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"You remember that like, the third message you sent me after this went down was the unsolicited announcement that a murder spree that I just died in wasn't enough for you to break up with Jedao?"

Rhys points out. His voice is soft and low, not critical,

"I don't need to know what you said, or whether you were right or wrong to feel like maybe you're being held to an unfair standard in this."

"J's all in. I mean, he's moved out, but he still wants to see me. It's just- Fives."

Voice breaking, before he decides;

"I don't think I can talk about this. Can we just- you don't have a tv, do you? Did we get you a tv?"

"It's okay, it's okay-- yeah, I have the expandable home cinema system."

You shouldn't have let him design his own room, Quentin. He shifts a little bit, his eye whirrs, and a frankly unnecessarily large screen descends majestically from the ceiling in front of his huge darkwood four poster bed.

"Hold on, just let me draw back the velvet curtains, and we can flop on the bed and watch something..."

He means that literally. There are extremely fancy velvet curtains making up the bed's canopy.

You shouldn't have let him design his own room, he's just made it a weird robo-prince's trashy new money mansion.

"I like your duvet," says Quentin, not out of desperation this time but as a soft, vaguely damp joke.

They've been here before. Funny to be choosing to come back.

Rhys gets it, and gives a little hum of acknowledgement that isn't really a laugh.

He tugs Quentin back towards the bed, has to release him to push open the curtains enough for them to have a little television watching window, then grabs him again to tug him onto the duvet in a companionable sprawl.

He doesn't turn the TV on immediately. Just lays in a slump with the other man for a minute, staring at the string bulb lights that are absolutely wrapped around the inside of the canopy.

"This sucks, right? Just this whole thing, completely sucks."

"My partner murdering you and me losing the moral highground, or this chandelier?"

Asks Quentin, from an obedient sprawl on his back, blinking at the lights overhead.

"I think the chandelier is- kind of okay?"

The softest, lightest little smack on the leg.

"Don't attack me like this right now! I'm very vulnerable!"

The chandelier is perfect, you monster.

He throws an arm over his eyes, and breathes all the way out.

"Have you been in touch with Jedao at all?"

"We spoke the day after. He apologised."

Rhys pauses, then, actually, grabs his communicator and thumbs his way down to the conversation in question, handing it to Quentin.

He doesn't look like a saint in it. He doesn't really care right now.

He hesitates a moment, then listens, rolling onto his side and tucking his forehead to Rhys's shoulders, hitching up into a fetal position and pressing his knees against his side.

"I admire that you never say quite what you're supposed to."

"I can't win a conversation with him. He'll always tie me in knots. If I had a long conversation with him then, then it would have ended in a situation where he'd murdered me and I was apologizing to him for it."

Rhys sounds bitter. Sounds tired. Wraps his arm around Quentin.

"And like, he'll have reasons. I get that it's all because of a million shitty things that are bigger and more intense and more important than anything that's ever happened to me, but-- Y'know what, if I'm no big deal to him, whatever. I'm a big deal to me. I don't want to be talked out of caring about how this felt to me and not to him. And I know he could."

So he chooses not to engage with that.

"When he loves you enough to protect you it isn't like that. He's so careful. He remembers- the littlest things I've told him upset me, the things I've asked for other times I've been in trouble."

He explains, softly.

"I say this so you know I'm not in trouble." Shifting closer, into that grip. "But I also agree that you are a big deal."

"Yeah, obviously he's great at keeping score."

More bitterness, although this time unfairly. Rhys is just as perfectly guilty of holding onto things as Jedao is. He just isn't feeling generous right now, about anything.

"Sorry. I just don't have a lot of faith in him right now. I know you do. I know you'll be okay."

But this is just another thing that he's angry at Jedao about right now. Fives doesn't really even cross his mind. The blurry amorphous shape of someone who hates him for reasons that Rhys doesn't really even understand anymore, and who Rhys hates back mostly out of habit by now.

He doesn't know if that will be okay, and feels thoroughly unqualified to guess about it.

"I think the thing that gets me is how fast it all fell apart."

Says Quentin, reaching out and curling a hand around the edge of Rhys's jacket.

"A couple of days ago I was carefully planning a Christmas dinner. So they'd have the sense of the traditions when I went back there with them. We had a bunch of friends coming- people who I don't know if they're speaking to him right now."

Rhys is quiet for a long moment, then finally he offers:

"People rearrange the rules when they know someone needs help from them. They accept that they're going to love people and not be loved back, or that they're going to love someone who's going to hurt them. People will keep being his friend because he's charming and beautiful and delightful, and because they want to help him get better. And most of them get to do that not knowing for certain whether or not their name is on the incredibly short list of people he cares enough about not to hurt like this."

He gives Quentin's shoulder a gentle rub.

"I forgave him when he tortured Hux. I was angry and upset, and we fought about it, but I forgave him."

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