somehow i'll make a man out of you Who: Jareth Monaco & Pyr Min What:The boywonder meets the batman Mentor and mentee meet Where: Shieldwyrm Hall When: 6 Pisces (24 February) backdated Rating: PG-13 bc Jareth can’t actually not think of cuss words Status: Complete!
Standing in front of the closed door to the EKP headquarters in Shieldwyrm Hall, Pyr had envisioned a room full of frowning men and women staring at whiteboards with pictures of suspects pinned to them, arguing amongst themselves about motive and opportunity while the smoke from their cigarettes clouded the room.
What he had found, instead, was a room full of tired-looking agents chugging coffee desperately and sifting through reports at their desks, nothing flashy about it. Jareth was nowhere to be seen, and so Pyr decided to ask one of them, a lady maybe Peony's age who looked much more cheerful than the rest. In doing so, he made his first big mistake that day.
"I jus' banna no ere areth onaco is," he mumbled for the second time. Proper enunciation would continue to elude him as long as the lady insisted on pinching his cheeks. She was stronger than she looked, which should not have surprised him, since she was probably a fighter. "Pwease."
Jareth had come in that morning to find two new case files on his desk. For about ten minutes, he’d just stood there, scowling at them as though they’d magically disappear. When they refused, he picked them up, dropped them in the rubbish bin - that’s where all of his unread files were being kept - and stalked into the hall to grab some coffee. A quick glance at the clock on his way out showed him that Min should arrive any minute, and Jareth was going to need all of the caffeine he could get before that.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t even fucking get to where the coffee was, he needed to pass Lilith, the overeager fucking secretary. Maybe if he snuck by or hid behind someone else passing by, he could get some damned coffee without having to pry her vice-like grip from his arm.
Like the poor sucker whose cheeks she was pinching. That looked a hell of a lot like his squire.
Shit. That was his squire. He could always leave the kid to his fate, but that wouldn’t be the humane thing to do. He wouldn’t wish Lilith on cultists. Actually, if she was a cultist, he could just off her. And that would make the world a greater place.
Instead, he sighed and walked up to them, putting his hand on Min’s shoulder and glaring at Lilith, who beamed at him.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “this little boy was looking for you, Mr. Monaco. I was just getting ready to show him your desk, but then, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be disturbed and so I was just trying to figure out what he was doing here.” She paused for breath. “Shall I get you some coffee? There’s this new hazelnut one that I brought in, just for you.”
For fuck’s sake, he could practically see the Faram-damned hearts in her eyes. “No.” He looked down at Min. “Let’s go.”
Pyr didn’t need to be told twice. “Okay.” He extricated himself from Lilith’s grasp (not before she pressed some candy into his hand―so maybe she wasn’t so bad, after all) and followed Jareth. As they were leaving, she waved.
They stopped in front of a mostly bare desk, and Pyr wondered if there was any work for him to do after all (all the better if there wasn’t), and then he saw the stack of files inside the rubbish bin. “So what do I have to do?” he asked his mentor, dreading the answer.
Jareth looked around and almost shrugged, but he had to be the authority figure here. If Banes had been around-- He cut the thought short and motioned towards a chair he’d put in front of his desk. “You’re going to go through each of the cases in the trash,” he explained. “If it’s a robbery or burglary, throw it away.” He shook his head. “Put it… somewhere. I don’t give a fuck where. I’m not working it.”
Maybe he could pawn it off on Finch, but he doubted the princess would deign to take something below his station or notice. Or fuck, it could be reassigned to a rookie. (He was ignoring the fact that he was still technically a rookie; he had more important shit to do and more experience than most of the people here.)
“If it’s a murder, don’t look at anything. Put it on the desk. Assaults, same thing. Suspected cult activity? Give it to me. When you’re done with that, we’ll start the next thing.” What the next thing was, Jareth didn’t know, but he figured this would give him enough time to think of something.
Pyr almost asked where he was supposed to dump the files that had to be thrown out, considering the rubbish bin now served a higher purpose, but held back. Instead, he said, "But to know if it's a murder or not, I have to look at it, right?"
Smart ass kid. Just his fucking luck. “First page is a brief,” he explained, sitting down and opening up one of the files he grabbed from the bin. “Right here? Tells you the kind of case. Doesn’t require you to look at a picture. Or memstone.” Or anything, really. He doubted the kid was actually going to want to read the case details; they were usually boring as fuck and either not detailed enough or too damned detailed.
It was a lose-lose situation, mostly.
He reached for his cup of crap coffee only to realize that he’d gotten sidetracked by saving the kid from Lilith the Hell Demon. Maybe he could send the kid to grab him coffee - that’s what they were supposed to do, right? Jareth sighed and glared at the empty space where his coffee usually sat. “Get started. I’ll be back.”
"Sure." Pyr plopped down on the chair and took the first of the files. Much to his disappointment, it was a robbery. "I'll just get started then."
As soon as Jareth walked away (not quite managing to avoid the secretary, judging from her oh, if you wanted coffee you only needed to say so) Pyr dropped the diligent act like a hot potato and set himself a much more interesting goal: achieving perfect balance with only two of the chair's four legs resting on the floor. He had almost found the perfect angle when he heard footsteps stomping back toward the desk and Lilith's disappointed voice, and barely managed not to fall on his back. At once he returned to the papers in front of him and hoped the undignified squeak he had let out moments earlier would go unmentioned.
He gave Jareth a beatific smile. "Welcome back."
Jareth took one look at the kid’s smile and the papers in front of him. “It’s upside down,” he pointed out, sitting down and sipping at his coffee. “An extra mile for slacking off.” Kid probably wasn’t going to like him, but what the hell? Jareth just needed to make sure the kid could stay alive and pass into class.
Wasn’t like Pyr was his son. He didn’t have to impart life lessons or bond with him. That he’d considered it was awkward enough. Still, best to keep his distance, do what he could to get the kid up to snuff, and then let him go. Getting attached to the kid was a bad idea. That he looked close in age to how old Liam would have been…
No. Keep it professional. “If you can’t do this, you can file.”
The urge to grumble was almost overpowering, but Pyr contented himself with a pout and a sigh. “I’ll do it. It’s not like it’s that hard. You’ll see.”
Sorting papers and reading things with no dragons in them weren’t strong points of his, but if his new mentor thought he was going to mess up because of that—well, Pyr would just have to show Jareth how wrong he was.