In the Beginning
Summary: In the beginning, Owen genuinely disliked David Xanatos.
A/N: In the end I had to go write some porn to get the smut-bunnies out of my system and some fluff to get the fluff bunnies settled and then some other stuff generally not belonging to this fandom before continuing this. Hopefully they won't take up residence again.
Warning: Language and bad grammar (beware for I've a love for run on sentences and the misuse of hyphens).
Spoilers: Vows mostly.
Disclaimer: Gargoyles… Disney… Buena Vista… Greg Weisman… not me.
Chapter 12: In Which Information is Freely Given
It wasn't that David couldn't do it alone. He could do it alone and could probably do it better by himself. That wasn't what this was about.
"Ouch," David held up his hand in the dim light and frowned at the paper cut he'd just given himself. Wordlessly Owen held up a handkerchief from where he was crouching. "Thank you."
David had wanted help because sorting through the boxes that made up the Archives ostensibly to clean out obsolete files and reorganize the others was a tedious way to spend the day and Owen seemed adept at doing tedious tasks. In reality he was doing it to try and locate the rest of the project Renard had given him ("given" his ass, it had cost more than a pretty penny) because, as Renard had put it, if David wanted it that bad he could just go dig it out himself and Owen had an eye for subtle details.
The whole process - dragging out a box that looked vaguely useful, digging through the files only to find the box was mislabeled or that half the files belonged somewhere else, gathering up the misplaced files and finding the appropriate box for them only to realize absolutely none of them were what he was looking for - had David feeling vaguely annoyed and was giving him flashbacks to his first high school research paper. Owen seemed unaffected, though he was getting a lot of dust on his trousers.
"Kind of reminds me of high school," David said because Owen seemed more than happy to spend the next few hours the way they had the last thirty minutes: in complete silence.
"I wouldn't know sir," Owen muttered distractedly, digging through the pile of files that they'd ended up dumping on the floor. It was less organized than Owen would have liked, clearly, but David had preferred to have it all sitting out in front of him and it was fun to watch Owen glare at him every time David upended another box of files on the already considerable pile. "I attended a private school. We didn't study like this."
"Oh?" David turned to the younger man, interest piqued. The blond was kneeling, his shirt sleeves pushed up past the elbows. David considered that it was the most natural he'd ever seen the young man look. Owen made a faintly agreeable noise and yanked a folder from the pile, giving it a quick once over before discarding it again.
"My father expected me to be a doctor from the start, or a lawyer if I didn't develop the aptitude, so he worked to give me every advantage."
"Ah," that certainly explained some of Owen's odd past. "How'd he take it when you chose to work for Renard instead?"
"We haven't spoken in three years," Owen's voice was neither choked nor dismissive. Either the blond was very good at hiding how he felt about the situation or he'd come to terms with it long ago. Still, David found himself frozen, looking for something sensitive to say, maybe to confide in the blond about his own father. Owen sat upright and interrupted David's mental ramblings by holding up a thin blue folder. "Found it."
(Line Break)
The Archives room was temperature controlled because even though Renard had more or less let the department fade into the background that was no reason to risk losing valuable data before it could be digitalized. Since it was technically David's job to clean up the basement and deal with the mess he and - strictly by association - Owen had made, he sent the young blond back to his desk with instructions to add the blue file to the growing stack.
It took another three hours just to get all the files they'd disturbed to their proper place and by the end of it David was dirty and - despite the excellent air conditioning system - sweaty. He returned to his desk annoyed but over all very hopeful that, surely, after all that his day could not possibly get worse.
Owen, having replaced his jacket and cleaned up a bit, was sitting at David's computer, fingers flicking over the keyboard with nothing less than a self-assured grace. Blue eyes glanced up at him briefly as the darker man approached before returning to the monitor. Despite the fact that there was no logical reason for Owen to be seated at David's desk, using his computer, no alarm bells rang off in the darker man's head. Owen was about as relaxed as he ever was; posture straight and had not seemed surprised or discomforted at David's appearance. Nothing to worry about.
"Hey," David stopped at the side of his desk and reached, rather rudely, across it and through Owen's line of sight to grab a Kleenex. The typing didn't so much as pause. "So," David ran the tissue across his face and frowned at the dirty streaks it took off him before discarding it in the trash can. "Thank you for the help. There's still another forty or so boxes to deal with but I think-" Owen's right ring finger smacked the enter key with more force than was strictly necessary and lines of text began scrolling across the screen. David couldn't help but glance at the monitor and when he realized what he was looking at his blood ran cold.
David was not so foolish as to keep his private work on a CyberBiotics computer; certainly not after the damage done by the fire. He did have, however, a very secure folder dedicated to random notes he needed to leave himself as the ideas and thoughts came to him at the office. The folder was regularly dumped onto floppy disks and removed from the computer. No harm, no foul.
