Work Text:
Heldur Wardell has an incredible knack for not being able to catch a break.
Sometimes it’s his ever-bothersome brother, sometimes it’s finding that someone mixed up his perfectly sorted documents, or that he’s once again struck by his chronic bad luck.
This time, however, Heldur was plagued by something slightly different.
Hex would not stop following him.
Now, they weren’t being a bother. They were quiet, didn’t cause a ruckus, and stayed out of his way. But for some reason, they insisted on trailing behind them like a lost puppy. All day long Hex had been... There. And Heldur did not have the slightest clue as to why.
It was when he was shelving documents that he finally said something. After a few hours of this anomalous activity, Heldur had enough. Turning to Hex who was sitting at a very stereotypical library table, he spoke.
In hindsight maybe it was a bad idea to be sassing his superior, but the co-captain had been ticking him off with all their wordless tailing. Was he being watched or something? As far as he knew, he didn’t do anything wrong. And he certainly didn’t mess up any files.
He was very particular about his files.
“What do you want, Hex.” Blunt as ever and a little rude, he really knew how to initiate a conversation.
Hex shrugged, “Nothin’.”
Heldur would have responded with a slow blink. If he still had eyelids.
“Ok... Are you going to continue following me?”
“Who said I was following you? Maybe it’s just a coincidence that you’re in all the places I need to be.”
If Heldur had less self-control, he would have thrown the manilla folder he was holding directly in Hex’s face. But Heldur did not feel like losing his job today.
“So what reason do you have-,” He gestured to the shelves beside him, “For being in the soil sample records section?”
Hex paused and blinked at him, obviously grasping at straws for some kind of excuse. Heldur noted with some triumph that they were failing miserably.
After half a minute of painfully awkward silence, Hex lapsed back into their unbothered expression and propped their arm up on the desk, and leaned their head against it.
“Alright, you caught me. I guess I’m just bored.”
“.. And watching me shelve soil data from Hermiterra expeditions is alleviating that?”
“Kinda.”
“You are an exceptionally weird person.”
“Says the suit of haunted bone armor.”
This time Heldur nearly lost the battle to not dome the guy with a flat file. But once again, he pulled himself back with herculean levels of restraint.
“Ok, fine! So you’re bored. Why. Aren’t you, like, the co-captain of this flying tub? Don’t you have some important shit to do?”
He gestures vaguely at the area around him. The Hermiterra Space Station, or HSS for short, was huge. There was no way they didn’t need to do something.
But Hex shrugged again in that infuriating way of theirs and simply replied, “Oh, probably. But I don’t want to do it.”
Heldur silently asked every god he could remember to give him strength. How did Scar and Grian manage to stand this guy? Speaking of-
“Don’t you usually hang around with Scar and Grian? Go and bother those idiots instead, I’m busy.”
“Yeah, but they’re doing a salvage right now. Trying to scrape up anything good from a deposit planet. Y’know how it is.”
Ah, so they were dumpster diving, “And you didn’t go with them?”
The corners of Hex’s eyes crinkled just a bit to let Heldur know that behind their gasmask, they were currently wearing the galaxy’s biggest shit-eating grin.
“No, I had more important things to do.”
Heldur stands there, staring at the person who is currently the bane of his existence. Somehow they managed to temporarily take that spot away from Wels which was saying something.
Heldur closes his non-existent eyes and breathes in a deep, aggravated-beyond-belief sigh with his non-existent lungs.
Finally, he gives in.
Heldur grabs as many unsorted files as he can from one of the crates and chucks them at Hex.
But instead of aiming for theirhead (although he desperately wanted to), the stack landed haphazardly on the desk in front of them.
“If you’re gonna stay here, you’re gonna have to earn your keep. Put those in alphabetical order and when you’re done, I’ll shelve them and give you more.”
Was there a rule against ordering your co-captain around? Was he going to get fired? He hoped not. None of these idiots were capable of properly filing anything, he was the last (and only) bastion against their unorderly chaos.
But to Heldur’s astonishment, Hex swept the papers into a pile, straightened them out, and began their task.
He watched them for a moment.
That worked?
Huh. He should throw files at people more often.
And so they carried on, working in silence. When Hex was done sorting, they’d pass off the files to Heldur and receive more to work on. Heldur took the sorted files and put them in their proper spot. Work that would have taken him the rest of the ship’s day cycle was over in just a couple of hours.
Heldur and Hex both basked in the fruits of their labor. Which was just a slightly more crowded library shelf.
But weirdly enough, it felt like they both gained something more out of it.
The sound of Hex’s chair scooting backward snapped Heldur out of whatever library-shelf-observing daze he found himself in. He tipped his head ever so slightly to the side as he watched Hex stand up, stretch, and start walking out of the room.
“You’re leaving?”
Hex paused and turned their head to the side, “Yeah, why?”
Heldur didn’t answer, surprised to find himself feeling... Disappointed in the loss of their company.
Hex took notice and the corners of his eyes crinkled again, most definitely smirking beneath the mask, “Aw, what, sad to see me go?”
“No, I’m relieved you are finally leaving me alone. Carry on.” Heldur stiffened and looked away, busying himself with pushing Hex’s chair back into place.
“Sure. See you later, Hels.”
“I told people to stop calling me that! Blasted Etho and his ridiculous nicknames..” Heldur grumbled to himself but stopped just before Hex disappeared out of sight.
“Hey,” Hex stopped and looked at him once again, “... Thanks for your help. I.. appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.”
And with that, Hex gave a parting knock to the library’s doorway and disappeared down the hall.
Heldur found himself spending a second looking after him before shrugging. He found his way back to his desk and shuffled a few idle papers about with no particular goal.
Heldur would never admit it, but he enjoyed the company today.
He hoped he could throw more files at Hex sometime soon.