Who: Jess, Marco with appearances by Lydia & Daniel What: A hostile first meeting in front of the boss’s office (complete) Where: Camelot Castle, UK When: Backdated to Monday, May 27th 2019 Warnings: Nothing major, just your typical Jess warnings
Camelot Castle hadn’t changed since the last time Marco had been there—it never seemed to, no matter how long he spent outside its walls before there was some reason to come back again. Wallace had spent all of Marco’s childhood working there, but Marco wasn’t the man who’d raised him. He was just as loyal to Camelot as Wallace had been, but Marco had never been interested in staying close. That was why he’d volunteered for postings with the extended family, with the ones who didn’t work directly for Camelot but who needed protection anyway. Up until Lydia had called, that was where he’d been.
When the Head of Security assigned you to protect the leader of Camelot itself, you didn’t say no. It was about time for a change in scenery anyway.
Marco’s duties as Daniel’s bodyguard hadn’t officially started yet; Lydia was still in his office and it wasn’t any of Marco’s business exactly what she was telling him. Official or not, he would rather position himself to stand guard instead of waiting in the hallway like a kid waiting to be called into the principal’s office. He’d done enough of that when he’d actually been a child. It had been almost a constant the first few years his parents had been gone, before he and Wallace had reached an understanding.
Then again, most kids waiting outside the principal’s office didn’t have a set of modified straight-bladed katana strapped to their backs and wakizashi resting at their hips over their leather coats (plain black and as far from a Clipper’s uniform as he could get). If they did, it was undoubtedly why they were going to the principal’s office in the first place; Marco didn’t go many places without Sunny’s daishō and he doubted anyone was going to try to take them away from him.
Standing straight and tall was the only thing that kept him from shifting and displaying very clearly how uncomfortable he was. And yes, he was aware that it just made him look like he had a sword stowed up his ass, too, but it was better than the alternative of looking like he really didn’t belong there.
Jess was already in a bad mood after a three hour training session with a handful of brand new recruits who didn’t know their asses from their elbows, and now she had to be the one to go debrief Daniel about their latest batch of newbs because Lucas was still in the middle of a session. It wasn’t that she hated having to talk to Camelot’s leader and her son’s namesake, she just hated having to talk her way around saying that somebody’s technique sucked worse than her grandma’s.
She preferred the art of blunt directness to wasting time sugarcoating
They were lucky that for the most part they’d ended up with a department that could hold their own, but in Jess’s humble opinion, sometimes Lucas was a little too forgiving with someone’s shortcomings. This wasn’t PR, or R&D, this was combat, and some people would never be right for it no matter how good they get at hitting a target. Combat was as much instinct as it was technique, and way more cutthroat than the average person could stomach. Not everyone was cut out for that. These new kids? They were so green it made Jess’s head hurt. But, like Lucas, Daniel was determined to see the potential in just about everyone, so whatever she said had to be at least vaguely constructive. Annoying.
Which is why when she found the way into Daniel’s office temporarily blocked by an overly muscular, unfamiliar looking man with more swords on him than arms, her annoyance increased ten fold. Jess might not look like much to anyone who didn’t know how well she could throw an ax, but what she lacked in intimidating size she usually made up for in sheer attitude. Stopping squarely in front of him, Jess looked him over and raised an eyebrow, assuming he must be somebody to be standing outside of Daniel’s door like that, but she honestly didn’t care who. He was in her way. “Hey, crouching tiger. Do I need a password or are you going to move out of the way?”
There was a very good chance that someone who just assumed she could walk up to Daniel Morgan’s office and expect to be let in was someone fairly important, but it was going to take more than that to intimidate Marco into stepping aside. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her, expression carefully blank. “I’ll move when you can move me, Goldilocks.”
Sure, he could have explained that Lydia was in there. He doubted that whoever this pushy woman was, she’d want to intrude on that conversation. He shouldn’t have to explain it though. Explaining Daniel’s schedule wasn’t Marco’s job… not yet and it never would be. His job was to stand between him and anything that might possibly be a threat. While he doubted that there was anything threatening about this little encounter, since they were in the safety of the castle and absolutely no one who wasn’t a loyal member of Camelot could be inside, he wasn’t all too keen on starting out letting some stranger through the door.
