Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A few days later, Jack showed Rhys the solarium.

Because the station had no real atmosphere, it was dangerous to be exposed to the system’s sun without artificial filters. The windows throughout Helios were heavily treated to protect the inhabitants from radiation and burning. It was only in the solarium, with its crystal-like, opaque panes that you could actually, safely feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin.

There was greenery all over the station, carefully tended by maintenance robots into perfect geometric shapes, but the solarium had more. A nearly overwhelming amount, in fact. It was less of a greenhouse and more of a botanical garden, complete with a huge stone water feature of Jack pouring purple tinted water from a vault key like some kind of douchey nymph. Crawling vines clambered up the walls and along wood trellises, colorful flower plots were navigable by meandering cobblestone paths, and a small copse of trees offered shade to a cluster of wrought-iron bistro tables. A nearby stand sold ice cream and corndogs. There was even a sprawling lawn consisting of real green grass the likes of which Rhys hadn’t seen since he’d left Persephone.

And at some point between taking off his shoes so that he could feel it under his bare feet, Jack teasing him mercilessly about his star-patterned socks, Rhys ripping up grass to throw at him, and Jack shouting, “That handful cost me a thousand dollars! Stop throwing my own money at me!” Rhys suddenly realized that he was, for once, happy. Jack made him happy.

It was almost more of a shock to Rhys’ system than any other thing he had experienced so far on Helios. It was far and away the most pleasant. But it was a fragile kind of happiness, too, one that was under constant threat of collapse.

Whenever Jack looked at his ECHO, Rhys felt an uncomfortable twinge. Then Jack would look up and give him an exaggerated once over, or roll his eyes, or – worst of all – grin or smirk or smile, and the twinge would turn into a sharp stab, would smooth out into a rolling, easy pleasure that it simple to forget. Rhys would turn his face toward the light, close his eyes to feel its touch, and pretend he wasn’t bare inches from being incinerated.

Sometimes Rhys felt that Tediore had been an awful nightmare that he had suddenly woken from. Other times he felt that Jack was some kind of hazy dream, that he was drifting through it all like a cloud or a blimp, untethered. The only time he felt remotely real was at work, and that was because everybody there hated him.

It was hard to tell which reason was the most common. Jealousy was chief among them – and was by far the most palatable – swiftly followed by embarrassment, but honest disdain was an uncomfortable third. Not all the lab assistants had been involved in the shit talk on the group chat, but all of them had seen his response, and very few were pleased with it. The general opinion among the serious scientists in the group seemed to be that Rhys was a smug braggart who didn’t deserve his job and who used his apparent relationship with the CEO to get away with being an asshole.

Rhys was fine with alienating his insufferable colleagues. He’d never intended to form close bonds of comradery with any of these people. He was less fine with the dark looks and abruptly ended conversations that happened when he walked into a room, especially given what had happened with Amy. The Hyperion employees of Helios were not to be underestimated. He’d started to watch his back pretty carefully in the labs, and never ate or drank anything he hadn’t opened himself.

Rhys’ only ally was Benson, who was great for a thumbs up and a sorry-looking frown, but not for much of anything else. He seemed sympathetic, but also totally unwilling to stick his own neck out for a guy he’d known for less than a month. Plus, he spent most of his time hanging around Ines now, and his interaction with Rhys was limited mostly to waved hellos in the mornings, and goodbyes in the afternoons. Rhys tried not to resent him for it. There wasn’t much Benson could’ve done, anyway.

Ines – a willowy, dark-skinned woman who was taller even than Rhys – might have served as an additional ally except that her true loyalties turned out to lie exclusively with brutal honesty.

“What you did was pretty funny,” she said in their first real conversation, “but they were kind of right about the boots. Also, you can be kind of a jerk sometimes. Sorry. Thanks for the coffee, though!”

Rhys wondered if there wasn’t a single thing in his life that he hadn’t fucked up utterly.

Dr. Headland appeared to wonder the same thing. He’d taken to barking orders at Rhys left and right, sending him first to fetch supplies and then immediately to return them. He delighted in giving Rhys busy work and impossible tasks, only to later nitpick and criticize the results.

In one horrible exercise, he sent Rhys back down to Genetics to fetch a data drive that had been left behind. The data drive turned out to actually be property of another Genetics team, far above Rhys’ clearance, and in the possession of a scientist named Dr. Nakayama who, between heavy breaths, threatened to turn Rhys into an experiment himself. He was also drinking out of a coffee mug that had Jack’s face in a large heart on it. Rhys wasn’t sure whose eyes to keep contact with. The whole exchange was massively creepy on several different levels.

When Rhys returned to Dr. Headland to explain what had happened, he was yelled at for an unbearable thirty minutes. Rhys was unable to risk even reaching up to wipe Dr. Headland’s spittle off his cheek, lest the thirty minutes turn into a full hour.

The rest of the week passed in a similar vein.

Jack took Rhys back down to the gun range and tried to teach him to use a shotgun. Rhys fell on his ass, made Jack laugh, and they made out like horny teenagers against the gun lockers. Someone deleted all the spreadsheets Rhys had been working on while he was taking a bathroom break one afternoon and he had to restart from scratch. Benson and Ines’ flirting shot past ‘cute’ and landed in ‘sickening,’ just short of ‘totally insensitive to the suffering of others.’ Dr. Headland cornered Rhys in a hallway and asked him if he had a death wish and then offered to provide one. Rhys spent one hard to remember hour sitting on the floor of his apartment, staring despondently into space. Jack sent Rhys a dick pic during a morning meeting. Rhys responded with a picture of his middle finger and wished that he could call his mother, because clearly he needed an adult.

Clearly, he needed something.

The weekend arrived and Rhys once again found himself laid out on his couch watching As Promethea Burns and feeling sorry for himself.

“That’s right!” Barbara yelled on screen. “I’ve been able to walk the whole time!”

She leapt up out of her wheelchair and roundhouse kicked Jasmine’s lover in the sternum, sending him flying through a nearby window.

“Why did you do that?” Jasmine cried. “Vincent’s been nothing but kind to you!”

“Vincent?” Barbara said. “That wasn’t your husband, Yannis?”

Barbara’s butler gasped.

“She didn’t need the wheelchair,” he said, “but the blindness was real!”

The show cut dramatically to an advertisement for Handsome Jack Hair Gel – “For that authentic windswept look! Remember: Not everyone can be great, but for only forty Helios credits, you can at least be good looking!”

Rhys picked up one of the couch’s pillows and tried to suffocate himself with it, but mostly only succeeded in getting lint in his mouth.

The doorbell rang, interrupting his half-hearted attempt to end it all, and he slouched toward the door with a pretty good idea of who was behind it. It wasn’t like he had a ton of friends and would-be callers on Helios.

“Wow, look what the skag dragged in,” Jack said as Rhys answered. “What’s got you looking so miserable, sweetheart? Need me to shoot someone? You know I’m always up for a revenge killing.”

“I’m not really in the mood today, Jack,” Rhys said.

Jack frowned. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked.

Rhys shrugged evasively. It wasn’t like he could tell the truth.

“Okay,” Jack said, and pushed his way into the apartment. “Ugh, you live in a shoebox. No wonder you’re depressed. It’s like hanging a masterpiece in the bathroom.”

Rhys reluctantly felt himself start to smile.

“So, talk to me,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

Rhys examined Jack’s expression. He was serious, attentive. Something tight and heavy unknotted itself in Rhys’ chest.

“It’s nothing, I was just being stupid,” Rhys said.

“Don’t get shy on me all of a sudden,” Jack said. “I might at least find it funny.”

Rhys glared at him without much heat, chewed on the inside of his cheek, and then asked, “Have you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?”

“’Couldn’t’ and ‘can’t’ are strong words that I prefer to ignore,” Jack said. “What do you want? I bet I could get it for you. Money is no object.”

“A time machine,” Rhys said.

“Ah,” Jack said. “I’ll have to keep you posted on that one, but I’ll get my best people working on it ASAP.”

Rhys smiled and leaned forward to rest his forehead against Jack’s shoulder. Jack raised a hand to pat him on the back of his head.

“I like you, Handsome Jack,” Rhys said.

“You and everyone else,” Jack said.

“Nope,” Rhys said. “Just me.”

Jack huffed. “Whatever you say.”

“Why did you come down here, anyway?” Rhys asked, straightening back up.

“No real reason. I had to drop by Tourism for a thing and got curious about how people who aren’t me live. Thought it’d be more fun to come here than to just burst in on some schmobody. Although that also would’ve been pretty fun. Can you imagine what the reaction would’ve been? They probably would’ve shit themselves.” Jack cackled and then headed further in to look around Rhys’ apartment with open interest. “Gotta say, this is about as sad as I expected, tangible miasma of despair included. Oh, you really do have a ficus.”

“Why would I lie about that?” Rhys asked.

“I can’t believe you watch this garbage,” Jack said, having already moved on to the screen playing As Promethea Burns.

“It’s not garbage, it’s a riveting interpersonal drama with themes of love and war set against a vivid backdrop of untamed space and alien wilderness,” Rhys defended.

“But Vincent, how did you survive the fall?” Jasmine gasped, hurrying to his side.

“The truth is, my love…” Vincent said, ripping open his shirt to reveal a steel plate where his torso should’ve been. “I’m a cyborg!”

Jasmine let out a scream of anguish.

“Oh no,” Rhys said quietly. To Jack he explained, “Cyborgs killed her mother when she was a child. She has trauma.”

Jack raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“You need to learn what real cinema looks like,” he said, picking up the remote and changing the channel.

He’d flipped it to some kind of action movie. There was a massive explosion and then a man on a motorcycle came flying out of it, a scantily clad woman tucked under one arm and a huge shotgun held in the other (surely that couldn’t be a stable way to drive). The motorcycle screeched to a halt and there was a close up on the man’s face. It was Handsome Jack.

Except it clearly wasn’t. It was a buff man with a square jaw and a strong nose with makeup on that made it look like he had clasps and the line of a mask. He stood up and set the woman down. She immediately swooned and fell out of the shot.

