Work Text:
Sunlight dappled the wall of Sole’s quaint Sanctuary home, rendering the gnarled metal and chipping trim almost beautiful in the soft hues of morning and dancing silhouettes of wind-shaken leaves. A pleasant breeze graced the air, turning the acrid tang of the Commonwealth over with the perfume of wild hubflowers, sprouting in scraggily bunches over the sides of Sanctuary Hills. Lounging in a patio chair, Sole sipped at his coffee, warmth soothing life into his sleep stiff body as he prepared for the day.
His eyes fluttered shut for a few moments, letting his skin indulge in the tenderness of morning. They fell open again when he sensed a shade imprint on the inside of his eyelids.
Sole was surprised to see X6 standing before him, leather Courser attire looking out of place in the picturesque serenity of the neighborhood.
“’Morning,” Sole grinned, his eyebrows still raised inquiringly.
“Sir,” X6 nodded in greeting – a sign of respect, and much to Sole’s disappointment, distance, “the Director has assigned us a reconnaissance mission.”
This struck Sole as odd; reconnaissance was usually a one-synth job.
“The Director has invited you to accompany me. He believes it will prove valuable as you prepare to succeed him,” X6 continued, as if he were able to read Sole’s mind.
Sole nodded thoughtfully, sitting up a little straighter.
“What’s the assignment?”
“It’s simple; just check up on a dispatched synth to ensure the subject is assimilating properly into Commonwealth life.”
Sole’s face brightened.
“It’s nice to know the Director follows up on the synths he sends out. Is that why they call him ‘Father’?”
X6’s demeanor was a businesslike cold.
“It’s not, but that’s not relevant right now. The point is we can’t have a repeated incident in Diamond City like the one that transpired sixty years ago. I believe you know it as the ‘Broken Mask Incident.’”
An ominous gust of wind ruffled the bare, brittle branches of the sparse trees around the property, and Sole’s expression sombered.
“Ah, yes. That definitely isn’t something we want to repeat.”
Sole rose to his feet, the mug sitting forgotten by one of the frontmost chairs legs.
“We ought to get going then.”
“I couldn’t agree more, Sir.”
-
The air here was smoky and crowded with the myriad of things the citizens of Diamond City were funneling into it; in Sanctuary Hills, when you took a deep breath, it felt cleansing. In with the gentle sweeping scent of running water, lightly doused with the taste of the local wildflowers, and out with one’s troubles. In Diamond City, if you inhaled deeply enough, it was as if you were fishing a dirty sock from an exhaust pipe, and stuffing it into your lungs.
Sole and X6 were perched at the Power Noodles counter; Sole’s bowl was about halfway empty, X6 had barely touched his.
Both sets of eyes scanned throngs of people as they milled about, though Sole doubted he’d be much help. On the way here, X6 had shown him a picture of the synth they were supposed to be looking in on; a fair woman with loose brown curls, and whose heart-shaped face seemed to smile with bowtie lips even if she wasn’t trying to. Sole thought she looked kind, X6 had said her designation was D2-05.
Even with her likeness folded safely in the inner pockets of X6’s coat though, Sole was doubtful they’d be able to pick her out. There were a lot of bright-eyed, brunette women in Diamond City; and it’s not as if she’d answer to her designation, even if they were able to call it out openly without earning a spray of gunfire - courtesy of the DC Guard.
Sole was about to bring this to X6’s attention when he felt his companion perk up beside him.
From behind the shades, Sole could tell the steely irises were tracking with bloodhound tenacity.
“You found her?” Sole murmured under his breath, taking another casual bite of his meal.
The Courser made a small sound of confirmation. When his face turned slightly to keep the target in sight, Sole glanced up and saw her too.
She was walking towards the Schoolhouse, leading a girl who couldn’t have been more than seven, by the hand. Every so often, the girl would smile more broadly, her bumbling gait faltering in its happy rhythm momentarily to fit a small skip in her step. D2-05 beamed down at the child, the corners of her eyes crinkling warmly.