Besides. She was already annoying. Marco didn’t want to encourage that kind of thing.
Since he doubted that there was no way in hell that she could budge him even an inch, Marco didn’t bother bracing himself. Even if she tried, he was perfectly confident in his ability to stand up to whatever she could dish out. There could be some surprises when it came to reincarnates, but that held true for Marco too. He was good enough without Sunny’s help. With it, though? There weren’t very many people who could stop him without some kind of magic in the mix.
‘Goldilocks’? Oh hell, no. If Jess had been annoyed before, there was no comparison to the red hot flare in her chest now. Nobody in Camelot was stupid enough to say something like that to her face, and the last person who had made the mistake of calling her ‘Blondie’ had ended up getting their face rearranged. The only reason Jess wasn’t more tempted to throw a punch now was because they were right outside Daniel’s office, and not because she was having any second thoughts about it.
Most people took a little time to get from zero to sixty instead of plunging right in to the deep end of a conflict, but the thing about Jess was she’d never really operated on what could be considered a middle ground. It didn’t help that she was already amped up from training, or the fact that she was notorious for having the shortest fuse known to man.
“Wow, that’s really original.” She was appropriately bristled now, in a situation that by all counts had no business already getting this escalated. Jess crossed her arms over her chest in a perfect mirror of his standoffish position by the door with her legs spread evenly apart, like she was planning on growing roots. She was just stubborn enough that if she could have, she probably would. “Is that why they have you out here, Captain Obvious, to make sure everyone knows what color hair they have? Thank god for you or we’d all be lost.”
“I’ll throw in another freebie: you’re a pain in the ass.” Marco’s tone was still mild, no matter how irritated he actually was. He wasn’t going to let her know she was getting to him; that was how you lost these little battles. Lucky for him he’d learned his poker face from one of the best… two of the best, if you counted the mentor in his head too.
Was it professional to start off the first day of his new assignment calling someone he’d just met a pain in the ass? No. Definitely not. But Camelot had never been all that great at keeping it professional on the inside, anyway. To the outside world, sure, and Marco would never give in to provocation from someone on the street. Not out loud, anyway, he’d keep it all in his head. He couldn’t quite resist the urge to bite back now though. She’d been asking for it, after all. Was he supposed to just let the crouching tiger thing pass without doing something about it?
He arched an eyebrow at her, just as carefully unimpressed as he’d started. If she thought he was going to give in and move out of her way now he was more than happy to shatter that little delusion for her. Marco could stand there all night… or until Lydia called him in, which would probably be first. At least then he’d get the smug pleasure of getting through the door before her.
It was the little things that really mattered and Marco had been spoiling for a fight for longer than he’d even realized. This wasn’t as good as if she’d drawn a sword on him, but he was going to work with what he’d gotten. She probably couldn’t have put up much of a fight anyway. At least this way the match would last longer before she had to admit defeat… and she would have to. After all, she really couldn’t possibly move him.
Jess barked a laugh, feeling some strange mixture of rage mixed with an almost morbid amusement. As much as this guy was already pissing her off, and he was really pissing her off, she had to admit she would almost admire him if she hadn’t already decided that she hated him. Nobody else in Camelot had the guts to call her a pain in the ass, but here was this guy, telling her this right to her face.
It was as funny as it continued to be extremely irritating.
“Listen, K-Fed,” Jess responded icily, one hand emerging from previously crossed arms to point an accusatory finger at him and his excessive amount of tattoos. “You have no idea how much of a pain in the ass I can be, but you might if you don’t get out of my way.”
Admittedly probably not the most effective tactic for getting someone to do something you wanted, but Jess wasn’t exactly the type to play nice for the sake of it. Especially once someone had already pissed her off. Who the hell did this guy think he was anyway? She didn’t know who he was or what he was actually doing here and she didn’t care, all she cared about was that she never saw him again after this unpleasant encounter. And also getting through that damn door.
Marco’s other eyebrow leapt up to join the first; his lips pursed briefly to look even less impressed than he already had. “I might respect that insult more if he’d been relevant in the last decade.”
