thethespacecoyote:

Rhys couldn’t stop crying. 

He’d been struck numb when he’d first heard the news, only being ripped back to his senses when he’d  realized he was on the ground crouching over the man who had delivered the report, cybernetic fist crunching around his throat. A cry of horror had stuck in Rhys’ mouth as he’d wrenched himself away, shakily standing to his feet. His vision had blurred with tears as he’d looked down at his hands, before fleeing the briefing room and racing through the stunned crowds of the Hub before locking himself up in the penthouse. 

Rhys had barely wanted to be there but there wasn’t anywhere else in Helios he could go. The news would have spread by now, images of what had happened down on Pandora splayed all over the screens. So he’d burrowed deep into the bed, rubbing his tear-stricken cheeks against the pillows, nose nestled in scent that both broke his heart and soothed his brain to sleep. 

He was jostled awake by a hand on his shoulder, a fearful yelp tearing from his throat as he lashed out. His feet kicked against the tangle of the bedsheets, groping against whoever was touching him–another assassin, perhaps, come to kill him too, to put him out of his misery of living without the love of his life–

“Easy, kiddo, you tryin’ to finish me off?”

Rhys’ eyes flew open, jaw dropping as he looked up at the face towering over him–a face he’d only expected to see again shrouded in golden flowers or immortalized in cold statues. For a moment, he wonders if he’s dreaming, but then Jack’s hands cup his face, leaving his arms free to wrap tightly about the older man’s chest. 

“….I….I thought you were dead…” he sobbed into Jack’s bare chest. The man smells thickly of blood and soot and metallic dirt, but underneath Rhys can still detect the faintest hint of the cologne that he has come to know so well. 

He expected Jack to say more, to tell him what had happened, why everyone on the space station had thought he was dead, but the man was unusually silent, just holding Rhys and petting his sides and letting the younger man cry it out until his eyes and nose were sore and they’re laying besides one another with the bedsheets now tying them both together. It was then that Jack grasped Rhys’ hand lightly in his own and lifted it up to his lips, warm breath brushing against the young man’s knuckles.

“….Marry me, pumpkin.”

Rhys sniffled, his voice rough. 

“…What?”

Jack’s sigh was tight, eyes dark with knowing. 

“You heard me. Marry me, Rhysie. Show them all that Handsome Jack’s life belongs to you.”

Rhys’ lips parted slightly, his heart squeezing as Jack looked at him, sincere and bared and fresh from a scrape with death, and he realized that he might not be the only person in this bed who really needed right now. 

So he lifted his hands to cup his lover’s rough, mask-less jawline, as he kisses the terrain of his exposed scar with a promise. 

“I will.”

Rhys locked eyes with Jack, speaking right to the fear ghostly in their reflection. 

“You’re mine and…they can’t have you.”