Chapter 4
Vaughn returned home looking like he had just gotten run over, shoulders slumped and glasses askew, dragging his feet through the door before he finally shut and leaned against it. Rhys looked at him from his spot on the couch, empty, pizza-grease stained paper plate on his lap and a straw dangling from his lips from his glass of soda.
"Bro-"
"Don't."
"You look really shitty-"
Vaughn let out a strangled cry and fell to his knees dramatically, missing Rhys' heavy eye roll at the gesture, and slapped the hardwood floors with his hands. He realized his mistake a second later and Rhys heard him hiss in pain, the sound slightly muffled by the floor where his head was bowed.
"Soooo..."
Vaughn groaned again, forehead pressed against the flooring.
"Wanna talk about it?" An answering moan told Rhys that the answer was probably no, so he got up from the couch and went back into the kitchen, grabbing two more slices of pizza and putting them on his used plate. They were a bit cold by now, so Rhys popped them in the microwave for about a minute (Vaughn wasn't going anywhere anytime soon). After the microwave dinged, Rhys took the pizza and placed it on the floor next to Vaughn.
"Want some pizza?" Vaughn lifted his head enough to see where the plate was and grabbed for it, then slowly got to a sitting position on the floor, Rhys mirroring his action and sitting across from him. His friend started stuffing the pizza in his mouth, uncaring of the heat, and nearly started sobbing.
"You're an angel, Rhys."
"I try." Rhys dodged a bit of chewed pizza that came spewing from Vaughn's mouth, eyeing the glob of food on the floor with disgust. Fuckin' Christ. "Speaking of angels, I met one."
A mumbled that's nice came from Vaughn, who was too focused on the food to really pay attention to Rhys. Who could blame him? The entire Accounting department went through hell and back just to find out where a very large amount of money went, and several employees got fired in the process. Normal day for Hyperion, but extremely stressful and agonizing nonetheless.
"I mean one lives next door, not literally, but her name is Angel and she's the daughter of our local beekeeper-slash-horrible neighbor." The only response Rhys got was a grateful moan around a mouthful of pizza. He scowled and poked Vaughn's stomach, hard enough to make the guy cough.
"Mr. Lawrence, your latest obsession, has a teenage daughter. I thought this would be valuable information for your Who Is Mr. Lawrence? puzzle."
"Oh, it is." Vaughn thankfully swallowed his food this time before speaking. "But I'm much too tired to care. Someone stole like, a million bucks from Hyperion last week and the company is just now noticing it."
Rhys squinted at him, not quite believing what he was hearing, but then again Hyperion was filled with cutthroat assholes who'd do anything to get a leg up, so he supposed it wasn't too far fetched.
"Did you find out who did it?"
"Of course," Vaughn answered, as if the possibility of them not finding the thief was even well, possible. "And the people who helped him out, a couple of moles in my own department. They're gonna wanna be out of town before the full report reaches Handsome Jack tonight. So what about this girl? Don't tell me you're crushin' on some teenager, Rhys, you dirty old man."
"What?! No!" Rhys held up his one arm in defense, looking scandalized that Vaughn would even suggest such a thing. "She's like, fifteen! And yeah she was cute but like, in a little sister way, so no."
"Okay well, good. What'd you do though, go knocking on their door to borrow a cup of sugar?"
"Actually, she's the one who knocked on our door. She gave me a jar of honey as, and I quote, a preventive measure to make sure we didn't take her dad's shitty demeanor personally. She seems really sweet. Told me to tell you hi and everything."
"Maybe," Vaughn stopped to swallow a particularly thick wad of food. "Maybe she gets it from her mom? Oh, do we have a hot mom living next door too or is Mr. Lawrence living the single dad life?"
"I-" The taller of the two squinted at his smaller companion, then shook his head. "I don't know, and frankly it's none of our business."
Vaughn finished off his pizza and eyed the glob of food he launched at Rhys, making a face before he pinched it up and put it on his plate, wiping his fingers on his pants. He got himself off the floor, Rhys following him up, and threw his plate away before shrugging.
"Right, right. Oh, before I pass out and forget my work day happened at all, I got a hold of Athena again, our applicant? I was able to schedule some meet up with her, but she's only free tomorrow, like, in the evening. That cool, bro?" Rhys thought about it for a moment, tapping his chin with his hand. As long as it was after they were both out of work, it should be fine. And if traffic was forgiving tomorrow, then they'd have time to come home and cook up dinner or something before she got there. It'd be a nice gesture on their part.