Might, he’d said. Not that he would have. The tattoos were just as easy a target as her hair color and she hadn’t seemed to be all that impressed with his efforts there. They didn’t know each other personally enough to get into anything really good. If Marco was lucky, they never would, no matter how satisfying it would be to really score a good hit on her. He hadn’t expected to make an enemy before he’d even officially started the job. Seemed like a promising beginning.
“And you’d have to reach my ass to be a pain in it.” Sure, she wasn’t that short, but he still had about half a foot on her and he was going to use everything he could. “I’d get you a ladder, but I don’t know where they keep them here.”
He hadn’t noticed his rigid stance beginning to relax, shoulders lowered instead of squared and at the ready. If he had he would have jerked back into position immediately.
Outwardly Jess sneered cooly, but inside she was seething. It wasn’t the insults that bothered her so much as the nerve this asshole had to be spouting them off in the first place. Pointing out the very obvious facts that she had blonde hair and was considerably shorter than him weren’t nearly as infuriating as the fact that he not only seemed genuinely unafraid of her but he also wasn’t moving.
“What is that, three swords?” She recrossed her arms but took a much looser stance than before, unaware that her posture had gone from rigid to almost relaxing into the fury. “Overcompensating, much?” Objectively speaking, they were actually pretty sweet looking pieces, and under any other circumstances Jess might be more interested in them then the person they were wearing, considering how much time she spent in the weapons room. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
The irony was that her mission wasn’t even that urgent. Daniel could be debriefed at any time, it didn’t have to be right now if he was busy, but that didn’t matter. Now it was an actual matter of principle, something Jess didn’t usually bother with, but in this case she had already made the choice to stubbornly dig in her heels and she wasn’t budging for anyone. “I’m sure you’ll get familiar with where we keep the supplies, I’m assuming you’re here for the recent janitorial opening.”
“Two,” he told her, slightly defensive at last—it wasn’t that he wouldn’t have carried three on him, you never knew when someone was going to manage to disarm you and then you’d be happy for the backup. He just hadn’t branched out beyond what Sunny had brought with him. There was always a part of him, though, that expected someone to get shitty over the fact that he was a white guy carrying around a samurai’s traditional weapons, reincarnate or no reincarnate. “They’re a set. Maybe you should be applying for that janitorial position, since you obviously don’t know shit about decent weapons.”
She could always be in Magics, or R&D, or any of the other departments that didn’t need to know shit about a sword. Hell, even someone who was relatively knowledgeable might not know what his were. People expected curved blades when it came to katanas, not the modified straight blades that Sunny favored, an updated version of the old samurai staple daishō pair.
There was a little voice whispering in the back of his head (not Sunny’s, for once) that he really ought to get his shit together and at least pretend to be an adult. It normally wasn’t a problem for him but something about this woman had slid right under his skin. Maybe it was being back in the castle after years of avoiding it, or nerves he wasn’t acknowledging about taking on such an important assignment. Hell, maybe it really was that she was just that irritating. It didn’t matter because whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to let her get the last word, damn it.
It wasn’t even that cutting of an insult, or at least, Jess had been called a lot worse than someone who ‘didn’t know shit about weapons’. For one thing, it wasn’t even true, but how could this dipshit know that? She probably knew more about swords than he did, but whatever, axes were better anyway. For another, she didn’t care what he thought of her. Who did this guy think he was anyway?
He was nobody.
Despite all of this, Jess couldn’t mask her anger anymore, her already invariably short fuse grown even shorter by the very brief but impossibly irritating encounter with this guy in front of Daniel’s door wearing a pair of katanas. And yes, she knew what the fuck those were, thank you very much. She didn’t owe him any kind of explanation but she still suddenly found herself getting directly in his face, even jabbing a finger in between them that was only inches from his nose. “Listen, bucko, if you don’t get out of my way right now I’ll take your cute little set of katanas and shove them right up your a-”
Right at that moment the sound of a door opening made Jess take an automatic step back, just as Lydia stepped out of Daniel’s office and stopped short herself, taking in the very tense sight of Jess and Marco both with mild alarm. “Jess! I see you’ve met Mr. Romano… Marco, Jess is our assistant trainer.” An awkward pause as she cautiously observed the two of them, before speaking only to Marco. “...Daniel’s ready to see you now.”
