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6:31 am

Jess always wakes up before her alarm rings. She set it for 6:37 am at the start of the year and had somehow conditioned herself to wake up at least 5 minutes before it. The reason she set it at such an odd timing instead of seven o'clock like a normal person?

Her boss insisted on Jess having a little time to herself in the morning before the town car came to pick her up for the morning coffee run. He, like the other 'too rich to bother' nepo babies that populated the city of New York, had no idea how the other side lives. He expected the world to rearrange itself to his patterns. She'd rather start her day later with enough time to make breakfast and go for a run, but if her boss wants a bagel, then she'll go across town to fetch him the best one. And he never finishes the whole thing. Just as wasteful as any other lucky bastard who had been born into wealth. 

It was partly her daemon's fault as well, for adjusting to the position of being Kendall Roy's Executive Personal Assistant so well. Florentino seemed to relish the grunt work she had to do for Kendall. All the setting up of meetings, forwarding of countless calls and emails, sitting through those same meetings without losing focus, in case her boss wanted something. Not easily bored, he actually liked it, even after more than two years. 

Jess drags herself out of her cozy bed with some effort. "Hey."

Her daemon trots to her side. "Morning."

When her feet hit the floor, she's a little taken aback by how cold the tiles are. Jess looks out of the window. The sun hasn't risen yet, but it feels like the kind of weather that would freeze your tits off. There's a certain chill in the air. It was hardly a view that would make you burst into song. Bad things were just waiting to happen. So a typical December morning in New York. 

Jess rubs her face and flops back onto her bed, closing her eyes. 

"Come on," Florentino coaxes, nuzzling her face. He snorts in her ear loudly when she still remains glued to the bed.  

Waking her just as she's about to drift off again. Jess really hates him in this moment. 

Her phone buzzes with a series of texts. That could only be one person.

"Is it him?" She grumbles, slapping a hand over her eyes like she could block out the rest of the world. 

Florentino sounds sympathetic but also excited, the traitor. "You know it is."

7:14 am 

The town car, after picking her up at her dingy apartment building in Brooklyn, deposits her two blocks away at her local bodega. 

Jess honestly didn't know why Kendall refused to make his own coffee with one of the two beautiful stainless-steel coffeemakers from Italy he had at home. That was until a year and a half into her tenure when she had gone over earlier than usual (meaning seven-thirty in the morning) and bravely asked if she could have a coffee. He had looked at the machine and then at her blankly. Jess realised he had no idea how to use it. Like many of the things in her boss's tastefully decorated but cold and grey apartment, it was just there for show. 

And he didn't seem to mind that she bought him dollar coffee from a lowly bodega in a borough he avoided like the plague. His only request was that it couldn't be too cold when it got delivered to him. 

"Hey cutie," the owner, a lanky man in his late forties, grins at her. His daemon, a tiny pale-brown goldfinch, peeks out from behind his head. 

This early in the morning, in the middle of a freezing winter, Jess was one of the few regulars he reliably saw at this time. 

"Usual please," she says with a small smile, holding out her wallet.

"On the counter," he replies with a wink. "If you were a little later, we woulda thrown it out. I know ya like it hot."

"Well thanks for thinking of it," Jess pays him with a two-dollar note and asks him to keep the change. 

Florentino, who had been waiting for her outside since it would've been too crowded if he squeezed inside the small store, tilts his head when she comes out with a smile still on her face. "Feeling more awake?"

"Feeling more normal now," she answers, putting her free hand in her coat pocket. At least it would warm up when the sun came out. 

Jess always liked talking to that guy before she crossed the bridge to Manhattan. It was a simple, pleasant interaction, something she can't say for most conversations at work. 

Before she gets inside the car, she blows on the coffee and takes a sip. She grimaces at the overly-bitter taste of black coffee and dumps the rest of it into the drain.

Out of sight of the bodega of course. 

7:43 am 

Jess performs the switcheroo in the car after they stop by a Blue Bottle. 

Florentino judges her from where he's seated on the floor, long legs tucked under him. If he raised his head, his antlers would brush the ceiling. 

"What?" She asks him pointedly, pouring fresh coffee into the blue bodega cup. 

"You know you could just get a bunch of those cups on Amazon? He wouldn't notice the difference." 

"Don't give me that look,' Jess huffs, knowing that he was right but not wanting to give him the pleasure.

It was a pretty convoluted backstory that she hoped she would never have to tell her boss. It had started in her first week. Mr Roy (as he then was) messaged her at his typical time, around six-thirty in the morning, asking for coffee when he arrived at work. Back then, she didn't realize that this was going to be his 'typical time' and had set her alarm for seven-thirty. Jess hadn't given much thought about what kind of coffee he wanted so went to the nearest shop at around eight. She skipped the Starbucks because the queue was too long, and she would be late by then on her first proper day. Even buying the coffee had given her a queasy feeling, like she was in the process of making a mistake. No way would some fancy exec, who was probably used to the finest of everything, drink it.

She presented the cheap coffee, already cooled, to her boss with half-smile, trying to suppress her nervousness. He took it from her, remarking, "I haven't seen one of these cups in a while."

They walked to the elevator in silence and inside, he drank a little from the cup. Jess had watched his expression like a hawk. A funny look crossed his face but he didn't start screaming at her for making a mistake. For some reason, she thought he would be one of those bosses from hell you saw in movies, who fired assistants for getting something wrong just to prove a point. His daemon, who had until that point moved as little as possible, however, turned her head to stare Jess dead in the eye. Her mind went back to the manual the previous PA had left her. There was nothing in it about his coffee order. Did I mess up?

"Really makes me feel like a man of the people," Mr Roy had said loudly in the quiet elevator after taking a few more sips- Jess swore she saw someone to her right roll her eyes. When they got off, he handed her the cup. Jess relaxed a little. 

It was only after a few weeks of bringing her new boss the same coffee daily that Jess finally knew. She had a read on his facial expressions by now and could recognise from the brief look he gave the cup she handed him that it was a look of silent resignation. 

But when she offered him coffee from a new, up-scale cafe down the street from the office in a non-descript white cup, he had frowned at her. "What happened to the old one?"

That was her first hint at Kendall Roy's personality. He would drink shitty coffee without complaint but noticed a change in his public image. Even so, he had finished the whole cup and Jess had taken a note of that. 

If he really wants to be a 'man of the people', he should try getting his own coffee for once, Jess thinks to herself now as she closes the lid over the cup of fresh coffee.

8:25 am

Jess didn't start out as a PA. She wasn't even sure why the position was called 'Executive Assistant', when she was the only one. You needed an underling to be an executive, but what did she know. She graduated from NYU with a degree in Economics, which qualified her for great jobs, but she couldn't get hired. There seemed to be a freeze on hiring everywhere. Out of desperation, she started sending her resumes to everything. Waystar was the first to offer her an interview and to her surprise, they gave her a job in their PR Department after two rounds of interviews. Jess had applied for an opening as an analyst, but beggars couldn't be choosers. She was about to miss her rent payment and at least this would give her enough to live on while she carried on job-hunting. 

She felt bizarrely over-qualified up to the point when they put her up as a PA for one of the higher-ups who had gone through three PAs in the past year. Handling one man's life and career required a different set of skills that she didn't learn from college. But she's survived this long, long enough to be awarded a degree in Kendall Roy's Approval. 

Almost every morning she would greet Kendall in the Waystar lobby, armed with his schedule for the day. And almost always he would show up before eight-thirty, even after a long night out, looking worn as usual. But there were layers to his expression and Jess is a long-time student. 

Today, he looks somewhat alive. There's a spark in his eyes and he almost smiles at her. Kendall rarely smiled at anyone. His mouth was always set in a default line, like he was disappointed that he had to wake up every morning. 

Jess launches into her morning brief as he drinks the coffee. Two meetings with the Tax Department, then a call with their news partners in China. He listens and then gives her her orders for the morning. 

