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The man was on a call right now, ECHO tucked between his ear and his shoulder while his cybernetic hand clicked away at his keyboard and his flesh hand smoothed over Tim’s feathered head absently. Tim admired the skill it took to multitask like that.

Rhys sighed after a few more moments, rolling those pretty eyes as his hand stalled on the keyboard. “Mr. Finley,” He said with an authoritative force that Tim had learned meant he was tired of whatever was happening, “I am a very busy man, and I can assure you that Jack is even busier. I do not have the time nor the inclination to listen to you bitch and moan about what you perceive as a lack of appreciation of your skills.” He paused just long enough for that to sink in before continuing, “Provide something genuinely beneficial to this company, and you’ll get the recognition you deserve. Now, if you please, I have more important things to be attending to.”

And with a practiced ease, he dropped his ECHO into his cybernetic hand and hung up.

He turned to look at Tim, then, rolling his eyes again and laughing. “The nerve of some people, huh?”

Tim laughed as well, laying his head on Rhys’ thigh. “The nerve, indeed. Was he really bitching about not being appreciated enough?”

“Yeah,” Rhys muffled a snort in his fist. “Yeah, he was. He’s not even that important to the company.” Another snort, “If Jack had been here to take that call, the guy woulda gotten airlocked.”

“You can say that again.” Tim nuzzled into the hand still smoothing over his feathers, “You really that busy, though?”

“Pff, no.” The leggy brunet moved his hand to scratch at Tim’s chin, “That was pretty much the only thing I had left to do until after lunch, when I’ve gotta schedule some meetings for Jack and field a few more idiots’ calls.”

“There’s still three hours until lunch,” Tim pointed out when he could think past the very distracting, pleasant feeling of getting chin-scritches, a little impressed, “You’re really done with all the bullshit Jack left for you to do?”

With a grin, Rhys said, “I make a point of having everything he leaves for me done in three hours or less of him leaving. It’s always funny to watch him gape like a fish when he realizes I got through him being gone without anything piling up.”

“That’s dedication.”

The brunet just kept grinning that shit-eating grin, and there was a hint of dark circles under his eyes and Tim knew he had to be very tired despite all his constant insisting to the contrary. He worked very hard to stay on top of things. Tim had overheard the secretary telling him he needed to get more sleep more times than he could count just in the few weeks he’d been on Helios. He was determined and strong and overall Tim liked him very much.

He kept his head on Rhys’ thigh, getting his head pet, until it was time for lunch, and the whole time he couldn’t help thinking how much more soothing it was to be around Rhys than Jack. How much more he liked Rhys.

If they were even remotely the same species, he’d almost think he might have a crush.

Regardless, it was nice.

Rhys frowned. “Would table salt work?” He asked, not really caring how much he may have to buy if it meant keeping the way to work clear. Keeping the path clear and the company running was important in the winter, because he couldn’t afford to shut down production for the entire season. They were still working toward becoming a company powerful enough to be able to get away with not producing for a week, for Pete’s sake.

“Well, if we had ‘bout a metric ton of it,” Fuse snorted, “Maybe it’d be enough.”

“I’ll have someone run the calculations.” Rhys sighed, “We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, I’m arming you two with snow shovels and you’re going to be on shoveling duty until―”

At about that second exactly, the door to Rhys’ office slid open without any preamble, and all three current occupants tensed.

There was a tense second before all of them realized the person entering without asking first was Tim.

The relief was immediate, and Rhys was about to greet the man when he realized that Tim was covered in snow and stumbling, cheeks and nose red. A peal of laughter left the man as he stumbled right into the side of his desk.

“Merry Christmas, motherfuckers.” The man said without any effort to hide the way Jack’s voice left his throat.

Rhys blinked.

Fuse and Var dissolved quite immediately into laughter.

Tim stumbled his way across the office to them where they all stood next to the entrance to Rhys’ old office. It dawned on Rhys, after a moment, that Tim was drunk. Very, very drunk.

“And Merry Christmas to you, too, baby.” Tim purred when he was next to him, wrapping an arm around him and pressing a somewhat sloppy, icy-cold kiss to his temple.

Rhys did his best not to cringe away from the cold, rolling his eyes as he wrapped his arm around Tim in return.

“Tim,” He sighed, “It’s December 4th.”

“It’s basically Christmas,” Tim agreed gleefully.