“She’s playing her part well,” X6 said, his voice ringing with approval.
“They look happy,” Sole remarked, though his chest twinged slightly.
They watched as D2-05 walked her daughter up to the front steps of the school, and a pudgy hand waved goodbye as Miss Edna corralled the child inside. D2-05 waved back, lingering until the door was shut, and her daughter was too preoccupied to notice her mother leaving.
Bill taken care of, Sole and X6 slid from their stools at Power Noodles, trying painstakingly to emulate their own casual pace as they tailed D2-05. She was walking a leisurely gait though; which was difficult for the pair to mimic seeing as how little of leisure they’d been seeing as of late.
When she rounded the corners down one of the lower stands’ cramped alleys, Sole and X6 followed in suite, tailing her at least three full shadows’ lengths. Sole hoped it was enough to counteract their shoddy acting.
“She’s slowing down,” Sole whispered through stiff lips, one of his arms reaching out to caution his companion, though X6 had already slowed to a low creep.
“She must live nearby.”
Sure enough, a few doors down, D2-05 stopped before a door, it’s pale blue paint chipping. She paid no mind to that though; just rummaged through the cozy pockets of her house dress, Sole ventured, for a key.
Before she could procure one though, the door swung open. A tall, stately looking woman appeared in the doorway, her cascading, brown, corkscrew curls bounced slightly as she pushed a current of hair behind her shoulder. The woman smiled and said something that Sole couldn’t make out from the distance he and X6 were at, though it sounded happy.
D2-05 grinned broadly in return, her hands fluttering around the shoulders of the woman, before leaning in to place a kiss at her lips.
“It seems like she’s doing well,” Sole said, unable to resist the small smile tugging at his own lips.
X6 nodded, “Certainly. She’s assimilated into the role of wife and mother almost seamlessly. It seems like neither child nor adult suspect anything’s amiss.”
As quickly as Sole’s smile came, it disappeared, his gut writhing uncomfortable in him. He opened his mouth to say something, before it snapped shut, empty of the words he’d wanted to say. There was perhaps nothing he could that mattered at this point; X6 followed orders, like most at the Institute, and that was that. Sole had learned this rather quickly upon teaming up with the Courser.
Sole respected it – knew it was both a strength and a weakness to set one’s heart aside for the sake of duty, as much as it was both a strength and a weakness for someone like himself to set aside duty to act on the passions of his heart. It was a constant battle they debated, most often over the crackle of a fire, and beneath a canopy of stars.
What pressed him more deeply in this moment was something X6 had mentioned earlier though; that his own presence on this assignment was a step in preparing him to rise to fill the Director’s rather large shoes. To make calls as he did. Could he?
Sole had witnessed no unease but his own today thus far, and yet, he knew that it lurked in the depths of such schemes, should one only decide to rip the sheet off its ugliness, and reveal the ghost beneath.
“Sir?”
X6’s voice soothed him from his reveries. Sole snapped his gaze back to his companion.
“You looked like you had something you wanted to say.”
It was no use hiding it, not that Sole felt he had to from X6, although perhaps on the tail of their – Sole chilled at the thought – subject, wasn’t the time nor place.
“Later,” Sole assured.
They waited outside the small house for about an hour, and every so often a figure would pass before the thinly dressed windows. The bigger, darker silhouette that passed had to be who D2-05 called Amanda, or ‘Mandy’ at times when her affections softened the timbre in her voice, already light as summer rain.
At the telltale creaking of shifted weight over worn floorboards, X6 and Sole sprang back into their pantomimed casual afternoon. Sole leaned against the grimy wall of a structure a few paces down the narrow alley, the concrete abrasive against his skin. X6 stood within conversation’s distance, nodding intently at nothing in particular. It was then, D2-05 emerged from the small house, this time a faded yellow suitcase in one hand. A pistol was holstered at her hip, looking bizarrely normal with her white and pink spotted sundress. A colorful scarf was tied over her head, and she wore stylish, white-framed sunglasses that would’ve been commonplace before the bombs dropped.