"Set up a meeting with the Global Investments team after I call China," he says. "I also need a room for, um, Hannah and PR for the ATN mid-month numbers. Remind me to have continue that talk with Finance about print. And I'm going to lunch with Stewy today."

Jess, very professionally, doesn't pause in her steps and instead presses a button for a private elevator. "Any location?"

"You'll set it up with his Jess," Kendall shrugs. Jess can hardly wait to talk to Stewy Hosseini's sweet assistant, Maria. And in case you couldn't tell, she's being sarcastic. 

"I'll cancel your one o'clock with Joanne and Steve then," Maybe she should be glad that at least he eats when he's not out purely for business. 

"Yeah," Kendall says, already distracted with checking his messages. Half the time Jess sneaks a look at his phone screen and he's on Twitter. The only Twitter account Jess knows he has is run by the PR team (and he was pretty much banned politely from having any involvement after the Classist Pig Incident). The only conclusion was that he had a secret account lurking out there no one knew about. 

She sends out the relevant emails from her phone, fitting the new meetings into Kendall's packed schedule- she'll call Maria personally later. 

Florentino manages to fit in the crowded elevator. They usually take the one reserved for larger-sized daemons but Kendall's daemon, a pretty hare with a snowy-white winter coat, is small enough to slip in the normal elevator. And they go wherever Kendall Roy goes. 

"Any plans for Christmas?" Kendall asks suddenly, once most of the people in the elevator have shuffled off on their floor. 

Jess looks at him carefully. Last year, when she told him she didn't really have plans with her family, he had invited her to join his family and their associates. Likely on the worst trip in the world, accompanied by a painful Christmas dinner with his wife and kids. Even if it had been to the Bahamas, her dream vacation destination, she wouldn't have gone. She had turned him down gently. Don't suffer if you didn't have to. 

"Just dinner with my family," she replies, looking up from the email she was drafting to Joanne and Steve. Cancelling lunch with the two heads of the ATN Marketing Team, planned weeks in advance, for one man.

"Oh," Kendall says monotonously. "Sounds like a fun holiday."

"Yeah," Jess stretches the word out. Florentino nudges side gently to assure her. 

"They're coming to town? Or are you going to New Jersey to see them?" 

Sometimes Jess is shocked by how much Kendall remembers about her. Two years in a row he has bought her something for Secretary's Day, which Jess had no idea existed. A spa trip for her first year, and tickets to the Broadway musical she had mentioned to him for her second. But right now, she's a little busy trying to figure out why he was making this kind of small talk with her. 

"They're coming to town," she replied, a bit too sharp. "Next week."

Luckily, she doesn't hear how Kendall responds, because at that moment, the elevator grinds to a halt. 

8.34 am 

They've been stuck here for a few minutes. 

Jess is mostly relieved that she scheduled Kendall's first meeting at nine, which would give the maintenance people a pretty generous amount of time to work with. She reviews the schedule again. It's the nervous habit of any good PA. Any second their boss wasn't moving was a second wasted. 

Fortunately, Kendall had reacted to the elevator malfunction without exploding and yelling through the intercom about staff incompetence. All in all, he has been surprisingly quiet so far. 

Florentino, finally tired of standing, sinks to the floor gracefully. 

"Are you okay, man?" The other guy they were trapped with pipes up. 

Jess raises her head to look at him and then at Kendall. His eyes were downcast so she couldn't really get a read on him. Maybe his cheeks looked more sallow than usual, but not enough to get her really worried. 

Still, she says, "Do you need to sit down?"

No response. 

Her and the man exchange a look. She hopes her glare conveys to him that there was no way this incident left this space. At least his daemon was a German Shephard, an indication of trustworthiness.

Jess moves closer to her boss and puts a hand on his arm, hoping the contact will wake him up from whatever this was. Is he claustrophobic or something?

"Come here," she says, thinking of her little sister, and gently guides him to a seated position on the ground. She plucks the coffee cup out of his limp hand. 

Jess spares a look at Luna, his daemon. As usual, she had been standing as far away from Kendall as she could when they got into the elevator. She started sneaking closer once Kendall was sitting down, nose twitching. 

"Luna's here," she murmurs. 

At this, Kendall finally looks her in the eye briefly before his gaze turns towards his daemon. "I..."

He trails off. They are still staring at each other. Jess wondered what was going on between them. It's common knowledge that skin-to-skin contact was calming, and Kendall seemed like he needed an anchor right now. 

"I don't need her," he completes the sentence slowly and looks away, fumbling in the pockets of his suit trousers for something. 

Jess turns her back when he finds whatever he's looking for and listens to the sound of him snorting cocaine barely two feet away from her. She cringes and Florentino flicks his tail. Kendall sniffs loudly. 

Something warm bumps into her leg. It's Luna. 

While it is easy for Jess to guess her boss's moods accurately, it is impossible to know what his daemon is feeling. Luna isn't naturally expressive and would only look at things with large limpid eyes that hinted at nothing behind them. But Jess had never been this close to her and feels her body trembling. 

Florentino stands and nimbly walks around Kendall and the other man. He stops in front of Luna and dips his head, touching his nose to hers. 

Jess looks at Kendall, wondering what he makes of this. The man in question is pointedly not looking at them, instead staring glassily at the elevator ceiling, his mind already a million miles away from wherever they were. 

Struck with a sudden sentimental feeling, Jess crouches and reaches her hand out to the hare daemon. 

Luna calmly closes the last few inches and presses her head into the palm of Jess's hand. 

She's shocked by how soft she is. The sensation reminds Jess of a stuffed furry rabbit she had as a child. Luna allows her one short stroke on her back before withdrawing. 

11:12 am 

"Hi, Jess," Maria greets coolly.

"Maria," she replies, just as coolly. "Here's a last minute request for you. Kendall wants to meet your boss for lunch today. Between one and two."

"Mr Hosseini's schedule is packed right now," Maria explains. "I'm afraid he doesn't have time to entertain Mr. Roy. December is a busy month for him, in terms of deal-broking."

It's not like her boss was working hard for his year-end bonus too. 

"Tell him I called," Jess says. "Before I text him myself that you were so unhelpful in arranging an afternoon meeting with his good friend."

"Of course," is the less cool reply. "You're welcome to do that. I don't believe he'll give you a different answer."

"Thanks," Jess says and hangs up. Nine times out of ten Maria was unhelpful. She kept holding out for that one time when the other woman would just drop the attitude and be useful. It was easier to contact Stewy herself, but that would involve, you know, talking to him.

She sneaks a peek into the glass-walled meeting room where her boss is in conversation with the Asian Business Development team. He looks remarkably stable for someone who had a nervous episode (let's call it what it was) less than three hours ago. After the coke wore off, he had taken something to calm him down from the stash of pills in his office.  Jess'll have to keep an eye on him for the rest of the day. 

"You have any idea how to start a message to this guy?" She asks Florentino.

He does the best approximation to a shrug a deer could do. "How about: Hi, are you free for lunch with Kendall around 1 today? You are not encouraged to bring drugs. Addiction is a disease, just like you."

Jess rolls her eyes at him and opens the messaging app. "Two years of dealing with this..."

Kendall wants lunch at 1. You in?

Something simple and curt always worked well with Mr. Hosseini. Jess had often been confused about the nature of his relationship with Kendall. He cycled through several roles in her head- drug dealer, party organizer, college buddy, close friend, blood-sucking leech. But he was undeniably a bad influence on Kendall no matter what he was. 

Jess sighs after sending it. She looks down at Luna. They're both half-hidden behind one of the cubicles, silent onlookers to whatever their master was doing inside. He's saying something to the team, commenting on their presentation. It must be coherent, because she could see a few nods around the room. 

Before she started at Waystar, she thought it hurt to be apart from your daemon for so long. Kendall proved to be the exception to that rule. If anything, he seems more at ease without Luna by his side- in public, at least. 

"I think it'll be over soon," she says to her. It's weird to talk to someone else's daemon directly but without Kendall around most of the time, she feels like it's alright to try and reach out to her. And Luna never responded.