He sighed again. Of course Tim would be that kind of person.

Tim seemed to try to take a deep breath, fingers knotting in the fabric of the back of Rhys’ shirt.

In the dark room, Rhys couldn’t so much see the way Tim shook as he could feel it.

“You’re gonna be alright,” Rhys told him softly, laying his head against the top of Tim’s. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

He didn’t know what this was about, exactly, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that it may have been about the time Tim had spent working for Jack.

Rhys, for his part, had been working on something on his ECHO, just trying to get it done while he still had the motivation to do so. He’d been right beside Tim, left side pressed against his sturdy back while he slept. He’d felt it when his breath sped up, felt it when he began to twitch, felt it when he jerked awake and away from him.

He’d pulled him close again and Tim hadn’t hesitated to wrap his arms around him and, apparently, try to calm himself down.

Again, Rhys didn’t know what this was about. He could guess, of course, but he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.

“Thank God you’re alright,” Was the first thing Tim said to him, what seemed like an hour after this had started.

Unsure what to say, Rhys merely hummed.

Regardless of how long they’d been sitting here, Rhys was starting to get very, very tired. He had an early start in the morning and he was sure he’d already sacrificed most of the good night’s sleep he could have gotten just trying to work instead of sleeping―but to some extent he was glad he’d been awake. He couldn’t help wondering how many times Tim had had to do this without Rhys being awake to hold him and reassure him.

“I―” Tim stopped himself, pulling away from Rhys’ neck slowly to look him in the eyes.

Rhys blinked back at him.

“If Jack was alive―” He stopped himself again, looking away, “If I still worked for him… You’d probably be dead. He’d have made me kill you for being an upstart.”

This was, of course, a possibility Rhys had entertained.

Lord knew the AI version of Jack hadn’t liked it when he got confident and told him to shove it―one could only imagine how the real Jack would have reacted to him growing a pair of balls… Not that he likely would have ever grown the ones he had now if Jack was still alive.

“Well, good thing Jack’s dead then, huh?” Was the best thing he could think to say.

It fell flat, not having the joking or comforting tones he’d have liked it to have. It was honest, instead. Too honest. It probably wouldn’t help.

Tim stared at him for a moment, almost disbelieving.

Then, slowly, the elder man’s lips began to curve upwards. Further, further―eyes crinkled at the edges and then…

And then Tim was laughing, full-bellied and hearty.

Rhys blinked at him, unsure how to take the reaction.

Tim kissed him, once he’d sobered, and Rhys decided that maybe it didn’t matter what Tim found so funny about that reply. As long as it put Tim in a better mood, he didn’t care.

“You know,” Tim said, stroking Rhys’ cheek, “I think he actually woulda liked you.”

“Yeah?” Rhys asked, lifting a brow and leaning into the touch.

“Yeah.” Tim confirmed, smiling at him. “Long as you didn’t question his authority or betray Hyperion, that is.”

Rhys chuckled a little, smiling back. “When he was alive I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing either of those things, Timtams.”

“Sure,” Tim agreed easily, then, after a moment, “Yeah, he’d have liked you. Even with your weird obsession with him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rhys rolled his eyes, slowly pulling Tim down so that they were laying together rather than sitting, “He’d have liked me because of my weird obsession with him. He’d have promoted me to his Personal Hype Guy.”

Tim snorted, pulling Rhys close again and burying his face in his hair.

He didn’t reply aloud, but he pulled Rhys closer nonetheless.

With his ear now pressed to Tim’s chest, Rhys found himself smiling―sure, Tim didn’t reply to that aloud, but he didn’t need to. Rhys could feel how much better Tim felt.

His breathing had slowed and shallowed, heart beat still steadying as Rhys listened.

It was relaxing to listen to, frankly.

“Hey, Tim?” He asked after a moment, voice breaking through what had been a rather comfortable silence.

Tim hummed in question.

“You’re gonna be okay, right? Like, if I fall asleep right now.”

He got a little huff of a laugh in response.

“Yeah,” Tim told him, nuzzling into his hair again, “I’m gonna be okay. ‘M falling back asleep myself.”

Rhys smiled and nuzzled into his chest.

Tim gave another little huff of a laugh and Rhys thought that maybe, just maybe, one day Tim wouldn’t have to wake up panicking because of the mere memory of Jack. Maybe one day he’d be able to go to sleep with a smile on his face thinking about the fact that the rat bastard was dead.

