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Nick Valentine sees the security guard with the sunglasses and the cap that’s always slightly tilted to the right about once every month or so.
It’s never the same time, or day, or place, but he appears every so often and blends in like a bipedal chameleon.
He’s ‘new’, ‘training’, ‘transferred’, when, on the rare occasion he’s asked on by other Diamond City residents. When it’s old Nick, though, there’s a glint in the sunglass lens and a little ghost of a smirk. He knows that he knows that he knows.
Deacon fools about every single person he meets- disguises, facades, lies- the whole nine-yards and an extra thousand just to be safe. But Nick is a wise man, with a watchful eye and a memory like a- well, ha! Like a machine.
There’s no actual need for Deacon to hide from Nick, but the game is entertaining. The Railroad and the old synth detective have worked together time and time and time again. There's mutual trust there. He stays out of their business, gives them tips if he has them, they return the favor.
It’s fun, then, when Nick steps outside his office into brisk, afternoon November air and keeps his gaze aloft- and every now and then, he wins the I-Spy and catches Deacon’s gaze from across the distance of the noodle shop in town square.
There’s the briefest meeting of eyes behind glasses, the subtlest of nods, and their days continue as if it hadn’t happened- but they both know it did.
Nick would consider Deacon a, well… an acquaintance. There’s no telling if anything he’s ever said or done has any truth to it at all. The only thing Nick knows for absolute sure is that the man is with the railroad, and that he appears in DC now and again.
He doesn’t know what for, and he doesn’t care to know, either. Private business and all of that. He doesn’t know if the bits of deacon he has seen are legitimate. Like his shit-eating sarcasm and his love of old world literature, but it’s well enough. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not. All that does really matter is that Deacon is an ally, a stand-up guy regardless of what might go on behind the curtain of those shades.
Nick knows the difference between good and bad- very, very distinctly. He hasn’t spent the last who knows how many years being a detective to not be able to distinguish a dick from a good man.
Deacon, in turn, feels quite the same. He doesn’t like the spotlight, being noticed or spotted is what he might call a “pet peeve” if he’d been reading some prewar mags before speaking on it. But Valentine does him no harm, not even irritation. He’s an ally, and a better man at heart than any of flesh and blood that deacon might know.
He doesn’t know what goes on in Nick’s head, or what he’s after, but he’s not a threat, and it’s not Deacon’s problem to know what the sleuth is up to.
And they never had much to do with each other outside of those fleeting moments in the city. Well, not until the survivor.
Deacon watched them from afar for months with his facades and disguises perfectly in place, to judge and to decide what exactly this meant for the railroad, the institute. The appearance of this variable. This sole survivor.
Nick- well. He’d been there for them since they’d stumbled into the old jewel of the commonwealth. Helping them find their son, helping them enact justice, making a decent friend out of the only other person who understood his prewar quips.
And the tip, from nick’s synthetic lips into the ears of the sole survivor, about the railroad- it’d led them into Deacon’s, the Railroad’s, waiting arms. It hadn’t been purposeful, to intertwine fate in such a way, but that’s what fate is all about.
With Nick as their closest confidant and Deacon their trainer in the ways of the elusive Railroad, it had them bumping into each other more and more.
Sole is hurt.
Got themselves shot in the side on an info run alongside Deacon concerning some synth escapees, something or other- lots of codewords and secrets, nick is sure.
Diamond City had been close, and Deacon had donned that weary traveler look and slunk into the gates with sole over his shoulder. He’d picked their key out of their bag and drug them into Home Plate, and shut the door. Nick had been outside in the chill smoking in the twilight when he’d seen it happen.
Deacon must’ve seen him watching, or call it an agent’s intuition, because the man shows up at Nick’s office about two hours later while the synth is mulling over some old paperwork.
He just stands there for a second behind his shades with a stupid, torn up blazer over his shoulders to help keep that air of “know nothing vagabond” while he wanders the city.
Nick waits expectantly. It must be something, something related to notes or locations or missing peoples, or maybe he has a tip or something to say about the institute. He and sole have discovered so much just since they left the vault.
Then he remembers sole is hurt, and a worry strikes his old gears, but Deacon seems too relaxed to be relaying horrible news like the death of the sole survivor.
“Thought I’d, yknow, drop by,”
Nick cracks a wry grin and shakes his head, drops his gaze to the desk full of paperwork and then back to the man in front of him.
“Good to see you, Deacon.”
And they share a glance and a grin.