Chapter Text
Piers is in the elevator that’s currently scaling Rose Tower.
The Chairman has summoned him. A rare occurrence. Piers wonders if he has time to light a cigarette and set the smoke alarm off.
The elevator stops with a ding, and Piers is greeted by an impassive frown, Oleana appearing as soon as the doors open.
“Piers.” She motions for him to follow her. Pointless really, because there’s only one door at the end of this hallway.
Why does he suddenly feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter..?
Piers waits by the door as Oleana pokes her head in.
“Mister Chairman?”
Rose doesn’t answer right away. But when he does it’s with the usual exuberance and pomp; though he can’t see him, the rocker from Spikemuth can practically hear a smile curling at his lips.
“Well, send him through!” Piers begrudging enters the room, fights not to roll his eyes when he sees that stupid smile, and promptly startles when the door snaps shut behind him. Oleana isn’t sticking around, strangely. “Piers! So good to see you! Please, take a seat, take a seat.”
Piers begrudgingly does that too.
“Tea?”
“Pass.” Piers puts his cigarette to his lips, he’s testing the man now. Desperate for a reaction.
Rose slides an ashtray across the table. Piers lights his cigarette anyway, staring daggers.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here.” Rose continues to smile that amiable smile. The one that makes his skin crawl. Piers doesn’t answer, deliberately flicks some ash onto that polished mahogany table.
No doubt it will be about moving Spikemuth to a dynamax spot. Again.
“It’s... come to my attention that you’ve been spotted lately in the middle of the night with— how should I put this,” Rose looks troubled as if trying to find a way to sugarcoat his next words, “more than one suitor?”
Piers feels a sudden flash of horror before it twists his guts. Suddenly he’s back there in that alley. Hands roaming, grabbing, forc— “I’m being spied on, you mean, Chairman?”
“I can assure you, that couldn’t be further from the truth.” Rose pauses, plays with that wisp of hair in front of his eyes. Piers continues to glare at him, unblinking. “But what you’re doing is—“ Rose pauses again. “Indiscreet to say the least.”
“Tough.” Piers flicks another column of ash, this time onto the carpet.
Rose still doesn’t react. Doesn’t tell him off. That frown line between Piers’ eyebrows deepens.
Something to be said for being a cat person, he thinks. Rose probably has a higher threshold for mindless destruction, and from far peskier creatures than Piers.
He thinks on Rose’s words. Perhaps five men in one alley had been rather stupid of him. He went willingly after all—
“Piers that kind of work can be dangerous.” Rose is staring in a very odd way all of a sudden. “You must know that.”
“What can I say, I like to live dangerously...” Piers mumbles around his cigarette, takes a drag and actually uses the ashtray this time. “It reflects badly on you — on the brand; that’s what you’re trying to say, yes?”
Rose gives him that look again. He’s not even sure what it means, but Piers wants to slap it off his face.
The chairman plays with his hair, eyes furtive and downcast.
“Not... exactly.”
Piers makes a face. And it’s a frustrated ‘just fucking spit it out already’ face.
“Piers, do these men pay you?”
The gym leader of Spikemuth feels his gorge rise. Feels his heart begin to hammer, and his guts fight to keep from dropping out. Is he going to prison..? Who will look after Marnie?!
“Yes.”
He lights a second cigarette, the first not having lasted all that long under the circumstances.
“Is that a crime?” He knows it is; is talking now to fill the heavy silence between the two of them.
“Piers, you’re not in trouble, if that’s what you think.” The Chairman takes a seat then. “But I have to ask that you stop this instant.”
Piers needs the money. He can’t stop, not without the landlord cutting the power again next month.
It’s winter. Marnie will get cold.
“Piers, I’m not asking you—“
“You’re telling me. I get it.”
“No—?“
“Then what?!” Piers is standing, cutting an imposing figure despite his wiry frame, and sunken face. “You brought me here for a reason Chairman, so say it!”
Rose taps his fingertips together, maintains eye contact before very quietly he whispers, “I can pay you more...”