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Jelena becomes Topaz six and a half months before Aventurine joins the Cornerstones and she tries really hard to like him.
Jelena did not show up for Business Etiquette; it's the only class she ever failed, the only one she didn't ace. She doesn't have time to make nice or to dissemble and flatter and lie; she's got debts to chase down and ranks to climb.
She enters into the ranks of the Cornerstones when Citrine leaves an opening, and she's still new when Beryl retires less than a year later. It’s not unexpected; Beryl and Citrine were partners, really, in most ways that matter, and once Citrine died, it’s not particularly surprising that Beryl left.
It still takes her aback, a little bit, before she remembers that not everyone has signed the lifetime contract, including the In Perpetuity clause. For most everyone at this level, the IPC is a lifestyle, not a career, but that isn’t always contractual.
Getting into the Stonehearts isn’t easy, after all, and when Jade brings in someone to replace Beryl just a few months after her, she’s honestly pleased. She’s excited to have a new coworker who seems to be around her age, another newcomer.
But.
He's never in his office; when he even bothers to show up, he spends his work days wandering around different departments and levels and chatting with people and not doing his paperwork. He can be found in the breakroom playing on his phone more reliably than at his desk.
She doesn't work with him and tries really hard to not need anything from him, ever, but she can't seem to avoid him, either. He's always swanning around in their shared office areas, passing her door with a glib compliment or smart remark, and she bites her tongue and smiles at him when she can.
The cherry on the cake, the icing on the sundae, is that Numby likes him. Numby loves Aventurine; Numby goes to Aventurine first in any meeting, any room they share. Numby has no issues accepting coins and casino chips and folded up bills from Aventurine, and Aventurine has no issues teasing and spoiling Numby whenever the little treasure trotter pounces on him.
He laughs and hands out thousands of credits like it’s nothing, like it’s pocket change. Her entire job revolves around collecting debts in the twelve-plus digit range; she knows the value of money, and his disregard of it is infuriating.
It's with a sense of vindictive sympathy that she catches him in the break room his second week in and asks how his first project is going. It wasn't a milk run, not quite, but it was only to get agreement for Epsilon 18 to join the System Accord.
"Mmm?" He says, looking up from his phone. "Which...oh, the Epsilon one? Done and dusted, my dear Topaz; they signed this morning."
She's pretty sure he spent all of last night drinking at a party and she knows he was at the Business Development brunch this morning because she got several emails about it; a handful of them were complaints but most of them were just requests for his contact info. "That was fast," she says dubiously.
He grins and she wants to like him, she really does, but his smug little smirk is just so smarmy. "Ah, I got lucky," he says, shrugging elegantly. "It all just kind of fell into place."
She tries really hard to like Aventurine.
She fails.
He's in the break room, like he usually is, and she tells herself that she's just here for a refill, that it won't take more than a second.
Numby is pleased to see him, as always, and Aventurine looks up from his artful sprawl and says, “Good morning, Topaz! How's my favorite Cornerstone today?”
She bites back on her instinctive response that his favorite Cornerstone is undoubtedly himself, and she forces a polite little nod instead. “Morning. Nice work on the Green Isle job,” she says and it tastes bitter on her tongue. “Any trouble?”
“Not a bit,” he says, grinning at her. “Went just according to plan. Isn’t it nice when nothing goes wrong?”
“Yeah,” she says, trying very hard to be blank. “Good for you. Good luck on the next one.”
“Thanks,” he says as Numby jumps on his lap. “I always appreciate luck; it’s what carries me through.” And then he laughs and flips Numby a coin.
She tries to smile back and thinks she succeeds, then grabs her coffee refill and leaves.
She decides to pretend he’s not there; the more time she spends thinking about him, the more it upsets her, so clearly she needs to stop stewing over him.
This resolve works all morning, right up until the regular group check-in meeting Jade makes them hold. They go around and discuss their projects, nominally to keep each other informed. Topaz has a sneaking suspicion that it’s also to keep them in competition with each other; if it is, it’s unfortunately working.
“Having some trouble with the Helma Council,” she admits when it’s her turn. “Prince Rufus is blocking the funds again, and without a majority they can't authorize repayment. If they haven't made progress by the end of the week, I'll head out there personally.”
Jade makes an mmn noise and waves a hand; it's the gesture Topaz has always taken to mean disappointing but permission granted. “And you, Aventurine?”
“Mm? Ah, no issues on the Gorjo City deal; the mayor gave verbal confirmation last night, and the signing is scheduled for tomorrow. Very straightforward.”
“No issues?” Jade asks.
“Not a one,” he says with that terrible smug grin and a wink. “The mayor was very accommodating.”
That gets Jade's approving smile and Topaz is calm, calm, but Jelena burns. She takes notes as needed, tucks away some reminders, and focuses on anything but Aventurine.
As soon as they’re done, she gets up and calls for Numby, who is naturally a happy pile of trotter goo under Aventurine’s hands. He gets up too, and Numby makes a sad noise but she just calls for the trotter again, then turns her back and leaves.
“Ah, one second?” Aventurine says, reaching out as if he's going to touch her but falling far short.
“What,” she says, turning on him, and Numby finally comes to her. “What could you possibly want?”
His hands go up and he leans back, but he's still wearing those awful pink glasses. “Whoa, sorry, no need to get snippy! I just wanted to see if you needed a hand, that's all!”
“Oh, so now you can do my job better than me too, is that it?!”
He cocks his head at her, arms falling to chest level but still spread. “Of course not, Topaz. You're the best at debt collecting; I could never do what you do.”
This is true and it's nice that he acknowledges it but somehow him respecting her is also making her feel worse.
