Chapter Text
X can’t stop fidgeting with the chin strap of the bucket hat Dr. Cain lent him.
To be honest, the hat isn’t doing much for him—he can still feel the scorching heat slowing down his processing with not even a breeze to ease the load on his cooling system, kicking into overdrive. He can barely hear the usual cicada shrieks over the sound of his own fans.
But still, Dr. Cain had always insisted that he wear one, and, well—X was feeling a little nostalgic earlier this morning, even if he regrets it a little now.
Even without looking, he can feel Zero’s eyes on him. “You’re sure you don’t want to take that off?”
And reveal his unsalvageable hat hair for the world—for Zero—to see? No thanks.
“It’s fine,” X says, then tugs on the strings again. “It doesn’t bother me.”
Has the bus ever been this late? It’s been—he checks his internal clock—ugh, it isn’t actually late. In this stagnant, oppressive heat, he’s sure he would be sweating buckets if he were human.
He sighs, wincing when the sound lags. “I’m really sorry, Zero. I think you were right about taking the Ride Chasers.”
“This isn’t too bad.” Zero sits with his back straight, one leg crossed over the other, seeming entirely unbothered by the heat.
Maybe X is a little jealous, because not a single one of Zero’s long, blond hairs is out of place, even without his helmet keeping his ponytail extra bundled. More importantly, he can’t hear Zero’s fans at all, while X’s are whirring a mile an hour, so noisily that he wonders how Zero hasn’t brought it up yet.
Hm. He might be due for a check-up soon, if his processors are overheating when they shouldn’t be.
His fidgeting moves down to the hem of his T-shirt, thin and faded from the five years he’d worn it since winning it in an event raffle. To be honest, the shirt’s quality hadn’t been great to begin with, but it’s the same shade of blue as his armor, and it makes him feel more like himself when he’s out and about as a civilian, even when Zero teases him about his consistency.
It isn’t X’s fault that his pants are blue too! Humans wear denim for a reason, and X can acknowledge their point. Besides, it’s not as if Zero has any room to talk, with the awkward questions he’s gotten for his choice in bottoms—that is to say, nothing at all save for the thin bodysuit he always wears.
(No, there was nothing showing. No, X did not look.)
Needless to say, no one asks him to take off his armor in civilian areas anymore.
Today, X managed to wrangle him into a pair of shorts, at least, with the promise that, one, they wouldn’t be fighting (this did very little to convince him), and two, shorts wouldn’t restrict his movement the way he complained jeans did.
Now he sits next to X with a pair of white cut-off shorts over his bodysuit, and X stops himself from sniping back— who’s being consistent now?
“...But you know, X, if you’re starting to change your mind,” Zero drawls, eyeing X through his fringe, “I bet heading back and going a round would clear your head…”
X pulls a face. “Yeah, right. I think you just enjoy beating me up too much.”
“You’re my favorite sparring partner.”
“I’m your only sparring partner.” He doesn’t realize what he’s said until the words have already left his mouth, and he winces because they hadn’t always been true. “Sorry.”
Zero goes still for a moment before slouching against the back of the bench in a movement too relaxed to not be practiced. “You’ve always been able to keep up. Didn’t I say you’d surpass me one day?”
He laughs, a strained thing. X wonders if he’s thinking about anyone in particular, if it’s Colonel or Storm Eagle or Vile, or if he’s thinking about the days after Iris’s death that he spent holed up in the single-person training sim until X had bodily dragged him out.
X remembers his own plea, a request that had bubbled out of him in his desperation to get it out into the world, to prove to someone that he meant it. It had felt a little bit like writing his own will.
He has to fight harder than usual to bite back that thought too, berating himself for steering the conversation in this direction. “Zero—”
“Don’t mind it.” Zero’s face is tipped up toward the sky, brilliant and cloudless like his gaze, which is fixed on something X can’t see. “Where are you whisking me off to today?”
I knew them too, X wants to say. I lost friends too. When can we start acknowledging that losing them can hurt?
Instead, he reluctantly latches onto the subject change. “You said you wanted it to be a surprise.”
“I changed my mind. I need to know what’s got you worked up enough to propel a small plane with that fan of yours.”
Damn it. X scrubs at his face, accidentally knocking his hat askew. “Don’t worry about it.”
--
X remembers hearing the bark of a dog during those sparse moments of consciousness when he was still being built.
He doesn’t know what breed it was. His attempts at combing through his dog database bring up a Jack Russell Terrier, but the bark from his memories doesn’t have the same uncontrolled trail at the end that all of the examples do.
A well-rounded bark, in X’s opinion.
It’s nothing like the sharp yips from the Maltese puppy skittering around in his lap. Apologetically, X goes back to scratching her behind the ears. His back presses against an unflattering concrete block of a building that casts a shadow over his seat in the grass, changing the heat from a full-out scorching to more of a broil.
Peering over his shoulder, a young-looking Reploid remarks, “Dia sure missed you.”
Fondness washes over X as the puppy tries to clamber up his shirt. “You think so, Ferrel?”
“Sure I do. She won’t cuddle with anyone else like this.”
“Is that right?” He scoops Dia up to look her in that tiny, adorable face. In response, she tries to eat his hat strings.
“X.” Beside him, the cats seem to have accepted Zero as one of their own. He doesn’t seem to notice the paws batting at his hair when he shakes his head. A cat curled up on his chest licks sleepily at his chin, awoken by his voice.
Forlorn, X sets the puppy back down on the ground, watching as she trots off to play with a dog twice her size across the yard. “I know.”
