Chapter Text
“It’s definitely morally questionable.”
“Questionable? Nina, it’s morally bankrupt,” Inej retorted, folding her arms as if that could bring about the end of the conversation. Jesper glanced up from the napkin he was scrawling on, the warmth of the Kooperom Café and the smell of coffee deceptively relaxing.
“Am I putting ‘morally questionable’ in the pros or cons list?”
“Cons!” Inej answered with a kick to his shin under the table.
“Pros,” Kaz interrupted, jabbing Jesper with his cane until he shuffled over in the booth with a huff. “If you want to get rich, you need to get comfortable with immorality.” After a pause, Jesper scrawled ‘morally questionable’ down into the pros column of his napkin.
“Kaz, how can you support anything that helps Jan Van Eck? One time I watched you literally boo him when he came on the news,” Nina asked.
“If he’s giving away money, I don’t see why we shouldn’t take it.”
“He’s not giving it away, Kaz. He’s paying someone, specifically a person of colour, to date his son to make himself look less racist!” Inej snapped, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. “It’s exploitative, and backwards, and harmful.”
“It’s fifty thousand kruge, ‘Nej,” Jesper pointed out with a wince, knowing somewhere deep down that the Suli girl was definitely right, but that he also needed the money. “And it’s not really dating, it’s more… pretend dating.”
“And it would be great for your career,” Nina added, pulling her phone out and unlocking it with a few taps of her fingers, her nails clicking satisfyingly against the screen as Jesper added ‘good 4 career’ to his list. “Wylan Van Eck is practically a celebrity himself. Forty-nine thousand followers on Instagram, articles in magazines published all over Kerch, mutuals with loads of celebs and creatives. One week of pretend-dating him could give you so many networking opportunities. Even Kaz follows him.”
“It’s useful to keep up with what the elite are doing,” Kaz muttered, sipping his coffee with something close to a grimace.
“And Inej, you like that little series he does, don’t deny it.”
“Okay, I do like the Sunday Stores series, but I just like that he focuses on small businesses! He’s still his father’s puppet and not a good person.”
Jesper scrawled down ‘his Da’s puppet’ into the con list, and dropped his forehead onto the table with a groan. The conversation continued on in a buzz around him, Inej’s outrage matched by Kaz’s arrogant indifference.
The email outlining the deal had only come through this morning (to his personal email and not through his agent, which was a terrifying indication of the scope of Van Eck’s intel), and already the decision was giving him a headache. It was a simple enough offer. Pretend to date Wylan Van Eck, the closest thing Ketterdam had to a Prince, for approximately six months (or more specifically for six public events, expenses paid, plus social media posts) in return for a one-off fifty thousand kruge payment. Nowhere in the email had a reason for this offer been given, but that wasn’t necessary. The eminent leader of Kerch’s Merchant Council had recently been overheard making some less than inclusive comments about employees at the exchange, and it had made quite a splash in some of the less forgiving tabloids, and even in some of the more forgiving ones. The whole proposal was a giant, audacious PR move, the likes of which only a Van Eck could truly get away with. Fifty thousand kruge was nothing to them.
Money wasn’t exactly an issue, but it also wasn’t exactly in great supply. Jesper’s acting career was no longer stagnant, he’d had a handful of smaller roles in popular shows, which was no doubt where Van Eck’s PR team had found him, a stint in the theatre that had only just closed, and his agent had lined him up with some auditions that looked pretty damn hopeful. But most of the money he’d earned so far had gone on paying off his debt, and he was fairly tired of counting change at the end of every month. Fifty thousand kruge could go a long way.
“Jesper? You’re not actually considering this, are you?” Inej’s voice broke through his distracted haze, and he forced himself to sit up, rubbing what was inevitably a red mark on his forehead.
“I’m not not considering it?”
“You’d seriously let Van Eck exploit you for fifty thousand kruge? You’d help him distract everyone from what he’s said?”
“If it’s not me, it’ll just be someone else, ‘Nej. We’ve done questionable things for money before!”
“But this is… it doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Then it’s a good thing you weren’t chosen, isn’t it, my dear Inej?” Kaz interjected, finishing his coffee. How much time had passed while Jesper was in crisis?
“Nina, what way would Matthias vote?” Jesper asked, mostly trying to de-escalate whatever was about to implode between Kaz and Inej. Nina glanced up from her phone and rolled her eyes at him.
“Matthias? The Matthias Helvar of Fjerda? I wonder what he thinks about deception, dishonesty, and benefitting from prejudice, let me think…”
“Point taken.”
“That’s two votes for no,” Kaz said, gesturing to Inej and Nina’s phone, “and two for yes,” he continued, gesturing to himself and Nina.
“Being in a group of five is the worst,” Jesper whined, dropping his head back against the leather of the booth.
“You could always make Wylan Van Eck our sixth,” Nina grinned, putting her phone down. “I’m sure he’d love the Crow Club. He seems like a seedy casino type.”
“I take it back. You’re the worst.”
“Wylan Van Eck would melt if he stepped foot in the Crow Club,” Kaz sniped, pulling Jesper’s coffee towards him and ignoring the glare he got in response.
“You never know,” Nina continued, twirling her hair around her finger. “You can’t believe everything you see on the internet these days.”
“None of you are helping me with this.”
“That’s because we all knew you were going to say yes the minute you told us it was fifty thousand kruge,” Kaz said, glaring at the stolen coffee he’d sipped like it had tried to kiss his mother. If Kaz even had a mother, Jesper thought. That man could have emerged from a swamp fully formed and it wouldn’t surprise me.
“Then what was this past hour for?!”
“Moral and philosophical debate?” Nina offered.
“Trying to get you to do the right thing?” said Inej.
“Entertainment,” concluded Kaz, pushing the mug back towards Jesper, the coffee unfinished. There was a reason Jesper had begun drinking it with so much sugar, and it wasn’t because he needed the energy.
“I’ll go to the meeting tomorrow,” Jesper conceded, the decision settling uncomfortably in his mind. “If it’s awful, I don’t have to sign anything. I’ll just see what they have to say.”
“Careful the Van Ecks don’t suck out your soul while you’re there,” Nina added, pointing at him with a long, brightly painted nail.
“They’re millionaires, not demons, Zenik. Plus, it’s just the PR firm. The Van Ecks definitely won’t be there.” Nina gave him a one-shouldered shrug in response, looking unconvinced.
“I’m just saying, be careful. And grab me some goodies while you’re there.”