“But politics and contracts are my specialty, and I've been looking into Prince Rufus,” he says, playing with a coin he's apparently pulled from thin air. “Let me make this issue disappear for you?”
Of course he vanishes the coin on cue, just for the drama. Of course he does.
“What do you want?” she asks because he's not the type to do anything, much less for free.
“Mmm,” he says, tapping his chin and pretending to think, even though he wouldn't have made the offer if he didn't already have something in mind. “Your goodwill?” he tries. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot; maybe we can be friends.”
She stares at him. The way he drawls the word, fri-ends, it's just so…so punchable. “We will never be friends,” she says because she doesn't know what's happening here but she does know that.
“Your tolerance and continued patience, then?”
It's stupid, but she's tired, she's upset, she's got a headache and is so, so done with people who smile to her face and then do nothing at all, and they deserve each other, truly, do Aventurine and this stuffy council. It's not like he can make it worse, right?
“Sure,” she says, turning to leave. “Go for it.”
There's an email in her inbox the next morning when she checks it at 5:30 am; the Helma Council has reached an accord and the funds will be released in the next three days. There's also a personal note from Prince Rufus himself apologizing for the delay, full of chatty asides and good humor, treating her like a bosom friend instead of the professional annoyance she's been considered up ‘til now.
She stares at the email, then turns off her phone screen, goes to find Numby, and screams into the trotter’s fur for a while.
Months later, Aventurine is idling in front of her office, lazily spinning a coin through his fingers, and she sets her eyes on the door and doesn’t look at him even when Numby makes a happy greeting squeal; she just keeps moving.
“Ah,” he says, “Topaz, my dear, a moment?”
She does stop and forces a smile on and says, “I’m not your dear, but what is it?”
The coin stops in its motions and he tilts his head enough to look at her over the top of his tacky pink glasses. “May I beg a favor, Topaz not-my-dear?”
Oof. She bites back on a couple responses but can't quite keep back the, “You can beg, sure.”
He smiles at her, all dimples and white teeth and insincerity. “Fair enough. There’s that final meeting with Celiden tomorrow, the one we’re both in? Here’s the deal; James wants his boss to sign, we want his boss to sign. The only one unconvinced is the boss, right? So I was hoping you’d condescend to play my Lovely Assistant for this meeting.”
This stops her dead. “You want me to what?”
He flips the coin over his fingers in a showy little flourish. “Oh, come now, haven’t you ever seen a magic show?” He makes the coin disappear and reappear and she scowls at it. If he flips it one more time, she’s gonna take it away. “The magician is just the loud, showy distraction,” he says. “The Lovely Assistant does all the hard work.”
She’s doing her best to keep her eye from twitching. “Flattering, but you’re not really selling this.”
The coin vanishes and he straightens up, shoulders down and hands spread. “If I can convince him–if you can back me up on the numbers–then James will owe us a favor and he’ll know it. I was hoping to have his help on the Prossdyn thing next month, so you take credit for closing this and I get the chip. Deal?”
The thing is–
The thing is, she knows she owes him. He fixed that mess with the Helma Council for her months back and he didn’t ever call it in. He’s not even calling it in now; this isn’t a favor he’s asking. He just wants her to be a part of his effortless, lucky, underhanded way of handling projects and he’s offering a rather sizable incentive to get it.
He could have called in her debt, and he’s acting like it’s not even there.
This will make them even regardless, she decides, even as she sighs. “What would this entail, assuming I agree?”
He grins bright and big and reaches into his coat. “If you agree,” he says in the smarmiest, most punchable way, “I just need you to know these numbers.” There’s a file in his hand now, a printed physical file, and he hands it off to her.
She’s always preferred physical files, and she’s not sure why he knows that, but she’s sure this isn’t an accident. “And what numbers are these?”
“It’s their annual budget and spending for Celiden for the past decade, broken down by city and industry,” he says as she flips it open to find exactly that. It’s laid out perfectly clearly and is color coded. She has no trouble reading it at a glance because she uses the same colors for these meanings, and it is, in fact, exactly what he says it is. “The next couple are five year before-and-afters of five other planets we’ve implemented this system on, and after that is our projections of their numbers over the next decade should they sign.”
This is a significant amount of time and work–assuming it’s true. “I’ll be doublechecking these numbers.”
“Of course,” he says expansively. “Velmer down in Analytics ran me the comp reports, if you have any questions. Argebi in Accounting did the projections; his projections are always the most accurate. I synthesized it and Elsie in Marketing did the quality assurance and she owes me one, so it should be squeaky clean. Feel free to check anything you like.”
She stares at him a second longer because who even are those people? She doesn’t know the names of anyone in Analytics or Accounting or Marketing, much less having them owe her favors. How does he have the time to meet so many people?
“I’ll get you their emails,” he says, apparently mistaking her confusion. He then pulls out his phone and begins to, presumably, send her their contact info.
“Uh, thanks,” she says, and how did it come to this? He asked her a favor, and now she’s thanking him?
But this report is comprehensive, and thorough, and the numbers seem to check out. She worked the Arelick project herself, last year, and this seems about in line with their austerity recovery plan.
This is not the work of someone who just has things fall into place.
Huh.
Sure enough, when she runs the numbers herself that night, they all check out.
Jelena becomes Topaz six and a half months before Aventurine joins the Cornerstones and she tries really hard to like him. She never quite manages that. Their styles are just too wildly different.
But when she sees him in the breakroom now, when Numby jumps on him and he laughs, and when he’s leaning over someone else’s desk and laughing with them, she thinks of favors traded and comprehensive reports.
She doesn’t like him, but maybe she’s beginning to respect him, just a little.
Just a little.