D2-05 gave Mandy a quick peck on the cheek before descending the front steps. She turned to give a final wave of her fingers to the woman at the door, before turning her back and departing down the alley the way she came. Mandy disappeared back inside the house as D2-05 passed them. If the synth recognized X6, she never showed it, her purposeful gait never faltering.
“She looks as if she’s going somewhere,” Sole murmured.
X6 nodded, unperturbed by this.
“The original had scheduled a visit back home today. D2-05 did well to remember.”
Sole frowned deeply.
“Sir, we should follow.”
Before Sole could protest, X6 was already nudging him into motion, before they swept around the corner again, determined not to lose D2-05 as they passed through the gates of Diamond City. Sole followed with his look of disapproval.
Their departure from Diamond City was a quiet one, and Sole knew it wasn’t just the discrete nature of their mission that made it so. He used the crunch of gravel and debris underfoot as a preamble to collect his words, before slowing his pace to indicate that he wanted to talk.
When X6 turned to meet his gaze, he could see the silver of his irises, glinting in the space between the lens of his glasses and his face, like knives.
“Sir?”
“I…” Sole frowned again. These sorts of things were uncomfortable, but he knew it’d linger, a thorn in his and X6’s sides until he addressed it properly. “This isn’t right,” he finally said.
X6 didn’t seem surprised by this sentiment.
“How so?”
“It just…isn’t,” Sole’s gaze found his utility boots as they turned up dust, “This woman was somebody. She loved people – and had people who loved her too, and we just…altered that without even thinking of the consequences. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said easily, keeping his own stare fixed straight ahead. “In the grand scheme of things, these things that you take to heart are just details. They don’t hold a candle to what the Director hopes to accomplish in the long run.”
“But these ‘details’ are what our lives are made of,” Sole argued, “when a lot of us won’t be around to reap the fruits of the end goals we’re working towards, it’s a big thing to ask us to sign on to.” Sole sent a shrewd look towards the path in front of them, where D2-05 had passed no more than ten minutes before. “Not to mention, most of us didn’t even actually sign on.”
“You’re looking at it too emotionally. The needs of the many will always outweigh the wants of the few.”
“But the few are a part of the many, and the lives we’re affecting throughout the Commonwealth are the many compared to the few of us running the Institute,” Sole sighed. Nothing, it felt, had changed save for the reprieve of a massive weight on his chest. “I know I won’t be changing your mind or anything but…to ignore it completely; walking her daughter to school, kissing her wife – these are things we took from someone else for the sake of our own agenda.”
“Humanity is our agenda,” X6 said, his voice sounding as close to gentle as Sole had heard it.
“If that’s what helps you sleep at night, then by all means, keep telling yourself that.”
Sole let out a steadying stream of air, and the pair traveled onwards in silence. He could feel the Courser’s eyes on him through the charged silence that filled the space between then. Sole finally let his gaze slide over to his companion, who looked to be opening his mouth as if he intended to break their quiet. Then, a woman’s shrill scream had them barreling down the beaten path.
Where dry, loose ground accumulated a coat of thin, sparse brush, X6 and Sole came onto the scene of five figures – their bulky armor gnarling around them like vines of twisted metal – appeared fanned out around who Sole could only assume to be D2-05. She was the smallest silhouette amongst the rest, cringing away from the others as they prowled and stalked about her, hyenas encroaching on a fresh carcass.
Sole and X6 halted behind the vast column of the rotting expressway, its length crumbling like a snake’s corpse in decay. They peeked around, studying the scene as it unfolded.
“D2-05 is compromised,” X6 said, his voice terse.
Sole’s feet itched with an urgency to put himself between the woman and her pursuers.