“Looks like I,” the fake Jack said, cocking the shotgun, “was just in the Jack of time.”

Rhys had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

“Who’s that playing you and how do I trade up?” he snickered from between his fingers.

Jack scowled and turned the screen off.

“TV melts your brain, anyway,” he said. “Guess what always cheers me up, though! I’ll give you a hint, it starts with an ‘M.’”

“…Murder?” Rhys guessed nervously.

“Close!” Jack said. “Good try! But the one I was looking for in this specific instance was, ‘moonshots.’ Want to go fire shit out of a cannon that’s almost as big as my dick?”

“…I’m trying really, really hard not to use the opening you just gave me,” Rhys said. “It’s painful but I feel like I have to give you a pass after ‘just in the Jack of time.’”

“As long as you never expect me to do the same for you,” Jack said. “Put some shoes on and grab a coat. We have to go out to the Eye for this.”

* 

The Eye’s command center was located at the very middle of Helios, surrounded by cargo bays filled with loader bots and mechanics. Most travel out of Helios was done via shuttles that docked closer to the Hub of Heroism in impressive landings, carefully adorned to introduce newcomers to the power and awe of Hyperion and Handsome Jack. The Eye had no such function, and was all bare efficiency.

The vast, open hangars were nearly freezing, but the moonshot controls were located in an enclosed room high up above, with large windows on all sides. It faced Elpis, but at the press of a button the windows to the left flickered and a display of Pandora was projected against the glass. The right bank became a close up of the moonshot cannon itself, filled with enormous, yellow bullet-shaped containers.

“Okay, what should we load into this baby?” Jack asked. “Feel free to really get creative. I generally stick to loader bots, because then it’s like the big can of death crashes down and splits open to reveal lots of little cans of death, but high-grade explosives are also a solid choice.”

“You ever think about, like, not killing people for a day?” Rhys asked. “Just to see how it feels?”

“I already know about your dumb murder hang-up, Rhys,” Jack said in exasperation. “We don’t have to kill anyone with it, alright? I did say you can get creative. Load it with glitter for all I care. Might take a while to find that much glitter, but it’d be super funny to bust it open right over New Haven. That bitch Lilith would be trying to get it out of her stupid looking side-bangs for months. And Pandora’s not only inhabited by human beings. We could – as a completely random example – smash the ever-loving crap out of a varkid colony. If you’re looking for suggestions.”

“That does sound satisfying…” Rhys said slowly. “And you just happen to have the coordinates for one of those?”

“Pft, of course I do,” Jack said. “I know about everything that goes on down there. A skag so much as vomits in the badlands and I get a ten-page report on what it had for breakfast. It’s a given that I have the exact location of a secluded varkid colony covering about an acre of otherwise unpopulated mountainside. What do you take me for?”

“Uh-huh,” Rhys grinned.

“C’mere,” Jack said with a wave.

Rhys came closer and let Jack pull him under one arm, smacking a kiss onto Rhys’ cheek as he did so.

“So, what’s it gonna be?” Jack asked.

“Explosives,” Rhys said confidently. “It has to be thorough.”

“Atta boy,” Jack said, slapping him on the back. “One moonshot full of ‘fuck you, six-legs’ coming right up.”

He began typing on the control panel. A siren sounded twice out in the hangar and movement picked up around the moonshot cannon as forklifts and loader bots hefted pallets of cargo to-and-fro. They worked quickly and efficiently, likely used to being called on for emergencies. It wasn’t long before a green light appeared on the moonshot console, indicating that the bullet was ready to fire.

“Just a sec, the satellite’s still not in position,” Jack said, still typing.

“Satellite?” Rhys asked.

“There’s no point in putting a massive crater in the planet’s surface in an attempt to drag a species one step closer toward extinction if you don’t get to see it, is there?” Jack said.

Another screen appeared, covering part of the view of the hangar. It was only satellite footage, so the image quality was poor at best, everything rendered in shades of green and ultra-low contrast. Rhys squinted at it, trying to make out among the static what he was seeing. Then he reared back as he realized that it wasn’t static at all.

“There’s thousands of them!” he said. “That’s disgusting! Look at them, crawling all over each other, dripping their horrible bug juice, and oh, ugh, I think I might be sick. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

As he stared in horror, Rhys suddenly felt something brush against the exposed back of his neck. He jumped, shrieked, and slapped a hand over it, only to turn and see Jack snickering, hand still halfway raised.

“Don’t do that!” Rhys snapped.

“But you make it so easy,” Jack said. He wiggled his fingers menacingly.

“I changed my mind, I want to put you in the moonshot,” Rhys said. “See how funny you think it is then.”

“Too late!” Jack declared. “I’ll let you do the honors, though.”

He gestured toward a large red button on the console. Rhys thought that had probably been an intentional design choice. Not that he was complaining. He reached out and pressed it.

The siren blared once again, and then there was a roaring sound as the moonshot was fired. The enormous bullet was propelled toward Pandora at a nearly unfathomable speed. Rhys watched it cross the screen on which Pandora was displayed, like a comet streaking past, and then, in an instant, it was crashing down into the satellite footage, sending varkids and the wet parts of varkids scattering.

Then it exploded.

The satellite feed cracked and fizzed before refocusing on the burning wreckage of the colony. It took a few minutes for the smoke to dissipate enough for anything to be visible. There wasn’t much left to look at. The varkid colony had, true to Jack’s prediction, been turned into a massive crater in the ground.

“I do feel a lot better now,” Rhys admitted, staring at the smoldering hole where a nightmare hellscape had been only seconds before.

“I should totally send that footage to Dr. Moist,” Jack said. “You think he’ll get a kick out of it?”

“Ohhhh my god no no no do not do that,” Rhys said. “He’d make my life miserable, more miserable than it already it is, oh my god.”

“He’s making your life miserable?” Jack asked sharply.

“No,” Rhys said quickly.

Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“He’s my boss,” Rhys tried. “Everyone’s boss makes their life miserable. That’s what a boss does. I know you don’t have one anymore, but you must know what I’m talking about.”

Jack made a face of understanding and stopped looking quite so murderous.

“I did strangle my last boss to death,” he said. “Just a suggestion.”

“If I strangle Dr. Headland, I probably won’t get any college credits,” Rhys joked.

“Hm,” Jack said. “You’re really gonna follow through with it, then? Getting your degree?”

Rhys looked away, out toward Elpis.

“It’s obvious you don’t want to,” Jack said. “You hate this stuff so much, babe. You just gleefully exploded a whole-ass city of the things you’re supposed to be studying." 

“What else can I do?” Rhys mumbled. “At this point I don’t have a choice.”

Jack crossed his arms and looked out at Elpis as well.

“Take it from me,” he said seriously. “You always have a choice.”

Rhys had to bite down on his tongue to keep from yelling.

“Hey, quit it,” Jack said, catching his expression. “I’m not trying to make you do anything you don’t want to. It’s just a drag seeing you all worked up. Well, like this. I like seeing you worked up, when it’s me who’s doing the working.”

Rhys rolled his eyes but released his tongue.

“I’ll think about it,” he promised after a moment, as if they were even remotely having the same conversation.

As if he hadn’t thought about it, and hated the conclusions he had come to. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He just wanted to be here, bathed in moonlight, Jack standing at his side.

Rhys turned and tugged gently on the lapel of Jack’s jacket, forcing him to uncross his arms again, and then kissed him softly on the lips. There was a split-second pause before Jack caught on, and then the kiss deepened. 

Rhys reached up to brush his fingers across Jack’s face, feeling the ridge of his cheekbone under his fingertips. He traced it carefully, following it slowly up toward his ear. His fingers slipped across some fine line in Jack’s skin and Rhys’ progress stuttered as he suddenly remembered the mask. Fascinated and curious, his hand paused there, pressed against the place where Jack’s face met his Face.

It was only for a breath, a fraction of a second’s hesitation, but that was enough. Jack reared back, snatching Rhys’ wrist in a bruising grip and shoving him harshly back against the console with a thud.

“Don’t ever touch that,” he snarled.

Rhys gaped at him. “I-I’m sorry – I didn’t – I wasn’t –” His heart hammered in his chest.

Jack leaned toward him sharply and Rhys flinched and ducked his head in submission.

As though he himself had been struck, Jack suddenly released Rhys’ wrist. His took a quick step backward. Rhys kept his eyes trained on the floor, shoulders hunched around his ears.

“I just – forgot it was there, and –” Rhys began again.

One of Jack’s hands reached out and touched Rhys’ chin, tilting his face back upward. Rhys glanced at him and was surprised to see that Jack no longer looked angry. He was frowning, brows drawn together tightly, but he was searching Rhys’ face in distraction

“Sorry,” he grunted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Rhys blinked owlishly at him. He couldn’t remember Jack ever apologizing for anything before, not to him or anyone else.

“I wouldn’t,” Jack said, then paused nervously. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Rhys.”

Rhys’ lips parted slightly.

“You wouldn’t?” he asked, awed.

Jack’s brows furrowed further. His hand dropped from Rhys’ chin and he ran it through his own hair instead, mussing it out of its perfect coif. His eyes slid away from Rhys’ and toward some indefinite spot beyond him.

Another siren blared distantly out in the hangar.

“Let’s not do this here,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s go back to my place.”

* 

The trip up to Jack’s penthouse was quiet, Rhys keeping his distance, not sure what to do or say. Jack hardly seemed to notice him, a dark set to his features as he mechanically went through the motions of calling the elevator and opening the front door. In the dimly lit living room, Elpis seemed to loom closer than it had down in the Eye, although of course that wasn’t possible. Its cracked and eerie face pressed up against the glass with a fixed, unblinking gaze.

“I really am sorry, Jack,” Rhys said quietly, gripping one arm with his other hand awkwardly. “I know it doesn’t make it better, but…”

Jack crossed to stand in front of the window, back to Rhys, only one thin, pale strip of his face visible. His shoulders were tense as he looked at the moon.