…

… Rhys would really like that.

Every microscopic personality trait, tic, or even just a word choice preference, he picked up on and he emulated to better his impersonation of Jack. Every little tiny thing was important. Even just the way Jack picked up glasses to drink from them was important―but thankfully, Tim had a lot of training with this sort of thing. He’d gotten a degree in behavioral analysis on top of all of the other bullshit he’d put himself through in college. He’d made those loans worth it…

And now he’d never need to pay them off.

Funny.

Point was, he knew how to pick up on behaviors and he was a good enough actor to be able to put on a pretty damn good Jack act―he even learned to emulate the bastard’s hair-trigger temper and knew a good deal of the triggers for it. He could imitate it right down to the ‘going totally murderous at the mention of his wife’ thing.

It was all an act, of course (and a well put together one, too, if he did say so himself), and like any good actor he knew his character inside and out. He could turn the personality on and off like a toggle switch.

There were just… Well, there were some things that he couldn’t ever completely remove from himself―things he’d picked up from Jack that had engrained themselves into his real personality and presentation… Not that there was much left in terms of pieces of him that were still “Tim” and not Jack, of course.

The biggest offender on the list of tendencies he couldn’t shake even when he wasn’t actively putting on a Jack performance?

Petnames and instinctual insults.

More often than not, when he spoke to Jack he had to physically restrain himself from calling him things like “sugartits” or “moron”. He’d slipped several times and called him Princess, but thankfully that had only amused the man. He could only imagine what sort of things might happen if he let even one utterance of “bastard” in Jack’s general direction slip out.

He shuddered at the thought.

“―but anyways, sugartits,” He found himself saying to one of Jack’s other doppelgänger’s―a new one he’d been put in charge of training in Jack’s stead, “A big thing you gotta remember about being me?”

He looked him in the eyes, grinning Jack’s shit-eating grin, hands firmly on the newbie’s shoulders. He knew he looked unsettling. Part of being Jack was wielding a toothy grin like a scythe of impending destruction whenever he could, and making people afraid of him. Afraid to fight against him.

For all this poor little pissant knew, he was speaking directly to Handsome Jack himself, not another doppelgänger, and against his own wishes the fact made a sick satisfaction twist in his gut.

“What’s that?” The newbie asked, meeting his gaze with an impartial frown.

Not intimidated at all, at first glance. But Tim could see the tenseness in his figure, the set of his jaw behind the skin of his cheeks. He was nervous.

If Tim’s grin could have gotten any wider it would have. This was another thing he couldn’t shake―the inherent sadism that came with portraying Jack. He’d be much more concerned about it if he wasn’t in-character right now.

He leaned closer to the newbie, left them nose to nose, and said, “I call the shots, baby. I’m the king. And that means I don’t take orders from anyone else, capice?” He allowed the newbie time to nod, “Now you, on the other hand… You don’t take orders from anybody either.”

“Oh?” The quirk of his eyebrow was almost spot-on perfect for Jack.

Tim liked this one.

“Yeah.” Tim assured him, leaning back as his grip tightened until he knew it was painful for the recipient, “Except for me. You get your orders from me. And y’know what you do when you get those orders, champ?”

“Obey them.” Newbie hissed, wincing only slightly at the pain.

“Obey them, good answer!” He laughed, releasing him, “Now wipe that grimace off your face, Jack, it’s time for you to see the Hero in action.”

If Tim hadn’t been in Jack-mode, he’d have been a little afraid of himself.

He reached out with his new cybernetic arm for the cup on his desk. It was the only part of him that didn’t twinge and jerk with every movement from stiffness, but unfortunately… Unfortunately he tended to get distracted by the simple silver metal that made it up. Even in the dim light of this old, musky office, it gleamed. He was proud of that. He was proud of the arm in general.

He’d built this arm from scratch, more or less, and it hadn’t been easy in the slightest. It had been his first order of business after getting the building up and running proper. After that he’d made his new ECHO eye.

So many tiny, delicate pieces in that one… So many mistakes to make.

He shook his head and grabbed the cup, lifting it to his lips. Hesitating just a moment longer, he was soon taking a hearty swig of its contents.

Ugh.

Cold.

That didn’t prevent him from taking another drink, of course. It merely led to a disgruntled internal monologue about the quality of the coffee he was still drinking.

