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[therushingsky]

"Heyyyy, you've reached the head office of the Atlas Corporation, leave a message and your number, and one of our people will get back to you."

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[therushingsky]

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.

[magician_king]

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

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

[therushingsky]

"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.

[magician_king]

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."

[therushingsky]

"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.

[magician_king]

"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."

[therushingsky]

"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.

[magician_king]

"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."

[therushingsky]

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."