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It was during the a-hacker-got-their-hands-on-the-Protocols-agents-information that Brimstone found out that Kay/o had a tendency to hover.
He did it subdly, of course, but it was very much hovering.
He kept and eye on Phoenix, ready to pull him away from danger or dissuade him from a particularly foolish idea.
He was never too far from wherever Cypher holed himself in whenever he stayed in the base, tucked far away enough to not alarm their information broker, and visible enough so the man could keep tabs on him.
He had banter with Breach, distracting him enough from the nervous energy that kept simmering under his skin, threatening to bubble up into justified anger. Into desire to take action.
He had a steadying hand for Sova, cold and still like a compress for a feverish mind, letting his laser focus concentration run over the details of their mission, but pulling him back into himself whenever he started to run dry. It was starting to happen more and more often these days.
He never strayed too far from Brimstone.
More and more often, Brimstone found himself spending the night in his office, pouring over documents, notes, updates and contingency plans regarding their hacker. More and more often Kay/o was there, sometimes bringing him coffee, sometimes fetching him a stray document that he forgot from the briefing room, sometimes just poking his head in his office to check on him and reminding him that it’s late, Brim, you should sleep. You need to rest.
Sleep avoided him, but that was alright. He had productive ways to spend that time.
The Turkey mission has left his agents shaken.
Brimstone could see it in their faces.
He saw it in Chambers shifty eyes, his flawless composture just slightly less polished than usual. He saw it in the way Cypher avoided them all more than usual, rivalling Omen in new abilities to disappear without trace. Saw it in the slight tremor of Sovas hands when they weren't busy with work, and the exhaustion under his eyes. Saw it in Breachs cold grim determination, the anger now burned out but no less dangerous. Saw it in Neons nervousness, the young agent so horribly out of her depth, but still hellbent of doing her duty.
None of them voiced their worries or fears beyond mission-related objective concerns, but Brimstone could see, that whatever she has done to them, whatever the audio or the camera feed couldn't pick up, it has shaken them.
And if Brimstone had to guess, Kay/o was not immune either.
The first night after the woman has been brought in, the robot visited his office once again, bringing coffee like before the mission, but hesitated to leave. He simply watched him, as if waiting to ask a question. When prompted, he simply shook his head without offering clarifications. Unsure on what to do, Brimstone offered him a sit on the moldy creaky couch in his office.
Brimstone did not mind being watched while he worked. He's never been self conscious, and he did like the quiet company.
Considering how much this mission made his agents uneasy, he did not mind this one-off.
It ended up not being a one-off.
Kay/o... hovered. More than usual. More around him than the others.
Brimstone liked to think of himself as an open minded type. He tried to understand others when he coud, and simply accept them as they were when he couldn’t. He was well aware every person had their quirks, and his agents weren’t exeptions. Kay/o, more often than not, fit in the category of people he couldn’t understand.
He wasn’t a loner, thankfully he was communicative and socialized often enough, even more that few of his flesh and blood companions. He was well adjusted, and well accepted.
Kay/o, however, was also very closed off.
His background had missing information, holes in the narrative, topics that he simply refused to talk about, sometimes to the point of bullheadedness. If he refused to share information, it was impossible to pry it from him. They knew he was from the future. They knew he lost many of his companions. People he considered his friends. They knew Reyna was the cause of it all.
They knew nothing else.
What Brimstone had, in the end, was a slim file with only barebones information that projected a grim shadow on their future. What was worse, however, was the implications.
Kay/o never said Brimstone would die. Its was one of the scraps of information that one would have to pry it from him with pliers and brute force and sheer disregard for his privacy, and Brimstone never pried if it meant causing unnecessary grief. He understood Kay/o enough to know he would come to him if that information was vital enough to share.
But he knew. He saw it in the way he acted sometimes.
In the careful gentleness he let slip through the cold exterior, when they found themselves alone late at night in that badly illuminated office. In the way Kay/o spoke whenever Brimstone as much as hinted at overworking himself.
Overwork was inevitable of course, it came with his job. But Brimstone spent enough time in positions of leadership such as this to know that running yourself into the ground would lead to committing embarassing mistakes at best, and getting people killed at worst. And he wasn’t inclined towards either option.
Brimstone knew their prisoned dealt in fear. Whatever Kay/o saw, whatever she clawed through the depths of his code, it involved Brimstones death.
“You alright?”
Pointless question, but enough to break the heavy silence. The machine behind him was silent for several moments, save for the quiet hum of his servos, as costant and as reassuring as breathing.
“Yes.”
Brimstone left it at that, willing to give him space to sort out his thoughts and emotions. Classify and file away his feelings. In the reflection of the computer screen, he could see his faceplate staring at the back of Brimstones head. If he could guess his emotions by just looking at the bulletproof glass, he’d say his expression was one of grief.
