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"Free food sounds good to me any time. ...What uh...what's up with you and Clarice? She mentioned dinner before." Harrison tried to sound casual but he was the fact made him uneasy for reasons he couldn't place.

Mostly that nobody had offered him dinner.

Except Jordan just now.

...Damn, he was really hungry.

Jordan stirred and wrapped an arm around Rep's waist, bristling somewhat more literally than usual at the idea. "Sometimes she's got about as much tact as Ferros does," he grumbled. There were a lot of things he could say, a lot of things he wanted to say, but he didn't know how well they'd be received, was still a little freaked out himself by how intensely attached he'd gotten in such a relatively short time. Safer to keep his mouth shut for now.

"I think I needed the lack of tact though. As she put it, Simon wouldn't give me any warning, he'd just shoot me. She only even warned me." She'd said he reminded her of herself and the hole she'd dug herself into. It felt like a small degree of confiding, he kept that at least to himself. "For her own reasons."

He leaned a little more on Jordan, grateful for the possessive gesture, needing it more than he'd admit.

Harrison got a smirk but one that was very much one of his attempts to look less concerned than he was. "So yeah, someone a bit worse than Marcus I guess. I was asked where I thought I lay on the Deus balance sheet and how I was dangerously near to being more trouble than I'm worth. And I guess I still technically am. I'm still breaking tables and all that s**t. I don't know."

He'd been trying but he had no idea if it was even close to enough.

"They don't...do that, do they? Kill people in their sleep over budget issues? I mean, you're not- that's just tables, they want you to wreck the enemy and s**t and you do, you put your life on the line every time you go out there, and they think you're not pulling your weight because...because of popularity contests and a little property damage?" Harrison was getting more upset the more he talked, everything turning into a steady growl. "That's BULLSHIT. Allan took out half the walls in the main building and a whole stairwell! He wrecks s**t all the time and they're threatening you over nothing, those chintzy ********>

"Wanting me dead and trying to kill me are two separate ******** things in my book," Harrison barked, only half-registering the question and losing track of his temper, "Beaurocratic bastards."

"You've taught me a lot about how absolutely necessary it is to work together as part of a solid team," Jordan said. "To do that, you've gotta be able to trust your teammates, and Rep was doing a damn good job of alienating everyone he talked to in the first couple of weeks he was awake." His hold on Rep tightened, possessive and protective. "I'm not saying it was justified. I am saying the warning went a long way towards pulling him back from getting to a point of no return."

He reached up to stroke at the base of Harrison's ear, a deliberate imitation of the touch that had calmed and quieted him so easily.

Rep just listened to the discussion quietly, not entirely sure why he felt so guilty listening to them talk. As Harrison snapped at him, he had to resist the urge to flinch, even though he knew the anger wasn't directed at him, resenting himself even for the impulse. Again that self doubting inner voice that had him try and persuade himself the other man was only angry because he'd wasted energy defending what could inevitably turn out to be a lost cause.

But the inner voice faded, the knot in his gut loosened just a bit at the end of his rant. There was a lot he suddenly wanted to say, a well of emotion that demanded voice, but no words to say it.

He looked away, his usual fight curiously absent so close to what was a serious weak point for him, still resigned and distant to what he perceived he couldn't change.

"I shouldn't have mentioned it really."