Chapter Text
The knock on Darby’s locker room echoes and, before he opens the door, could honestly be anyone: TK, here with a shiny new flamethrower, or one of the EAs with a card update that means Darby will be able to punch someone annoying. Unfortunately for Darby, because he never gets things that he really wants, like continued carte blanche to set people he hates aflame, the person standing on the other side is Jack Perry. And he is not currently on fire.
Darby tries to slam the door shut again, to make the asshole go away, but he's too slow. Score negative one for his shitty reflexes, apparently. He blames Everest and all the frostbite that nearly took his digits off.
“Stop,” Jack whines. God, even his voice is the most infuriating sound on the planet. The only sound Darby wants to hear from this guy is yelps of pain. “Darby, don't—”
“Fuck off,” Darby growls, while attempting to jam Jack’s boot, which he stuck into the opening as a means to prevent the door from closing, hard enough to break a few toes. He doesn't seem to succeed, because Jack just wiggles his foot in further.
“No! Hold on. Will you just listen to what I have to— stop, oh my god, you are the most—”
“I said, fuck off,” Darby repeats. It has absolutely no effect; Jack doesn't stop attempting to squirm his way into the room, and Darby’s words appear to fall on deaf ears. Darby loses the war with the door as it flies open, flinging him into the room as he scrambles to stay on his feet, and gives Jack access to walk in and slam the thing shut behind him.
“I’ve figured it out,” Jack says, like that means something.
“What, how much I hate you? Newsflash: you didn’t have to come in here for that, I could have texted it. Yelled it across the arena. Sent up smoke signals to create giant middle fingers in the sky. Go away.”
“No,” Jack replies, nonchalant, as though none of that landed, and why the fuck did none of that land? “I’ve figured out how Christian is controlling Lucha.”
Darby stares at him for a moment, boggled. And then, as frustration and irritation well up hot through his chest, says, “Why the fuck do you think I care how Christian is controlling Lucha?”
Jack rolls his eyes. God, he’s so bitchy. “You hate Christian.”
“Everyone hates Christian.”
“You specifically hate Christian, because he stole Nick from you.”
Darby groans, loudly. Emphatically, even. Again, his obvious displeasure seems to do nothing, because Jack has the astounding ability to ignore everything he doesn’t care for. “Dude. Go take a long walk off a short pier, and leave me alone. Nick made a choice. It was a fucking horrible choice, but he’s eighteen. He’s an adult. He gets to make those choices.”
“You might be the dumbest motherfucker on the planet,” Jack tells him, with all this seriousness, and Darby starts looking around the room for something to throw at him. Maybe one of the metal chairs. Oh, there’s a dumbbell against the far wall— he can throw that. In fact, he’s bending over to pick it up before Jack starts talking again. “Did it not occur to your tiny pea-sized brain that if Christian can control Lucha then he might also be controlling… what are you doing with that?”
Darby straightens, the dumbbell in one hand. Hold up. There were words in there that weren’t entirely full of shit, and he wasn’t totally paying attention, so he’s stuck sort of backtracking through parsing what he’d heard. “What?”
“I said, what are you doing with that?” Jack repeats.
“No, what did you say? Before that?” Darby squints blearily at him as his thoughts kind of pinwheel. “Christian could be controlling Nick?”
“Are you going to throw that at me?” Jack demands.
“Oh my god,” Darby groans, and sets the dumbbell down. He’ll wait for bodily damage until after he hears this asshole’s outlandish explanation of the events Darby has long pushed out of his mind, for his own good. “Okay. I put it down. Say that again, about Christian and Nick.”
Jack’s brow furrows. “No.”
What the fuck. “No?” Darby repeats, incredulous.
“You have to agree to help me first.”
“Help you what?”
Jack throws his hands up into the air, as though someone Darby is the one making zero sense here. “Help me get the device that Christian is using to control Lucha!”
