Chapter Text
“Don’t be alarmed. I’m leaking.”
Nate’s first thought is to make a joke, until he remembers who he’s talking to. He tips his head over his shoulder to get Nick’s meaning, and continues pilfering through the pockets of the one bloated ghoul in front of him.
He spots it then, the point of dark liquid blooming through the left side of Nick’s coat.
“Ah, shit, are you okay? What- what happened?” He hurriedly pockets the junk and turns toward him. “I didn’t even notice, you- uh,” He shakes his head, “What, uh… What do we do?”
Nick pulls his trench coat away from his body and looks down at himself, tilting his head. The space between his side and the lining of his coat reflected no light at all, except for the fading edges of the stain, where black turns to grey, to light white.
“Hm,” he says quietly. “It.. should be.. fine as long as we don't leave it unchecked for too long. I don't think we should linger.”
Nick watches the stain continue creeping through his dress shirt, over his side, slow and steady, like dispersing ink in water. When he pulls the coat closed again, the wet fabric sticks. He brings his hands up to press over the leak, like a bleeding wound.
“You sure? It looks bad.” Nate steps towards him. “Very bad. We could tape it up, patch the hole?”
“It should be fine until we get back to the office, I can patch it all up there.” Nick looks up from his spilling side to give a soft reassuring smile, as best he can manage. Nate doesn’t return it, he’s looking at Nick's hands.
Nick is quick to reassure, “Hey, I’ve been through worse scraps before. It’ll be fine,” He shrugs a bit stiffly. Nate looks up at him sadly, his eyebrows furrowed.
“What even happened? I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”
“Ah- a ghoul tripped me up pretty hard back there. Tackled me right into the exposed wall.” Nick gestures accordingly. “Apparently there was something pretty sharp, some rebar or something sticking out. It should be no big deal, if we hurry up here.”
No argument there. The whole undertaking had been quite uneventful, at least for Nick (until this very moment.) Nate had grown increasingly frustrated, looping through the station again and again, coming out of each room empty-handed. Nick followed faithfully behind, backing him up whenever something had the guts to attack them, and patiently waiting while Nate scavenged through disappointing room after disappointing room, for whatever it was he was sent to nab.
It should have bothered him more, leaving with nothing after the hours they had sunk into the search. But that thought slips away as he catches the movement of Nick’s mechanical hand, pressing harder into his other, fingers tightening around the plastic and fabric to hold himself together.
“Right, okay. Then let’s get out of here.”
He turns heel towards where they came from and begins chewing on his bottom lip. They step over the bodies of ghouls and roaches and into the subway car, shuffling past dusty skeletons and their forgotten belongings.
Nate steps out the other end of the car and watches Nick stiffly do the same, slowly and decidedly shifting his weight onto his next foot, stepping himself up, and out.
Nate blinks at him a moment. “..You’re really sure you’ll be okay long enough to get out of here and home?” He points a thumb behind him. “We are pretty far from the station exit, and I don’t exactly feel like carrying you over a hundred meters of rubble, plus the trek to Diamond City.” Nick almost wants to laugh. Nate says that, but he can get so selfless sometimes, Nick easily imagines he really would carry him from here across the entire Commonwealth, if he asked.
Which he won’t.
Nick shrugs, and continues moving. “I’ve managed worse. Just keep a slow stroll. It’s nothing dramatic.”
“Yeah, well, ‘slow stroll’ doesn’t exactly sound comforting.” Nate follows, trying not to step on the scattered debris. He soon catches up with him. “I mean, you’re leaking—what is that, coolant? Oil? Whatever that’s gonna do.”
Nick hums, tilting his head. “I think it’s coolant.” He decides.
He swallows, flicks his eyes twice towards Nick. “Are you gonna overheat and explode? And die?” Nate asks earnestly.
“I’ve been through worse, Nate, this isn’t much to fuss over.”
Nate just makes a face. “It feels like it.”
It’s not exactly unprecedented, Nick figures, to be unsettled when the man beside you is holding a gushing wound closed with both hands. It’s a lot easier, for Nick, not to treat it like much of anything when he doesn’t actually feel like he’s been punctured through with a thick shard of stray metal. There’s no pain about it. No lightheaded rush of blood loss, no, nothing but the lack of sensation where his plastic was torn through. And his torso already lacked some sensation.
“Seriously, what could happen if you lose too much?” Nate asks.
That part does make Nick a bit nervous. There have been tons of times his internal workings have gotten damaged, limbs stop moving, thoughts stop making sense, but a session of rewiring has always set him back straight. The difference this time is that he’s never had to worry about a leak.
“...To be honest, I don’t know.” He says. “I can assume I might start heating up after a while.”
“So you could explode?”