Kay/o was not the tactile type. He was a war machine, he wasnt built with a sense of touch or pressure, or desire for warmth beyond the basic parameters necessary for his function. His power core emitted radiation that was dangerous if exposed too closely to for prolonged periods of time. He was programmed to work with humans and ensure their phisiscal and emotional functionality for the sake of the mission, but he was not programmed for mercy, or for emotions, or friendships.
He did not touch others (the most he could give was a shoulder pat), nor expressed much affection beyond sass (a shoulder pat accompanied by a backhanded compliment), and he didn’t really do well with complex emotions.
All that was a meatbag thing. Not a Kay/o thing.
So it came as a surprise when Brimstone hugged him.
It came as a surprise that Kay/os overloaded, glitching processors screeched to a halt, leaving dead silence in his mind.
The only program his processors seemed to register was the information coming from his non-ocular proximity sensors: a body, similar to his in height and build, trapping his torso and upper limbs. A pressure, barely registered, compressing his exoskeleton.
(A warm body squeezing him as tight as yielding human muscles could, as if holding him together, as if it was this machine of steel and carbon fiber and radianite that could fall apart at any moment, and not the human holding him.)
He registered, vaguely, his own upper limbs attempting to do the same, to hold on just as tight, locked in an uncomfortable curl around the torso.
“You’re alright. You’re alright, Kay/o, stay with me.”
He did not know what he said to prompt such a response. Rewinding the last minute or so of his memory brought him nothing, only a glitching grey screen, as if his visual feed was corrupted, as if he was suddenly out of battery and processing space and found himself forced to shut down any non-essential functions he could find.
The only information from those moments of blank nothing his memory could provide were vague impressions of the joints of his hands being slicked with a dark, dense liquid. A limp body. A dawning sense of-
Of what?
But he was fine. Everything was online and in working condition, he was fine.
(If he was human, Sage would’ve argued with that statement.)
(But he’s a machine, and Killjoy probably would’ve done the same)
Kay/o wished, not for the first time, that he could feel the way a human does. Having a logic program modeled after a human being was sometimes a nuisance, making him yearn for things his mechanical body was never build for. In that moment he really wished to be able to register deeply, fully the bruising strength of the man holding him.
To feel his warmth, his smell.
At least he could still hear his voice, as calming and as steadying as he remembers. He still could register his presence and know he was real, he was right here. He had the knowledge that no, the future he came from did not come to pass yet, he still has his second chance, he still had hope, Liam was still here.
(It’s not over yet. Not yet not yet not yet there’s still time he can still do something)
Kay/os cameras came back online to them crouching on the dusty wooden floor of the little Venice office, near the door. He jerked suddenly, pulling back from the awkward position he found himself in, making Brimstone jump slightly.
“Kay/o.” there it was again, that steady voice, “are you with me?”
Brimstones eyes were searching his faceplate for any sign of distress, knowing perfectly well that he wouldn’t be able to find anything. He was not staring at a human face after all. Maybe it was, in a weird and convoluted way, a self soothing action, an unconscious attempt at normalcy in a situation that was anything but normal.
He was no longer holding him tight, but instead keeping a distance, though his hands were still on his shoulders.
Anchoring him, reassuring him.
(Keeping him close)
Kay/o couldn’t help but resort to sarcasm. “I am in your office, Brimstone. I am near you.”
(If he was human, he would cringe a little at his own brusqueness. But just a little bit.)
“I’m sorry,” Brimstone backtracked, flustered and uncertain on how to behave now that the moment of crisis had passed, “I wanted to call Killjoy and see if she could help, but you seemed like... well.”
Like he was working perfectly fine, like his circuits and code were doing their job exactly the way they were supposed to be.
Like the issue was way, way deeper that metal and carbon and silicon and radianite and lines of ones and zeroes and cold hard logic.
“She’s locked herself up in her lab again and her phone was off” the man concluded, a little lamely, letting go of the robot still half curled up in front of him.
Kay/o stared at his captain, taking note of the increasing distance between their bodies, the slight awkwardness in Brimstones body language. He wanted to close that distance again, even if he didn’t benefit from it, even if it was pointless.
“I am alright” he said. His voicebox sounded off. Maybe there was something wrong with him after all. “But I might need to run a system diagnostic. Check if there is something wrong to report.”
Brimstone nodded, posture relaxing slightly at the prospect of having to help, a comfortable and familiar territory.
“Do you want to stay here? While I go fetch Killjoy”
Kay/o did not want him to leave, even if it was for a few minutes. He still needed him here, while he rebooted from whatever threw him in that grey terrifying abyss. The information made his processors scream as if they were experiencing an error.
(Don’t go. Please don’t go. I think I held you in my arms. You were bleeding out. Stay, I need to make sure you’re still alivepleasepleaseplease)
Could a machine act childish? Because to Kay/o it felt like he was throwing a tantrum right now.
“Yes. I’d like that.”