Of course David understood that there was no way to completely erase something from a computer; you could only disguise it and bury it deep. Owen had somehow broken into the folder, surpassing passwords and dead ends and all the other tricks David had used to hide the folder's information and the "deleted" work from before. Owen sat back, expression impassive.
Shit.
"Owen," David's voice was low, calm and very much in control. Owen turned his head ever so slightly, meeting his gaze with a faint twitch of his lips. "It would appear that you've stumbled across a private project of mine."
It was several projects actually, including the plans for his own company and several... borrowed weapons designs that David intended to improve upon. The seated blond gave a brief nod as though he really had just 'stumbled' across some sensitive information by chance instead of the dedicated search that had to have occurred for him to have found it.
"It would seem so sir," Owen pushed up his glasses.
"I did ask you to stop that," David said mildly. Owen's lips twitched again and he moved his hand to lightly nudge the frames into place with forefinger and thumb. "Well, I suppose-"
"Permission to speak freely, Mr. Xanatos?" Owen interrupted what was going to be a quiet, elegantly worded threat that would, to an outside listener, seem completely innocuous. David paused.
"Of course Owen," he recovered with a faint smirk. "This isn't the military."
"Then, if I might be so bold, your timeline seems overly cautious," of all the many things that Owen could have said - including an outraged statement involving David's parentage, a call for Mr. Renard and Vogel, and a blackmail attempt - that was the one thing David was not ready for. He blinked.
"You think so?" he asked after a moment. Owen returned his attention to the screen.
"You seem to be working under the assumption that you'll be starting a second company from scratch," David looked over his shoulder to check that no one was listening in on their conversation. There were few others on the floor and those few were all clearly preoccupied. "It would be far more advantageous if you were to... court some of the older, more personable employees here and take them with you to form a solid foundation for the new company. Training time for new employees would be cut nearly in half and production could begin almost immediately."
"More personable employees like... say, you?" David suggested with raised eyebrows. Owen's twitching lips very clearly formed a small smirk this time.
"Few would call me that sir."
"Even fewer would call you an older employee," David nodded. Owen was the one to pause this time, hands hovering over the keyboard. After a moment longer the fingers descended and the rapid fire typing started once again.
"If I were you," Owen frowned slightly at the screen and smacked a key with an excessive amount of force. The text changed and the frown cleared. "I would begin with Mrs. Jones and Ms. Pince as neither of them are entirely happy working for Mr. Renard - or rather, working under Mr. Vogel - and both already seem quite fond of you."
"We've developed a pleasant understanding," David agreed, watching as lines of text began to disappear from the screen. One after another, notes that he had carefully buried under a pile of code and firewalls disappeared under better codes and better firewalls. David had to make a real effort to keep his expression blank despite being equal parts impressed and alarmed at the blond's skill. "And you?"
"I'm sorry?" Owen was, David was sure, pretending to have misunderstood the direction their conversation had just taken. David humored the blond with a smile.
"I consider you quite the asset Owen, as does Mr. Renard. You would be an excellent addition to the team you've just suggested. However I understand that you're well settled here with Renard and Vogel," David paused significantly but Owen didn't look away from his typing. "Should I be courting you Owen?"
"That is entirely up to you, sir," a few more delicate taps and the screen cleared. Owen stood and straightened his jacket. David stepped back to give the blond room to leave the low walled cubicle. "I will say that if you do, your timeline will shift significantly and you'll be able to leave CyberBiotics at the end of this fiscal year," Owen slipped past him, somehow managing not to make any contact with the other man despite the small space. "You will, however, find that I am not so easy to charm as a certain pair of ladies."
David felt his eyebrows jump in surprise as he watched the younger man depart.
"Was that a challenge?" he asked under his breath, knowing full well what the answer was.
(Line Break)
Thursday mid-morning found David in the break room, sitting opposite a familiar pair. Subtlety would do him no good here; not with the shrewd eyed and clever women.
"So..." David smiled at the two women. Belinda raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow while Myra quietly smiled back. "Hypothetically if I were to start an advanced technology production company and, hypothetically, needed a Human resources Supervisor with prior experience and a front desk receptionist..."
"Hypothetically," Belinda quipped. David grinned and raised his hands in a calming gesture.
"Hypothetically of course," he turned a hopeful, puppy-dog eyed look to the older of the two. "Would you have any suggestions?"
Myra and Belinda shared a long look.
"We wouldn't be able to talk about CyberBiotics," Belinda started slowly.
"We wouldn't betray Mr. Renard's confidence like that," Myra interjected fiercely. The younger woman rolled her eyes.
"And it'd be a breach of contract even if we wanted to."