“What device?” Darby can’t handle this. He absolutely cannot handle this. “You’ve told me nothing, I don’t even know what you’re talking about right now!” Darby grabs for the short bit of hair he’s got. “Jesus, you make no fucking sense. What am I, a mind reader? I’d tell you that this is why nobody likes you, but honestly, this is just, like, a drop in the bucket of why nobody likes you.”
Jack snorts, unamused. “Yeah, ‘cause you have so many friends.”
“I have friends, you piece of shit, that’s…” Darby makes another supremely frustrated rattle in his throat. Is he being punished for something? Surely, he’s being punished for something. “That’s not the point. Okay. Let me attempt to make sense of this bullshit you’re spewing out all over… Christian has a device, and you think he’s using it to mind-control Lucha?”
“Duh,” Jack says.
“I am going to punch you in the fucking face,” Darby tells him, with great sincerity.
“We have to get the device.”
Oh my god, Jack isn’t going to leave until Darby humors him, is he? Darby almost feels like crying. Almost. If he just… lets Jack go off on this, quite frankly, absurd tangent, will he leave? Will he take his obnoxious, horrible mug and get out of Darby’s locker room? It seems like the best bet Darby’s got, so he sucks in a deep breath and manages to grit out, “Where is the device?”
“It’s on his keys,” Jack says. He’s got this manic sort of glint in his eyes, like the insanity has finally caught up with him. “They’re with him all the time, but I saw it. I’ve been following him around backstage, and—”
“Okay, stalker.”
“—I saw it on the keyring, the one with his car fab. I know he’s got it.”
Darby closes his eyes, counts to ten. He is in charge of his emotions. He is calm. He is not here. He is somewhere where there is no Jack Perry. Everything is fine. He inhales another deep, measured breath that, naturally, does nothing, because the damn guy is still standing across from him harshing all of Darby’s vibes. “So steal the keyring.”
“Oh, is that what I should do?” Jack asks, voice going suspiciously high-pitched. “Should I just take the keyring? Wow, what a fantastic idea. I’m so glad I came to you for this. Yeah, I’ll just walk up, grab it, and then be immediately murdered in gorilla by his psychotic lackeys. Thanks for that. You’re a regular Einstein.”
“Every day I wish that I’d had three flamethrowers to properly set you on fire at Double or Nothing.”
Jack rolls his eyes again. It somehow makes him look actually less attractive than normal, which feels like it shouldn’t be physically possible. “And every day I wish your head wasn’t made of bricks so running it over with my bus would have had more lasting consequences.” His mouth purses. “C’mon. I need help. We’ve got to find an opportunity where the keyring will be unattended and we can steal it.”
“No,” Darby says, in disbelief.
Jack gestures towards the door. “I’m gonna find a way, and you’re gonna help me when I do.”
“I am not going to do that.”
“Okay, once I figure things out, I’ll hunt you down again and tell you what the plan is.”
“No,” Darby tries again. What the fuck. Is he not making words? Has he been put on mute? Why the fuck is Jack ignoring him?
Jack is nodding, like Darby agreed with him. Like Darby would ever do that. Like Darby hasn’t spent the past almost-year pissed off that one of their bouts in the ring didn’t result in permanent brain damage so he’d never have to see Jack’s stupid beard again. “I’ll be back when I figure it out,” he says, heading towards the door like something has been settled.
“Do not come back here,” Darby tells him, offended. “Never, ever approach my locker room door again.”
“Maybe next week!” Jack calls, halfway out to the hallway.
“I hope you get the ebola virus next week,” Darby returns, with considerable force, and the door slams shut, leaving him gobsmacked, confused, and about ten other emotions that all ripple out from horrified in Jack’s wake.
Jack doesn’t show up the next week, and Darby, the fool, comforts himself with the belief that Jack has given up on his entire thing— or at least found some other sucker to bother with specifics. He honestly thinks himself free of this, happy with the quiet stillness of his locker room not being invaded by horrible, annoying people.
