Chapter Text
With an eardrum-shattering boom, the auto-cannons atop the massive barrier shatter and rain metal shrapnel down on Brick and the Vault Hunters below. From around a hairpin-turn in the volcanic canyon, the drop-barge soars into view. Mordecai stands at the edge of its platform, his triumphant fist-pump high in the air.
“Boom, baby! The path is clear!” The Vault Hunters cringe at the shout in their ears.
Brick returns the gesture, throwing his massive fist up with a grin. “Hell yeah! Let’s go!”
The Vault Hunters pick off the remaining robots and storm through the open gate. As Brick readies his hammer to throw into the fray, he hears sharp screeching of metal and distinctive whoosh of jet propulsion. Whirling around, his heart plummets into his stomach. A dozen loaders have landed on the drop-ship’s platform. Mordecai has been caught off guard, scrambling out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed. But he is surrounded. Brick freezes.
“Dammit - they’re swarming me, Brick!” Mordecai’s voice comes through on the ECHO comms. He gasps with exertion, bashing a loader with the butt of his rifle. “Just leave me - keep goin’!”
The desperation in his voice wakes something up in Brick.
“Like hell!” he snarls. “I gotcha, Mordecai!” He starts at a full sprint directly at the drop-ship. His feet thunder on the cracked concrete, arms pumping at his sides. One foot leaves the ground, then two, as he jumps from the cliff to the barge.
“No, Brick!” Mordecai backs further away as the loaders advance on him. Anguish cracks his voice as he screams. “NO!”
One, two punches connect directly with loader bots, sending them staggering towards the edges of the ship. Brick’s knuckles are already bloody, but the adrenaline numbs everything. His vision grows redder by the second, a wave of pure heat sweeping through his chest. He will not let them hurt Mordy.
Mordecai fires off shots at close range, the explosions almost deafening in Brick’s ears. He slams a fist down on a bot’s head, hard, crumpling the metal like a soda can.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Mordecai shouts as Brick punches his way into the fray. “Stay with the Vault Hunters!”
Brick spins on his heels and clobbers a bot aiming its mechanical arm at Mordecai. “I ain’t leaving you!”
A voice booms from above, like a god ready to strike them down.
“Locking onto drop-barge. Commencing lunar bombardment.”
“Crap!” The force from Mordecai’s rifle blast sends a loader bot flying into its neighbor. “They got a lock on us!”
“Just go, Slab!” With one arm, Brick grabs a bot by the leg and flings it off the drop-ship like a frisbee. “GO!”
He doesn’t wait to see what the Vault Hunters do. Every muscle in his body is screaming at him to get to Mordecai. A calling, deep in his bones, to make their final stand together. Just as he reaches him, an impossibly loud series of booms erupt from the sky, so loud he can feel them in his chest. If a Helios bombardment decimated Sanctuary, what would it do to their measly drop-ship?
Explosive beams of light rain down from the sky, shattering the rocks around them into fragments that fall into the lava below. One skims the edge of the ship and sends it careening towards the canyon wall. The barge shrieks as its metal hull drags along the rock and attempts to stabilize itself. The men stagger and try to maintain balance as the ship swings wildly across the canyon. Two loader bots topple over the edge and fall a stomach-churning distance into the boiling lava river beneath them.
The chaos is never-ending. Brick and Mordecai fight back to back, punching and shooting in a familiar tempo. Just like the old days. It’s a dance they fall back into easily, like they never really forgot how it goes. Stepping in time, a sweep of the leg here, a crashing fist there. Brick knocks a loader bot on its ass and pauses to check in on Mordecai.
The man’s lips are curled up in a defiant sneer at the bots advancing around them. Dreads shake loose from their tie, framing Mordecai’s angular face. Sweat drips down his forehead as he lashes out with his knife. His tongue touches his lower lip in concentration, and the blade arcs to imbed itself in a loader bot’s circuitry. It crumples to the floor, and Mordecai laughs. Brick’s heart jumps in his throat.