There were probably worse people that Marco could’ve picked fights with his first day back in the castle. Like the lead trainer, maybe. Or any other department head. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to play nice with the woman who’d almost threatened to shove his swords up his ass at all. If he was even luckier, she wouldn’t tell whoever the head of training was about the whole argument, but Marco would live with it if she did. He wasn’t the one that had started it, after all. Not really.
That probably would’ve carried a little more weight if he hadn’t, once he was absolutely positive that he’d turned enough that Lydia couldn’t see him, shot a very triumphant look at Jess. No one was perfect.
“Thank you,” he told Lydia, all business again. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that he’d possibly been engaged in a grade school level argument with a complete stranger in the hall outside the office of the man he’d be working very closely with. Marco was a professional, after all. He’d been doing this for a very long time. “We’re done here.”
Not like he’d have had a choice about it if they hadn’t been. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in the same room as the leader of Camelot, but it wasn’t like they were familiar enough for Marco to keep him waiting. He slipped into Daniel’s office with one last nod, straightening his shoulders and trying to put everything that wasn’t the present moment completely out of his mind.
Daniel hadn’t been able to make out much from the conversation happening outside his door, but the look of repressed fury on Jess’s face as Marco walked into his office before Lydia closed the door behind him told him all he needed to know, enough to force him to bite back a smile. Knowing Jess, there were only so many scenarios he actually needed to consider when trying to figure out what had happened, but if anyone could handle themselves when it came to their long time assistant trainer, he figured it would be the man in front of him.
Considering he was hiring Marco to be his personal bodyguard, it was probably in his best interest to employ someone for that particular task who had a thicker skin than most, but Jess was notorious for making men three times as big as her cower in confusion and fear. It was a good sign if Marco wasn’t showing that he was rattled. Honestly, Daniel admired Lucas just for being brave enough to ask her to marry him, there had been a fifty-fifty chance that she would either say yes or punch him in the face.
Honestly, Jess was one of Daniel’s most favorite people in the world. She was, also, uniquely terrifying.
“Thank you for coming on short notice.” Daniel got up from his desk and came around to shake Marco’s hand, eyes wandering curiously for a moment to the katanas the other man was carrying before refocusing with a pleasant smile. “I hope our assistant trainer hasn’t scared you off already.”
Marco hadn’t meant to snort at the idea of it; he couldn’t quite hold the sound back.
“Nothing to worry about. It takes a little more to intimidate me than…” Marco hesitated; he had a few more great barbs that he could throw out about her, but probably not to his boss. Or, in fact, his boss’s boss. “Than that. Just a misunderstanding.”
In that Jess had misunderstood the possibility of Marco actually caving and moving out of her way. Marco didn’t think he’d misunderstood anything at all, actually.
“Lydia explained the expectations of the position to me.” With all that aside, Marco would rather get right down to business to start with. Get it out of the way so that they could start letting everything else fall into place later. While Marco hadn’t really needed all of it spelled out, being the bodyguard for someone as important as Daniel had a very inherent set of conditions that Sunny, at least, was all too familiar with, it was always nice to have everything established so that there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings later on. “But I’m sure you have your own preferences to add.”
Marco would consider them, of course. And then he’d do what he needed to in order to protect Daniel to the best of his ability regardless of any of them.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Daniel’s answer was flippant, but he didn’t appear to be ready to talk his way out of this one, he was actually fairly resigned to it. As reluctant as part of him still was at the necessity to always have someone by his side for his own protection, Daniel knew that’s exactly what it was. A necessity. He was no longer as stubborn about that particular point as he used to be, and considering he was on… what, number four? Four bodyguards now? Five if you count his former head of security who eventually just took on the role herself.
Point being, Daniel had been at this for too long to still get hung up on silly things like having little to no privacy. Though honestly, for as difficult as he could be, he was far from the worst Morgan to try and babysit. Marco should be glad he hadn’t been put in charge of Freddie.
“I won’t waste your time trying to convince you of anything we both know you’re just going to ignore. It’s why you were recommended for this position, so I’m told. We Morgans are stubborn creatures. Admitting to needing help isn’t always our strong suit. It helps that you’re already well acquainted with how we do things.” Lydia had of course already briefed Daniel extensively on Marco’s work with her younger brother.
