He didn't know what the hell this was but it definitely wasn't a dream, Rhys had been extra touchy lately. Kid wasn't even acknowledging him, and to top it off the moment Jack mentioned his nerdy little friend he started bashing his head against a concrete wall until Jack went away.
Usually he would root around in Rhys' mind, looking through memories, maybe concoct some filthy wet dreams for his kiddo to have.
Just for the hell of it for the most part, Jack just liked to watch him squirm.
So now, he was standing in front of some...thing. It was probably an Eridian, he realized. This one was more human-like as far as Eridians went, so maybe not.
Whatever it was it was still a monstrosity, but one that didn't induce horror as easily. It stood tall, taller than him, maybe about ten feet. Claws for hands, and a tail that hit the floor with a loud THUMP every so often. The tail end up leaving behind some kind of ooze wherever it made contact.
Gross.
"You are Handsome Jack." it stated pointedly, so it speaks, he thought. Awesome.
"Uh- Ha yeah sugar. That's-that's me." He replied, he hadn't felt this small since he was a stupid scared little kid, he hadn't felt that in-fuck he hated that feeling.
"Rhys is fond of you. You are fond of him too." Jack bristled at that. so what if he thought Rhys was pretty damn fuckable...For a pathetic little code monkey. That Doesn't mean that he gives a shit, just that he thinks the kids easy on the eyes.
"Well who the fuck isn't?! I mean I am the hero here!" that seemed to kick the creature into full on business mode.
"I am going to get you a body, Handsome Jack. Rhys will help you and you will help him and protect him."
"What?" The alien spoke in concise statements like a recording, he felt like he was on Eridian hotline for aggravated and confused humans stuck in limbo.
"If you allow him to die, or try to kill him you will die. Painfully. You will help him."
"I'm not playing fucking babysitter just because some fucking star trek knock off threatens me." Jack spat back, he was getting real fucking tired of following other peoples demands. He was Handsome fucking Jack, he didn't follow anyone else's lead.
"He can get you to a vault, if you gain his trust" The creature looked livid, like it just lost everything, it made a noise that sounded almost like a sigh, "...Rhys is a siren. You will do good things for Pandora with him and you will be the hero you always believed you were."
The idea of getting to a vault and destroying this piss-hole of a planet ended up being the thing that got him to begrudgingly agree.
"C'mon walk this way for me, kitten." Jack, well his holographic form, whispered in Rhys' ear. "I've got coordinates, a clone facility Nakayama had. Apparently that little freak could do something right."
Jack didn't have anything to lose, so he figured that seeing as how the way to a body was essentially empty, Rhys would stay alive and he could get a body. Go back to being a real life bonafide bad ass. Rhys had been incredibly obedient toward him since that talk he had with the Eridian while he was stuck in Rhys' head space.
It definitely made keeping him alive and well easier, he hadn't even questioned where he got the coordinates to get himself a body or even if it was a good idea to leave his...Friends/accomplices/frenemies In the middle of the night.
They were almost on the doorstep of the... Facility was a nice way to put it, more like a shack with clones and preserved dead body doubles. The crazy thing being that the closer he got to a corporeal body the more could feel the inclination to protect Rhys getting stronger. so this is what it is, he mused, he gets a protector and I get an obedient siren to do whatever I want with? Not a bad deal, I guess. He didn't understand the creature's motivation but he doesn't mind taking care of Rhys if he can get him to a vault.
He doesn't have a problem with Rhys. His bandit friends? Yes. His Hyperion so-called best friends who would betray him in a heartbeat?Definitely.
"This place is creepy," Rhys said, mainly to himself, "I mean I always admired you but this" the redheaded male gestured around the smallish space, "is some single white female kind of stalker crap." Rhys allowed himself a small smile when he heard Jack chuckling at what he said.
"Yeah, well. You're not wrong, kiddo." Jack replied, feeling a little superior already. "but I'm not in the mood to be picky about where I'm getting my new body, babe." He added, "Just Jack my chip in. Ha! Jack in, you get it, kiddo? yeeeeaaaaah, of course ya do."
"Oh...um, which one?" The compulsion to defer to Jack had been there for a while, he had only started listening to it without too much coaxing in the last 48 hours.
"That one," Jack gestured over to a clone still in its formaldehyde covered cocoon, "looks like the least likely to have fanboy splooge all over it."
His new body was good, just as good as his old one even. Maybe even better, this new body of his had a virgin liver and lacked his trademark scar. He found an outfit that would at least appear unassuming enough that he wouldn't be attacked on sight. He had almost got lost in the feeling of being alive again when he heard the tiny whimpers Rhys was emitting. He looked so scared and vulnerable, then Jack saw the blood leaking from his port.
"Shit, Shit shit! Rhys, pumpkin, baby... What'd you do?" he moved over to sit with with the other man, manhandling his ex employee on his lap. "You couldn't have just used the chip? It's in your pocket dummy."
Rhys looked at him with prideful indignation. He pouts as if he's getting ready to tell Jack off in that snarky-little-kitten way of his, but his words come out smaller than Rhys probably wants them to. "I did! But I...When you left my..." He broke off into a moan of pain, "H-h-hurts." He mumbled, feeling stabs to his pride for whimpering to a psychopath like Handsome Jack.
Rhys had always had an incredibly high pain tolerance but this was unbearable, and it killed his dignity that he was sitting in Handsome Jack's lap like some child. "Okay kitten, let daddy take care of this, then." Jack snarked, grinning at Jack and wriggling his eyebrows.
Rhys rolled his eyes at the former CEO, even in the midst of all of his incredible pain, Jack just has to make some stupid innuendo. Or call him some kind of petty endearment, possibly accompanied by some kind of cursory glance that resembled a leer. If Rhys didn't know any better, he'd think Jack was flirting with him.
He let his pride go and submitted to Jack as the older man cleaned the blood out of his port, and made sure there wasn't any more, permanent damage. Jack said something to him that sounded disturbingly like, "good boy."
Jack was surprisingly good at being gentle, he soothed the younger man every time he flinched or hissed, he couldn't feel anything other than white hot pain, his port was incredibly sensitive, but usually it was sensitive in a good way instead of this torture.
Rhys could see Jack's hands shaking; like he thought Rhys was something fragile and dangerous and if he messed up he would break the younger man beyond repair. It occurred to Jack that he feasibly could. He could break Rhys, he could ruin him and tear down and destroy every pretty facet of the cybernetic man. "Feeling better, kitten?" Jack smirked, "not gonna piss yourself from the pain now?"
"You helped me." The younger man croaked to him, looking at him with confusion in his eyes.
"Why would you do that? Jack, I don't…" Get it, his brain finished lamely unspoken. Rhys wasn't stupid, he didn't have any illusions about Jack and his relationship with him. In his eyes Jack was a hero, someone larger than life, bigger than god. He had no reason to waste his time and his breath on Rhys under normal circumstances. He certainly wouldn't be straddled in Jack's lap like some overgrown house cat. If the CEO hadn't been forced into it by being stuck in Rhys' head he would have never even met Jack. Or maybe ended up dead on his floor, for no particular reason. Jack chuckled, but it sounded a little off.
"Kiddo, me an' you" he gripped Rhys' waist hard, almost punishingly. "We're gonna do some great things. We get back to Helios, you're going straight to the top. Riiiiiight under me." Jack wriggled his eyebrows up and down. "You know, as my second-in-command."
But first they had to get off Pandora.