Hares weren't meant to be naturally still animals. Jess's roommate from college had a rabbit daemon and he was constantly scampering here and there, and even while idling, it was never completely motionless like Luna is. His ears still twitched or he would groom himself. She supposed hares were different than rabbits. Luna's the only hare daemon Jess has encountered in her life.

Her phone buzzes. 

Is he bringing you ?

Jess snorts. What was the point of Stewy always trying to act like a huge flirt? Yes, he wasn't exactly bad-looking, and his powerful daemon must be attractive to the right kind of crowd, but he was so- 

Unpleasant to be around, is how she would put it politely. Stewy never brings out the best in Kendall. The only times he takes a break from him (and by extension, provided her with some relief) is if either one of them is on a business trip or right after they had a falling out.

Jess recalls the last time they had an argument. It was about a merger ATN was ruining by running stories that it was anti-competitive, despite its usual pro-capitalism take on things. She had stood there in the corner, pretending to write an email, as they spat poisonous words at each other.

"Are you trying to fuck with me, man?" Stewy had said, almost pleadingly. "Because you're fucking like some old fuck fucking his mistress without taking his little blue pill. A few bad stories aren't going to change shit about this merger."

"Are you saying you're the mistress in this case?" Kendall had said, sounding a little puzzled. 

From her corner, Jess had shared an exasperated look with Florentino. Out of all the things to focus on.

"Whatever," Stewy had huffed. "I guess you'll always be daddy's little soldier, doing his bidding. Do this. Take that. Jerk me off."

"Well-" Kendall said. Jess had wished that she could see what the look on his face was. His full range of emotions would come out when he was speaking to Stewy. It was pretty fascinating. "That's just how it is. You've got to work with me here, dude. The merger is as dumb as going out for a swim when there's a, uh, storm brewing. You at least want to bring a boat with you, right?

Right now's not the time for Pacific International to diversify. Acquiring some video game company from Silicon Valley is not going to do shit for their bottom-line. It's going to be a full-blown money sink down the line and you know it, I know it. It reeks of desperation."

Jess had found herself agreeing with Kendall. He had shown her the numbers a few days ago. And she was pretty sure he had done a line before his meeting with Stewy. 

"It's not your job to look out for me," Stewy had retorted. "I look out for me. There's no Kendall Roy in I."

Were they even talking about the merger at this point?

"And I thought you were smarter than this," Kendall had said after a pause. 

Jess had glanced up from her phone when he that one-liner came out of his mouth. It was very out-of-character for Kendall to be so snippy. For a moment he sounded like his vicious little sister. Even Stewy, owner of an impressive poker face, looked taken aback.

He had blinked. 

"I'm smart enough to know how to cut the fat the second we get our hands on AG," Stewy shot back. "Logan's screwing Sandy like he wants to prove his spunk's still intrepid enough to give you a fourth sibling."

This confab had taken place after Sandy snapped up a board seat on a pharma company Logan Roy had been eyeing. The end for now of the idea that Waystar Royco would have a Pharmaceutical Drugs division. Like the company could get any more toxic. 

"I'm all for, um, mixing it up, you know? But there's too much fat at the moment for this to be a good idea. My father's not super involved in this anyway. Sandy's just being paranoid and it's clearly contagious."

"Not as contagious as whatever disease you got from the model you slept with last week. It rots you slowly from the inside. Incurable stupidity."

Again, that puzzled tone. "What model?"

This would end any minute now. Jess had slowly walked to the door, waiting for Kendall to break away. 

Out of curiosity, she had looked at their daemons. Luna had wandered closer to Kendall's side during the conversation and stood in a tense stance, like she was preparing to bolt at any second. Stewy's leopard daemon's fur bristled, tail sweeping across the ground in slow, calculated movements. Seconds away from attack.

Jess had cleared her throat, getting Kendall's attention. Stewy had given her an unimpressed look, like she was worse than the dirt on his thousand-dollar Italian shoes. Kendall, on the other hand, looked like a deer caught in the headlights. 

"Your next meeting is on their way up," she had lied. 

Stewy had uncrossed his arms, an unfriendly gleam in his eyes. "Well, may the best man win."

Kendall had cocked his head slightly; in the way he did when he was thinking hard about something. He then coughed and said, "Yeah, yeah, sure."

He turned his back to stare out the window. 

Maybe it was only because his friend couldn't see him and only Jess and Florentino were paying attention to him (and they probably didn't count in his mind as tangible beings), but Stewy's lips had turned down in a pronounced frown. The look aged him. 

He had stalked out of the room without a backward glance. 

His daemon had lingered briefly and, so lightly that Jess thought she had imagined it later, when she was riding in the town car with Kendall, ran her black-tipped tail over Luna's brown-and-white autumn coat.

The leopard daemon glared at Jess as she left, head held high. Such a beautiful creature, wasted on such a horrible person.

Silence filled the room. Jess stood there, waiting for her instructions. 

"Jess," Kendall had said in his soft voice. The one he used when he was being serious. "I'm going to have a talk with Dad. Gotta see him in person."

"Okay," Jess had replied. She might not be able to move mountains or change Waystar Royco from inside out, but she could help Kendall when he needed it. "I'll set it up."

To her knowledge, Kendall and Stewy haven't spoken since October.

She texts a quick reply to Stewy. 

No.

Kendall's the one asking,

not me. 

Jess closes the messaging app. Florentino taps the ground with one hoof and says, "All good with him?"

"He probably has to think, even though he's not surrendering by agreeing to eat with someone," Like most people in Kendall's social circle who wasn't a blood relative, Stewy made moves like he was a player, not a piece in the game. Always looking for the motive behind the motive. "You know the kind."

"Tell me about it," someone says caustically. 

Florentino and her look at at Luna incredulously. More than two years since she joined the company and now she finally speaks.

Is she warming up to us after what happened earlier? She still couldn't believe that Kendall's daemon had sought her for comfort. 

"Are you talking to me?" Jess says, scrutinising the now silent hare. 

Another minute passes until a notification pops up. 

Alright.

I'll stop by ;)

She knew by the message that it would be like countless encounters before. Stewy would crash some meeting Kendall was in with a sleazy grin, inexplicably finding him in a skyscraper of over fifty floors. It must be his secret talent. Or maybe he had someone on the inside. Jess never told him Kendall's exact location beforehand. Might as well make him work for it. 

She still makes an effort to be polite. 

Thanks.

See you later.

12:23 pm

While Kendall sorts through some files in his office, Jess quietly replies to internal emails outside at her desk. No, he will not join the Christmas after-party. Yes, he would like to extend his congratulations to Peter's newborn son. No, he will not push back the Management Team meeting. It's been delayed long enough. 

The phone on her desk rings. 

Jess clocks the caller ID, mentally prepares herself, and picks up the call.

"Hi, Jess," Rava sounds harried over the phone. "Is Kendall busy?"

"Hi, Rava," she replies. "Let me check with him."

Kendall's wife called during office hours only if there was something wrong with the kids and she only went through Jess, as though afraid her husband won't pick up her calls.

She buzzes the intercom. "Hey, you busy? It's your wife."

Kendall glances up and meets her eyes through the glass wall separating them. "Huh?"

Jess goes back to Rava. "What's your reason for calling?"

"I just want to talk to my husband," Rava snaps. "That's a good enough reason."

She says to Kendall through the intercom, "She's your wife, so she wants to talk to you."

Through the glass, she watches him put something in his mouth, likely Adderall, and wash it down with some Scotch. 

"Put her through," Kendall tells her, a visible grimace on his face.

Because she's a professional and paid a decent salary not to interfere in her boss's life, Jess doesn't eavesdrop over the phone, However, she could surmise from Kendall's dead-eyed expression that Rava's chewing him out for something. 

Florentino exhales, almost like a sigh. 

"You're judging him? You're the one who doesn't want to leave this company."

"I don't know, Jess," her daemon replies. "It's like he's deteriorating. He's not the same person we started out working for."