Sitting further back in his own chair, Daniel gestured vaguely to the one across from him. “But while we’re talking preferences, I would prefer to get to know the man who’s going to be charged with jumping in front of bullets for me a little better, if it’s all the same to you. Just how I prefer to do things here.”
Getting personal had never done Marco any favors before; hadn’t done any for Sunny, either. Getting attached could be turned into a blade at your throat in the blink of an eye. It didn’t matter on Marco’s end. Attached or indifferent, he was going to do his job and stand between Daniel and any harm either way. If someone he was guarding got attached to him, though, that was a recipe for them fucking up all of Marco’s hard work keeping them alive.
The difference was that Daniel knew how this worked. Marco was aware of the track record for bodyguards assigned to Daniel Morgan.
Marco still would have preferred to stand, but he’d do it Daniel’s way. Just this once. He unfastened his swords before he sat, but he still kept them close. The castle was safe, but Marco didn’t plan on getting into any sloppy habits with Daniel that could come back to bite them in the ass later. Morgans might be stubborn, but Daniel was right. He was well acquainted with that fact and he’d had plenty of practice being more stubborn than the extended family.
“What did you want to know?” It wasn’t a promise that Marco would share it, but if he decided he didn’t feel like talking about it? He’d at least be honest about it. Not that there was that much to share that wasn’t a matter of public record, the kind of thing that Daniel could have found out from reading his personnel file… and Marco really hoped that he’d done that instead of just letting Lydia brief him.
There were always the kinds of things that got covered in small talk, Marco guessed. He didn’t like them any better than he liked long discussions about his feelings. He was starting to wish he was back out in the hall exchanging insults with a short blonde.
“Whatever you’re willing to tell me, I suppose. Something I wouldn’t have already read in your file, maybe, but it doesn’t have to be,” Daniel responded, as if sensing Marco’s general unease and reluctance to engage. It was entirely possible he did, after all, considering his particular gifts. He wasn’t exactly a mind reader, but there was more than one way to sense what a person was thinking. He didn’t know if Marco was aware of what made Morgaine different, but he wasn’t about to broadcast it all right then and potentially make the man across from him uncomfortable. That could be a conversation for another time.
Of course Daniel had read this file, somewhat extensively, and he’d listened to what Lydia had to say about Marco’s track record, including her own thoughts about him. It was hard to find an opinion more highly regarded than Lydia’s in Camelot, and Daniel wasn’t stupid enough to write someone off who she had vouched for unequivocally. She’d spoken highly enough of him that even if his own record hadn’t spoken for itself, Daniel likely would have heard him out. Now that it was a done deal, he was still curious.
“When I was young I imagined doing all sorts of things, never once did I imagine that I’d one day be in charge of this place. Life happens to everyone. When people find their way to Camelot, I’m always curious about the ‘why’. Why they came, why they stayed. You’ve worked for my family for long enough that I feel like it’s long past time to learn something about you other than your stats. There’s no wrong answer.”
Having a simple conversation shouldn't have been more nerve wracking than a battlefield; that was the kind of life that Marco led though. It was easier to lurk and look threatening, or even run a sword through someone, than share any kind of meaningful connection with another person.
Which was why Marco was newly single and had no one but his new charge to make awkward conversation with.
There had to be a middle ground between uncomfortably personal and the kind of thing that was recorded in a personnel file. Marco's forehead wrinkled as he thought about it, then relaxed when he thought of something that at least approached that middle ground. "I had goldfish when I was a kid."
They hadn't lasted long and they'd been his first and last experience with pets. Turned out he'd liked the idea of pets more than actually having one. By the time he'd been willing to admit his parents had been right not to let him go straight to a dog, it had been too late to tell them so. And he'd managed to take even goldfish in a direction that was too personal. At least he hadn't done it out loud.
It was only a little funny that a strapping man like Marco would choose to talk about his pet goldfish of all things, but Daniel was kind enough not to laugh. His mouth didn’t even flicker, features just as pleasantly neutral as they had been when this conversation first began. The exercise of getting someone to share something personal about themselves was an interesting one, Daniel always thought the motivations behind why they chose that particular answer was sometimes more telling than the answers they gave.