“When I lost my arm,” Rhys pressed on, “before I got a cybernetic prosthetic, I hated the way people looked at me. Without even thinking about it, they would stare, like they couldn’t help seeing what was wrong with me. I’m not…saying it’s the same, or that there’s something wrong, I don’t know, but I guess…I know what it’s like to not want people to look. That’s all.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Jack said.

“Really?” Rhys asked shakily. “Because you seem kind of. Mad.”

Jack remained silent. Then, suddenly, his hands were reaching up toward his face. They rested there for a beat, and then came away, holding the mask.

Rhys’ heart stuttered and had to work to resume its normal pace. He could just see the edges of it – thin and flesh-colored, one clasp exposed. His brain raced to catch up with what was happening.

Jack began to turn. Instinctively, Rhys looked away.

“Rhys,” Jack said. “It’s okay. You can look.”

Rhys’ eyes darted first to Jack’s shoulder, and then up slowly to his exposed face. He sucked in a breath that didn’t quite make it to his lungs as he saw the huge, blue scar that cut across Jack’s skin. Its long arm perfectly bisected one white, sightless eye. The other returned Rhys’ gaze stonily. Seeing what, he didn’t know. 

“How…?” Rhys said, taking an involuntary step forward.

“I got punched in a vault by a siren.”

“Wh-what?” Rhys stuttered. “You…who…what?”

Jack’s lips quirked slightly. He looked down at the mask in his hands and seemed to decide something, because when he looked up again, he was resolved.

“Tell me, Rhys,” Jack said. “What would you do if you suddenly knew everything – everything you could possibly want to know, and in it you saw a way to become a god. Would you take it?”

Rhys swallowed. “Who wouldn’t?”

“No matter the cost?”

Rhys didn’t know what to say to that.

“Four years ago,” Jack said, “I stood in a vault on Elpis and was given a vision. I saw the future. I saw the path – to greatness, to power, to absolute control. It was,” Jack exhaled harshly, “glorious. But when Lilith punched me, I saw something else. I saw what I’d have to lose to get it. My daughter.”

Angel, Rhys recalled. The picture on the desk. The conspicuously absent child.

“For a while, I thought I could ignore it,” Jack said. “That it didn’t matter. There was nothing I wouldn’t give up for greatness. I killed Tassiter. I put on this mask and became Handsome Jack. I finished Helios and turned to Pandora. Then I turned to Angel. I needed her, you see. She was essential. There was no way to get what I wanted without the use of her powers. The powers of a siren.”

Rhys’ ears rang with a funny buzzing sound, numb and shrill as he tried to process what he was hearing. Vaults. Sirens. Angel. Jack’s face, cut viciously with the vault symbol, so perfect in its arc that it almost looked like Jack was the mar, not the other way around.

Jack watched him carefully for a moment, as though waiting for something. For Rhys to run screaming, maybe. Whatever it was, it never came. His hands tightened in their grip around the mask.

Roughly, he went on, “Angel was. Not afraid. She’d been afraid of me before, and I’d never cared. But she was resigned. Tired. She’d given up on me. To her, I’d already crossed the line in the sand. To her, it was over. She may as well have already been the corpse from my vision. I could see it in her eyes, without her ever having to say a word. It wasn’t like she ever said anything other than, ‘Yes, Jack,’ anyway.

“I…love her. I’ve always loved her. But for a long time, I only loved her as an object, a useful tool. A thing. When she looked at me like that, totally devoid of hope and affection, I knew it wasn’t really love. It was…ownership. It was love the way a – a grandmother drowns her grandkid’s pet cat and calls it discipline. It was. Smothering and false. Destructive. Apocalyptic. Hate, I think.

“So, no, I wouldn’t hurt you, Rhys,” Jack concluded after a beat. “I’ve already done enough of that for one lifetime. I’m not a good man, by any means. But I’m not that, either. Not anymore.”

Rhys stood there, reeling. He tried to think of something to say, but it all felt inadequate.

“Your daughter…Angel…where is she now?” he asked at last.

“Dunno,” Jack admitted. “After that, I couldn’t do it anymore. Any of it. I let Angel go. I gave up on the vaults, promised myself I’d never chase after them or her again. I mean, I’m still up here mining eridium and selling weapons and laying waste to my enemies, but I’d crossed one line in the sand and I had to draw another. One that was a little more final. She prefers it that way, I think. I call her sometimes, but she never picks up. The only reason I even know she’s alive is because I still get received notifications on all my messages.”

Jack paused.

“It’s funny,” he said, even though it wasn’t funny at all. “I used to think being a hero was all about rushing into action, chasing danger, chasing the prize. I thought what made you a hero was choosing to take what you wanted, to fight for it, to break down every obstacle in your path. But that’s not it, or not all of it, anyway. Sometimes…sometimes being a hero is just choosing not to be the villain.”

Rhys closed his eyes. A deep and steady calm came over him. It settled in his bones. When he opened them again, both Jack and Elpis were still looking at him, two scarred and watchful faces. Wary. Immense.

Rhys looked down at the mask still clutched tightly in Jack’s hands.

“May I?” Rhys asked, holding his own hand out.

Jack hesitated, and then gave it to him.

Rhys took it gently. He looked down at the cold, emotionless piece of plastic, and thought how different it seemed now, how lifeless and fragile. He traced the line of the cheekbone with his finger, as he had down in the moonshot control center. He traced the ridges of the lips. These were the lips he had kissed what felt like a thousand times, but had probably only been a dozen. Slowly, he raised the mask, and kissed them again. They were soft and unresponsive. It felt unfamiliar. Strange.

Jack inhaled sharply, a barely audible sound that nonetheless cut through the heavy silence, drawing Rhys’ attention. He looked at Jack, at the scar, at the one dead eye and the other – wide with something raw and unguarded – and had a sudden thought.

It wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t even a bang or a crash. It was barely a whisper, barely anything at all. It was everything.

He set the mask carefully on the nearby coffee table and leaned in to give Jack, his Jack, a kiss. It felt like the thousand and first. When he broke away, Jack was looking at him so softly it hurt.

I can’t do it, Rhys knew. I can’t steal from this man.

*

There was a small window of time in Jack’s penthouse – a second or maybe even less – during which Rhys contemplated just telling the truth. It creaked open noisily, rattled around in Rhys’ throat, and nearly spilled out of his mouth without permission, until he reached back and slammed it shut with force.

I don’t have to do it, Rhys told himself. And Jack never has to find out.

He tried to reason that it was just simpler like that. He’d find a way to get Dr. Headland to lay off and be content with his varkid research and Rhys and Jack could just go on as they were, as if nothing had happened. Rhys could ‘drop out of school.’ He could call his parents and feed them some story. He could stay on Helios and everything would be fine and no one would have to get hurt.

But it wasn’t that he thought it would be simple. It was that Rhys was afraid.

What would Jack do if he learned the truth? Rhys was a spy. He was a liar. He was a thief. And Jack had just exposed himself in the most extreme way possible. Wasn’t that betrayal enough?

Maybe he had said he wouldn’t hurt Rhys, but that was because he had no idea who Rhys actually was. Rhys had seen him crush those he considered his enemies, knew he was capable of extreme violence, even knew that Jack had a tendency for holding grudges and taking revenge. What was to stop him from killing Rhys the moment all was revealed?

Would he even give Rhys a chance to explain himself, or would he pull the trigger first?

Worst of all was that Rhys was afraid of hurting Jack almost as much as he was of dying. He knew he couldn’t expect that Jack felt as deeply about Rhys as Rhys did about him, but there was no denying that he was attached. What would it do to him, to find out?

Rhys tried to imagine a scenario in which Jack was the one who was using him. He tried to picture it – this thing he felt being twisted and turned back on him like a knife. Even in his imagination, it was devastating. Rotten and twisted and horrible. The lowest of lows.

If I can spare him that, of course I should, Rhys decided.

Tediore would have to stay a secret. One he would take to his grave.

The only problem was Dr. Headland.

He tried to plan out what he would say in advance, but found it hard to find the right words. All he knew was that it would have to be a pretty convincing speech. Maybe it would be enough just to point out that if the plan was over and Rhys dropped the astrozoology act, Dr. Headland just wouldn’t have to put up with him anymore. He could only hope.

Rhys arrived at work on Monday with a steely resolve, breezing past his glaring coworkers without paying them any mind.

“I need to speak with you in private,” he said as he approached Dr. Headland.

Dr. Headland looked up from his microscope immediately, and then glanced around the room.

“My office,” he said, standing up.

Rhys followed him out of the lab and down the hall, past the breakroom. Dr. Headland’s office was still crammed with partially unpacked cardboard boxes filled with files and lab equipment, his desk overflowing with lopsided stacks of paper. The only signs of personality were a large diagram of a varkid hanging on one wall and a picture of a young, smiling couple sitting on the desk. Relatives, maybe. A son and his wife.

“What have you got?” Dr. Headland asked, locking the door behind them. He sounded excited.

“Oh, uh,” Rhys began awkwardly. “That’s not…what this is about.”

Dr. Headland’s expression shuttered. His jaw clenched.

“Listen,” Rhys said. “I’ve. Been giving this whole thing a lot of thought. And I just don’t think it’s a good idea.” He took a deep breath. “I think we should call it quits. You can do your whole varkid thing, and I can. Do other stuff. And that’s it.”

Dr. Headland was looking at him as though he had suddenly started speaking Truxican.

“Call it quits,” he parroted blankly.

“Yeah,” Rhys said. “Look, you know how dangerous it is. For the both of us. Neither of us wants to get killed. And.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away nervously. “So, like, Jack is an asshole and a narcissist and just pretty much an all-around terrible human being. No arguments here. I think he might actually be the worst person in the universe – he’s definitely in the top ten. But, like, does he really deserve to be robbed like that? It just… it feels a little –”

“Does he deserve –” Dr. Headland interrupted incredulously. “I knew you were a layperson,” he spat, as if this were an insult of the highest degree, “but I didn’t realize you were a complete moron!”