"He's fine. People change all the time."

"Care to guess the cause?" Florentino asks. "My money's on drugs."

"Be quiet." 

Her eyes sweep the surroundings, looking for a familiar white pelt. 

Luna is nowhere to be found. 

Jess keeps an eye on whatever Kendall and Rava have going on- he says something, listens to her reply, and then raises his voice, "The kids are fine! Nothing's wrong with them!" 

Wouldn't she like to know the context behind that. Still, Jess turns her head away, eyeing the framed photo of her family she keeps on her desk. Her mother taught her to keep her nose out of things that were none of her business. This included any marital problems her boss may have. Conflict avoidance was just as important as conflict resolution.

"Out of the two of us, don't you like him more?" she asks Florentino.

"Eh," he replies, shrugging. "I like the job he gave us. Now I'm not sure if the man's doing so hot."

"Mhmm," Jess hums, trying to focus on her work. 

"Just look at him," Florentino pipes up after few minutes of blessed silence. 

Jess looks. Kendall's talk with Rava must be over, because he is staring straight ahead, both hands on his desk. She cranes her head and sees his fingers tapping an erratic beat on top of the documents. He's the picture of a trapped man. 

Should I go inside? 

She could prepare a cup of coffee and use it as an excuse to go in. Maybe try to guess where the new spot where he hid his stash. In winter, there was always something rolling around in Kendall's coat pockets that he picked up from the office. He cared enough to keep his drug habit on the down-low, at least where family was involved. 

But Jess thinks better of it. 

She keeps her head down and does her work. 

"Jess, I need you," Kendall calls her in a steady voice, standing in the doorway. 

She rises to her feet automatically and gives him a quick once-over. Same old dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks. He stands hunched over. Winter doesn't suit Kendall Roy, unlike his daemon. 

"Buy Rava something nice, as good as a thousand apologies," he says simply and heads back inside. 

The next time Jess checks in on him, he's talking to a trio of execs about the performance of the Parks Division. Like any good assistant, she had spared some time in his schedule for unannounced meetings. The meeting doesn't seem to be one of his favourites, judging by how he leans back in his chair. He hasn't even bothered to get up and he usually loves things to do with the Parks Division, since it was where he started work after graduation. 

"Just do your job, Jess," she says to herself under her breath. She has already pulled up the website for Rava's favourite shoe brand. This is what she does. She buys shoes for another woman. 

Florentino makes a snorting sound. He clearly thought otherwise. 

1:30 pm

Stewy's daemon arrives before he does. 

Jess could feel the hair on the back of her neck rise when she spots the leopard padding leisurely towards the conference room. She too, hasn't seen Stewy in over two months. 

Kendall turns his head to the side. 

"I guess now would be a good time to wrap up," he says, interrupting the speaker.

Someone gasps audibly. 

Jess wants to face-palm so badly at this moment, because someone ranked one or two levels below the GC shouldn't stop Gerri Kellman when she's speaking. Even if that someone is Logan Roy's son. And the meeting technically isn't over yet. 

"If you have to leave, Kendall, we won't stop you," Gerri says with a raised eyebrow. 

Her horned lizard daemon flicks his tail in agreement. 

"Alright," Kendall replies, clapping his hands together. "I would just say that we should definitely more aggressive on the, um, so-called defamation victim. Dig up some dirt on this so-called charity and get them to drop the case. Send me the notes after the meeting. Contain this."

"Sure will," Gerri says with a tight smile. 

"Talk soon," Kendall waves at the group and pushes the door open. Jess follows, Florentino trotting beside her. 

Stewy's daemon stares up at her and Kendall with a perpetually bored expression. The man himself seems to appear out of nowhere after a tense beat, gliding into their personal space. He's wearing a sleek maroon turtleneck under a black suit that highlights his broad shoulders. 

Jess is irrationally glad to be standing next to Kendall when he greets Stewy. His face breaks into a small smile that instantly takes years off his face. He looks like the different version of himself, the one in the only photo in his office. Only that college-aged Kendall stood stiffly with his father without a smile. 

"Hey, man," Kendall begins. They don't shake hands or hug it out like 'bros'. Jess would've died of awkwardness on his behalf if they had. "It's good to see you."

"Uh-huh," Stewy says. Jess doesn't miss the way his gaze sweeps over Kendall once before returning to his face. She wonders what he sees and if it's different from what she does. "I'll be the judge of that, you slimy motherfucker."

Kendall isn't offended by that. In fact, Jess watches in horror as his smile seems to grow larger, crinkling his eyes in a not-unattractive manner. 

She thinks back to the drugs she saw him take today, coupled with his intense reaction to being stuck in an elevator, and does a mental calculation. Surely this reaction could be explained by taking too many happy pills to deal with a stressful morning. Or Kendall wanted something from Stewy. Badly. 

"There's nothing on the agenda," Kendall says, taking a tiny step forward. 

"You expect me to believe that?" Stewy says flatly, with a raised eyebrow just as impressive as Gerri Kellman's. 

"I know you don't get out of bed for less than a quarter of a bil in the morning," Kendall shoots back. "But I only want a friendly chat. As friends."

"The only thing I want to hear you say is: You were right, Stewy."

"Yeah, congrats on bringing AG Games from the brink of bankruptcy. Tell me again, was it a three or four-percent profit margin you got in two months? That was, uh, truly a great use of your talents. Cutting the fat but not bringing home the bacon."

"Fuck you," Stewy says with a great deal of bite, a guarded expression on his face. "The longer the wait, the better the reward."

Again, she comes to the conclusion that they may not be talking about business. 

"So, lunch?" Kendall says, a little manically. 

"My pick," Stewy leans forward. 

It's a little uncomfortable being so close to whatever this is, but Jess really couldn't bring herself to look away. Florentino also examines them closely, completely enthralled. 

"Okay," Kendall shrugs. "That's doable."

"Where's Luna?" Stewy asks out of the blue.

"She's..." Kendall looks around. How can someone not know where their daemon is at all times? Sometimes it's this casual callousness that makes Jess rethink her life choices.

He's not a bad person, she reassures herself. His daemon's just special. 

"There she is," Kendall says mildly as the white hare hops over. 

"Hey, Lune," Stewy greets the hare daemon, sounding significantly warmer than when he greeted Kendall. "Things skipping along as usual?"

That's a bad joke. 

Kendall looked amused though. More than Luna, who makes a soft scoffing noise and ambles away. Stewy's daemon soon goes after her, tail swishing back and forth in contentment. 

Jess types a message to Fikret, the driver, to bring the car over, in case they weren't going to walk to wherever Stewy had in mind. Kendall hates the cold. When she had to drop by his apartment in winter, it was as warm as a summer day inside in all the rooms, the kind of heat you could only achieve if you had money to burn. 

"Let's go."

"Get the Zimmermann files ready for me when I get back," Kendall orders. Up till that point, Jess had been part of the furniture. It's depressing to realise that her life revolved around this man. She only contributed when he wanted her to. A few centuries ago, she would be called a servant. 

What's with me today? First the elevator, now this strange mood. Is there such a thing as a subcategory of depression for PAs?

"Alright," she nods. 

Jess feels Stewy's eyes on her when Kendall thanks her shyly. For one second, she's on his radar. Her boss must've been feeling the aftereffects of the elevator incident, if he just took time out of his day to say thank you for doing something that's part of her job.

The two men head over to their daemons, who are waiting patiently. With the path between the cubicles being so wide, there was no need for them to walk so closely together, but it's above her pay grade to think of why. 

"Those two," Florentino says wearily as they walk in the opposite direction to the other set of elevators that lead to the employees' cafeteria. "Poor Luna. Having to deal with that."

"You're lucky you have me, Flore," Jess grins at him. "Low maintenance."

"I wish you'd stop thinking of yourself in that way," he says teasingly. "How many hours do you spend on your hair again?"

"Shut up," she says affectionately, patting his head. "It's less time than I spend polishing those antlers."