Just as Mordecai turns to boast about his accuracy, Brick grabs his face in big bloody hands and kisses him, rough and frenzied.
For a beat, the two just look at each other, inches apart.
“Marry me,” Brick says.
Mordecai stares at him in awe. “You… What?”
CLANG. Brick parries the swing of a loader bot aimed directly for Mordecai’s head. He digs his fingers into the metal arms, crumpling it like aluminum.
“Can’t go down without you knowin’ how I feel.” The last word is part grunt as he heaves the loader bot over his shoulder and tosses it across the barge. “I’ve wanted this for a long-” CRASH “-time, Mordy.”
Mordecai ducks beneath Brick’s arm as he swings wildly at a bot over his shoulder. “Is now the best time for this conversation?”
With a heavy rumble beneath their feet, the ship shudders and jolts mid-air.
“Never been a better time,” Brick says, grounding Mordecai with a heavy hand on the shoulder.
Mordecai almost to shout to be heard over the whir of machinery and clashing of metal. “I, uh, I didn’t know you felt that way!”
With a colossal crash, the drop-ship’s main engine gives up the ghost. Thick acrid smoke billows up from the underside of the barge, and both men start to cough uncontrollably.
“This thing’s going down any second,” Mordecai shouts between exhausted gasps and shots from his rifle, accuracy utterly abandoned. “We gotta-”
The ship jerks to the side, and Mordecai slips. Brick watches it happen in slow motion. His lithe body falling through the air, arms desperately reaching for anything to hold onto. A look of pure shock crosses his face, a look Brick has never seen before and knows will be burned into his mind for the rest of his life. Mordecai is flying off the side of the ship, reaching for the railing but missing it by just a few inches.
Brick is moving before he can form a thought. A loader bot in his path is eviscerated with one swing of his fist, the side of its head shattered in a burst of sparks and shrapnel. A wildfire is erupting in his chest, furious flames crawling up his throat. The edges of his vision blur red. Move, the fire screams as it spreads outwards to his arms and legs, go, run run RUN. He hears it louder than the screeching of the ship, the clanking of metal, and the blasts in the sky. A roar in his ears, like he’s standing beneath a waterfall.
And then Brick’s entire body is hanging off the edge of the ship, foot hooked into a gap in the railing. The moment Mordecai’s hand slips into his own, the wildfire calms, still burning a hole in his chest.
“I got you, Mordy,” he says, chest heaving with ragged breaths, “I ain’t lettin’ go. I got you.”
Mordecai says nothing but laughs from sheer shock as he dangles above a river of lava.
It takes hardly any effort to pull Mordecai up with one arm. Brick sets him down on his feet, and he stumbles when the ship rolls beneath them. Looking around, Brick sees that there are no loader bots left on the ship. Just mechanical corpses and the wreckage he wrought. The air has grown thick with smoke, furious flames licking up the sides of the platform. There’s a terrible groaning from the engines below, like the bellows of a dying monster.
Brick looks at Mordecai, who stands frozen beside him. He looks, for once in his life, unsure of what to do. So Brick makes a decision for the both of them.
“What are you-?!” Mordecai stutters as Brick scoops him up in his arms. He clutches him bridal-style, a big arm under his knees and across his back. Sounds from below deck grow louder, a high-pitched whine accompanying the clangs and whirs. The ship has started to pitch down in its descent to the lava below. The wildfire flares in Brick’s chest.
Brick tightens his grip on the man in his arms. “Hold on!”
Before Mordecai can object, Brick backs up to the other edge of the platform. Then he’s running, barely aware of Mordecai’s yelling in his ears.
And he jumps.
What follows is a cacophony of sensations. Mordecai’s shouting nearly drowned out by a deafening boom behind them. Searing heat on his back like a hot iron. Fingernails digging into his sides. A bizarre feeling of weightlessness. It all lasts only a second, and then Brick hits the ground. He somehow manages to twist around so he lands on his back, shielding Mordecai from the impact but sliding several feet through hard dirt and rocks. For a few moments, he lies there with his eyes shut. If he opens them, he’ll have to move, and he’s not sure if he even can.