But he fails to factor in the fact that Jack had spent several months doing nothing but obsessively returning all of Darby’s volleys in increasing unhinged methods with a sort of single-mindedness that, in other people, Darby might actually find impressive. In fact, Darby fails to factor this in right up until his locker room door slams open two weeks later, Jack striding in staring at his phone without a goddamn care in the world that he’s trespassing.
“Okay, great news,” Jack announces, as though anything other than his departure could be considered ‘great’ in Darby’s world. “I’ve discovered an opportunity to get the keyring.”
Darby stares at him from his place on the couch, one boot propped up on a metal folding chair. “What are you doing here?”
“This is really good, actually, I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried.”
“Do you not understand what knocking is?” Darby asks. “I told you never to come back. What if I’d been bare ass naked in here?”
“Then I’d be rendered blind,” Jack returns, and oh, so he does listen to what Darby’s saying, huh? Jack sits down on the loveseat next to Darby like that’s a thing he can do, still staring at his phone. He’s scrolling through something with his index finger. “Okay, so the cruise—”
“What cruise?”
Jack sighs, put out, and lifts his eyes. How on earth does he have the gall to be frustrated right now? “The inaugural Jericho Couples-Only Wrestling Romance Cruise. Do you just, like, not ever read emails? The company’s been promoting this for months.”
Darby recoils, frowning. It’s actually instinctive: his soul’s involuntary response to hearing Jericho’s name. “Think I marked them as spam. What does this have to do with anything?”
“Christian’s going with Shayna,” Jack says, as though it should be obvious. “The EAs have a document with all the sign-ups.”
“Oh, god.” Darby closes his eyes. “Like I didn’t have enough trauma. Don’t tell me these things. Anyway, how’d you get the fucking EAs sign-up list?”
“Not important.” Jack waves one hand in the air. Uh, it feels kind of important. What shit is he getting up to? “What’s important is that I got us on.”
Darby’s brain, which had gone down a truly terrible line of thought that included Nick and Christian playing an exaggerated game of catch out in a park and Shayna clapping as she watched, all hazy and pink-colored, abruptly short-circuits. He did not just hear that right. “I’m sorry, what? You what?”
“I got us on the cruise,” Jack repeats, sounding annoyed. “Jesus, you’re so slow. It’s like your head is just floating disconnected from your spine at all times. I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised, but.”
“Jack, that’s a couples cruise,” Darby says. Is he dreaming? This is a nightmare.
“Yes,” Jack replies, and he’s still looking at Darby like Darby is the insane one here. “And you’re welcome, by the way. I had to lean in to the perceived homophobia of not letting us sign up after the deadline had—”
“No,” Darby exclaims. Holy shit. This is definitely a nightmare. This is a nightmare, and Jack is the malicious sleep paralysis demon watching Darby’s torment with glee, holy fuck. “Oh my god. What the fuck is the matter with you? We’re not… we’re not going on that!”
“Darby, this is our best shot at getting that keyring. Think of all the times it’ll be left unattended: during activities, when they’re at the bar, during… other things we won’t talk about…”
Darby makes a noise he did not know he was capable of making, a cross between a dying wail and the most agonized torture response possible. He covers his face with his hands because he simply cannot exist in a world where he is being made to think about those things— Shayna is like a second mother to him, holy fuck— and also because the horror of this bizarre new reality he finds himself in has come crashing down around his shoulders. “Why would you do this? Am I being Punk’d? Is this a new trial of Elite psychological bullshit designed to mentally destroy me?”
“Okay, drama queen.” Jack scoffs. When Darby peeks through his fingers, Jack’s gone back to his phone as though thoroughly unaffected by this shitshow. “The EA should be sending your ticket and flight information.”
“Flight information?” Darby repeats, incensed, and then his phone dings cheerily, heralding his doom. What the fuck.
“Listen, we’re gonna have to sell this,” Jack warns, all serious. “You do understand that there are, like, ten couples from the roster on this thing, and if we don’t sell this, Christian is absolutely gonna get suspicious.”