The dark mood that had taken over her fades away just like that.

Chapter Text

1:45 pm

Jess eats lunch in the employees' dining area. One of the few perks of working at Waystar are all the free food options in the cafeteria, but only a few are edible.

Today, the chicken parm is what looks the most appetizing, though there's a salty aftertaste even after she uses a cup of flavoured sparkling water as a palette cleanser. 

Idly, she wonders what her family is doing right now. Her mom must be resting after a 30-hour shift at her hospital and her dad may be enjoying his lunch from the neighbourhood sandwich shop. She should call her younger sister soon, just to see how she's doing. Louise always had some sort of drama going on. Right now, it's her uncertain relationship status with her med school frenemy. Jess is glad she doesn't have to worry about dating seriously (she's already accepted that she'd only have the time to do that once she finds a job with better hours) and that she doesn't live in Maryland.

"Hey, Jess," someone greets her while she's in the middle of taking a bite. 

Jess sets down her fork and looks up.

She smiles, "Hi, Kerry."

"Can I-" The other woman gestures at the empty seat opposite Jess with her tray. Kerry has her usual bowl of soup and single slice of garlic bread on it. Jess supposes that working for any boss like hers would make anyone lose their appetite. 

"Sure, it's empty," Jess replies. 

Kerry carefully places her tray on the table to avoid making a sound. Her raccoon daemon wanders into her lap once she's seated. Jess can't really remember his name- Kerry comes from a generation where it was popular to give daemons rhyming nicknames with their humans. Maybe it's Perry. Or Larry, like one of the Stooges. 

"How's it going with the Little Prince?" 

That's Kendall's not-so-secret nickname among certain long-time Waystar employees. Kerry isn't one of them but uses it like it's her right to. Jess doesn't. She thinks it's silly. 

"Oh, you know," Jess shrugs. "Same old."

"He works so hard," Kerry says, sounding sympathetic. "And he's way too hard on his assistants."

Jess has heard rumours about what happened to the assistants that came before her. The one who wrote the original 'How To Handle Kendall' manual had been let go after getting into a shouting match with him. It had something to do with working almost fifteen hours a day during one of the first major acquisitions he led for the company. Jess could imagine her boss standing stiffly, arms at his sides, while that poor overworked girl screamed at him. Did he listen? Or did he tune her shrill voice out? It took a lot for someone to lose their cool like that. To this day, she sometimes hears other people laugh and tell their colleague not to 'pull a Laura' at the end of a stressful day. 

As for her direct predecessor, she'd never met her, but gathered from small snippets that she had been switched to another department for making a mistake. Her picture had been on the profile Jess saw when she first logged onto the computer at her desk. A pretty blonde. Her overreactive imagination connected the dots for her. 

It's difficult to think of Kendall openly asking anyone for sex, with his aversion of eye contact and flat way of speaking, but maybe that was what had happened. She had once pictured it the other way around. A beautiful assistant attempting to seduce a powerful man. Jess had shuddered inwardly.

Not that she couldn't see the weird appeal Kendall had, it was just that she couldn't think of doing something like that herself. He was simply so non-sexual, if that was the right word for it. Jess had, after sitting through a Roy family gathering on more than one occasion, wanted to cook him a plate of ribs served with a side of homemade cornbread and mashed potatoes. Perhaps for Secretary's Day she should invite him to dinner at Sylvia's and force him to finish one full meal. 

"Not really," Jess replies, a little defensively. "Only when there's a lot on his plate."

"Oh please," Kerry says after blowing on her first spoonful of minestrone. "Don't tell me you think he's your friend. At their core, they're all assholes waving their- their silver spoons in the air like babies throwing a tantrum."

"I mean, look who you have to deal with," sometimes it's easier to agree with Kerry in the moment than to debate with her the evil and less evil parts of the Roys. 

Kerry rolls her eyes theatrically. "He's in a real mood today. Not only was I not invited to the San Fran trip, I also had to deal with Cece hounding me about the tax thing all morning-"

Jess really wants to roll her eyes back but settles for shoveling more pasta into her mouth. Kerry's a little too obsessed with her work. She's fun to talk to about casual things like the best restaurants in the city (the PAs kept an eye on any up-and-coming spots to please their social-climbing bosses) or the latest movies showing at the cinema (Kerry had a degree in journalism from Columbia and once aspired to be a serious critic) but when it comes to work, that woman could talk anyone's ear off. And she isn't even Logan's Executive Assistant. She's but a lowly second assistant. Work shouldn't be such a life-or-death thing for her. 

"Are you zoning out?" Kerry says, snapping her fingers in front of Jess's face. The movement jostles Perry-slash-Larry the Raccoon on her lap. He looks at her with minor irritation. 

"I am," Jess replies. "You were complaining about Cece. Again. Don't compete with her. I'm only saying this because you both do very different things for Logan Roy."

Kerry huffs. "I do the more important things. Cece hardly works besides kissing up to the man. 'Mr Roy, would you like your coffee now or later?' 'Mr Roy, should I tell the PR team your opinions on defamation as a crime?' Meanwhile I work my ass off running his entire life. No credit whatsoever. He doesn't even look at me. I'm the glue."

"It's a thankless job," Jess replies solemnly.  Kerry's older than Jess and worked jobs in PR before joining Waystar- her official title was still something like Marketing Representative- but was somehow assigned to work under one of the worst people in the company. It must've been a different work environment for her, like jumping off the deep end. She'd had time to adjust to the lowly status of Personal Assistant yet she continued to resent the work, thinking it beneath her to be part of the furniture when she wasn’t needed. When would she realise she wasn’t the glue holding things together for Logan Roy (that would definitely be Cece) but just another cog in his corporate machine? Jess doesn't think she ever will. 

Kerry had also started about a year after her and, by virtue of seeing each other so often, they had sort of become work friends. Trauma bonding and all that. That's why Jess tolerates the seemingly endless complaints. She'd done the same to her college friends when she first started out. There's now a rule that she can only rant about Kendall and his litany of issues for five minutes each time they meet. They time her and everything. 

"Thank God the holidays are coming up," Kerry says, changing the subject. Jess appreciates that. 

"You're going back to Maine right?"

"Yeah," she sighs. "My parents even invited my ex."

"No way."

'They always liked Bryan more than me. And I'm their daughter."

From the moment Kerry told her that she divorced her husband while looking for a job, Jess sort of knew that Waystar was the first company who gave her an offer. Refusing it would've meant no income, no money to pay rent and having to leave the city with her tail between her legs. Waystar would hardly be anyone's first choice, ever since the 2009 exposé of working conditions at the company by a rival media conglomerate. Inhumane working hours and biased hiring practices to replace employees who couldn't take it anymore. Even a decade-long PR campaign couldn't repair their severely damaged reputation. 

Jess wondered if anyone is truly happy working here besides Kendall- and that was only true on his good days. 

"That's unfair," Jess says, hoping it's what Kerry wants to hear. "If I had an ex-husband and my parents invited him to a family-only gathering, I would be so upset."

"I have to see him at the dinner table," Kerry sounds like she's getting more emotional. "I'll have to talk to him. Can't demand him to get out of my house or I'll look like a crazy lady in front of my mom. That would be so much worse."

"Remember it's only one day," Jess says reassuringly. "It'll be over before you know it."

Kerry dips her garlic bread in soup and takes an aggressive bite. Jess takes this moment to look down at where Florentino is dozing at her feet. Daemons don't know how lucky they are to not have to socialize like their humans did. 

Perry/Larry turns his head and places a small black paw on Kerry's arm. When she offers him her finger, Perry/Larry holds it tightly. It's a cute gesture. 

Not that Jess hates having a deer as a daemon, but she did wish Florentino could hold her back like he used to in his fluffy dog form before he settled. At least she could still cuddle him in her arms, as long as she avoided his sharp antlers. If someone had a daemon like a spiky porcupine, Jess doubts they would be able to embrace them.