No matter what anyone said about him, he knew no one could deny his determination… Or his rising levels of spite. And that spite and determination were what led him to finish the disgusting mug before setting it aside once more. He knew he should have just drank it while it was hotter than the very spite burning through his veins that had led him to drink it in the first place.

The coffee was colder than Handsome Jack’s dead heart, more bitter than Fiona, and about as energizing as being told he was being promoted to Vice Janitor, but all of that in combination somehow gave him the energy to look over the last of the files he desperately needed to look over.

There were still several that he needed to look over eventually, but for now he’d done all he needed to do. He could sleep at last.

He smiled to himself as he stood, stretching out, and stumbled over to the modest nest he’d built for himself behind some ancient-looking filing cabinets, out of view of anyone who might come into the office. Though the likelihood of anyone, even Bandits, coming to the old Atlas building wasn’t exactly high, it never hurt to be prepared. He needed to watch his back down here.

The man with the key is king…

Dragging his hand across the display before him, Rhys rearranged the items into a more manageable configuration―priority tasks at the top, partially covering the less important ones. He nodded, satisfied, and set about examining the first thing on his roster.

Recruitment.

Again.

He almost hated himself for setting such a task as the most important for possibly the ninth time this week, but it was a necessary evil. To get Atlas back on its feet he needed workers. To get workers he needed to recruit. To make himself go out and recruit, he needed to set it as his primary task.

So far, he had two staff members, and neither of them were particularly useful to actually producing anything for the company… Which wasn’t to say they weren’t useful at all, of course. They certainly had their uses.

But he needed engineers. He needed mechanics. He needed desk jockeys. He needed many more workers that he couldn’t really put names to the jobs of when he was running on so little sleep. It’d been at least two days, now, since he’d gotten up from his meager nest behind the cabinets and set to work on several other tasks that needed done. He’d mostly been attempting to recruit during the day, since most of the people likely to be in need of a job he could provide them with would be awake that that time.

He peeked over his shoulder at the one window in the room. Even through the blinds he could see the sun beginning to climb into the sky at last. It had been dark the past couple of days―rainier than he’d ever seen it. Stormy. The place had nearly lost power several times.

But the sun was out now.

It was time to recruit.

He sighed and smoothed his hair back. He needed desperately to wash it and slick it back proper, but running water was precious and better used keeping him alive right now. He’d wash it tomorrow… Along with the rest of his body.

He checked the second priority item once more, just to remind himself what it was.

It was simple enough. Sell a few items to make a little money to put toward repairs and making new items. And paying his workers. He just had to hope he met someone who wanted Atlas wares.

He paced over to his desk, straightening his back and wetting his lips with his tongue. Presentation was important, especially at this stage in the reemergence of Atlas. He needed to look his best.

He converted his main holoscreen on the desk into a mirror app and checked his appearance.

Fine. He was presentable, at the very least. His hair could use some work, and he needed to smooth out some wrinkles in his suit, but for the most part… For the most part he wasn’t looking too bad. He could stand to go another day before he for sure had to change things up and take that shower.

He’d just have to be careful. He never knew when the water was going to decide it didn’t want to work.

He smoothed out the wrinkles in his suit, smoothed his hair back again, and grabbed the duffel bag full of handmade tech he intended to pedal while he was attempting to get some employees. It was heavy, as was to be expected, but that was fine. He could live with that.

The bag itself? Certainly not handmade, but he’d managed to take some time out of his schedule to carefully place an “ATLAS TECH.” decal on it, and seeing that decal? It reminded him of what he was doing with this company.

Yes, Atlas would still make weapons―that was a given. But Atlas Armaments was long gone. Atlas Technology though? Atlas Technology was just getting started. And Atlas Tech was going to be the biggest company on this shithole of a planet, no matter what Rhys had to do to make that happen.

The ends justified the means, as far as he was concerned.

And honey…

Atlas had a grand total of twenty-seven employees, not counting their beloved CEO, and Rhys absolutely preened at the knowledge every time he thought about it.

Yes, there was still a ways to go before Atlas rose from the ashes like an extremely technologically advanced phoenix, but there were twenty-fucking-seven people willing to help him in this endeavor. And, according to his first two hires? There were more waiting to be interviewed.

It made him positively giddy, if he was honest.