“Okay, just ignore that part,” Rhys said quickly. “The important thing was the rest of it. The…the ‘let’s just walk away and live’ thing.”

“There is no walking away!” Dr. Headland said, voice raising in volume. “Do you seriously think Tediore will just shrug their shoulders, say, ‘Oh well! Lost that one!’ and let us go? Don’t be stupid!”

“Surely we can find a way to…to convince them –”

Rhys was cut off by Dr. Headland’s hand flying across his face. Rhys stumbled slightly, shocked, and then winced as he registered the pain. He raised his hand to touch his cheek where Dr. Headland had hit him in disbelief.

“Wake up!” Dr. Headland yelled, face pale and terrified. “This isn’t a game, you idiot boy! You absolute child! They’ll want us dead! And they won’t even have to try very hard, won’t have to hire an assassin or exert any effort at all! All they’ll have to do is tell Handsome Jack!”

It was Rhys’ turn to stare without comprehension.

He recalled, very suddenly, what Mrs. Tediore had said, that awful day in her office. Either he could be useful, or they could risk outsourcing his execution.

Dr. Headland was right. If Tediore caught on that Rhys wasn’t theirs anymore, they would simply tell Jack that he had been.

It didn’t matter what Rhys did or didn’t do – that had been a naïve dream.

Jack was going to find out.

“Do you have any idea what that lunatic will do to us?” Dr. Headland demanded. “He won’t just kill us, Rhys, he’ll destroy us! He’ll destroy our families! He’ll destroy everyone who so much as knows our names! He’ll do it slowly, and he’ll enjoy every second! Are you even listening to me? It’s not just your life on the line, Rhys. Don’t make me beg you for mine.”

Rhys swallowed, but his mouth had gone bone dry. He nodded.

“You’re right,” he rasped. “I’m sorry, Dr. Headland. Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.”

* 

Rhys sat in his apartment with the lights off, nothing to see by but the glow of his own arm. He stared into the darkness, willing it to transform into something solid and tangible and useful, and if not, then at least to swallow him whole. It did not respond.

He felt like he was somewhere far outside his body, looking down. If he tried, he could almost pretend that this was all happening to someone else, that he was nothing more than an onlooker with no particular interest in the outcome. It was almost funny, that way. Like some long comedy of errors that was finally drawing to a close.

Was this all his fault? Or was he just the butt of some huge cosmic joke? Somebody somewhere must be laughing, or else there was no justice in it at all. If it was all mere happenstance and coincidence and bad luck, he didn’t know if he could stand it for a second more.

He buried his face in his knees and tried to repress the urge to scream.

As much as he hated it, as much as he wanted to keep on pretending, as much as he wanted to yell and rage and fight, Dr. Headland was right. There was no walking away. Jack was going to find out. Whatever precious, fragile thing Rhys had found with him would be broken irreparably. And now Rhys only had two options: He could be on Helios when it happened, or he could be off of it.

He could live, or he could die.

Rhys clenched his fists and looked up, into the pressing, insistent dark.

He didn’t want to be a martyr. Even if it made him miserable, even if it ruined everything, he wanted to live. He wanted to survive. He would do his job and get his check from Tediore, and then he would quit and go home to Persephone and use the stupid fucking money to uproot his family and spend the rest of his life running the fuck away from Jack. Away from the man he loved.

It was the only choice he had.

And for that, he needed a plan.

* 

(And this he could not say out loud, could barely form into words in the privacy of his own mind, it was so painful. He merely felt it, and knew that it was true: The worst part was, for a moment, Rhys had really thought he had a chance. That it had been real. That he was going to win. The worst part was, if he had lost something, it was only because he had been dumb enough to trick himself into believing it was his in the first place.)

*

Rhys already had everything he needed. The plan fell together so quickly and easily that it was obvious to an unbearable extent how hard he had been working to avoid it. He had wasted weeks on breaking his own heart.

There were two places on Helios that could be used to get the information Tediore wanted – the study in Jack’s penthouse and the computer in his office. Rhys had access to the penthouse, but the study was further secured by both a palm print and a retina scan. Those could possibly be hacked, but it would be difficult, especially if Jack was just down the hall the entire time.

The office, on the other hand, was secured by the same forcefield used to protect the vault key, as Jack himself had told him. At first blush, that seemed impossible to get around, but it could actually be bypassed through much easier means – by use of Jack’s ID card. The ID card he carried with him everywhere he went.

Rhys’ plan was this: He would have sex with Jack. While Jack was distracted, he would snag the ID card and tuck it away. Once Jack was asleep, Rhys would retrieve the ID card and slip down to Jack’s office where he would use it to get inside. He’d have to hack Jack’s computer – there was no way around that – but he was confident in his skills. Even if Jack was a genius, Rhys had been hacking since he was twelve, with a fancy new eye and arm and a whole new world of possibilities. He’d find a way or make one.

After Rhys had found something, anything (he didn’t even care what, wouldn’t even pick something huge, just something big enough to satisfy Tediore and that was it), he would leave the office and go wake Dr. Headland who had their passports and the universal credits needed for shuttle passes out of the system. The two of them would get on a shuttle headed back to the Edens, hopping station to station to obscure the trail, until finally. At last.

It would be over.

* 

Rhys already had standing plans to meet Jack to watch movies at his place on Thursday night.

“That ‘just in the Jack of time’ thing was a fluke,” Jack said. “They make so many ECHOflicks about me I’ve got my own subgenre – Jacktion movies! Downside of that is there’s bound to be some duds mixed in with the gems. You win some, you lose some, what can I say? But lucky for you, I own all the best ones! I’m even in a few of them for real! Just wait, babe, you’re never gonna want to watch a shitty soap opera again in your life.”

Rhys very much doubted he’d want to watch ‘Jacktion movies’ either.

The good thing about a movie date was that it meant a dark room with no expectations for small talk, so it would be much easier to hide his extreme anxiety and misery. He was even able to force on a smile as Jack let him up into the penthouse, and, as always, it wasn’t hard to let Jack run away with the conversation on his own. He couldn’t quite manage to hide his stiffness, though.

“Is something wrong?” Jack asked, sinking down onto the couch next to Rhys with a big bowl of popcorn.

“Sorry,” Rhys said, shaking his head and uncrossing his arms. “I’ve just been thinking a lot. About school. And stuff.”

“What have you been thinking?” Jack asked.

Rhys bit his lip.

“It’s just a little longer,” he said, “and then I’ll have a doctorate. But I don’t have to ever use it again. I don’t have to be Dr. Rhys. I can just be Rhys.”

Jack ruffled his hair affectionately.

“You can still be Dr. Rhys in the bedroom, if you like,” he said. “We can do a full body examination.”

Rhys cracked a genuine smile at that, and shoved him playfully.

“There’s no cure for what you have,” he said.

“Guess you’ll just have to make me comfortable,” Jack said, giving an exaggerated sigh. “My last wish is to see you in a nurse outfit. With fishnets.”

“Nurses wear scrubs,” Rhys said. “I won’t even be that kind of doctor.”

“Nothing but a lab coat,” Jack corrected. “And fishnets.”

“And a microscope,” Rhys said, because Jack’s pass had expired. “So I can find your –”

“Shh, shh, shush, the movie’s starting,” Jack said, placing a hand over Rhys’ mouth. “You don’t want to miss the opening credits, they really set the tone for the rest of the plot.”

They truly did, but even if they hadn’t, it would have been difficult for Rhys to misunderstand any of what happened in the movie’s two and a half hour run time. It was pretty much the platonic ideal of B-movie action flicks, complete with an unnecessary and shoe-horned romance subplot featuring an attractive, baby-faced young man who spent the whole time either crying or being kidnapped.

Rhys probably would’ve found the experience weird if he’d had room in his body for anymore emotions. As it was, he merely sat there, barely taking it in, wondering how awful it would all seem in retrospect. Jack’s hand was slung over his shoulder, one thumb rubbing circles on Rhys’ arm. How badly would he regret that contact in the morning? Rhys nibbled at the popcorn without really tasting it and watched the love interest scream for Jack’s help as he was carried off by bandits once more.

Halfway through the second movie – nearly indistinguishable from the first – Rhys decided enough was enough and climbed into Jack’s lap. He didn’t even kiss him right away, just looked down and examined his masked face, committing every detail to memory. Years from now, he wanted to be able to close his eyes and remember the way Jack looked up at him, vaguely amused, a little smug, eyes glinting with some secret joke at the universe’s expense.

He wished he could see Jack without his mask again, but he was afraid to ask.

“Jack,” Rhys said quietly, “why would you think I care even a little bit about some actor playing you when I have the real thing right here?”

“You make a convincing argument,” Jack said, and pressed Rhys by the back of his neck into a kiss.

Rhys kissed him slowly, drawing out every touch, savoring each swipe of Jack’s tongue. Like a man dying of thirst, gulping down seawater, he kissed.

They probably would’ve fucked right there on the couch with the movie still playing in the background if there had been condoms and lube in the living room. Instead, Jack hefted Rhys up and carried him into the bedroom, Rhys’ legs still wrapped around his waist. Rhys could feel Jack’s shoulder and arm muscles tensing as they held him aloft and felt a thrill of lust and terror. But Jack set him down on the bed with gentleness to let him strip.

Rhys watched carefully, inconspicuously as Jack undressed. His heart leapt into his throat as Jack pulled the ID card out of his pocket, and then it plummeted like a brick when he opened the dresser drawer with a press of his palm against the surface and dropped it inside. He pulled out the condoms and lube and closed the drawer. It clicked as it relocked.

A spike of panic shot through Rhys and made him shudder. Jack must have thought it was desire, because he smirked.

How had Rhys never noticed that before? How stupid could he possibly be? He’d always been so consumed with Jack, with the sex, that he’d never paid attention to something so obvious as a palm print lock on the fucking bedside table. A series of emotions rushed through him so quickly he could barely process them – disbelief, fear, anger, grief, and then, at last, resignation.