Darby is in hell. He stares at Jack; stares, and stares, and stares until the outline of Jack’s stupid fucking face begins to blur, and normally, that would be great, because less time looking at the details of his dumbass features— eugh, blech, puke— but here Darby recognizes as a sign that he is dangerously close to passing out from shock and disgust. “What are you saying, Jack.”
“I’m saying that we have to be a couple. A believable couple. And you can’t keep looking at me like you wanna rip my fucking head off, and— yes, that’s exactly the expression I’m talking about, you can’t look at me like that if we want people to believe this.”
“I can’t look at you any other way,” Darby deadpans. “I want you to die.”
Jack pulls a deeply resigned face. How dare he act like this isn’t the single worst thing to ever happen, and it’s his fault this is unfolding in the first place. “Darby. Pull your bloated head out of your ass and think about this.”
“Yeah, I can’t think about this. My mind is wiping it all as soon as it enters to protect me.”
Jack ignores this, as usual. “If Christian is controlling Lucha with a device that hijacks his brain, can you really say with certainty that he isn’t doing the same to Nick? And don’t you want to know if he is, because then none of this would have been Nick’s fault and that kid you loved would still be inside there? Screaming? With no one helping?”
Okay, Darby hates that entire line of thought, so that’s cool. That sits extremely poorly around all the sections of his heart he’d blocked off when Nick had so thoroughly betrayed him for a geriatric megalomaniac. Ugh. “You think that’s possible?”
“Well, I can’t write it off,” Jack says, shrugging. “I don’t know how the damn thing works. Maybe it’s not reptilian-specific, you know?”
“Huh?”
“The physiology might be different. I’m not a scientist. But it’s possible.”
Darby’s more confused than irate now, which actually feels a bit better. “I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.”
“Whatever.” Jack sighs. “The EA should send over the cruise itinerary with everything else. There’s all these planned activities and excursions and shit; you know, cruise stuff. Jericho likes to over-schedule things like mad so nobody has a free second to complain.” He’s on his phone again, scrolling like mad. How did Darby get here? He needs a do-over on this entire day. “We’ll want to meet at the airport and take a car to the port terminal together.”
“Excuse me?”
“For appearances, you dumbfuck,” Jack says. “It’s a couples cruise. We can’t travel separately.”
“Oh my god,” Darby moans, collapsing against the loveseat because his body has simply given up. Smart of it, honestly; he wishes the rest of him would, too, like his circulatory system. He cannot possibly be expected to go through with this. And he’d kick Jack outta this locker room so damn fast except the asshole has planted a kernel of doubt about Nick and Nick’s choice in aligning with Christian, and Darby can’t shake it free.
What if Jack’s right? What if Nick’s somehow being controlled, and he’s spent the past almost two years trapped inside a hell he can’t escape from, beating his fists against the metaphorical walls of his brain?
Shit. Shit, Darby can’t deal with that. Despite it all, he still loves Nick.
With great trepidation, he twists his head to look at Jack on the other side of the couch. “You promise you’ll get this damn keyring… thing… so we can figure this out?”
“I mean, as much as I can promise that, sure. This is the best shot we’ve got; I’m not gonna waste it. I want to take Christian down.”
Well, Darby’s probably done dumber stuff for less possibility of a reward before. He did, after all, go through a pane of glass and miss the Bucks completely. He sighs, extremely heavy. Hopefully it conveys the depth of his horrified displeasure at this entire scheme Jack’s cooked up. “Fine,” he grits out.
Jack studies him for a long moment. Then he says, “I wasn’t asking, you idiot. You know that, right? You were going to do this no matter what.”
“I hate you so much,” Darby groans.
Arriving at the Tampa airport is liking stepping directly into the sun. Not because it’s hot and stupidly sunny, because it is, but Darby’s fairly used to that in Atlanta, but because he ends up landing ten minutes after both Kyle Fletcher and Skye Blue, and Roddy Strong and Marina Shafir, and it’s… so much Bermuda print. Just so, so much Bermuda print, and white shorts, and sandals, and tiki-themed luggage sets that Darby suspects were purchased just for this cruise.
