#11

[rank1]

Passengers: Travis Touchdown and Rhys Strongfork and Lucifer Morningstar
Location: An elevator
Date: mid March
Summary: Lucifer is like "wow I got the two most annoying inmates, let's lock them in a room together to sort things out!!" and ideally Travis will not fucking kill Rhys
Warnings: ideally Travis will not fucking kill Rhys but i'll let u knowwww



Noon at the gym. Travis is in his designated gym t-shirt, the sacrificial lamb from his collection that is navy blue and declares him to be WORLD FAMOUS. He does not own gym shorts, either here or at home, but here he cannot work out in the nude without being called a pervert or something. Maybe next month when the commissary opens he'll buy a pair. For now: jeans.

He waits at the gym door, head back, humming to himself, drumming his fingers on his thigh. He wonders if Rhys will pussy out of anything heavier than 10lbs. Probably. That guy looks like he was made for pushing papers, not work. Lucifer might do a little better, but he doesn't look like the kind of guy to tolerate gym shit very long. Short session, Travis bets.

Smash cut to getting in an elevator with the two guys. No gym after all. What a fucking bait-and-switch.

"The fuck is the point of this," Travis says, mostly to himself. The doors start to slide closed behind him, and he pivots on a heel, confused: Lucifer has not boarded the elevator, and Travis finds himself looking at an ever-narrowing slice of Lucifer's face. He calls back, wary: "Dude, what's the deal?"

Comments

[rank1]

I really don't, because I don't fear shit like that. It sounds pretty sick to airlock someone, though. Is it true the air gets sucked from their lungs so they suffocate as they spin in space?

[smugreport]

[ "It sounds pretty sick to airlock someone" WOOF- it's not like Rhys was above it or anything but he didn't try to cool-factor it that much. Just another unfortunate part of office life. ]

...Yeah, I guess so. And freeze.

[ His mind immediately goes to Henderson's lifeless body floating past the window of his office with timing so good it was like a bad joke. Then his mind goes to other bodies, co workers who didn't make it off the station, Yvette....ejected into space, their corpses left to orbit Pandora like a frozen graveyeard.

He's glad he's not facing Travis right now, with the way he can feel his brows pinching. There's still some strain in his voice. ]

Can we- ....If you're gonna talk, talk about something else. Like your berry girls or whatever.

[rank1]

[Travis raises an eyebrow. Though he'd usually relish the chance to talk about something that matters to him, it's Rhys. He's not gonna set himself up to be called a pervert or whatever.

Skeptically:]

What, you want to hear about Bizarre Jelly?

[smugreport]

[ Rhys crosses one of his legs over so it sits high on his thigh, crosses his arms a little tighter. ]

Yeah, that. I've already forgotten most of what you said on Meodriotope so it'll be like brand new information.

[ Literally- well, almost literally anything would be better to think about than where his mind's going right now, even Travis's weird interests. Some kind of background noise to drown out the bad thought spiral he's begun to enter. ]

[rank1]

Hey bro, great idea. I love just chatting away at someone who doesn’t actually give a shit about what I’m saying.

[Travis rolls his eyes.]

You know not all of us talk just to hear our own voices, right?

[smugreport]

[ Rhys does turn his head to face Travis at that. ]

Who said I don't give a shit? I totally care about.. Bizzare...

[ He's already forgotten. ]

Look, we're stuck in here for the next however long. I don't like it, you don't like it, but I'm at least trying to make some conversation to pass the time. I thought you were into things like twenty questions.

[rank1]

Uh huh.

[He’s not buying it.]

There’s a reason I played it with Jack and not you, and it wasn’t that she’s hot.

[smugreport]

[ Jack truly has the most unfortunate name, it makes him near wince every time he hears it despite how common it is. ]

What, you only play with bald people?

[rank1]

[Travis isn’t sure if he’s met someone with a dumber sense of humour in his whole life, but if he has, they sure aren’t coming to mind.]

Nah, but give it time. You’ll figure it out.

[smugreport]

[ Any humor in his expression from his attempt to redirect vanishes and is replaced by a scowl instead. ]

Fine, I'll go first. What's with you trying to fight everyone?

[rank1]

There’s nothing in life as thrilling as a good fight.

[He doesn’t want to play shit, but he’s here and stuck, so:]

What’s with you picking fights all the time? You know you’ll lose.

[smugreport]

[ Inwardly he is stupidly satisfied that Travis is playing along. ]

Seriously? Nothing?

[ Rhys can think of at least a handful things that give a better rush then a smackdown. Landing a good deal or promotion, watching someone you hate suffer, rolling a nat 20, the entirety of Pandora (in a bad way.) ]

Physically, maybe [ definitely. ] but physical isn't how I play.

[ He taps his right temple with the port in it. What does that even mean? Don't worry about it. ]

[rank1]

[Travis genuinely isn't sure if Rhys means his brain or the hunk of metal, but either way, he's skeptical of anything interesting going on upstairs. His expression in the dim glow of the CommLink is notably dubious. "Sure."]

Absolutely nothing.

[smugreport]

[ HE MEANS BATTLE OF THE MINDS TRAVIS. He means dueling with wit and intelligence!! ]

You'd fit right in on Pandora, that place was all violence all the time. Well- mostly.

[ It had it's moments, overshadowed as they were. The biodome, the....uh. Okay it had one moment, and it didn't really count. ]

[rank1]

[Given Travis has no reason to believe Rhys has any idea whatsoever what his inner life is like, he's similarly dubious of a claim like that. You don't fucking know where I'd fit in, bro, and all.]

Why is it all violence?

[smugreport]

[ He shrugs. ]

I dunno, it's like their culture down there or something, every other week there'd be some kind of turf war between clans. And if you didn't get get caught in their crossfire you'd be running from getting ripped apart by the wildlife instead.

[ Hyperion was supposedly helping with that, "bring order." But from all Rhys had seen down there they didn't accomplish much in the way of that. And the people, they really thought Hyperion had made it worse.

Regardless of what Rhys thought about most Pandorans, he could only deny the reality of it all so much after living down there for months. ]