“I really don’t think it’s gonna be that dramatic. I think, most likely, I’ll just slowly wear down until it's fixed. And I highly doubt it’ll take us that long to get to the office,” He reassures.
“Okay, but– ‘wear down,’ what does that mean?”
Nick huffs a quiet breath. “It means things stop talking to each other the way they should. Systems get sluggish, maybe I lose a little coordination. Then a little more..” He tilts his head, thinking.
“Look, there was this one time, I got knocked so hard I couldn’t move for hours. I was alone, mind you. Had to slowly work through my software before I could even get myself to touch the hardware. That was one hell of a repair.” He pauses, glancing at Nate with a lopsided grin. “Funny story, really, I thought I was done for.” He says. “But, look, after all that, I’m still here, aren’t I?”
Nate swallows hard. “...That actually doesn’t make me feel much better, Nick.”
He looks at him for a moment. “..Yeah, that.. That probably wouldn’t, huh?”
Nate just shakes his head, looks forward. Nick continues, “Well, I think it illustrates my resilience. My.. self sufficiency, no?”
“Yes.” Nate responds rather rigidly, “It does. ..But it’s also scary. That’s a scary story.”
Nick watches Nate’s rigid expression, the way he keeps looking forward.
“I’m still here, is what I’m trying to get across.”
Nate nods, and bites his cheek in thought. “That’s true. And I’m glad for that,” He says. “It’s just the way you seem so unconcerned with yourself.”
Nick looks at him. It is easy for him to stay calm about it when damage is familiar, when he has learned all the usual ways his body can fail and how to work around them. Nate does not have that context.
“…Yeah, I’m sorry,” he mutters.
The story hangs in the quiet for a moment, and Nick starts to feel that long, frozen repair drift back. Alone, the hours of careful coaxing and moving and rearranging of himself from the inside, pouring over his diagnostics, before he could move enough to push back whatever had gotten knocked askew. Hardly a funny situation, and yet, he still wanted to laugh.
The urge to laugh doesn’t come from the situation itself, it’s the way he remembers how absurdly stubborn and methodical he had to be just to get moving again. Something about how comically tedious it had been, how the gravity of his situation was so quickly accepted and understood, in a resigned sort of way. The second where he had been standing so surely, right before hearing a loud snap, and he was suddenly rebooting on the floor somewhere, neck bent at some awful angle so that he could only imagine the discomfort if all his sensors weren’t currently disconnected. Is that funny?
He was glad he had fallen facing a window. At least he had something mildly interesting to look at while he pieced together the memory of what led up to it.
“It’s okay. You’ll be alright.” Nate says softly, more to himself.
They fall silent again, listening to the faint whirr of Nick’s mechanics and the echoes of their shoes against the tile. He shifts his coat and notices he’s fallen just a bit behind. He picks up his pace, careful and steady, catching up to Nate.
He’s tilting his head to look at the ceiling, tracing a long, cracked pipe like following a line in a book. His steps are even and tense, and Nick can imagine him counting each one just to fill the lack of noise.
“You alright?”
“Yeah, yes,” Nate answers. “Just antsy, maybe. Can’t wait to friggin’ leave.”
The pipe curves out of sight. Nate drops his chin again and keeps walking.
The station opens up a little farther ahead. A wider stretch of platform, benches tipped on their sides, an old maintenance table shoved crookedly against a pillar like someone dragged it there in a hurry to take cover. Nick catches Nate eyeing it, but they keep moving.
His hip rolls a bit oddly, and the grip on his side slips, so he adjusts, careful not to look down. The fabric makes a faint, sticky sound when he shifts it. His eyes flick towards it despite himself and finds his hands are dark and slick with it.
Nick can say he knows blood quite intimately. He knows the way it thickly splatters, how it sticks, and runs, and dries crackly and stubborn in the grooves of his metal hand, and how it then melts away in the rain.
Nick also knows what it's like when he’s the one bleeding. In fact, the original Nick Valentine faced a gunshot wound not too dissimilar from the hole he’s got now. It was also on the side of his abdomen, though it had been the opposite side.
Memories of that era are mostly fickle, but this being one of Nick’s more traumatic experiences, he can remember the panic pretty well. The sudden awareness after the pop, to the chill while waiting for the pain to set, sticky fingers, and a slipping consciousness…
This isn’t like that.
Nick guesses that when his touch sensors were being designed, the goal was less about giving him accurate sensation and more about giving him the awareness of contact. He made peace with it a long time ago. Certain perceptions, like pain or pleasure, just aren’t meant for him anymore. It’s been rationalized. A lack of pain is a convenience, and pleasure was never really on the table to begin with.
So this time, this leak, he reasons, is nothing like any real injury. It’s a mechanical issue, no matter how Nate reacts to it. But still, there's a gush of blood when he presses against himself, his wound.