Plus, Darby actually opens the itinerary the EA sent while he’s waiting for Jack to text him where the car’s waiting, and by the time he ends up opening the Uber door to slide into the backseat, he is so annoyed he’s practically vibrating with it.
“Why the fuck,” he begins, slamming one boot into the back of the passenger seat and not caring at all, “is there a fucking couples massage on this list?”
“It’s a free massage, why on earth are you complai—” Jack’s voice trails off. “What is this?”
“What is what?” Darby returns.
“What are you wearing?”
Darby glances down at his front as the Uber driver starts up his course for the port. “Clothes.”
“Clothes?” Jack repeats, indignant. He sounds so dumb like that, all… squeaky and weird. “You look like you’re clocking in for your shift at Hot Topic. In 2005.”
“Oh my god,” Darby groans.
“You did bring appropriate attire, didn’t you?”
Darby’s door has locked, which is unfortunate, because it means he can’t fling himself out of the vehicle to escape. Also, they’re still only going like 10mph, so the impact wouldn’t hurt him badly enough to necessitate a hospital stay. “Well, at least I didn’t wear board shorts on a plane.”
“We’re going on a cruise!” Jack squawks. His face has contorted into what Darby actually thinks is possibly the funniest incredulity he’s ever seen. Then he sort of flails around in the backseat, very unattractive, and makes a faux crying noise. “Oh my god. You know, it’s very apparent why you have no one to actually go to these things with. You are literally a disaster of a human being. Like a crash dummy come to life, but not being given any actual brain cells, just sort of… lumbering around and running into things.”
“Yeah, could you head back to the airport terminal?” Darby asks, shifting forward to grab hold of the passenger seat headrest to talk to the Uber driver. “I’m gonna buy a ticket for another flight and go home.”
“No, he is not,” Jack hisses. “Keep driving to the port. I’ll tip you double the trip cost.”
“Okay, Scrooge McDuck,” Darby says, and then Jack’s hands are lifting up his shirt, and Darby panic-throws both arms out. One elbow smacks into the window, which hurts like a bitch, and the other catches Jack in the stomach, which honestly serves him right. “What are you doing?”
“Changing your shirt into something more appropriate!” Jack says, though he grunted a little when Darby hit him in the torso. Good. “Ugh, this is a nightmare. I’m giving you one of my Tommy Bahama—”
“I am not wearing that!” Darby cries, and he can’t figure out why it comes out so screechy. Jack’s fingers are cold and Darby’s gonna freak out, but apparently he isn’t squirming enough to actually stop the guy from lifting Darby’s shirt up over his head. Or else Jack is just really, really good at undressing people. That’s a fucked-up thought.
“Can you get your pants off here, or—”
“No!”
Jack makes a growling sort of noise. “Fine, whatever, keep the black jeans. But at least put this on so you look like you tried not to dress like you’re an emo teen who hates his parents. Christ. It’s like you aren’t trying at all.”
He tosses Darby a shirt from the duffel he’d shoved into the footwell, and since Jack has not given Darby back his original shirt, the only option is to put the damn thing on. It’s covered in palm fronds. Darby’s soul is about to leave his physical body out of sheer mortification. People are going to see him in this, aren’t they? God almighty. Every single life choice that led him here was the worst.
“Why are you like this?” Darby asks, and means it.
Jack also ignores that, and it feels pretty rude for him to keep brushing Darby aside when he's the one who insisted they fake a relationship. Jack’s on his phone again, tapping away. There's no way he has actual friends to text. “So, as soon as we check in, we should head to the room and drop our stuff off, then do a quick walk around the ship, see what we're working with.”
“What?” Darby balks.
“Yeah, we have time before the ship leaves, and… then it looks like we're on the 7pm dinner slot.”
Okay, hold the fuck up. “Dinner slot?”