His new dream was finally beginning to come to fruition. His hard work was finally going to get him somewhere.

He laughed to himself a bit and threw a glance at his nest in the corner.

The employees had picked out their own places in the facility to stay until Rhys could provide them with housing, but thankfully they all understood that Atlas wasn’t anything amazing just yet. Rhys could pay them, if everything went well, but he couldn’t provide a place for them to stay outside the facility yet. It seemed to ease their minds a bit that he was also roughing it in the facility with them.

Soon enough, they’d have the money to have proper company housing. As long as things kept going well. As long as he was able to keep selling Atlas tech to people who needed it at reasonable prices.

And, see, that was the thing he was almost certain had made him the money he’d earned so far―he was selling this amazing tech at a reasonable price. He wasn’t overselling it or underselling it. He was offering it at more or less the price of the materials and a little labor. People loved good tech at reasonable prices. They ate it up.

As long as he kept doing that, he knew he could make some good money… At least until Atlas was back on its feet. Then he could raise the prices of the goods a little. Feed the people some crap about using better materials for even better tech… Even though he knew very well he’d be using some of the money for exactly the purpose of buying decent materials. For the most part Atlas still had some awesome materials lying around here, though, and he didn’t really need to buy any until the completely tore through what had been left in the storage rooms.

He laughed to himself again and sagged into his chair a bit.

First order of business once the company was well and truly thriving?

Better furniture for the offices in this dump. The desk in here was nice and sturdy, sure, but the chair? He’d sat on sand more comfortable, thanks. And the desks and chairs in the other offices? Miserable. His employees deserved better.

Thinking about having employees made him laugh again, lips stretching into a rather contented smile.

Things were running pretty smoothly right now.

He could probably…

He could probably go lay down, couldn’t he? He could head to bed for the night and get back to what he was working on in the morning. He sat forward again to check, and his smile only grew into a grin when he realized that, yes, he could do this in the morning without any negative consequences.

Hell yeah, he was going to put this off until morning. He deserved a good night’s sleep after all the all-nighters he’d been pulling these past few months.

He flopped into his nest after shutting off the lights in the office and passed right out regardless of his intimate knowledge of how sore he’d be in the morning from spending another night on the floor.

… You should see me in a crown.

Rhys stepped out onto the catwalk above the main floor, beaming to himself with pride as he gazed at the now fully-operating production line. He had enough employees to staff the whole building, with his first two employees having been promoted to the heads of the Security department. They had an entire team of people just as good as they were behind them. And the rest of the facility? Well, it was working wonderfully under several nearly over-qualified Department Heads who actually listened to Rhys when he told them that their department needed to do something.

The main thing being produced at the moment were weapons, shields, and cybernetic enhancements. They’d already sold several dozen cybernetic limbs to people in need of them, and Rhys had gotten a new employee from it―a cybernetics specialist who could help people attach their new limbs.

Everything was going perfectly.

He turned and paced down the catwalk, wandering through the facility, just making his rounds, letting himself be seen overseeing production. It was good for company morale for him to be involved in their day-to-day operations. It helped employees to see that, yes, he was a busy man, but he wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t have a look ‘round here and there.

By making his rounds when he could, he made himself open and accessible to his employees. Made himself seem more like a person and less like an intimidating voice over the intercom that had no body and all the power necessary to fire someone.

Things were going pretty much perfectly, if he did say so himself, though.

He made it through the rest of the day, and found himself beaming yet again when he remembered he didn’t have to retire to his office to sleep (although that had gotten more comfortable ever since the company started making some reliable money and he’d put a couch in his office). He’d managed to get some company housing set up near enough to the facility that he and his employees could walk to and from work.

His home was the nearest to the facility, of course, but he got to work the earliest and stayed the latest, so it was only fair. His schedule had him getting to his office before the facility actually started production in the morning and getting home an hour or so after everyone else had already left. That was okay though. That was how it was supposed to be.

He headed home, yawning, and calmly collapsed onto his bed.

It wasn’t anything lavish―not yet. It was just a bed, and it’d do just fine until Atlas could assert itself a little better. Until he was selling several hundred items a day instead of several dozen items a week. It was better than the nest on the floor, if nothing else, though. It worked for his needs. It was soft enough not to make him ache.

He stared up at the ceiling with a grin on his face.

Yeah.

Things were going perfectly, and, honestly? Jack had been right about one thing.