He’d ruined it all. He was going to die.

Jack pressed him into the mattress. It was a wonder that Rhys was even still hard. Maybe that was just how fucked in the head he was. Maybe that was just what Jack did to him – turned him into a fool. He arched his back and white noise crackled loudly in his ears.

Calm down, he told himself firmly. You can always try again. Think of a better plan. Tomorrow. The day after. Next time.

There was almost relief in it. It could go on. On and on and on and on forever. An infinity of fear and bliss. His body would stay in orbit around Helios until the universe itself died out.

No, he thought sharply. This ends tonight. Think of a way.

Jack bit Rhys’ neck. Rhys dug his fingers into Jack’s back.

The receptionist’s desk, he remembered as Jack thrust into him. There’s a control for the office’s security in it. It’s how she buzzed me in, both times. I can hack into it from there.

He closed his eyes and pressed his face into Jack’s shoulder, biting back a whimper of – he didn’t know what.

“C’mon, babe, you know how much I like seeing you,” Jack murmured, gently tugging at his hair.

Rhys looked up at him dazedly. He must have been an absolute mess. Jack hummed and pressed kisses to his face, dotting them here and there with tenderness.

“Next time I’ll wear fishnets,” Rhys heard himself saying.

“Yeah?” Jack asked with a grin.

“Yeah,” Rhys said, unable to stop. “I’ll even give you a blowjob.”

“You really do know how to sweet talk a guy,” Jack laughed.

“Next time,” Rhys said again, because he couldn’t say goodbye.

*

Rhys pretended to be drowsy as they curled together under the covers, but he’d never been more awake in his life. His skin was filled with pins and needles. He stared up at the ceiling and counted the seconds as Jack’s breathing slowly evened out. How long could he wait like this? There wasn’t a point. He wasn’t even enjoying it anymore. He wasn’t even present.

“Fuck,” Rhys forced out, and sat up in bed.

“What is it?” came Jack’s sleepy mumble. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I left a data drive with some reports for Dr. Headland down in the hub,” Rhys lied. He swung his legs around and started to get up.

“So what?” Jack huffed, looping an arm around Rhys’ waist. “Get back in bed.”

“He’ll kill me if I lose those,” Rhys said. He didn’t have to fake his nerves. “He might fail me for my internship.”

“It’ll still be there in the morning.”

“Not if a cleaning bot gets it,” Rhys argued. “Listen, it’s fine, go back to sleep. I’ll just go down there really fast and look for it.”

“Ugh, fine,” Jack said, and let him go, rolling back over into his pillow. A moment later he was propping himself up onto his elbows. “Wait, hang on, you’ll need a way to get back in.” He reached over to press his palm to the bedside table. The drawer slid open and he fished out his ID card, waving it toward Rhys. “Here, use this or you’ll be vaporized.”

Rhys froze.

“Jack. You can’t just hand me this.”

“Last time I checked I can do whatever the hell I want. Now take it and shut up. I want to go back to sleep. Hurry up and get your stupid drive before your spot gets cold.”

Rhys took the ID card. It wavered slightly in his hand. That was him shaking, he realized. His whole body was trembling minutely. Jack’s smirking face stared back up at him from the card’s glossy front. Abruptly, he wanted to throw it across the room. Instead, he curled his fist closed until the edges of the plastic bit into his palm.

“I’ll be right back,” he lied numbly.

Jack hummed in acknowledgement, already halfway back to sleep.

Out in the hallway, Rhys found Butt Stallion standing in the large archway that led out into the living room. It hadn’t been there when Rhys and Jack had moved to the bedroom. It stared at him with unblinking eyes, utterly still, for all the world nothing more than a gaudy statue. Rhys’ skin crawled. He felt he was being judged.

“Shut up,” Rhys hissed to it as he passed. “What do you know?”

He took the elevator down to the hub and found it still brightly lit despite the late (or early) hour. There were a few people around – men and women with dark bags under their eyes nursing large cups of coffee – but nobody paid him much mind as he crossed to the large elevator that went up to Jack’s office. Overwork and loss of sleep were probably common for Hyperion employees.

The reception area of Jack’s office was empty though, not even a stray loader bot hanging around to clean. Rhys’ boots clicked and echoed as he walked down the long hall. He came to a stop in front of the closed double doors and paused, Jack’s ID card already raised halfway. Then he swiped it across the reader, the doors slid open, and Rhys went inside.

Somehow the room felt smaller without Jack in it. Maybe it was just that everything felt like it was closing in on Rhys now. Maybe not. He was inclined to believe that it was Jack, that he had an aura of largess about him that he granted (briefly) to everything he touched. People often thought of him as a force of destruction. So did Rhys, truth be told. But Jack could build anything he wanted, when he was in the mood. With a thought, he could make you into something you weren’t. Something better. Something you could become.

Rhys mounted the steps and walked around to the other side of the desk. He pressed a button and a holo-screen and keyboard popped up. So did a password box. A cursor blinked innocently, awaiting input.

Rhys watched it for a long minute, until he could almost hear it like a drumbeat in his ears.

Jack’s encryptions would be difficult to break. Nearly impossible, probably. Part of him itched to try, just so he could say he had. Would he win? Would he lose? It almost didn’t matter.

But there was another curious part of him that looked at the screen and saw it the same way he saw the broken skin of Jack’s face, vulnerable and bare. He wondered if this was what being a surgeon was like. It was a bizarre thought, but the image swam and steadied and he realized that, somehow, he was standing with his hand stuck deep in Jack’s chest, fingers threatening to squeeze around his heart. To crush.

He could feel the pulse. He knew that pulse. It was strange, how well he knew it.

‘Angel,’ he typed.

The computer’s files opened. A flood of information came spilling out.

Out of the corner of Rhys’ eye, he suddenly saw Angel’s photo sitting on the desk, her small face beaming up at him. He stared at it, wondered distantly what she would think of all this, whether she would cheer him or condemn him. He wondered where she was. What she was doing. Whether she was okay. He hoped that she was.

Someone in this universe deserved to have a happy ending.

But it wasn’t Rhys.

He reached out and placed Jack’s ID card on the desk in front of her.

Then he walked away.

There was a strange serenity to it. It wasn’t as frightening as he thought it ought to be. His heartbeat was steady as he headed toward the shuttle bay.

Unlike the hub, the bay still had a fair number of people in it, coming and going from the various, far-flung reaches of the universe. Rhys approached the ticket counter and asked when the next shuttle to Opportunity would be. The clerk – a young, bored-looking woman who was chewing bubblegum – did a double take.

“Unexpected red eye to Pandora, huh?” she asked. “Must be important.”

“Life or death,” Rhys agreed dully.

The clerk eyed him, snapped her bubblegum, and then shrugged.

“Better you than me,” she said. “You’re just in time. Next shuttle leaves in ten minutes.”

She took Rhys’ ID card and drained his account of all the station credits he had left.

In the shuttle, safely strapped into his window seat, Rhys picked up one of the inflight magazines and flipped through it. There were a lot of pictures of Jack – posing in Opportunity, pointing guns at hideous, sneering bandits, walking away from explosions without looking at them. There was one printed on the very back page, just a simple portrait under an ad for Handsome Jack Hair Gel, a large block of text that read:

‘NOT EVERYONE CAN BE GREAT, BUT FOR FORTY HELIOS CREDITS, YOU CAN AT LEAST BE GOOD LOOKING!’

Rhys placed his thumb over the word ‘LOOKING.’

Jack’s masked face winked up at him.

Rhys ripped the cover off the back of the magazine, folded it into a small square, and tucked it into his pocket. As the shuttle landed in Opportunity and Rhys disembarked toward the trainline that would take him somewhere, anywhere else, it occurred to him that that was all he had.

He had dumped his ECHO in the shuttle trash. He had disconnected his eye and arm from the ECHOnet to prevent a trace. He had no money. He had no weapon. He had no friends. He had no valuable secret data. He did not have Handsome Jack. All he had was the shirt on his back and a magazine page that grew more wrinkled with every step he took.

He took a deep breath of Pandoran air. It smelled and tasted funny.

I’ll probably die down here, Rhys thought bleakly.

But it was still somehow better than spending another moment in his cubicle at Tediore. It had all, in the end, been better than that.

*

Pandora sucked pretty much as badly as Rhys had expected it would.

The scenery was beige and rocky, one mile of arid wasteland nearly indistinguishable from the next. The locals were inhospitable in every way a person could be, with some new ways that seemed to have been invented just for Pandora. A woman wearing patched and worn Dahl fatigues stopped as Rhys passed her on the street and loudly declared, “Fresh meat!” She sounded gleeful.

It was also unbearably hot and dry. Rhys became quickly, acutely aware that the last thing he’d eaten had been a handful of popcorn, hours ago, and that he’d been too stressed out to eat the whole day previous. With the sun beating down on his bare head, it seemed like ‘dehydration’ was steadily climbing toward the top of the list of ‘Things Likely to Kill Rhys.’ It was a long list.

He’d ended up taking the train from Opportunity to T-Bone Junction, because that was where the next train happened to be headed. From there, he decided to hitchhike to New Haven, which wasn’t on the rail system.

New Haven was the largest non-Hyperion settlement on Pandora and one of the only places on the whole planet that Jack hadn’t dug his claws into yet, thanks to the presence of Lilith and the other vault hunters. Heading there almost sounded like a plan, except that any reasonableness in this decision was just a lucky byproduct of pure whim. What happened was, Rhys was standing in the station at T-Bone Junction when he saw a poster advertising Moxxxi’s.

A slim, busty woman in full clown makeup pouted down at Rhys, lips pursed into a kiss, one eye closed in a wink. He could practically hear the sound of her tiny dress creaking as it strained to contain her breasts. That, he vaguely registered, was one of Jack’s exes. And she apparently ran a bar.

Well, I could definitely use a drink, he thought. And also someone to bitch about Jack with. Could be therapeutic.