“I know you've been on one of these before,” Jack says, looking cross. “This is how cruises work. You get assigned a dinner time, and a table, and—”
“We have to eat together?”
“Darby!” Jack snaps, which doesn't seem fair. Darby has just learned that he'll never be able to get away from the guy on this nightmare fodder ship. Not even for food. “Jesus, I am gonna strangle you. You have to sell this. You like me. We are there together.”
“I want to push you into oncoming traffic.”
Jack reaches over to grab Darby’s hand, and it's pure instinct that has Darby wrenching his whole arm away. “Don't touch me!” Darby hisses.
“We have to practice holding hands!” Jack says. Oh god, Darby can't do this. He cannot hold the man’s hand when he wants to shove broken glass shards into it, and then Jack is lacing their fingers together, and Darby wishes that he had never learned what wrestling was. If he'd been a skateboarder, he would not be dealing with this right now. He would not be dealing with Jack’s fingers tightening between his. It's making him nauseated. He may puke in the back of this Uber.
“Okay,” Jack says, to himself, it seems. “This is fine. We can handle this.”
“Speak for yourself,” Darby says. “I need to go scrub my hand with a brillo pad.”
“Oh, look.” Jack points out the window. Their hands are still joined, and Darby’s about to rattle out of his skin. “There’s the port.”
Darby wishes he could say that he wasn’t sure which ship they were headed to. They aren’t even there yet, have two more turns just to reach the drop-off zone, and he wishes he did not know which ship was ready to swallow him whole, but like most things Jericho is involved in, subtlety is an unknown. Jericho’s name is printed huge and black across the side of one of them, breaking only for the tiny porthole windows dotting the sweeping steel sides; in front of the vessel, on the pier, stand all of the passengers, paired up in the most obvious fashion Darby’s ever seen.
“Maybe it’ll capsize and kill us all at sea,” Darby says, a plea and a prayer to a deity he’s so very sure has long deserted him.
“God, you’re annoying,” Jack grouses, but he keeps their hands together, which is the worst damn thing ever because Darby can’t get his fingers free, even after tugging them. Jack’s grip is a vice. Darby’s gonna lose circulation.
The Uber driver slows near the pier, and Jack seems to suddenly remember he has shit to pull out, because he finally unlinks their hands and plunges his fingers into his duffel. “You have to wear the badge as talent.”
He shoves one of the plastic ID cards at Darby, who just stares down at the mess of a neon pink lanyard in his palms. “It’s covered in hearts.”
“It’s the romance cruise,” Jack says, as though Darby is deeply stupid.
If Darby’s lucky, the lanyard strap will become sentient and strangle him. Miracles do happen occasionally, right? He can’t see any way to avoid slipping it over his head, but when he looks down, his frown becomes more pronounced. “Jericho’s name is bigger than every other word on this fuckin’ thing.”
“Matches his ego, then,” Jack grumbles, sliding his own badge on.
The bark of that laugh claws out of Darby’s throat of its own accord. He isn’t nearly quick enough to tamp it back, so it echoes through the Uber as the driver finally stops the car at the drop-off curb, and Darby is acutely aware of Jack’s eyes on him. “You’re not funny,” Darby says, a reflex. “I had a tickle in my throat.”
One corner of Jack’s mouth lifts, disappearing beneath the dumb bristles of his beard. “Sure you did.”
Turns out, they get a different boarding location than the normies who’ve forked over fistfuls of cash for the delightful experience of being on a ship with them and, like, watching a few matches. Darby trudges behind Jack in a state of resigned acceptance; his jeans are already really hot, and he’s getting significantly overheated, but he doesn’t dare say anything or else Jack will literally never shut up about being right, so Darby bites his tongue and keeps all that within his teeth. Christ, the last thing he needs is giving Jack more ammunition, unless said ammunition is landing him in a jail cell for attempted crimes against Darby’s person.