"Yeah, I don't see why not. Why don't you get a hold of her again and tell her we'll have dinner waiting."
"You're cooking?" Rhys nodded, smiling.
"Oh hell yeah!" It was a well kept secret that Rhys was amazing in the kitchen, as in, only Rhys, Vaughn, and Yvette knew from their previous time of living together. He didn't cook that often since Vaughn was trying to do it more and more, but when he did, it was like cause for celebration.
"I won't do too much though, just keeping it simple."
"No, no, yeah that's totally cool. She's gonna love you, bro."
"Let's hope she loves the place too, or we're back at square one."
The clack of plastic keys filled the Robotics floor, where not even the slightest buzz of murmured conversation could be heard even though it was commonplace for the programmers to spark something akin to friendly talk between them. But they all felt the stress weighing on them, the horrible anticipation and dread forming clouds over their heads as they worked.
Matthews in cubicle fourteen even had beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, and Handsome Jack wasn't even there yet.
Of course, they'd all woken up that morning to a mass email from Jack's secretary informing them that the CEO would be sweeping through their floor that day, and honestly it was worse than not knowing if he was coming or not. Now, they all had the pleasure of being paranoid, never knowing when exactly he'd pop up, but knowing that he was going to be there.
Rhys, of course, had the unfortunate privilege of knowing beforehand that this was going to happen, but it did very little in helping to calm his nerves.
As it stood, he tried to distract himself with code and when that was finished, typing up reports, some of which weren't due for another week. His keystrokes just added to noise on the floor, the repetitive clack clack clack becoming the mantra of the entire department. Even Vasquez was quiet today, probably trying to avoid drawing attention to himself in an unusual display of self-preservation. Rhys kinda wished he had the power to make Vasquez complacent with just the news of his impending arrival like Jack did.
That'd be sick as fuck.
But he was getting nothing done thinking about that, and his reports were just blank word documents, staring at him from the screen. Rhys scowled at them as if they had been judging his lack of progress, and then sighed. Yeah, absolutely nothing was getting done this way. He needed coffee or food or both. But mostly he just really needed this day to be over.
Rhys stood and stretched his arms over his head, sighing loudly at the pop and crack his bones made. He spotted a few of his fellow code monkeys eyeing him as he stood, and even heard a gasp or two at his audacity to move now, when Jack could show up at any minute. He ignored them and trekked to the small employee lounge, happy to see that the coffee maker was still on and half-way full. After mixing together his coffee, he left the lounge and went back to his desk, eyes sweeping over the floor trying to see if Jack appeared while he was away, and, satisfied with not seeing him yet, sat back down in his swivel office chair.
Rhys sipped at his coffee periodically, his left hand flying over the keys with ease once he had something to wake him up and make him alert. Knowing what to type up wasn't hard, since he knew what would be considered useful, but he soon found himself drifting from that. A pad of paper caught his eye, a few ideas messily scrawled recently at the top of the page but it was otherwise blank. Rhys kept the pad close by in case he thought of something while writing code and didn't want to open a new word document just for passing ideas, and the thought of grabbing it right now was tempting. His code work was done, and he had plenty of time before his report was due.
What the hell, why not? He had some ideas for future prototypes anyway, and even though Vasquez would probably never take them or pass them on to higher ups, it'd be nice to get them written down.
Rhys started looking for a pen, checking everywhere on his desk and in his drawers while the elevator dinged softly, announcing the arrival of someone. If it was Handsome Jack, then yay, Rhys thought sarcastically, the rest of the floor could get their head out of their anxiety-riddled asses and do some work.
Not that he was doing much better, with his hand trembling as he searched for a damn pen, but still.
It was indeed Jack who exited the elevator, making his presence known with loud clapping and a louder voice reverberating across the floor.
"What is up, Robotics?" The question was drawn out, like he was talking to a stadium filled with fans and trying to get them amped up. No one answered him save for a few quiet Hello, sirs.
"Oh you guys can do better than that. No, you know what? Screw it. You're all fucking lame anyway. Get back to work, kids! Daddy's here to see if you deserve a gold star so show me something that'll make me smile!"
Rhys thought he heard someone cough next to him, followed by the resuming of clacking keys. He chanced a glance around the wall of his cubicle, rolling his chair out until he could peek around the corner. Handsome Jack was just down the way, leaning into someone else's space as they typed away. Rhys could see her, he thought her name was Janett or something, flinch every time Jack made a humming noise.