"And what about you?" Kerry says after wiping her mouth. "Any luck dating?"

Jess's last date had been a month ago, with some analyst from Tinder who sounded surprised when she could keep up with his finance babble. 

"I didn't know you studied economics- I thought you were a secretary. Or is having an economics degree a requirement these days?" he had said, which made her bristle. That condescension meant that there was absolutely no chance for a second date. She had standards. 

"Well," Jess begins. "Not really. I don't have as much time after Kendall's promotion to go on dates."

Yep, she always uses her boss as an excuse for not having a social life outside her small group of friends. Better than telling people the truth that she's too lazy to look nowadays. It's no wonder everyone thinks Kendall's hard on his assistants. 

"Do you want me to set you up?" Kerry perks up, letting go of her daemon's paw. 

"Not with someone who works in this building," Jess replies. 

Kerry's shoulders slump but she says, "There's a cute guy in accounting. Most certainly straight. Mid-thirties. Great hair."

"Are you shopping for yourself?" Jess teases. 

Just as Kerry is about to reply, Jess's phone goes off. 

"Kendall," she tells Kerry, who nods in understanding. 

Pick up in 10.

No location given as usual. 

She calls Fikret. "Hi, do you know where Mr. Roy went for lunch?"

"1803, Jess," he replies. "Told me to pick you up first."

That place was within walking distance of HQ, but god forbid golden boy Kendall Roy had to step foot into the icy cold for once in his life.

"So, he told you already?" 

Florentino noses her side, already up and ready to go. 

"Yes."

"Anything he wants me to bring? Coffee? The files?"

"He says he's coming straight back."

Then what does he need me for, Jess complains internally. 

"Thanks," she tells the driver and hangs up. 

"Go," Kerry says with a dismissing hand gesture. "Talk soon."

They only talked if their paths crossed. Maybe at the end of the week. Jess has started to get the sinking feeling that Kerry may be her only work friend.

She makes a mental note to ask her what she's going to wear to the Christmas party the next time they bump into each other. 

"See you around," Jess says with an apologetic smile. Perry/Larry waves at her like Kerry. She'll admit that he's one of the most adorable daemons she's ever come across. 

"Sad as usual," Florentino remarks as they walk to the elevator. 

"You mean Kerry?" Jess tilts her head at him. "She's not sad."

"Not sad as in 'her whole life is a mistake', kind of sad," Florentino says. "Not like Kendall-" Jess snorts. "- I mean, just unhappy sad."

"Like Kendall too," Jess says, pressing the elevator button. 

"Sad people everywhere," her daemon notes, staring at her. 

"What? I'm not sad."

"Your lack of self-awareness is disturbing," Florentino retorts, doing a full-body shake. 

"Aren't you-" she's about to shoot back when a group of workers joins them at the lift. 

It's rude to be seen having a conversation with your daemon in public. They weren't real people, after all. 

Jess looks at the TV screen embedded in the wall instead. It's just her luck that ATN is showing a video of Logan Roy stepping out of a building, done with the morning session of a North American summit of business moguls and the such. He's not even wearing a suit. The pronounced scowl on his face- one that doesn't go away when he tries to smile in front of the press- is ugly. 

For extra intimidation factor, his wolf daemon prowls in front of him, clearing a path. Her fur coat is glossy, like someone had brushed it before they left. Jess could count the number of times the wolf has made eye contact with her on one hand, but every time meeting those yellow eyes had sent a shiver down her spine. Lone wolves, unnatural in nature, even more disturbing as a daemon of a demanding leader. 

She catches a flash of Cece's worn face amongst the entourage behind Logan as the camera cuts back to the ATN anchor. There's no audio though she could guess what the anchorwoman is saying. "Something something, our overlord Logan Roy wins the dick measuring contest once again. Up next: Can my daemon be non-binary? One expert weighs in."

2:13 pm

Kendall clambers into the car, letting a blast of cold air in. It stings her face.

He's quite transparent, for a Roy. Jess can tell that he's on edge at once. The tell he has is whenever he tries to hide his emotions, he ends up displaying them for the world to see. The hurt is there, plain on his face, if you know how to look.

Jess looks at the still-open car door, suppressing a shiver. Florentino is tense in the passenger seat. 

After a minute, a furry white form hops into the car. Kendall slams the door shut. The earlier glow meeting Stewy had given him is gone. Waystar Kendall with his thousand-yard stare is back. 

Uh oh, Jess thinks. 

She waits for him to speak first. And he does, after staring out the car window, watching the buildings and other cars fly by. 

"You're fucked," Kendall says out of the blue. 

Jess glances at him out of the corner of her eye, alarmed. Fikret presses the button that makes the screen go up, separating the front and back of the car. Then, she realises that he's addressing Luna, who is lying docilely on the floor. Except for the fact that her ears are pinned flat back, a sign of either fear or anger. Jess thinks it's the latter. 

What could've happened? Jess recalls previous Stewy encounters. She has, of course, sat in on one more times than she could count. Once at a charity gala where Stewy and Kendall exchanged thinly-veiled barbs about each other's business conquests and talked shit about the Roy siblings. Post-gala, Jess decided that whoever sat Stewy and Kendall together, with Rava at the other end of the round table, should be sacked. And the another time at a corporate retreat for the Waystar execs. Kendall had asked her in a manner that felt like an order to come along, in case he had to respond to a 'corporate emergency' while he was away. Stewy had been there on a different retreat as well. And it ended with Kendall stumbling to the breakfast buffet over an hour late one morning, in a catatonic state. Jess had reluctantly ushered Roman over to force her boss to come back to life. Whoever scheduled these two things to overlap should also be fired. 

Kendall and Stewy one-on-one is like adding fire to gasoline. 

And look who's been burned this time.

"You've got the tax team from two-thirty onwards but there's around ten minutes of free time in between four forty-five and fifty-five if you need some quiet time."

"I don't need quiet time," Kendall snaps and then, he hangs his head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you."

"It's alright," Jess says. She knew from other PAs that their bosses never apologised for anything. Kendall is the exception. She wonders how long this politeness will last. He's entering his fifth year in a position that comes with an assistant. The pleasantries that made life easier for her may soon fly out the window. "Did it go well?"

It's a direct question. Jess normally wouldn't pry if it doesn't feel like her boss was about to have another breakdown. Or that he needed to process what just happened with real words.

"Nothing much," Kendall coughs, not meeting her eyes. "Just catching up."

"Okay," Jess says. She presses further, just to be sure. "And you made up with him?"

"Make up with him for what?" Kendall replies, staring at her now. "We didn't fight."

That sounded like denial.

Even Luna is looking at her, though it's impossible to tell what she's thinking behind her glassy black eyes.

"If you enjoyed lunch, that's fine with me," Jess says, breaking the gaze. 

As the more well-adjusted and self-aware of the two, Stewy must definitely be faring better after the lunch. From what she remembers, he actually enjoys the act of eating, unlike her boss, who treated it like an unwelcome chore.

Kendall could do with eating big portions more often. Under his expensive wool coat, he has lost so much weight since summer ended. The drugs, combined with the necessity to stay ahead at work, seemed to chip away at him. Taking more and more every day.

She wondered if he had ate a single bite of the food just now, though the smell of warm gumbo certainly lingered on his clothes. Kendall isn't the type to enjoy the spicy Creole fare served there. He might've nibbled at his dish like someone stuck in a 90s supermodel phase. And then Stewy would've gifted him a small baggie of coke for them to do together in the bathroom. A Kendall Happy Meal.

"Dad's flying back tonight," He says as they swerve smoothly to a stop in front of the Waystar HQ. "Roman's with him."

Jess thought she had spotted the face of Kendall's little brother somewhere in the back of the crowd just now on the TV screen. He's the one working on the studio side in LA. Is Kendall jealous that Roman got to tag along to the business titan pissing contest when he wasn't senior enough?

"What do you need?" She asks him, summoning all her patience. 

"Nothing right now," Kendall murmurs, distracted again as he opens the car door. 