They get their own check-in desk, too, which… is more than Darby would have assumed, given that it’s Jericho. And just when he thinks he’ll get onto this bitch of a situation without further humiliation, Jack grabs for his hand and smacks their joined fingers onto the marble counter where a young woman is smiling cheerily at them with resting Customer Service face.
“Give me my hand back,” Darby hisses under his breath, but Jack’s damn death grip is back. Darby’s fingers are turning white. This is worst than Everest frostbite.
“Good afternoon,” Jack says to the clerk, ignoring Darby’s plight entirely. In fact, his hand squeezes tighter just to be a little bitch. “We’re here to check in for the cruise.”
“Wonderful,” she says. Her smile doesn’t change; it might be plastic, glued onto her face. “Names?”
“Jack Perry and Darby Allin,” Jack says. If Darby tunnels into the floor, will he drown? That would be so nice. Drowning seems like a lovely escape from this hell.
“Perfect,” the clerk says. She does some tap-tapping on the keyboard, then lifts her eyes. “You already have your talent badges?”
“We do.” Why does Jack’s voice sound like that? He’s like… an alien of some kind, a body snatcher. He sounds so nice. What the fuck. “They’re so great. Beautiful design. Just love the font size choices.”
With his free hand, Darby attempts to push the bead uniting his lanyard cords up against his throat. Apparently, he alerts Jack to his movements when the plastic hits his trachea and he gags a bit. Jack reaches over and smacks it down with way too much force. “What are you doing?” Jack whispers.
“Trying to cut off oxygen to my lungs,” Darby answers. Hey, at least he’s being honest.
“Oh my god.” At least anything else Jack was gonna say gets cut off when the clerk completes whatever she was doing on the computer and hands them two plastic keycards.
“Here are your room keys,” she says. “You’ll be on Deck 7, in Room 718. Talent has their own relaxation space, which is located up the front of the ship on Deck 8, and keeps you separate from the rest of the guests.” She consults her computer screen again. “Your dinner reservations are at 7:00pm each night, and you’re booked for table 14.” She leans forward. “Talent tables are all together at the front. Near the string quartet.”
“Perfect,” Darby says. “That means I won’t be able to hear him speak.”
The clerk blinks at him, eyes wide. “What?”
Jack’s elbow jams into Darby’s side, a streak of furious pain. “He said it’s perfect, he’ll be able to hear the peak. Ha ha! He loves music so much.” Jack twists to fix that horribly fake smile on Darby. He might need to work on that expression— his eye is twitching. “Anyway, this is wonderful. Let’s go, darling.”
Jack’s lucky he’s hauling Darby away from the desk by the time Darby recovers from nearly vomiting on the ornate marble floor design to succinctly offer, “Ew.”
“What is the matter with you?” Jack asks, all sharp and annoyed as they get into the elevator and he smacks the button for Deck 7. “I told you we have to sell this! You can’t keep making stupid fucking comments.”
“A string quartet, Jack?”
“Yeah, well, at least I’ll have something that doesn’t suck ass when I’m stuck staring at your stupid face for every meal. You could be appreciative. It’s supposed to be romantic.”
A horrible thought emerges in Darby’s mind. “Are they gonna make us dance? Oh my god, I cannot. I will stab you with a butter knife. Like, twenty times.”
“Nick,” Jack reminds him, though his mouth is doing something funny, and Darby wonders if maybe Jack had failed to factor in dancing to his internal schedule. Good; hopefully he’s just as revolted by the idea. “You’re doing this for Nick, Darby.”
God, Darby is going to fling himself off the Lido Deck at the earliest opportunity. He’d rather take his chances with the sharks than have to go through the next three days with Jack. He tells himself it’ll all be fine, he can shove his headphones on when they have to sleep, and continues to tell himself this all the way up to unlocking their cabin door and walking in. In fact, he’s so caught up in the peaceful notion of tuning out Jack’s grating voice that he stalks into the room and flings his luggage onto the bed before he actually clocks what the room looks like.
His blood runs cold. He’s pretty sure he spirals through half the cycle of grief in a matter of seconds. And then, furious in a way he’s never been furious before, he growls out, “Jack?”