Unfortunately, Rhys’ ‘plan’ fell apart almost as quickly as it came together. He caught a ride with a group of rough looking men who hadn’t pointed weapons at him, which he figured was probably the best he could hope for, but a few hours out their non-threatening demeanor shifted when one of them placed a four-fingered hand on Rhys’ thigh. He decided to cut his losses and get out at the next stop.

The next stop turned out to be The World’s Largest Bullet, a roadside attraction – in as much as there could be said to be a ‘road’ or ‘attraction.’ It looked to Rhys like an oversized aluminum silo with lights strung up to it. At least it cast a shadow big enough to keep the cluster of buildings at its base cool, which was good enough for the moment.

The amenities at this pitstop were limited to an outhouse, a couple of vending machines, and a hut which may have once offered tours but which was now abandoned. There were also some lean-tos and shipping containers with more rough men hanging around, drinking beers and cleaning weapons and staring at Rhys with open interest.

Actually, it kind of looked like a bandit camp with a billboard out front.

Actually, this was probably, pretty certainly, almost definitely a bandit camp with a billboard out front.

That hadn’t been in the brochure.

Rhys squared his shoulders and walked up to the vending machines. One was a standard ammo vendor, the ground around it covered with scattered bullet casings and cigarette butts. The other looked like a soda machine, but it was empty. Rhys stared past his faint reflection in the cracked glass at the empty coils and felt something like despair. He bent down to open the flap at the bottom, just in case some higher power was feeling particularly merciful at that moment. There were no cans down there either.

When he straightened up, it was to find that three of the bandits had gathered on the other side of the ammo vendor, blocking his exit.

“Oh, uh, hi,” Rhys said, laughing nervously. “You guys here to see the bullet, too? Wow. It sure is. Large.”

The biggest bandit, the one on the left, crossed his arms, causing his bare muscles to ripple in what was possibly the most efficient and expressive threat Rhys had ever witnessed.

“I don’t have any money,” Rhys said quickly. “Like, none. Honestly, swear to whatever you want me to, all I have are my clothes, my shoes, and a page I tore out of a magazine.”

The bandits continued staring. The big one rolled his neck. Rhys bent down and took off his boots. His striped socks stared sadly up at him and seemed to instantly become coated in a thick layer of dust and dirt.

“What the hell is a piece of Hyperion shit like you doing out here, anyway?” one of the smaller bandits asked in a nasally voice as he took the boots from Rhys’ hands. He was wearing a thick rag over his head and mouth, probably to keep out the dust.

“Oh, I’m not –” Rhys began, and then stopped himself. The semantic differences between Hyperion and Tediore and whatever Rhys was at this point were probably lost on gentlemen such as these. He cleared his throat. “Relationship issues.”

“No shit?” the other smaller bandit – and really, they were only small compared to the enormous muscle-bound bandit; next to Rhys they were still pretty large – asked, a hint of sympathy in his voice. “Your girl try to have you killed or something?”

“Uh, close enough,” Rhys said.

“Man, that happened to my cousin Dino,” the nasally bandit said. “His girlfriend paid a guy to shoot his kneecaps out and leave ‘im for the skags.”

“Wow, that’s awful,” Rhys said. “I’m sorry.”

“Naw, she’s my girlfriend now,” the nasally bandit said dismissively. He examined Rhys’ shoes for a moment. “You’ve got really big feet.”

“You know, break ups are hard,” the other small bandit said, “but every failed relationship is an opportunity to learn something new about yourself. Someday all the things that haven’t worked out in your life will be the foundations on which you’ve built your happiness.”

Rhys stared at him.

“Love sucks,” the big bandit grunted wisely.

Rhys opened his mouth – to say what, he wasn’t entirely sure – but was cut off by the sound of a huge, growing roar followed by an echoing crack that shook the ground and had him whirling to find its source. The bandits’ heads all snapped toward it as well. The smaller bandit whose face Rhys could see looked shocked. The big one looked worried.

“A moonshot?” the nasally bandit yelped. “Why the hell is Hyperion sending moonshots out into the sunken fucking sea? There’s nothing out here except rakk shit and rocks!”

They drew their guns and started running toward the encampment’s high, barbed-wired wall, forgetting about Rhys completely. Rhys remained behind, frozen.

“It’s a fine day,” the ammo vendor’s deep voice declared cheerily from beside him, “full of opportunity!”

Pandora’s sun beat down on him with force.

The bandits started yelling, waving their arms, calling out to each other and gathering near the entrance of the camp and at the top of the wall. There was a car headed this way, they yelled. A single vehicle, coming in fast.

A bead of sweat dripped down the back of Rhys’ neck and into the cool shadow of his shirt collar, toward his spine. He shivered.

Then there was an explosion, and part of the wall came flying inward, sending bandits and debris tumbling through the air. There were cries of pain as they collided with the sides of the huts and shipping containers. One bandit went tumbling into the firepit and screamed as his torso met the burning embers.

Gunshots rang out from all sides, from the top of the wall and inside the camp as the bandits fired through the dust-filled hole. One of the bandits up on his perch was struck in the forehead and his body jerked backward, then fell, like a child’s doll, to the ground far below. The same happened to another.

“Grenade out!” one of the bandits yelled, and lobbed one hard.

There was a pause, and then a new explosion, followed by a second, larger one that sent a dark billowing cloud of smoke up into the thin blue sky. The bandits pressed closer, encouraged by this destruction, only to scramble back seconds later as a small object came bouncing back toward them. Their attempts to flee were cut off as the grenade sucked the closest gunmen toward it before bursting with a loud, fiery flash.

Rhys threw his arms up over his eyes to shield them from the light and the wave of hot air that pulsed through the camp. When he looked again, the makeshift buildings closest to the blast had caught fire and the flames were spreading. A barrel of gasoline burst like a cannon, and a hot plume of pure fire roared out of it, furious and unforgiving.

The bandit’s screams were nearly lost in the sound of the crackling flames and the hail of bullets. The ground was littered with bodies and rubble. Rhys watched as more bodies were hit by some unseen force and made to crumple, like an angry god had merely reached out and tapped them with his finger.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The bandits fell.

Rhys should have run. His brain was screaming at him to just turn and book it – to what, he didn’t know. Out into the desert to the skags. Toward the canyons with the spiderants and rakk. Just to the nearest hiding place – an overturned billboard, an outcropping of rock.

But there was something in him that held him fast. It kept him rooted deep into the dirt. Maybe he didn’t want to delay the inevitable. Maybe he didn’t want his last minutes to consist of running, pathetic and scared. Maybe he just wanted to stay and see the inferno. It was his, after all.

Above him, the overhang covering the vending machines flapped noisily in the artificial breeze, battered about in the wake of the repeated explosions. It was like a blood-colored flag. A marker.

The fire was raging uncontrollably now. It had spread to almost everything that could catch. Rhys watched as the big bandit who had threatened him threw himself at the opening in the wall. He fell back at once, buckled lifelessly to his knees, and Handsome Jack emerged like a vengeful demon out of the hole he had punched in the bandit camp’s defenses.

He was alone. He had a single pistol in his hand and a couple of grenades hanging from his belt.

Rhys wondered why Jack bothered having an army at all.

Jack looked around the camp for a second before his gaze landed on Rhys. It was too far, the air thick with smoke and heat mirage that distorted his expression, but Rhys didn’t need to see it to feel the brunt force of it like a punch. Jack took a step in his direction.

He was waylaid by one of the bandits, throwing himself at Jack with a raised buzz ax and a war cry. The cry curdled and warped into pain as Jack shot him in the face, blowing one cheek out and turning his jaw into shards. Another bandit shot at him from barely a foot away. Rhys gasped, but the bullets snapped and sizzled impotently against the blue barrier of a shield. Jack shot the bandit in the throat.

Two more appeared from behind overturned scrap metal they’d been using as cover, their submachine guns rattling like thunder, throwing up dust at Jack’s feet and sending blue static flying from his shield’s invisible barrier. He dispatched the first as quickly as he had the others, but only shot the second in the arm. Then the other arm, forcing him to drop his gun. Then one leg, crippling him, then the other, forcing him to his knees. Then Jack was emptying the pistol into his stomach, until the gun was empty, and death was mercy.

There wasn’t a bandit left alive in the whole camp. There was nothing but the fire, and Jack.

He resumed his progress toward Rhys, reloading his pistol with mercenary efficiency as he walked, not even needing to look at the gun as he did so. With deft fingers, he ejected the spent clip into the dirt and replaced it with a click. Rhys felt a sudden stab of empathy for Amy, whose last moments had been just like this – watching the man she loved bare down on her with killing intent. 

“Do you know what the first thing I thought was?” Jack asked as he stalked toward Rhys, the blood spatter stark against his pale mask. “When I woke up and you were gone and someone had accessed my encrypted files? It was that someone had taken you. That you were in trouble. I was so. Goddamn. Worried.”

He came to a stop several feet in front of Rhys.

“And then I saw the surveillance tapes.”

Jack raised his gun. Rhys closed his eyes.

“Look at me!” Jack roared.

Rhys opened them again and looked at the pistol, followed the barrel up Jack’s arm to his face. He was snarling, eyes wide with rage, teeth bared. Rhys had never seen someone so angry in his life.

There was a long, tense silence during which nobody spoke. Not far off, one of the lean-tos buckled and crashed into flames, sending sparks flying. Neither turned to look. The universe had narrowed to a single point.

“Nothing to say for yourself, huh?” Jack said at last, voice low but tangled with a shuddering thread of barely restrained violence. “Not even going to beg for your life. That’s fine by me. You’ve done enough talking. And, really, I’d like nothing more than to just shoot you, spit on your corpse, and walk away. Nuke this shithole and be done for good. But unfortunately for both of us, there’s still a couple of things I need to know. Who do you work for?”

“Tediore,” Rhys said at once.

“Tediore,” Jack scoffed. “’I want to know how Tediore makes their guns explode,’ huh? You transparent bitch.”

Rhys flinched.

“You’re not even a good liar, are you, Rhys?” Jack asked snidely.