Florentino leaps out of the car, landing on a patch of grey sidewalk snow. Jess is glad to see him again. 

"Would you hate me if I dressed you up like a reindeer for Christmas?" She whispers as they walk up the steps. 

"Yes," he hisses. "Don't even think about putting a bell on me."

Jess looks back. Kendall's slower than usual. He's deliberately slowing his pace, two hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. He never brings gloves, having no reason to be standing outdoors for more than half a minute at a time in winter. 

She keeps an eye on him.

"Luna," Florentino mutters and is about to head into the building before Jess puts a hand on his neck.

"Let's wait," she says. 

Kendall trudges up the rest of the steps. Luna is still nowhere to be seen. 

"Let's go," he says harshly with a closed expression and pushes through the glass doors into the lobby. 

How is he not in pain? In high school, there were whole lessons dedicated to daemon care. The number one rule, drilled into them by a tired looking gym teacher, had been to never let your daemon out of your sight. Forced separation was basically suicide. 

Jess, for once, doesn't follow him.

Because Florentino isn't moving. 

"What are you doing?" She says, watching Kendall's lean form disappear pass the security gantry. 

"Luna!" Florentino shouts, drawing the attention of some passerby. It isn't every day you see a daemon acting so human in public. They should be seen, not heard. "Luna! Come back."

"We have to go," Jess snaps. Her breath is white and she feels the chill seeping in, despite the extra-warm layers she had on. 

"Wait," Florentino says, before raising his voice again. "Luna!"

He's going to kill me, Jess thinks. She doesn't recall the last time she disobeyed a direct order from Kendall. The best assistants always did what they were told. Unless they had to anticipate what their boss wanted and even then, they were following instructions that were 'up to interpretation'. Come on, Luna.

The hare bounds up the steps.

Jess exhales in relief, though she probably won't fully relax until she sees whether Kendall's fine inside. "Let's go."

Luna pauses at the top of the stairs, standing a few feet from where Jess and Florentino are in front of the revolving door. Jess is struck by how out-of-place she is. A pristine white spot against the dull grey concrete and stainless steel structures bracketing them. The way she had run up to them just now, like a wild thing. 

"Are you mad at him?" Jess tries, opening the door for the hare daemon and waiting for her to go in. 

Luna raises her head and blinks once before heading inside. Jess takes that as a yes. 

"I'll never understand him," she says to Florentino as she taps her card at the gantry. Luna's far ahead of them, which is why she feels comfortable enough to speak with him.

"It's not that deep," he answers. "Something to do with his father."

"Logan?"

"It all goes back to the source."

"Everything wrong with him?"

"Yep," Florentino says darkly. "This family is messed up."

The three of them round a corner and she finally sees Kendall. The man locks eyes with them immediately, glaring at his daemon. There's a deep frown on his face. He's a bit young to have so many wrinkles and permanent dark circles under his eyes. 

She knows he owns several fancy anti-aging moisturisers- she's the one who orders them from Bergdorf's for him. Somehow his skin defied the best skincare formulas known to man. 

"When I say follow, you follow," is all he says. 

The strange thing is that he seems to be addressing Florentino directly. 

Jess presses a button. "Sorry."

Kendall looks away, lips pressed into a straight line. He'll be doing a different kind of line in the bathroom in a while. 

If he was my friend, I'd plan an intervention. This is seriously unhealthy. 

But he isn't, so she says, being a great assistant anticipating her boss's needs-

"You've got a five-minute window before your next meeting."

4:13 pm

For the next two hours, Kendall works like a maniac. He tells her to ignore Rava when she calls in the middle of the tax meeting so Jess has to spend ten minutes placating her boss's wife. 

"That sucks," she tells Rava sympathetically over the phone. "He really did that?"

"If I were someone else, this would've been the last straw."

Jess finally got the context for their argument earlier in the morning. Sophie had woken early and panicked when she saw Kendall collapsed on the floor of the apartment entrance. She had called her nanny, who then called Rava over to check. After finding a pulse, Rava had rummaged through his pockets and found them empty of any drugs.

"It might've just been exhaustion," Rava explains. "Working hard for the Christmas bonus."

She knew that a monetary sum large enough to pay off her student loans many times over meant nothing to Kendall. It's Logan's approval he wants for the holidays. 

"Not because of his habit?"

"Either way, it's his fault, the self-destructive idiot," Rava says bitterly. Jess could picture her Savannah cat daemon, Maxford, stretched out beside her. "He thinks he can hide what he really does behind my back from the kids, but they're smarter than you think."

The kids are six and four respectively. Not exactly the age when they have great powers of deduction, though Kendall was becoming less and less discreet. Jess personally blamed the Great Stewy Blowout of October for his increased reliance on dugs and alcohol. What a mess.

She looks into the glass-walled conference room, where Kendall seems to have regained some enthusiasm for his job. He's gesturing at the slides with an almost-excited look that brightens brightened his normally sad eyes. It could be something he took out of Jess's sight before the meeting or it could just be how he's in his element whenever the topic of screwing the government came up. 

"Do you have a message to pass to him?" 

Rava laughs once without mirth over the line. "And I thought we were getting to know each other. I know Ken well enough that he doesn't want to talk to me. He hates nagging. So I have nothing to say to him."

"Alright then," Jess says.

"Thanks for the shoes," Rava replies after a beat. "But did you know that it's bad luck in Asian cultures to give shoes as a present? You keep ordering them for me."

There's a bunch of ways Jess could respond, from 'we're not in Asia' to 'when Kendall says to buy you something "as good as a thousand apologies", I know what you really want is for him to spend time with you, but I can't do the impossible', but she bites her tongue. "I do what Kendall tells me to."

"I guess we're pretty much the same then," Rava says, not without anger. "It's like you're in prison and the only thing they serve is an onion sandwich. Every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Always stuck with a nasty taste you can't wash out of your mouth."

"Some people like onions," Jess replies calmly. 

"Every meal, all you get is raw onion stuck in between two slices of stale bread," Rava sighs. "And each day you dream about breaking out of this prison. Any sane person snaps sooner or later."

This is getting dangerously close to a personal conversation. Jess moves to shut it down. 

"Kendall needs me, so I have to get going," she says, even though the man in question is currently listening attentively to the presentation. "I'll let him know you hated the shoes."

"No, you won't," Rava says matter-of-factly and hangs up. 

Jess slips her phone into her back pocket and retrieves her workphone. She checks the new messages.

"At least you didn't tell her about Stewy," Florentino lightly headbutts her. 

"Why would I piss her off deliberately?"

It's easier to omit some things from the stories she told Kendall's wife, including certain people. He had never explicitly asked Jess not to mention Stewy in front of his wife, but she could sort of guess from the way Rava turned her nose up the one time she saw them both in the same room that the relationship between two of the most constant people in Kendall's life was cold. Frozen over like the Hudson on a particularly bad winter's day. 

"Divorce incoming," Her daemon says quietly. 

"Don't speculate," Jess warns him, firing off a reply to Gerri's secretary.

She starts on an email to the Parks Division, a follow-up on today's meeting and a request for more information about guest complaints. 

"It's all a matter of time," Someone says. 

Jess looks up and is slightly startled. When she had her head down, staring at a screen, Luna had found her way next to Florentino. 

"You're really chatty today," Florentino says to Luna.

"Pot calling the kettle black," Jess says to her daemon, raising an eyebrow, trying to get across to him that he had to stop talking to her boss's daemon. 

"It's fine," Luna replies. She sounds like she hasn't spoken in a while. "Not like I have a lot of options."

Jess didn't expect a voice so sweet and shy to come out of Kendall Roy's daemon. Or maybe she's just like this with me, a stranger. Of all his siblings' daemons, Jess has only heard Shiv's daemon, Alasdair, say anything, sounding like a real bitch.

"He can't see us, right? We're not meant to talk."

Luna cocks her head to the side. "I honestly don't care if he does."

Now that is her bitchy side coming out.