Throwing themselves into the middle of a firefight could prove just as fatal to D2 as not acting at all if they weren’t careful. Though by the looks of it, they didn’t have much time to come up with a better plan; Sole eyed the lumbering circle as the figures began to close in on the synth – even from here, they didn’t much look like they were trying to waste time chatting.
“So, we’re going in?”
X6’s eyes snapped to Sole’s; the slight quirk to the Courser’s brow was the only indication of the intensity behind his insistence.
“We? With all due respect sir, no, we are not. I’m going in. You’re just here to observe.”
X6’s voice remained as undisturbed as the glassy surface of a quiet lake on an empty morning as he unholstered his laser pistol. Sole strongly suspected it was the methodical nature of this action and the focus X6 could pour into it that kept him settled like the grave.
With his fingers curled securely around the handle, his index finger moving to its at-the-ready position just below the trigger after turning the safety off, he stepped out from behind their meager cover.
“I’ll recover D2-05,” he said before taking off towards the raiders, and it was the way he said it that felt more like a warning for Sole to stay back, than a reassurance of success.
To hell with that, Sole thought before he detached from his brain entirely, as the palm of his hand found the gun holstered at his own hip. It was technically the same gun as X6’s, but his touch lacked the reverence and respect X6 wielded his with. While no stranger to its uses, or the skill required for it, Sole stifled a cringe every time he used the weapon; it was his absolute last resort, though it seemed to be coming to that more often than not these days.
Sole started off on the same path as X6, adhering to where the withered fronds of sparse, coarse grass bended and creased under the weight of the man who had passed over them. He took it slower though and kept low to the ground. By the time he looked around and found himself in the middle of the action, two raiders were already incapacitated, lying motionless and sprawled on the ground, while X6 was handling the other three, with seemingly very little trouble.
The raiders looked hulking and clumsy next to the fluid, calculated motions of X6. There was an almost sort of elegance; his aim was pristine, and he switched off between shooting and hand-to-hand when a particularly misguided opponent strayed close enough to dare challenge him.
With a subdued crack as the side of X6’s hand made contact with the neck of the poor idiot, the raider dropped, blending in with the rest of the debris that littered the Commonwealth. Sole shuddered to himself; X6 was created to be a killing machine. The thought had no sooner drifted through Sole’s head, that he felt a twinge in his chest.
But surely, there a great deal of other things he could do as well?
Sole shook himself of the sentiment; of course, there were, and once this was all over, he’d be sure to find out exactly what, but for now, he had to see a synth about her safety. Turning to D2, who was cowering a few paces away from where her captors and kin engaged, he crept over to her.
“D2,” he said softly.
The synth nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of a voice so near. When her eyes found his, they went wide with terror, the pupils small and searching frantically for anywhere that might finally yield safety for her.
“We’re on your side here.”
The paranoid flittedness of her eyes finally stilled, though her trembling never ceased. Sole holstered his gun and showed her his empty palms.
“H-How did you know to call me that?”
Sole smiled kindly, “I’m with the Institute; as is X6-88,” he shot a look towards X6, who had both hands wrapped into a viselike grip around both of a raider’s wrists and was forcing him backwards and down into subduedness.
He looked as if he had decided to just throw down his gun at this point in favor for his hands. Unease lingered at D2’s face, though she looked noticeably more reassured than she had prior. Sole watched her, watch X6; did she see him as a trained killer too? Her protector? Her savior?
Her eyes seemed to track him in the distance, not in horror or admiration, but in a focused manner that had Sole turning to see what had ensnared her interest so.
One of the raiders that had before been at the ground had risen again and was creeping up on X6 from behind. Fresh adrenaline swelled in Sole, like someone was blowing up a balloon inside of him. The force with which it grew threatened to spread and crack his ribs. His mouth fell open to cry out a warning, but even in the split second it took for him to do that, it was too late.
X6 dropped like a dead weight as the business end of a modded pipe pistol cracked against his skull.