“Holy shit.” Mordecai pulls away from Brick’s chest, sitting up and staring ahead. When Brick peeks, he sees that the drop-ship is gone. Most of it, at least. Some of it sticks out of the lava, going down slowly like it’s sinking in a tar pit. The rest is in flaming pieces scattered across the ledge Brick managed to jump onto.
Brick sits up, stabbing pains up his spine making him wince and groan. “That was… somethin’. You okay, Mordy?”
“Am I okay?” Mordecai frowns and scoots behind Brick. “What about you, man?” Shivers trickle down his back when he feels slender fingers lift his tattered tank-top and touch the skin beneath.
Brick clears his throat, but his voice still cracks. “Is it- does it look bad?”
“Not the worst I’ve seen you, but the burns are pretty nasty.” A deep sigh. “Hold on.”
Mordecai rustles around in his pack before announcing, “This is gonna sting a little.”
The sudden cold on his burns is excruciating, and Brick can’t hold back a yelp. His wounds seem to sizzle, and he can feel the icy salve seeping into the muscles. After a few moments, the pain feels a bit more numb.
“Now let me see your hands.” Mordecai adjusts his position, coming into Brick’s view and plopping down at his side. “You’re not gonna be any use fighting Jack if you’re all beat up.”
Brick holds out his hands. Punching things is very much his expertise, but he’s not indestructible. His knuckles are raw and bloodied, shallow gashes ripped across the tops of his hands. Now that the wildfire has died down, Brick is starting to feel the aftermath of the fight. When Mordecai reaches for his hands, he winces but lets him take them. He starts to unwind a roll of bandages, criss-crossing it across Brick’s palm.
“So... that was something,” Mordecai says, not looking up from his work on Brick’s hands.
“It was rough goin’ for a while. Can’t believe we made it outta that one alive.”
“Yeah, me neither…” Mordecai clears his scratchy throat. “Is that why you, um…?”
Brick turns over his hand, letting Mordecai wrap the gauze around his battered knuckles. “Is that why I what?”
It’s a sincere question, and Mordecai knows it. “Come on man, you’re gonna make me say it?” He sighs, tearing off the bandages and tucking the loose end down. “Did you ask me to… you know, marry you, ‘cause you thought we were gonna die?”
Brick gives Mordecai a look of genuine surprise as the man begins bandaging up his dominant hand. Mordecai’s hands look absolutely tiny next to his own.
“No.” Brick can feel his cheeks growing hot. “I mean it’s true, I didn’t wanna die without asking. But you know I always mean what I say. You’re really important to me, Mordy. The best person I ever met. I been wanting to ask for a long time, and uhm…” He drops his gaze, certain his face is bright red. “I wanna be your husband.”
Mordecai stops bandaging him and doesn’t say anything for an alarmingly long time, so long that Brick looks up, a sinking feeling in his stomach. His heart jumps when he sees the man lifting his goggles to reveal a face streaked with tears. The man groans, wiping at bloodshot eyes with his wrist.
“Goddamn it, Brick,” he says with a sniffly chuckle, “you made me too soft. Ugh.”
Brick takes Mordecai’s hands in own, both fitting in one palm. “I know you said earlier it ain’t the best time, but I just-”
Mordecai is kissing him before he can finish his thought. His lips are chapped and he smells like smoke and his tears get Brick’s cheeks wet, but it’s the best kiss he’s ever had.
“Never been a better time,” Mordecai laughs against Brick’s lips and pulls his hands out of Brick’s grasp to cup them around his face.
Brick stares with big, wide eyes. “So is that a yes?”
Mordecai kisses him and time stops, leaving them alone in a moment all their own. When they separate to breathe, he leans against Brick and speaks into his neck.
“Yes, cariño. Of course.”