustrating the locations in the contract, free of legal jargon. “We kept these sectors separate because there’s towns in between them. We can’t mine—”
“Can’t we?” Jack glances back and raises an eyebrow. His mask allows the movement with an eerie amount of ease. “Nothing Hyperion hasn’t done before, cupcake.”
Rhys shakes his head as if to clear it; to make sense of what he’s hearing. “This isn’t Pandora, Jack, the deal is for land on Thrace. Y’know, where non-bandits live?” He doesn’t get a response, but Jack seems to be checking the door number as opposed to flat-out ignoring him. “My friends are not gonna like this…” he mutters.
Because they’ll hear about it as soon as it goes through, and sure, maybe nobody at Hyperion has all of their morals intact, but this isn’t gonna fly, as least with Rhys’ friends. Relocating hundreds of thousands of people at the drop of a hat for a mining deal isn’t exactly ideal for his conscience.
“Who cares what your friends think?” Jack says, tone mockingly whiny. “You don’t have to listen to them. Besides, till it happens, this stays between you and me. Confidential, you know the drill.” He stops in front of an opaque, grey glass door with 662 engraved on it.
The sounds of ambient music, chatter, and fake laughter are muffled through the door.
“This is us; where’s the key-card you got?”
Rhys looks at the door, then back to his boss. “I’m serious, I’m really not sure about this. We can make the deal without expanding the area. It’s—it’s bad rep.” Worse rep, at least, though he knows goddamn well this is just a drop in the pond. It’s the principle of it, or something.
Jack scowls and straightens his posture a little more. “This, this right here? Is not supposed to be a conversation. It’s my decision. I ask you to do show them the deal, to make sure the paperwork goes through, and you do it. If you don’t wanna be my P.A., then fine, get out of here.”
“I just think we should talk about it,” Rhys says calmly. If he can just get a few seconds to throw together a semi-rational argument, maybe…
“No time, kiddo. They’ve been holding back on this deal for months. If we don’t get ’em to agree to sign tonight—well, y’know, I guess we could just take their shit. But that’s time-consuming, and I remember something about you not being that into that kind of,” Jack waves a hand, gesturing vaguely, “war and bloodshed thing. Or did you get over that?”
“Jack, just.” Rhys forces a laugh and holds up his hands as if calming a ticked-off animal. “Slow your roll, for a second—” he says, going for a joking tone as a last-ditch effort.
“No-can-do. If you’re here, I need you to back me up, not to pout the whole fuckin’ time. You’re in, or you’re out.” Jack jerks his thumb in the direction of the elevator. “I need an answer, now.” He snaps his fingers and points to the floor in front of him.
Rhys looks to the elevator, way down the hall, but doesn’t consider going. Not really. “Okay,” he says with a nod. “Fine. Let’s do this.” He grabs the key-card and holds it to the lock.
Jack hits Rhys’ shoulder again, too hard to be friendly. “That’s the spirit.”
—
It’s awful, as most corporate functions are. Rhys remembers just how much he doesn’t have the energy to deal with all the shit that comes with orchestrating them. The trip halfway across the galaxy, and underlying unease that comes with being anywhere but Helios, is worth it for the lack of effort required to attend. Sitting through the handful of speeches still sucks, though.
Jack does most of the talking, though he asks Rhys to explain the gist of the Thrace deal to this particular batch of Maliwan execs, for the nth time. They eat it up, shady location details and all; Rhys is relieved, if only because it means the stupid contract will finally be out of his hair very soon. He steers clear of the other Hyperion higher-ups there, and anyone he even vaguely recognises.
“Hey, Jack, the party’s winding down, we should get going,” Rhys says when they’re both at the bar, a few hours later. He doesn’t bother shrugging off Jack’s arm from where it’s slung across his shoulders, but he does elbow the CEO when he doesn’t get an answer.
Jack drags his attention away from chuckling at the fools embarrassing themselves on the makeshift dancefloor. “Good idea, pumpkin. Arrive late, leave early,” he says, tapping Rhys’ temple with his index finger. “Glad you remembered,” he says, saccharine, and takes his arm back.
Rhys elects to ignore that, unwanted blushing be damned.
They make it out of the hotel within minutes, near-sober and mostly unscathed. No sense in getting drunk anywhere that there’s likely to be an assassination attempt, and all that. Jack recounts the apparent hilarity Rhys missed whenever he wasn’t around; drinks were thrown, someone’s toupée fell off, and Jack insulted anyone whose shit-list wasn’t detrimental to be on. Mostly. It’s nothing expensive gift-baskets and sparing representatives from being air-locked can’t fix, anyway.
Jack gets them to the shuttle station in one piece, despite his best efforts otherwise, driving like a madman while the rain continues to pour.
The station’s halls are a mess, but they make it to their Hyperion ship soon enough and board without issue. After three days of meetings and the final event, Rhys is ready to sleep all the way back to Helios. Of course, he isn’t so lucky. He’s mere yards from his cabin door when a hand catches his wrist.
Rhys jumps a mile and yelps, much more awake than he was two seconds ago. Either he was really out of it, or Jack scared him on purpose. Probably both.
Jack snickers and lets go of Rhys’ wrist. “I was wondering where you got to, babe. Just wanted to talk to you for a minute, before we get going.”
The ship’s engines are already roaring to life, so it’s a little late for that. Rhys doesn’t mention it, though, and nods instead. “Okay, sure,” he says, loosening his tie. He’d much rather have this conversation after a shower and a good night’s sleep, when his eyes don’t feel like they’re about to roll out of his head.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to forget about our little,” Jack waves a hand dismissively, “conversation, before the party. As long as it doesn’t happen again, okay?”
Rhys looks away and rubs at his ECHOeye with his knuckles, knowing it won’t do much to ease the ache there. “Arguments right outside a corporate event aren’t exactly my idea of fun,” he says with a shrug.
Jack steps closer, sneakers moving across the metal floor with a quiet slide. “Yeah, you almost had me worried for a second back there; thought you weren’t gonna have my back on this. But you came around, huh?” he says, voice low as if someone might overhear, even though the hallway is empty.
“Yeah, I…” Rhys leans against the wall with a sigh. He’s almost sure they’re not on the same page right now. His thoughts are too sluggish, too bogged down with doubts and whispers of contradictions. He shakes his head in lieu of finishing his point and looks up once more.
“Knew you’d do the smart thing.” Jack takes another step towards Rhys, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal space. “I can trust you on that. Right, baby?”
“Of course,” Rhys says before he can think any better of it, breaths suddenly all too short. He knows there’s a lie in there somewhere, that he won’t always agree; that’d be impossible. But maybe that’s not quite what Jack’s asking.
Rhys expects Jack to leave, to turn around and leave him standing there like an idiot, until he can get his wits together and finally rest. It’s—well, it hasn’t happened like this before, but it’s close enough. Here comes the flippant remark, the condescending look—
Instead, Jack kisses Rhys with too much energy for this time of night, one hand reaching up to grasp the side of Rhys’ neck.
Rhys takes a second to think—to wonder if maybe this is a champagne-induced fever dream—before he returns the kiss. He grabs onto Jack’s lapels, mind racing too fast to do much else besides hang on. Nagging thoughts press at the back of Rhys’ mind; that they still need to talk things through, that this might be a band-aid solution. But right now, he can’t bring himself to care, and gets lost in the taste of spirits and the pounding of his heart.