“No,” Rhys agreed.

“Guess that makes me pretty fucking stupid, doesn’t it?” Jack said. “Couldn’t even see through your load of crap. Well, you got me good, babe. Congratu-fucking-lations.” He took a deep, steadying breath, as if reminding himself why he hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. Then he demanded, “Did you tell them about Angel?”

Rhys’ lips parted slightly in surprise. He’d never even considered it.

“Did you tell them about Angel?” Jack yelled, taking another step forward.

“No!” Rhys cried. “I didn’t…I didn’t tell them anything.”

Jack laughed. It was hollow.

“I know you have no reason to believe me,” Rhys said, “but it’s the truth. You think I came down here to meet someone? You think this was my exit strategy? A bandit camp? Seriously?”

The sad, ramshackle cluster of hovels burned hot and angry on all sides. Sweat and smoke had begun to cling to Rhys’ skin in a thin layer of filth. It felt like filth upon filth.

“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say,” he croaked. “I know that. That’s…well, it’s not fine. It sucks pretty bad. But I’m done lying to you. I never sent them a thing, Jack. But whatever. Whatever. My word’s no good anymore. I’m sure you’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough.”

Jack stared at him, incredulous.

“Tediore would’ve killed for what you had,” Jack said. “Forget Tediore – you could’ve had whatever you wanted from anyone in the universe. Maliwan. Torgue. Fucking Dahl. You could’ve had it all. And you expect me to believe you just threw it away? Just like that?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Rhys said.

Jack’s finger twitched over the trigger guard.

“So your big plan was – what exactly?” he asked, gesturing broadly around him, as though some hidden cranny of The World’s Largest Bullet might hold the secret next step in Rhys’ nefarious scheme. “Come down here and – and go native?”

“Calling it a plan is probably overgenerous,” Rhys said.

“Oh? What would you call it, then? Huh?”

Rhys shrugged, fully, heavily, throwing his arms out to his sides and then letting them fall back to his hips with a thump.

“I’m just a code monkey, Jack,” he said.

He was exhausted and hopeless. He was standing at the end of the road, facing the abyss. He was done, and this was all that was left.

“I’m a nobody who made a mistake and got caught. Tediore told me to steal from you or they would kill me for it. What was I supposed to do? There was no way this ended without you finding out. The only way for me to get out of it alive was to go back to them with something to show for it. But I.” Rhys paused and tried to lick some wetness back into his cracked lips. “I couldn’t do it. Which is…so fucking stupid, by the way. I knew – I knew you would kill me the second you caught on, done deal, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. If not you, then definitely Tediore. It was that or death. And I still couldn’t go through with it.

“So, no, Jack, there is no plan. There’s only me. Me, the biggest moron in the six galaxies –” He threw one hand out toward the World’s Largest Bullet as if to compare their relative size. “– ready to die rather than tell Tediore about whatever super-secret business strategy bullshit you have hidden away, just because I don’t want to, I don’t know. Betray you. Be the –” He choked on the words, and then forced them out. “Be the villain.”

Jack was silent, face unchanged, gun arm steady. But he didn’t pull the trigger, even as the pause stretched on.

“As for why I came down here,” Rhys finally added, “I could only afford this or Elpis and sometimes I get vertigo in zero-g. Plus, you know. World’s Largest Bullet. Had to get that one off the bucket list while I still could.”

Jack exhaled out through his nose. “Always the comedy routine with you, isn’t it?” he said. It was bitter.

“It’s a defense mechanism, I think.”

“You might try one that’s less likely to get you shot in the face,” Jack advised. His hand tensed and eased around the gun’s grip. “What the hell do you even want, Rhys?”

Rhys huffed a laugh that came out as half sob.

“Right now? To not get shot. A drink of water. To stop being so stupidly in love with you.” He shrugged again, only slightly this time, helplessly. “What do you want, Jack?”

For a time, it didn’t seem like Jack was going to respond. Rhys wondered how much longer he had left to live. He wondered who would tell his mom.

Then: “The universe,” Jack said, sounding tired. “A call from my daughter.” He paused. “To stop being so stupidly in love with you.”

Around them, the bandit camp continued to burn.

“Well,” Rhys said. He swallowed and fought back the urge to cry. “I guess we can’t always get what we want.”

Jack stood unmoving for a beat longer, and then his gun arm dropped. He unclipped a canteen from his waist and tossed it in Rhys’ direction. Rhys reached out and fumbled to catch it, barely keeping it from falling in the dust. His mouth was achingly dry, but he didn’t move to drink.

“That’s only two out of three,” he said weakly.

“Gimme a break,” Jack said gruffly. “I’m batting zero over here.”

“The universe isn’t yours yet?”

“Nah.” Jack’s lips quirked into a self-deprecating smile. “There’s still a few stragglers.”

Rhys gave him a small, wavering smile back. Then it fell away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”

“Was everything you said to me a lie?” Jack asked.

“No,” was Rhys’ strangled reply. “Practically nothing. I couldn’t lie to save my own life. Obviously.”

“What the hell am I gonna do with you, Rhys?”

“Shoot me, I thought.”

“You really are the biggest moron in the six galaxies,” Jack said, “if you think that is even remotely an option anymore.”

Rhys blinked furiously. It was hard to see all of a sudden. Something warm and wet was running down his cheeks.

Jack holstered his gun. He sighed.

“We should probably get back to Helios,” he said. “Someone has to rescue your ficus. I may have thrown it at a wall.”

Rhys took several stumbling steps forward and threw his arms around Jack. Jack froze, and then relaxed as Rhys buried his face in his neck. Slowly, Jack’s arms wrapped around him in return. A large, warm hand came to rest on one of Rhys’ shaking shoulders.

“Come on, don’t cry,” Jack said into the side of his face. “It’s a plant. I’ll buy you a better one. One that’s carnivorous.”

“It was a graduation present!” Rhys sobbed. “It’s been my best friend for years!”

“You know something, babe?” Jack asked. “Your life kind of sucked before me.”

Rhys couldn’t argue with that.

* 

They picked their way back through the wreckage of the bandit camp toward the exit, Rhys gingerly avoiding stepping on the splayed-out limbs of the fallen. Jack had no such compunctions. He seemed to take delight, actually, in intentionally treading on faces and torsos as he walked.

Rhys finally took a swig from the canteen, only to discover that it contained not water, but straight vodka. He coughed and choked on it and spit most of it into the dirt. Jack reached out a hand and took the canteen back, throwing back his head and taking a long, heartfelt drink. Rhys really couldn’t blame him.

Along the way, Rhys spotted one of his boots in a gap under a shipping container. Another had been flung to the base of the camp’s wall. Jack watched him collect them silently, still not in the mood to remark. 

“How did you find me so fast, anyway?” Rhys asked, tucking them under his arm.

His socks were basically ruined with blood and dust by now. There was no point in scuffing up the hard-to-maintain skagskin any further just to save them.

“The magazines on the shuttles all have anti-theft devices,” Jack said.

Rhys took a second to process that, then ripped the crumpled page out of his pocket. He unfolded it and looked at the back. Sure enough, there was some kind of shiny, metallic film over the barcode.

“That’s ridiculous!” he complained. “It’s a magazine!”

“People kept stealing them!” Jack said in defense. “Couldn’t resist the temptation to try to pocket this face. Guess you know about that, though, huh?”

Rhys flushed in embarrassment, balled the page up in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder. So much for sentiment.

It turned out that the pillar of black smoke had been a result of Jack’s car exploding. The twisted wreckage of metal was barely recognizable anymore, although it looked like it had probably once been yellow. Jack stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head in dismay at it, before muttering something about gold-plated hubcaps – really? – and heading toward a nearby metal landing.

There were two parking spots flanking a clunky old console that smelled strongly of skag piss. A sign up above displayed a holographic tire, tilted in motion, kicking up cartoon dust.

“This junk runs off hijacked Hyperion tech,” Jack said, banging a fist down on top of the monitor. “Give me a minute and I can hack into it and get us a car. Now where’s that friggin’ access port…”

“Ah, no, I’ve got it,” Rhys said, activating his ECHOeye and reconnecting it to the ECHOnet.

It’d been a while now since he’d been able to use it to hack, and the feeling of reinstating its scan functions felt like coming home. In only seconds, it had analyzed the console and popped up the results.

ANALYSIS COMPLETE

Catch-A-Ride Station

Owner and Operator: Scooter (New Haven)

Function: Vehicle Digistruction

Safety Rating: 2/100

Driving one of these might get you killed, but walking definitely will. Seatbelts not included.

Rhys remotely accessed the console’s data bank and used RHY5-W1NZ.exe to crack through the security program. The console flickered to life.

“CATCH-A-RIIIIIIIIIIDE!” a man’s voice cried from the green display screen.

Jack looked at it, then at Rhys.

“Huh,” he said. “Code monkey, you said?”

“Server maintenance,” Rhys said. “But I got bored.”

Jack grinned.

“Alright, what do you think?” he asked, pulling up the menu. “Turrets? Rocket launchers? I’m kind of feeling the racing stripes, but I could also go for a nice, sleek chrome if that’s more your style.”

“Whatever’s fastest,” Rhys said.

“Racing stripes, it is,” Jack said.

A moment later, a light runner was slowly forming on the metal pad beside them. It was all function, barely more than a chassis with seats and a steering wheel stapled to the front. There were racing stripes, as promised, but they were almost comical in their slap-dash, wiggling journey over the uneven metal exterior. The colors – fire engine red and bright, sky blue – were garish.

“You know, what really cuts me up about this,” Jack said critically, “is that I was almost this kid’s step-father once. Can you imagine? Taste this bad in my family?”

“You have a horse made of diamonds in your living room,” Rhys said.

“What’s your point?” Jack asked.

Rhys rolled his eyes and sank into a seat in the light runner with a sigh of relief. He raised one leg and began putting his boot back on.

“What happened with the shoes?” Jack asked, hopping into the driver’s seat next to him. “Did the clock strike twelve on your way down, Cinderella?”