He still hadn't found his pen, but as he moved to roll back to his desk, he saw the glint of a metal clip on a pen under it, far back by the wall hidden by wires from his computer. Rhys heaved a sigh and got up from his chair, pushing it back far enough so that he'd have room to crawl under there and grab it. How the hell did it even fall back there?
Rhys reached for it was his metal arm, the other one braced against the floor to balance him. He knew he made a ridiculous picture at the moment, on his knees with his ass in the air, one arm frantically reaching for a stupid pen. It was tangled in the wires pretty good, so when Jack happened to walk by his cubicle, Rhys was still unfortunately in the same position, only now he was using both hands to untangle the pen. He got it free with a triumphant grin right before Handsome Jack let loose a dirty wolf whistle.
The cybernetic man cursed quietly and jumped, and when he tried to scramble out from underneath his desk, he knocked his head on the underside of it. Rhys hissed in pain, but was otherwise too panicked to really sit there and nurse his wounds, so he climbed up to his full height with his back still turned to Jack, who in turn hummed appreciatively.
"Ooohh, nice legs, pumpkin." Okay, he knew his chosen slacks were a little tight, but- Wait, wait, that was Jack. Rhys spun around, face flushed.
"H-Handsome Jack! I mean, sir, I mean- What uh, what can I do for you, sir?" The department had gone silent, trying to get a peek at them. Somewhere, someone spilled their coffee over their keyboard and loudly cursed. Rhys could see the corner of Jack's eye twitch in annoyance at the outburst, but he preoccupied himself with giving Rhys another once-over before crossing his arms, shrugging, and leaning against the wall of Rhys' cubicle.
"Hm, nothin'." He looked bored, disinterested mostly, but his eyes were shining with some shitty mischievous glee. Rhys was completely confused, standing as still as possible, not wanting to trip Jack's mood into something more volatile by so much as breathing the wrong way.
"What's your name, kiddo?" Rhys almost dropped his pen, knowing that when Handsome Jack asked for specific names he's either planning that employee's death or... Well he never heard of anything good come out of these types of situations.
He answered anyway.
"It's Rhys, sir." Jack smirked at him, more of a barely there twitch at the corner of his mouth than an actual smirk. He turned to leave, but not before winking at Rhys and saying,
"Get back to work, sugarplum."
Rhys barely gathered his thoughts in time to mumble out a confused and slightly terrified "Yes sir" before Jack completely left his area to move on to terrify somebody else. It took some time before Rhys realized he was still standing, and even longer after he finally sat down to realize he'd been staring at his screen for the last five minutes without moving, the cursor blinking at him from the open word document. He didn't feel like jotting down prototype ideas anymore.
Three people left the Robotics department with their things in a box that day, and Rhys wasn't one of them. Despite Jack asking for his name, the CEO didn't bother him after his initial appearance, and Rhys wasn't sure how he should take that. However, the rest of the day went as well as it could have, and Rhys and Vaughn were able to leave together and make it home with time to spare before Athena got there.
Rhys had decided on something simple for dinner, a chicken pasta, and Vaughn helped him with the small things like chopping tomatoes or stripping sprigs of rosemary. By the time a knock sounded at their door, the house was filled with the aroma of Rhys' pasta, filling the air with notes of garlic and rosemary, and the sweet tang of balsamic vinegar.
Vaughn answered the door while Rhys transferred the pasta to a serving dish, talking animatedly with who Rhys supposed would be Athena. Both voices floated through the living and to the kitchen, and all that Rhys could gather was that Athena was quiet, but her tone was firm, like she had total confidence in what she was saying.
Rhys snorted. It'd be nice to have someone like that in the house.
Vaughn and Athena got louder as they neared the kitchen just as Rhys pulled down plates and set them on the kitchen island next to the pasta, his hand then reaching for the silverware drawer to pull out three forks.
"And this is Rhys!" Vaughn gestured to him with a wave of his hand, Athena following his line of sight until Rhys fell into her vision. Rhys, in turn, gave Athena a small wave of his own before he stepped up to offer her a hand to shake. His prosthetic still had enough a charge to last through dinner at least, so there wasn't any awkward fumbling as to which hand Athena should take.
"It's very nice to meet you. We've been excited about this, you know?" Rhys pulled away to scratch his chin, smiling sheepishly. Athena returned the smile with a small one of her own.
"I have to admit, when I answered the ad, I didn't expect to be wined and dined before a decision was made. Dinner seems more like," Athena glanced at the steaming pasta on the island, eyes flickering from it to Vaughn, who had taken a seat on one of the bar stools. "A celebratory event after everything's been settled."