4:47 pm

Her phone rings at her desk. 

It's an unknown number.

Jess picks up. "Kendall Roy's office, Jess speaking."

"Hey, Jess," she hears Connor Roy's slightly reedy voice and represses a sigh. "Just calling to see how my little bro is doing."

"He's out right now," she replies. "Have you tried his personal cell?"

"Well, he, uh, doesn't seem to have it on him, because I couldn't get through," Connor says, a little awkward. "So he's not in the office."

"Yeah."

"Can you ask him what Sophie and Iverson want for Christmas? Because I'm on a- a boat in the middle of the Atlantic because Luca loves to fly with the sea wind in her feathers. We won't dock until December 23rd? I think. So, I need to find someone to get that stuff for me beforehand."

"Sure. I'll let him know."

Like that wouldn't require Kendall to actually spend time with his offspring. 

"Thanks," Connor sounds far away. Now that she knows he's on a boat, Jess could kind of hear static in the background. "Don't want a repeat of last year."

He had given Sophie a pony last Christmas. Much to Kendall's shock and Logan's chagrin. 

"It's a gift that will grow with her!" He had said. "By the time she's sixteen, she'll be the perfect size to ride him."

Jess had to dispose of Applejack somewhere on a farm, cared for by an experienced horse trainer, but it was getting the pony out of the mansion that was the difficult part. It's not something she'd like to do again. 

"Okay, Mr Roy," Jess says. 

"You're not coming to the Roy Christmas dinner are you?"

"No," Jess had made the mistake agreeing to Kendall's invitation in her first year. It wasn't an invite to the private dinner, which was family only, but the one with the family and the Old Guard. She couldn't comprehend who would even want to return to something so miserable, held in such an opulent, un-lived in townhouse. She played the Jaws theme in her head every time she saw Logan and his wolf daemon approach. Jess escaped the patriarch's mean gaze by standing beside Connor and leaving early. 

"Well, you're always welcome at our house," Jess could see in her mind's eye the eldest Roy smiling benevolently on a beautiful yacht, looking out at the waves. His sparrowhawk daemon soaring in the air above him. "You're one of us."

Not really. 

"Thank you."

"When you see Kendall," Connor pauses and exhales deeply over the line. "Ask him to call me. Please."

"Sure thing," Jess replies. 

"Right," Connor says. "Uh, bye."

5:26 pm

Jess reaches the downtown office conference room, just in time to see Kendall having a conversation with his younger brother in the middle of the now-empty room. Because it's never a simple conversation between the brothers, Jess wondered who had the upper hand this time. Did their father bring Roman along to the summit as a threat to Kendall's position? Is he becoming serious competition?

She doesn't claim to have the power to see into the future, but she, and other Waystar employees, could say with certain confidence that one day Logan Roy was going to hand over the keys to his kingdom to his family. To this day, no one really knows who would get the honour. Only Logan knew for sure. Jess has received several requests to join the ongoing pool. The odds are in Kendall's favour, as the eldest Roy still in the business and someone who acts like he's been groomed for it since birth. 

The Little Prince ascending to his father's throne. 

"Should we go in?"

Jess looks down at her daemon. "I don't want to shoot myself in the foot."

"Roman's not super terrible."

"Don't defend him."

Jess is still offended by Roman hitting on her by asking her what 'mix of black' she was. It had been her first month and almost led to her quitting the company altogether, rent and college debt repayments be damned. 

It was Kendall who convinced her to stay. Not directly, but when he heard what Roman said to her the next time they met ("I've never met a black chick who didn't like to fuck hard. You've got the growly blood in you."), he put his foot down. 

"Would you rather it be the King himself?"

She shakes her head slightly. Anyone but Logan. She'd sooner stick her foot into an active volcano than have to talk to the man face-to-face.

Jess is sure Kendall could only stand being in the presence of Logan Roy because he's been in the family since birth and he believes that there's something in it for him, if he could just wait it out a little longer. She wishes she could talk to someone about this. Working at Waystar in her position has given her a front seat to family drama that rivalled whatever they showed on reality tv. Her own family squabbles about money and love paled in comparison. And she could only imagine what they're like behind closed doors.

"Where's Roman's daemon?" 

Jess could only see Luna's perked-up ears, her body half-hidden by one of the leather chairs in the room. 

"She's never with him," Jess tells Florentino. The situation is worse than Kendall's in some aspects. 

"I don't see her with us either," he replies, turning his head to scan the area. Jess doesn't have a proper picture of Roman's daemon. She's seen some fur but that's about it. 

"Hey," she says to three people huddled together to the side. They looked like part of the New York production team, coats at the ready, waiting for Roman to finish. "How long have they been inside?"

"A few minutes," a woman around her age replies. Her daemon is a glittering green snake, wrapped around her arm. "They take forever."

"At your level, we still have to wait for the kids to finish," her colleague, a man with a head of full silver hair, says.

He looks resigned. Jess could sympathise. 

Just then, Kendall beckons for her with two raised fingers. 

Jess opens the glass door. 

"Duty calls," Florentino says, trotting into the room.

"Jessie J!" Roman greets her with a wry smile. "Beautiful as always."

Behind him, Kendall shoots her an exasperated look. Talking with his brother has breathed some life back into him. 

"Can you get me the numbers on Madison? Apparently we're changing our estimated growth rate for the next two years."

"On it," Jess replies. She shifts a bit on her feet- Sam Edelman faux suede boots she bought on sale- which Roman notices.

He leers at her. "Those are some really cute shoes you've got there. Care to step on me?"

"You can pay someone for that, you sex-hungry creep," Kendall says with a tug of his brother's arm. He has a saggy-dog expression on his face, the one he makes when he's tired. The high from earlier wearing off. 

"But who else can make it worth her while?" Is the slimy response. 

Jess looks down at Roman, who stands a few inches shorter than her in heels. She hopes her cold stare conveys as much of her disdain for his character as possible. 

"Don't be prissy, Jessie Baby," Roman grins. His blue eyes glimmer unkindly. "You can be completely honest if working for ol' Ken Doll over here isn't satisfying enough for ya. He can barely keep it up unless he's taking it up the ass- don't give me that look, man. Look at me. And look at him. Are you seeing this? You can do better."

"Same for you," Jess says quietly after a beat. Her voice doesn't waver. "Asshole."

Roman doesn't respond immediately. 

Kendall, on the other hand, has something that looks like relief in his eyes. A ghost of a proud smile on his lips. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Jess sees Luna step a little further into view.

"Little Miss Doe Eyes bites back," Roman finally says, with a pointed look at her deer daemon. "Too bad your teeth aren't that sharp."

Jess glowers at Kendall, letting her professional mask fall for a few seconds. I am not easy prey. 

"Leave us," he says, looking directly into her eyes. "I'll be down in five."

That usually means ten. Jess turns on her heel, already composing a message to the Business Development team that her boss is being held up by another meeting and to push back the meeting to 5:40 pm. 

She hears Roman say with mock indignation behind her. "Did your assistant call me an asshole? What's your servant doing, stepping out of line?" 

"I'd, well, I'd say it wasn't not deserved, Rome."

As she opens the door, something brown-and-white darts into the room. It's too fast for her eyes to catch and she's too proud to turn around to sneak a full look. 

The same group is still waiting outside. She exchanges an eye-roll with the woman when she raises her head from her phone. 

"Did you see that?" She asks Florentino softly once they reach the elevators. "What was it?"

"Around my size," he answers vaguely.

"A dog?"

"Maybe."

"So you didn't see?"

"All I saw was a blur."

"You're no help."

"I tried."

Jess presses the button, suddenly overcome with a wave of anxiety. 

"Did you just insult our boss's brother?"

"Heat of the moment."

"Alright."

Kendall hadn't reprimanded her for that. 

"Will he fire-"

"No. I'm sure he's seen worse from the others."

"It's just a job anyway."

Florentino gently touches his nose to her fingertips. He clearly doesn't believe her.