“Bandits mugged me,” Rhys said glumly.

Jack stared at him for a second, and then began to laugh uproariously. The sound cracked like a whip through the still easing tension, shattering it completely. Jack flung a hand over his face. His skin had turned red with mirth around the edges of his mask.

“What?” Rhys snapped.

“You were on Pandora for all of six hours,” Jack said, “and you managed to end up stranded in a bandit camp in the middle of nowhere without your shoes! How does that happen?”

“I don’t know!” Rhys said. “How does any of this stuff happen? Corporate espionage, Jack? Mutant acid monsters? I grew up in a suburb! I got into college on a mathletes scholarship! It’s not funny! Stop laughing!”

He tried and failed to repress a smile.

Jack howled with laughter for almost the entire ride back to Opportunity. This maybe explained the number of skags he hit along the way. Then again, that could’ve also just been Jack.

And it wasn’t quite riding off into the sunset – they were still in the middle of Pandora’s painfully long day cycle, and dust came flying through the light runner’s unguarded front into Rhys’ eyes. At one point Jack had to swerve and double back to avoid attracting the attention of some enormous, long-legged, spider-like monster that he called “a drifter” and “a distant relation of yours, probably.” So it wasn’t quite riding off into the sunset.

But it was pretty damn close. 

*

A week later found Rhys camped out on Jack’s couch, browsing the ECHOnet and studiously avoiding eye contact with the frozen Butt Stallion (which he still wasn’t convinced wasn’t some elaborate prank on Jack’s part). It had been an unspoken agreement that Rhys wouldn’t return to the job he was woefully underqualified for and which he hadn’t wanted or enjoyed in the first place. Not that it mattered, because Dr. Headland had vanished mysteriously in the night.

Rhys was fine not knowing whether he had managed to jump ship or if Jack had done something nasty and unspeakable to him. The group chat, however, was rife with speculation on the fate of Dr. Moist and Intern Rhys. Most people seemed to think (or hope) that they had both been airlocked for some unknown offense, the exact nature of which was hotly debated. Rhys figured he’d give them another couple of days to swap conspiracy theories and work themselves into a frenzy before he dropped a “news of my death has been greatly exaggerated” post. In the meantime, he was having fun watching them once more dig their own mortifying graves with rampant shit talking.

He did feel a small twinge of guilt when Benson posted a very nicely-worded memorial post for him (that quickly became the most downvoted post in the history of the group chat), but that guilt eased a bit when Ines posted a picture of the two of them holding hands the very next day.

I basically did that, Rhys thought smugly. I mean, to be fair, I definitely got that ball rolling. So you’re welcome, Benson.

Jack, having now heard the whole story from start to finish, seemed to find the whole catastrophe retrospectively hilarious. Throughout the day he would sometimes stop and stand in front of Rhys, shaking his head in amusement as if suddenly recalling a funny joke that Rhys had told. He was also currently in the midst of some kind of scheme to feed Tediore false information in Rhys’ name in order to pump them for cash and future humiliation. Rhys wasn’t too concerned with the details.

In general, he wasn’t much concerned at all. He was, in that comfortable homey way that so few people seemed to ever achieve, happy. A sturdy happy. A happy that could maybe last.

Rhys sat on Jack’s couch and looked out at Elpis and space with a small smile on his face. For once, it didn’t look like a threatening, deadly maw of nothingness, but the future stretching out before him, infinite in its potential, and filled with stars.

A quiet pinging sound broke him from his thoughts. 

It was an ECHO call, and not from his parents, whom he had just sent a long, rambling message that amounted to, “Everything’s fine; please don’t try to sue anyone about it.” The signal looked like it was coming from Pandora, which was weird. Hesitantly, he answered, and blinked in surprise when he recognized the caller from the file on Jack’s known associates that Tediore had given him. It was Nisha Kadam, the Bandit Killer and Sheriff of Lynchwood.

“Uh, if you’re looking for Jack –” Rhys started.

“If I wanted to talk to Jack, I would’ve called him,” Nisha said. “I just wanted to see what kind of moron shacked up with that asshole. Kind of skinny, aren’t you?”

“…Okay,” Rhys said slowly, because he didn’t want to piss off a woman whose name had the word ‘killer’ in it.

“You know, the other day,” Nisha went on, “he called me, as if we’re friends or something –”

Aren’t you? Rhys wondered.

“– all panicky about having feelings. Christ, it was embarrassing. Feelings. Jack. If I ever have to go through that again, I might vomit.”

Rhys blinked. “Are you…is this a shovel talk?”

Nisha looked briefly surprised and then wryly amused. “God, no. Can you imagine? Actually, if you break his heart and make him cry real life tears, I would find that extremely funny. Do that.”

“I don’t know that he has functioning tear ducts?”

“Nah, I kneed him in the balls once; he definitely shed a couple then,” she dismissed. “Although, at this point to see him cry you’d probably have to steal his hard drive and sell it to his competitors or something.”

“He told you about that?”

“…What?”

“What?” Rhys cleared his throat. “Go back to what you were saying about feelings.”

Nisha squinted at him. “Right. Well, only a pussy is afraid of his own feelings, Rhys. You’re dating a pussy. Just passing the message along. He’s a total pussy.”

Then she hung up. So ended the strangest call of Rhys’ life. He sat for a moment, then craned his neck toward Jack’s study.

“Your friend Nisha just called to tell me you’re a pussy!” he yelled.

There was a thud and a muffled string of curses.

“That bitch is not my friend!” Jack yelled back.

Rhys grinned to himself. As long as they had Jack to bully, he thought he and Nisha would get along just fine. Perhaps sensing this thought, the man himself came out into the living room, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What the hell is Nisha doing calling you, anyway?” he asked. “How did she even get your number?”

“I dunno,” Rhys said. “Phonebook?”

“Oh, ha ha, ‘phonebook,’ he says, very funny.”

Jack sank down next to Rhys and threw an arm over the back of the couch. Rhys shifted and leaned into his side.

“You know,” Jack started slowly, which was generally a bad sign, “we’ve had a lot of conversations about you sucking my dick, but it hasn’t actually happened yet.”

Rhys raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“All I’m saying is, you did just run off to Pandora and cause a lot of blood, sweat, and tears making me chase you,” Jack went on. “And, frankly, I think –”

“Are you trying to guilt trip me into giving you head?” Rhys asked. “Because that’s what it sounds like you’re doing.”

“I’m not trying to guilt you, oh my god, you make it sound so evil,” Jack said. “I just want to know what it’s gonna take for me to get a blowjob around here.”

“It’ll take you shutting up, for starters,” Rhys said.

“Babe, if I had that mouth around me, there wouldn’t be a word in the universe left worth saying,” Jack promised.

Rhys’ lips quirked despite himself. It was probably an unrealistic expectation, but it might be nice to see Jack trying to stay quiet. Hot, even. He felt the stirrings of genuine interest and placed a hand on Jack’s chest, pushing him back into the cushions.

“Hell yeah,” Jack said.

“Strike one,” Rhys said.

Jack made a zipping motion with his fingers against his lips.

Rhys sank off the couch to his knees and pushed Jack’s thighs apart with his hands. He placed a kiss against the inside of one, and then the other. He leaned forward, stopping with his face inches above Jack’s groin. When he looked up, Jack’s eyes had dilated into hot coals. Maintaining eye contact, Rhys leaned the rest of the way in and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Jack’s still-clothed crotch.

“Mph,” Jack said.

Rhys smirked.

Jack wasn’t fully hard yet when Rhys pulled him free, but he was getting there. Rhys helped him along with his flesh hand, running his thumb slowly along one thick vein, teasing but firm. He pressed a small kiss to the middle of Jack’s shaft, then one further up. Finally, he kissed him almost on the very tip of his cock, millimeters from his slit. Then he opened his mouth, just a small amount, and licked. He felt Jack’s cock twitch.

With his cybernetic hand, Rhys tucked a loose strand of hair back behind his ear. His flesh hand had fallen to massage Jack’s balls. He pressed the flat of his tongue to the underside of Jack’s head, dragged it up, and sucked the tip of Jack’s cock into his mouth. There was a movement up above him. When he glanced at Jack, he had the meat of one hand between his teeth, and he was biting hard.

Rhys preened silently as he began to bob his head, massaging Jack with his tongue with gentle, twisting strokes. He hummed lowly and tasted precum. He continued like that for a few beats, working up a rhythm, never taking more than a few inches of Jack into his mouth. Then, a wicked heat zipping up his spine, he pressed in toward Jack’s dark curls slowly, and swallowed him up to the root. 

“Christ, I give, I give!” Jack burst out suddenly, throwing his head back. “You win, babe! Take it all! My corporate secrets are yours! Tell Tediore it was mission: success! Just fuckin’ – Rhys, babe, why are you stopping?”

Rhys sat back on his haunches and glared up at him. “You are such an asshole.”

Jack scoffed and carded his fingers through Rhys’ hair, tugging him gently back in. His smile was fond. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” he said.

“Yeah,” Rhys sighed heavily, rolling his eyes. “I guess I do.”

And, like a fool, he totally did.

END

(Bonus:

“Hey Nisha, long time no chat, how’s Bandit Town?”

“Filled with bandits. What do you want, Jack?”

“So I might have a little problem up here.”

“Yeah? Need me and the boys to pay a visit?” Nisha asked, eagerly fingering the grip on one of her twin pistols.

“No no no nooooo, I was just, y’know.” Jack cleared his throat. “Hypothetically speaking, if you started to like someone – and I know this is a stretch for a heartless cunt like you to imagine, so bear with me – but if you did and you were like, wow! I’d probably like him even if he were butt fuckin’ ugly! I mean, probably, and he’s super, super not, just to clarify, and this is still a hypothetical –”

“Jack,” Nisha interrupted. “Don’t ever call me again.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jack sighed. “I’ll see you next month for poker. Don’t forget it’s your turn to bring the booze.”

“Not anymore it’s not,” Nisha said, and hung up.)