Vaughn and Rhys shrugged, almost in unison, and it was Vaughn who spoke up after pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "We'd thought it be a nice gesture either way, as like, a thank you for even giving the place a chance."
Rhys nodded in agreement before taking his own seat, distributing the plates among the three of them along with the silverware. Glasses of ice water had been set out too.
"But let's talk about that after dinner. We can just get to know one another for now and we'll show you around after we eat. Is that okay?" Rhys shifted in his seat when Athena turned her eyes to him. It was a little unnerving to say the least. She had a very serious gaze, made all the more solemn by the seemingly nature downward turn of her mouth. She gave him a small smile, though, and a hum in agreement.
Dinner went off without a hitch, the three of them sharing stories until their plates were empty and even well after that. They found out that Athena was looking to move further into the city to be closer to work, and that she'd be able to see her girlfriend Janey (no relation to Laney down the way) more often by doing so too. Neither man asked why she didn't move in with her girlfriend, as they still didn't know each other well enough to ask things like that. They also found that Athena worked as a bodyguard of all things, with most of her work keeping her in the heart of the city, making sure certain people were kept out of harm's way.
Neither Rhys or Vaughn thought that there were many threats in the area that required a bodyguard, but after hearing a few of Athena's stories, they shared a worried glance. They'd be watching rooftops from now on, trying to catch a glimpse of a glare off of a scope.
When every plate was clean and the leftovers boxed up, Rhys and Vaughn showed her around the house, starting with the basics and finally ending with her would-be room. It was a decent size and had a window that faced the backyard, where Rhys had thought about planting a vegetable garden come spring. There were two bathrooms in the house and while Rhys and Vaughn shared one, Athena would have the other to herself if she moved in.
Before any decisions could be made, Rhys remembered that he had a store-bought cheesecake in the fridge. A plain one, made to accommodate any topping a person liked. He thought that this would be a nice, final offering even if things didn't go as well as they hoped, and left Vaughn and Athena in the living room as he went to prepare.
Only problem was, he didn't have anything to top it with.
Rhys groaned loudly, hanging his head back after putting the cheesecake on the island. Vaughn came in then, followed by Athena.
"Got a problem, bro?" Rhys groaned again before answering.
"I forgot to pick up some strawberry topping. Even raspberry would've been nice. Sorry, guys." Vaughn shrugged and got out paper plates anyway and three more forks along with a knife to cut the cake. It'd be a bit dry, but still edible.
"What about that?" Athena asked, pointing with her thumb at the jar of honey on the counter.
"What about what- Oh, that? I guess we could use it." Rhys nodded and grabbed the honey and a spoon, putting them both on the island next to the cheesecake. "Still haven't tried this."
Vaughn gave the first slice to Athena, then served Rhys before serving himself. Athena helped herself to the honey, covering the slice of cheesecake in a generous amount of the thick substance before handing it over to the boys. They tried to ignore the extremely satisfied moan from Athena at the taste of the honey.
"Where'd you get this?" Fortunately, Athena did not have Vaughn's frankly disgusting habit of talking while his mouth was full, so everyone was spared the pain of dodging flying chunks of sweetness.
"Our neighbor bottles his own honey, I guess. His daughter brought it over as welcome gift."
"Yeah, okay," Athena took another bite, this time without making noise, and addressed them again once her mouth was empty. "If your neighbor makes honey this good, I'm in." Athena really liked honey. She wasn't going to tell them why, or even exactly how much she liked it, but she did. They'd have to find out on their own down the line. She'd tell them, but it was embarrassing. She blamed Janey entirely.
Rhys and Vaughn were both halfway through their own slices before they realized what she had said. Vaughn went into a coughing fit out of surprise, and Rhys downed a his water before he was able to answer. Athena looked mighty pleased at having caught them off guard. Rhys finally got back in working order, looking at Athena in shock.
"Wait, what?"
"First month's rent required before I move in, right? Yeah I'll bring a cheque over tomorrow, have my stuff in by this weekend. That sound okay?" Instead of actual verbal confirmation, Vaughn gave a hoot and broke out the beer from the fridge, passing a bottle to everyone and passing around a bottle opener. They cheered, celebrating good food, roommates, and not having to scrape by every month. It was hard not to share Vaughn's enthusiasm, and soon the three of them were laughing in the kitchen, the flow of their conversation easier now. It was a good feeling.
When it came time for Athena to leave for the night, Rhys walked her out and said goodbye, telling her that he'd have new keys made for her by the time she was ready to move in. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Mr. Lawrence's car was gone from the driveway, and that there wasn't a single light on in the house.