The raiders had the time it took for Sole to dash to X6’s side before the aforementioned Courser wobbled to his feet. Despite the shakiness to his stance, he looked anything but vulnerable. He loomed up like a shadow, his trembling a merciful opportunity for his opponents to pray to whatever gods they had before swift consequence was brought upon them by his hand.
The raiders figured this out before Sole had, who watched his companion rub at the knot swelling where the gun had made contact and relented as a protective instinct hijacked his every nerve and thrust himself between the raiders and X6.
With a human between them and the Institute’s executioner, the raider with the most exorbitantly grubby armor had his courage reaffirmed enough to not retreat. How could a raider pass up a (relatively) easy target?
The barrel of a gun stared down the bridge of Sole’s nose, and he met its glare with unflinching fire.
Adrenaline coursed through him; blood pounded in his ears; the white noise was welcome though. Sole focused on the thrum of his racing heart, lest it keep his knees from buckling beneath the gravity of his very tangible mortality in this moment. Latching onto the rhythm as it continued beating into the drone of time, Sole used it as a means to move forward. His mind blanked, and when he awakened from his spell again, one of his arms had caught the raider’s in a blunt intersection. The brunt of Sole’s impact had been focused on the raider’s elbow, throwing the gun wildly off its aim.
One step forward meant that he’d be yanked back in equal measure it seemed; the gun had no sooner been turned away from his face that a hard impact crunched into Sole’s side. His gaze snapped to X6’s, both sets of eyes wide, one with surprise, the other with a rage that threatened to spatter everything in a hideous, crimson haze.
Sole sucked in a sharp breath out of habit, before letting it hiss back out from between clenched teeth. A deep, reverberating pain stirred in his chest, and now he did crumple. On his way down, he caught the grimy, girth of a lead pipe; no doubt what had been used on him.
Once again, there was nothing separating the raiders from X6, and he turned to them with a prowess that denied his earlier encounter with the gun had ever happened. The remaining raiders staggered away, as if he towered several feet above them. X6 took one formidable step towards them. In perfect synchronicity, they took an equally bold step backwards, knowing that since their lives depended on it, the distance must not get any smaller. X6 took another deliberately intimidating stride, a cat pausing to take stock of exactly how it’d go apart ripping the canary’s throat from its designated place.
Now the raiders scattered, a few turning back, weapons raised, as if they’d do anything to slow his pursuit of them, others, not wanting to risk the paralysis of fear should they see him gaining on them. But X6 did not bother pursuing them further than a few paces. Instead, he turned to Sole, laying awkwardly at the ground, one arm hovering protectively over where his ribs were. His breathing was shallow and forcibly softened; the small, fluttered motions catching in his throat, and invoking occasional grunts of pain.
X6 knelt at Sole’s side, firm, skillful fingers going to Sole’s forearm.
“Sole,” he started, less sure then Sole had ever heard him, “you’re injured.”
It was perhaps the most obvious Sole had heard him as well.
“Yeah, well –“ Sole flinched; talking exasperated the injury worse than breathing had, “I got…well acquainted with the party side of a pipe today.”
His voice was terse, rendering his usual cheeky humor bleaker than what X6 was accustomed to.
X6 gently moved Sole’s arm from its guarded position over his abdomen.
“Lay back,” he said gently, pressing slightly at Sole’s shoulder and easing him down fully.
Sole groaned, but obliged, holding as still as his furtive breaths would have him as X6 pushed the hem of his shirt upwards, revealing the swollen area over Sole’s floating ribs, and the dark, bruises that blossomed as mottled, purple shadows.
X6’s jaw twitched, and Sole knew the thought of pursuing the raiders after all, had resurfaced in his mind.
“Hey,” Sole strained feebly beneath X6’s light touch, “I know that look. None of that now. It’s not a big deal.”
X6 raised a finger to skim above the tender area of the injury, and Sole contorted, his voice rising to a pained yelp.
“Broken rib.”