He imagined that Marco had chosen to hold up the goldfish anecdote as an offering for one of two reasons. Either he was an animal person, or there was something more to the story of a younger Marco coming to care for the lives of some goldfish. The answer to either didn’t matter so much as what it potentially told Daniel about Marco that this was what he’d decided to share with him.
Genuinely interested, Daniel leaned comfortably into the back of his chair and tilted his head. “Goldfish? Interesting choice for a child.” Honestly, Daniel preferred pets with four legs, but he might be somewhat biased. “Would you consider yourself an animal person?”
“No.” Marco could have left it at that, but… as much as he didn’t want to get close, he probably shouldn’t alienate the person he was responsible for guarding completely. He relaxed enough to elaborate on it. “My parents didn’t think I was responsible enough to take care of anything bigger than a goldfish. They weren’t wrong. I only had them a couple of weeks before they were belly up.”
And that was Marco, in three sentences. Guarding people he could handle. Taking care of anything small and vulnerable that needed someone to make sure it thrived, that was something that was better saved for people with some kind of nurturing instinct that he didn’t have.
He’d bet Daniel was an animal person. Probably great with any pets he had. He’d have made sure those fish lived their best, longest fishy lives. The kind of people who wanted to know something personal about their bodyguard were like that.
It didn’t matter whether Marco had cared that they’d died. What mattered was that he shouldn’t have been trusted with them in the first place.
“To be fair, goldfish aren’t known to have terribly long lives anyway, or so I hear.” Daniel smiled goodnaturedly, and left it at that. He appreciated the man’s honesty, where someone else might have tried to sugar coat the truth to impress their new boss. He was up front and didn’t beat around the bush, just the sort of qualities that Daniel would hope for in a bodyguard, if he was going to be forced to have one.
After all these years, he still hadn’t fully gotten used to having one, but he’d learned to live with it. It was either that, or risk Lydia’s wrath, and Daniel wasn’t stupid enough to provoke his beloved half-sister who also happened to be his Head of Security. She had far too many clearances for him to be comfortable.
“And as long as you aren’t afraid to be completely blunt with me, we won’t have any problems. I have enough people around me bending over backwards to tell me what they think I want to hear, I don’t need that from the man charged with risking his own neck for my safety.” Folding his hands together in front of him, Daniel arched an eyebrow at Marco expectantly. “I think we both deserve more than that from each other. Do you agree?”
"Agreed." That was something that Daniel would never have to worry about from Marco. He left the pretty, placating words to the people who were good at them. Marco didn't talk enough to waste words; if he said something, it was going to be because it was important.
Or because he really wanted to get under someone's skin, but that was important in its own way, too. Marco took his kicks where he could get them.
"Your safety is too important to be careless with," Marco told him. It ought to go without saying, but he said it anyway: "My job isn't to make you happy. It's to keep you alive, and I can't do that if I'm not willing to tell you that you're doing something… foolish."
Stupid was the word he'd wanted to use, but Marco assumed there was a limit even to welcoming bluntness. If Daniel was used to bodyguards who wanted to be his friend, Marco would likely be a shock.
Daniel smiled, having some kind of feeling that Marco had indeed meant to use an entirely different word from foolish, but in the end the meaning amounted to the same. That was fine. Daniel had meant what he said, he wasn’t interested in having a bodyguard who was too careful about tiptoeing around his feelings. Goddess knows his own family wasn’t, why should the man in front of him behave any differently?
In a perfect world, he wouldn’t need one, but the world was far from perfect and unfortunately for Daniel, there was no shortage of people who would very much like to see him dead. As much as he’d resisted Lydia in the beginning, even Daniel could admit when she was probably right about something, at least when it came to his own life and the lives of those he cherished. If the other members of his family being better protected was the price he had to pay for a somewhat inconvenient intrusion into his daily privacy, he’d gladly pay it over and over again. Even Freddie had stopped resisting his own detail after awhile.
“Glad to hear it,” Daniel replied with ease, after a moment rising from his chair and moving to shake his new bodyguard’s hand before he saw Marco out of his office, where he presumed the man would likely stay just outside the door. It would never not be a little strange, but so many things in Daniel’s life were strange that what’s one more in the grand scheme of things? “Then we’ll get along just fine.”