“Oh,” Jack says, kind of faint and breathless and weird. “Oh, no.”
It's only a King bed, which Darby had unfortunately anticipated, but that's not really the issue, is it? Sure, cruise cabins are small! Darby just sort of anticipated that there would be actual walls.
He rounds on Jack, who, to his credit, looks a bit pale. “There's nothing separating the shower except glass, Jack. A wall of solid glass. Not even the foggy kind! Squeaky clean and transparent!”
“Don't you make a real glass joke right now,” Jack warns. “I don't think I can handle it.”
“Oh, you don't think you can handle it?” Darby’s going to somehow shove himself out the window he's certain isn't any larger than his skull. “I'm going to have to watch you shower.”
“No, no, we'll just…” Jack makes a spinning motion with one hand. “...y'know, roll the other way on the bed.”
“I am going to murder you.”
Jack drags a hand down his face. “I'm sure Jericho thought this was all very romantic.”
“There's no walls around the toilet, Jack!” If Darby is yelling, it's really Jack’s fault, so he can't be bothered to try and keep his voice from reaching the absolute crash out point. “Is watching each other take a shit romantic?”
“Oh my god,” Jack moans, and good. Maybe he's finally realizing that this is, without a doubt, the worst thing that has ever happened. Darby is gonna kill him. Then he's gonna bring Jack to life just so he can kill him again. “Okay! Okay. So we're in… a bit of a situation here.”
“I can't do this.” Darby starts towards the door, doesn't even bother to grab his bag. It's all useless. Throw it into the sea. “I'm going back down there, and I'm getting another room, and I'll sleep with the fans, I don't even care, I can't—”
“Stop!” Jack's palms slam into Darby’s chest, pushing him backwards. “No. Darby, stop. It's fine. It's three days! How bad can anything be for three days?”
“Three days is enough to take you past the point where pumping your stomach will save you if you down a bottle of pills.”
Jack stares at him, momentarily stymied. “What? Why… why do you know that? You aren't doing that here.”
“I wasn't talking about me,” Darby tells him, very seriously. “Do you have a sensitive gag reflex, or can I shove them down your throat?”
Jack’s eyes sort of drift past Darby's shoulder, though he doesn't move his hands or readjust his weight to allow Darby to escape. “Uh, well, I think Jericho expected something to go down my throat, because there's a gift basket on the dresser.”
Curiosity wins out. Darby turns to look at the basket, decorated with a shiny red ribbon held together with… handcuffs. “What the fuck.” It's morbid curiosity that sees him stepping over to pull a bottle out of the interior. “There's fucking lube in the gift basket, Jack.” He glares at Jack, hoping that he'll somehow be able to set the man on fire using only the power of his hatred. “Exactly how hard did you ‘lean in to the perceived homophobia’ here?”
“Um,” Jack begins, and finally has the decency to look mildly embarrassed. “Well. Maybe kind of hard. I might have mentioned January 6th, and Jake Hager, and… look, I was worried he wouldn't let me sign us up late. It worked, didn't it? So who fucking cares if he left…” Jack motions to the basket, mouth turning comically down. “...creepy shit.”
Out of options that don't include creating a noose out of the fancy bedsheets, Darby chucks the bottle at Jack’s head. Very disappointingly, Jack ducks out of the way and it sails harmlessly into the too-close back wall of the cabin.
“Do not throw lube at me!” Jack exclaims, bristling and offended.
If Darby were anywhere else, he would lose his shit over hearing that come out of Jack’s mouth, but as it stands, he mostly just wants to throw more. Something harder. Maybe he'll break the super romantic glass separating the shower from the fuckin’ bed. “I have never hated anyone the way I fucking hate you.”
“Great.” Jack snorts. “I don't give a shit. Your acting chops had better be stronger than your actual chops are, ‘cause we're going up to Deck 8 and getting the lay of the land. We've gotta find Christian and Shayna.”