“See?” A bead of sweat slipped down Sole’s temple, “Not so bad. You just- “ Sole panted, still recovering from the fresh burn that had seized him at the beckon of X6’s touch. “You just gotta kiss the booboos away.”
X6 could feel how clammy Sole was as the man shot him a wobbly grin.
“How about a stimpak?”
X6 raised his eyebrows, and Sole looked away, his embarrassed flush nearly imperceptible against his cheeks, already reddened from the toll his injury pulled from his body.
Sole kept his eyes fixed on X6’s face as he watched the Courser procure a stimpak from one of the many mysterious pockets in his coat. Compared to the trauma of his injury, the process of finding a vein was almost easy, and so Sole barely noticed the tip of the needle disappear into his forearm. X6’s finger smoothed away at the dot of blood that budded from the puncture wound once the contents of the syringe had been emptied into Sole’s bloodstream.
Already in the few moments that followed, Sole could feel the heaviness in his chest and abdomen lessen, the bright flashes of pain growing duller as the medicine worked its way through his system.
Sole felt his breathing ease up, and he sighed gently; at first to test this, and then in genuine relief.
“Thanks,” Sole put weight down on his forearms; an experiment in attempting to get up on his own, when suddenly one of X6’s hands came to splay at his chest.
He looked up at his companion, eyebrows raised, inquiring, though having a few guesses about the nature of this gesture himself.
“I’m not done,” X6 said coolly, “I still haven’t…’kissed the booboos away.’”
Sole’s eyes went wide as he watched X6 draw closer. His breath came heavily again – thank god X6 had already administered him the stimpak.
When he was close enough that Sole could feel X6’s warm breath fan across his face, he couldn’t stop his eyelashes from fluttering. He was caught into a vicious push and pull; watch this beautiful man make him feel better, versus dedicating all possible resources to memorizing what his lips would feel like after his brain short circuited.
X6’s lips brushed softly against Sole’s forehead, but Sole felt it in his entire body. It was so tender, it made Sole’s heart ache, and had he been able to, he’d have cross-sectioned the kiss to fold the paradise wrapped up in it into himself so that it tangled in his heart strings and he could live in it forever.
When X6 pulled away, his eyes opened as well, and it was only then that Sole realized he’d closed them at all. Why, he wondered? Out of embarrassment? Was he trying to feel it as much as anyone could feel something? Or maybe, X6 figured, that was just something people did when they kissed.
At Sole’s expression, the corner of X6’s mouth twitched, but he stifled his own wily grin in favor of speaking.
“Does it still hurt?”
Sole nodded mutely.
X6 drew close again, and Sole had to close his eyes now, for if he didn’t, his heart would surely stop all together. He wondered if kissing was on the Surgeon General’s label on the stimpak.
Petal light touches brushed across the flat of Sole’s cheekbones, trailing down to the edge of his jaw before dropping off and switching to the other.
Sole’s lips fell agape, and he sighed rapturously.
All at once, Sole felt the urge to open his eyes again, and it was when he felt his own lips tremble as X6 came dangerously close to them that he decided, breathing be damned. He had to watch the face of the man who handled him tenderly though.
X6 drew back again, and now his face was completely void of the suppressed humor from before. Usually, when X6’s face was this impassive, he’d made sure to fill in any room for interpretation with steel; his visage an impenetrable force to look upon before death by his capable hand. Now though, while there was no open joy, there was no steel either. His face looked as tender as his touches had been; all want and anticipation for the stretch of time they’d have to fill when the kiss ended.
But first, Sole thought - vaguely surprised he could think at all – it had to begin.
He leaned up against his forearms again, now determined to sit up a bit straighter for this. Every part of him was vigilant for X6; the heat that pooled in their proximity, the phantom of his kisses at Sole’s face, and the magnitude of his eyes as they searched Sole’s before flicking down to his lips and back up again.
This was their language; no one else would be able to decipher the give and take that had just transpired. X6, taking his chance, and Sole, giving him permission, to finally close the distance between them.