His hands are the closest to being ‘sensitive.’ Maybe that’s why it's all so visceral. The slow, warm drag against his palm. The way the fabric clings and releases when he shifts his grip. The familiar weight of liquid gathering where it shouldn’t be–
“—Nick?”
The sound of Nate’s voice knocks his step crooked. His foot gives more than he expects and he stumbles just a bit. “Uh, what?”
Nate has slowed to a stop half a step ahead of him, turning back. “Did you hear me?”
Was he talking?
“Uh, no, sorry. ..Spaced.”
Nate’s mouth twitches as he looks him over. “I asked if you could tell if you were getting worse. Are you okay?”
Nick opens his mouth to answer, then closes it again. Maybe he should stop mindlessly reassuring him and properly consider his question.
…Zoning out wasn’t exactly the best sign, and neither was stumbling around. He rolls his shoulder once, shifts his weight. His leg responds, but not quite how he would expect, like the signal was delayed, or strained in a way.
“…I think so,” he says finally. It comes out a bit slower than he intended. “I’m still upright.”
Nate studies him for a second, quite unconvinced, “Okay,” He turns again, ready to keep moving, but his eyes stay on him, “Just, tell me if anything’s wrong, okay?”
Nick looks at him and nods. “Alright.”
Nate returns it, and moves.
Starting the next step takes a bit more finesse than he’s used to, he’ll admit. It’s more like lifting his hip and pushing it outward for his feet to follow. The first two paces come out stiff and slightly crooked, so he adjusts the rhythm and it’s eventually manageable.
Nate slows his pace so that they walk side by side.
“So…” Nate scratches at the back of his head. “…you were just spacing out?”
“Hm?” Nick glances over. “Uh, yeah, it looks that way.”
Nate looks at him. “Nick.”
He gives a weak shrug. “I’m walkin’, aren’t I?”
“That’s not really the bar I’m aiming for.”
Nick almost smiles at that, but it doesn’t quite make it to his face.
“I told you,” he says softly, “things might get sluggish.”
“Yeah, but you said that like it was hypothetical.”
“It still is.”
Nate huffs under his breath and looks down at his shoes for a few steps, kicking a loose bit of gravel aside. Then he glances back at him again.
“...What were you thinking about?”
“Hm?” Nick looks over.
“When you were spacing out. What were you thinking about?”
He swallows and adjusts his coat, pressing the fabric tighter against his palm.
“An old case,” he says after a moment, watching his hands.
Nate turns slightly towards him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, something that didn’t end particularly well.” Nick keeps his eyes ahead. “…Things like that have a way of popping up when it gets quiet, I guess.”
Nate studies him for a few steps, figuring how he should begin to take that answer.
“…That supposed to reassure me?” he asks.
Nick lets out a faint breath that might be a laugh. “Probably not.”
“Yeah? Cause-” Nate says, laughing uneasily along, “it didn’t.”
Nick tilts his head a little. “You’d be surprised what the mind does when it’s bored.”
“Ah, your mind just got bored,” he hums.
“Mhm,” He nods.
Nate looks him over again, slower this time.
“Nick.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know you think you are. I think I just need some more convincing.”
Nick finally glances sideways at him.
“Why don’t you think of it this way,” he says. “If I’m wrong, and I keel over, you get to tell everyone that you got to travel with the Commonwealth’s most stubborn piece of hardware.”
Nate snorts despite himself. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s an occupational requirement.”
They walk a few more steps.
Nate shakes his head a little, but there’s a small smile there now.
“You know why I keep asking, right?”
Nick raises an eyebrow. “Because you enjoy hearing yourself talk?”
“Because,” Nate says, ignoring him, “most people try to act all tough right up until they collapse.” He looks at him, “And I don’t want you to collapse on me.”
Nick looks ahead, expression thoughtful as he adjusts his stride again.
“Good thing I’m not most people.”
Nate hums. He really isn’t.
“—And besides, you'd catch me.” Nick adds with a wry smile.
Nate exhales a laugh through his nose. “Yeah, cause I'd have no choice!”
“Exactly,” Nick says lightly. “So I’m not too worried.”
Nick glances over at him. Nate’s still smiling, scrunching his face like he can’t decide if Nick is joking or just being difficult on purpose.
Nick gives a small, crooked smile back. Then Nate finally looks away again, and they keep walking.
A few yards later the corridor opens into the main boarding area. It is bigger, with benches and advertising panels still half lit, and a set of concrete stairs across the subway tracks that lead up to a street-level exit.
Almost out. It’s up the stairs, then just a few simple miles from South Boston until they reach Diamond City. An evening stroll, really.
..Could he really hold out that long?