"And I would never ask that of you," David leaned forward, arms folded on the table. "I'm talking about a new start. New building, new work load, new rules..." he paused significantly. "And a new starting salary. Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically, huh?" Belinda grinned at him. "We'd say yes."
"Excellent."
David knew better than to discuss specifics or to try the little 'hypothetically speaking' game with anyone else. He'd ingratiated himself with enough of the lab scientists that he didn't think he would need to do much more than ask when the time came. Besides, the end of the fiscal year was a ways away and there were more immediate things to consider.
He spent the afternoon in Archives. The work was tedious but since visitors were few and far between David felt no obligation to sort more than a few dozen files before skirting his duty in favor of poking through the boxes in search of more of the abandoned weaponry and medical research. He didn't resurface until half an hour before his work day was over and spent the remaining time searching for Owen.
When he finally found the blond it was in the most incongruous place he could have imagined. If he hadn't been walking past that particular supply closet at that exact moment, David would have missed him entirely.
"What the hell-" Owen's head snapped up at the exclamation. David felt his voice dying in his throat as the blond looked at him as though David were the strange one. "...were you doing in there?"
"Searching for an overhead projector sir," Owen's response was calm and said in a perfectly reasonable tone that made David doubt himself when he started to ask why the blond had had the door shut. "It's not important, did you need something?"
"It... ah, it's Thursday..." Owen blinked at him. "Janine... dinner...?" Recognition finally dawned on the blond's face. "She's coming to meet us here. I thought you'd like the heads up."
"Ah, yes. Thank you sir," Owen turned and David found himself following - following, like a lost puppy or something - the other man back out toward the main work area. It took a ridiculous amount of will to keep from feeling resentful about the fact that Owen had had his desk are returned to him in perfect condition almost immediately after the smoke had cleared while David was still awkwardly stuck in a corner.
It took five minutes of watching Owen carefully restack files and arrange his pens in a perfect line in the desk drawer before David realized that the blond was actually stalling.
"Owen," his voice was sharp and the blond obediently looked up. None too subtly David looked down at his wristwatch. "Perhaps we should start heading down?" It was less of a question and more of an impatient demand. Owen didn't argue and was half way past the older man before David realized that Janine wouldn't be overly happy with the suit and tie look they were both sporting.
It should be noted that while no one would accuse David of being particularly physical with other employees they also wouldn't hesitate to say that yes, David Xanatos would absolutely grab someone and forcibly strip them if he felt it were necessary.
Which he did.
"What-" It was the first time David had ever seen Owen stumble (or do anything lacking in perfect grace and precision, really) but in his defense David had snatched off his jacket from behind while the blond was in mid-step.
"It's a warm day, I doubt you need this," David went for dismissive and casual, as though stealing Owen's jacket were a perfectly normal thing for him to do. "There's no tag," David noted as he started to drop it over the back of Owen's desk chair.
"It's tailored," Owen's statement probably couldn't have gotten any stiffer. The darker man wondered mildly if the real reason Owen didn't have furniture was because he spent all his money on carefully tailored suits. And then, because David was childish and annoyed at Owen for delaying but mostly because he wanted to see what would happen, he carelessly tossed the jacket down onto the seat of Owen's chair.
Owen's entire body twitched. Heh.
"I don't suppose you have a casual shirt under that?" David asked doubtfully as he looked over Owen's stark white dress shirt. Apparently realizing where this line of questioning was headed Owen took a sharp step back into the hall. Silly man should have realized a larger distance would be required. "No? Oh well."
"Mr. Xanatos!" It wasn't quite a shout but it was a lot worse than "annoyed". David ignored him and forced the other man's tie loose and over his head. "This is highly-" A pale white hand darted out faster than David had predicted it would and caught his wrist in a vise hard grip before he could start unbuttoning. David managed not to wince. "Stop touching me," it was as close to a growl as David imagined Owen could even get and the warning was clear.
"Right," David didn't apologize for the extreme breech of personal space but then he didn't imagine that Owen expected him to. "I trust you can take care of that yourself?" Owen glared. He'd never seen Owen do that before. David took note of the narrowed eyes and clenched jaw while trying not to flinch. It was an almighty weapon, Owen's glare. He was glad that it wasn't used more often. A pale hand lifted and the top of the shirt was opened with a smooth gesture. David knew better than to expect more. "Fantastic, lets head down, shall we?"
There was no answer but David could feel Owen behind him as he headed to the elevator. It was a small victory.
A/N: this chapter never seemed to end. Unfortunately I've reached the end of the prewritten chapters (you guys know what I mean. Write three chapters ahead as a buffer so updates can be semi-regular) which means delays will be longer and more frequent as you lot wait for truly fresh updates.