His eyes fluttered shut and he allowed himself to careen forward, lips first, anticipating X6’s to find him in a similar manor. Instead, he felt his lips brush something smooth, but definitely most unlip-like. His chin crashed into a divot somewhere, and Sole opened his eyes as he heard X6 make a disgruntled noise.
He looked dazed – or as close to dazed as Sole could imagine him being, and he was rubbing the bridge of his nose – Sole’d guess, that’s what he’d bumped into.
“Oh!” Without thinking, Sole raised a hand to tilt X6’s chin up, the other hand reaching through X6’s to better inspect the area. “Are you alright?” There was no mark to inspect; just the heated flush that suffused the Courser’s cheeks.
“You’re taller than I expected, “ X6 mused, “I…perhaps, Sir, you should guide me to ensure I won’t miss the next time.”
Pink spots bloomed high at Sole’s cheekbones as his other hand tentatively maneuvered at the other side of X6’s jaw, so that his head was firmly cradled in Sole’s hold.
“I thought you never missed,” Sole whispered.
There was enough time for X6 to let out an amused snort, before Sole brought their lips together.
Sole might’ve done the guiding, but X6 was unmistakably the one kissing Sole. His lips, inexperienced as Sole might’ve thought before, worked with the soft skillfulness he’d expect from his hands. Had he not been so transfixed by the taste of the Courser on his lips and tongue, and the feeling of his stubble scraping lightly at his palm, he’d be terribly jealous of X6’s gun.
The fluttered motions of his heart fluttered more viciously still, and Sole found himself feeling lightheaded. Was there not enough air between sharing each breath with the man in his arms and taking some for himself, or had Sole simply stopped breathing entirely?
In any case, Sole used his grasp on X6 to anchor himself to him. One hand smoothed along the edge of X6’s jaw, beneath his ear, and up the back of his scalp. The other, dropped past the Courser’s neck, to smooth over his shoulder. Sole didn’t know how, but he deepened the kiss; now that he managed to get even closer, he came to the realization that there would never be a ‘close enough’.
Though Sole would be damned if he didn’t try.
X6 seemed enthused by Sole’s efforts, meeting each ebb and wane in their kiss with equal vigor. Occasionally, their teeth would clash, and both of them seemed to ring with the implication of what such clumsy desperation meant.
The answer to that question, was lost to them in that kiss, banished far away for a later time when there were significantly less important things for them to be doing than kissing, like breathing, or anything else.
Eventually though, they had to part, and when they did both were surprised to find that the world had not ended, and the sky was still blue and that in fact, only a few minutes had passed, rather than an eternity.
Sole opened his eyes and watched X6. He’d never seen him post-kiss before; he tried to commit it to memory.
X6’s eyes searched his own face, and Sole wondered if maybe he was doing the same thing.
But then, when his lips fell open, the words that came out felt disjointed from the tender moment they’d just shared. X6 looked suddenly off to the distance, his eyes searching somewhere else now, for someone else.
“Where did D2-05 go?”
Reality hit Sole as unfeeling as a spray of cold water. He jackknifed to his feet; the effects of the stimpak were now such that he could scarcely even remember his prior injury. The expanse of his and X6’s kiss and the tracelessness of it made it seem as if it had happened lifetimes ago, rather than just a half hour ago.
“We need to find her, Sir.”
Sole’s heart sank a little at the familiar title. Whatever intimate moment they had shared, had scattered.
“Right – the Director won’t be happy if we lose her.”
Sole’s words dragged at his lips as he spoke – he felt as heavy as they sounded.
X6 flushed brightly and cleared his throat rather suddenly.
“And…” he started, shuffling his feet, “she could get hurt.”
His voice sounded physically strained, and Sole broke out into a wide grin. He knew they were for him, as much as they were for D2.
“Yeah,” he said, reaching for X6’s hand, and tugging him forward, “you’re right.”
They went, the wind at their backs, and the vast Commonwealth, rolling into view before them.