It’s one of the more mundane but well-known sacrifices of being a Maverick Hunter these days, especially with the rapid rise and fall of the Repliforce. Few manage to maintain a consistent civilian life, and X barely makes time to take care of himself, as Zero likes to remind him (not that he’s any better), let alone a dog.
Trying to mask a new wave of fatigue, he smiles at Ferrel, whose brow is furrowed in pity. “Thanks for letting us drop in like this. It’s great to see all of you again.”
She waves her arms wildly, flustering. “No, no, thank you ! You bring in so many animals, it’s the least we could do…”
As she keeps going, X feels his flushing hot— or, even hotter than it already is, which is strange because nothing she’s saying is particularly embarrassing or particularly… audible?
“Right,” he says to nothing in particular, and his head falls back against the wall with a light thunk .
He wakes up on his side, something warm and soft beneath his cheek and a cat chewing on his hair. He can feel a light breeze stirring through the strands, which means—ugh, his hat’s gone.
Groaning, he tries to roll over to look for it, but his frame feels as if it’s been replaced with a solid block of osmium. He wrinkles his nose. Did he seriously just knock himself out?
Above him, Zero snorts. “No, you just shut down for a moment and tipped right over. Scared all the cats right off.” So he was enjoying the attention.
“Mmrgh. S’rry ‘bout y’r cats.” It doesn’t seem like X hit any, at least.
He sounds awful, even to his own ears. It feels like he’s having trouble vocalizing things properly, but instead of a voice box issue, it’s his mouth that feels sluggish and dry.
He faintly registers that Zero is still speaking, but his usual lofty timbre sounds distant, as if he’s gotten farther away, or like X’s ears have been stuffed with cotton. It takes an uncharacteristic amount of effort to process his voice.
“...wanted to come out today,” Zero’s saying. “You’d really leave me alone like this?”
I’d never leave you alone, X doesn’t say. Not if I had a choice.
Instead, he forces himself onto his back and opens his eyes.
Zero grins down at him, the expression on his face made more genuine and less mocking without the dip of his helmet at his brow. Something in X clenches to see him so unburdened, the wisps of hair around his face swaying freely. And not to mention—
Delirious, X mumbles, “Y..’re softer ‘thout armor. Should wear ‘t less.”
Zero pats his forehead a little condescendingly, but X can’t bring himself to feel annoyed. “All the Mavericks think so too, X.”
“‘M serious.” A pause, punctuated by the gnawing right by his ear. “Not Mav’rick either.”
“Of course you’re not.” A thoughtful frown crosses his pretty face. “But once we get back to HQ, I’m taking you to the med bay. I thought you said you got a full recharge last night.”
X thought so too. He decides it’d be best to start running on idle, opening his mouth to inform Zero, when a strange tingle rises up his throat.
“Err—” he starts, then unleashes an awful hacking noise that jerks through his body. The cat at his head springs away with a startled meow, and Zero looks so similarly spooked that X has to laugh, except that triggers another fit.
It leads to Zero doing that thing where he calls an emergency squadron to airlift X back to HQ while Ferrel and the other adoption center Reploids watch, slack-jawed. He just worries like that, X tells them before Zero holds him down and orders him to power down.
“My hat,” he says in the moments before he goes offline, “Dr. Cain’s.”
Zero nods, understanding. “I’ve got it.”
--
As it turns out, it isn’t a problem with X’s programming. It’s supposedly just a prank virus making its way around the Maverick Hunters via file transfers, which X would know if he’d spent any time talking to anyone outside of missions in the past week.
X looks at Zero, who stares back at him. He was totally clueless too, that traitor.
“It leaves no lasting damage,” Lifesaver says, probably for the nth time this week. As someone who has been witnessed wrestling Zero onto the operating table, he isn’t even looking at them, so X guesses it really isn’t that serious. “Whoever created this virus must have intended for it to clear out on its own after several days.”
Thankfully, X is allowed to wait out the virus in his room. He’s equally grateful that Zero insists on keeping him company, even when he puts up a token protest about getting him sick too.
Even when Zero won’t let him walk back to his room. That, X puts up slightly more resistance toward, but feeling marginally better than earlier still isn’t well enough to escape being scooped up from the cot and cradled against Zero’s chest.
“It’s way too late to worry about that now,” Zero says. He hoists X up to readjust his grasp, one arm under X’s back and another under his knees, as he uses his own knee to turn the handle of a door. Like this, strands of Zero’s hair keep slipping over his shoulder and sliding across X’s face, so he has to crane his neck away if he wants to talk without getting hair in his mouth. “I’ve been with you the whole day. Who knows how many files we’ve exchanged?”
X groans in between coughs. “I don’t even want to think about it. I’ll need to tell—plfbth—tell Ferrel to keep an eye out these next couple of days. I feel horrible for transmitting this to all of them.”
“It’s not your fault, X.” They stop in front of X’s room, where X reaches over to mash his identification against the scanner until the lock clicks open.
It’s no secret that X thinks his room is too spacious. When he had first been assigned to it upon being promoted to commander of the 17th, the emptiness had overwhelmed him, and he’d gone to the Maverick Hunters housing office to ask for a room change.
“If you can find someone willing to switch with you,” they had said, and X had barely had to ask one Reploid before he was pelted with offers—hey, Commander X, want a room tour? I promise my layout’s waaaay better than his—and in the end, the office had taken him aside and gently suggested that he stay in the room he was given.
He tries to fill the space with haphazard decorations and book stacks, and he has dragged in a table or two to work at, but it’s never as effective as having someone else with him, especially as that someone strides across the room to tuck him into bed.
X yelps as he’s jostled, the covers ripped from beneath him to be tucked firmly under his chin. “Hey, Zero—ow! You really don’t need to…”
“I am going to be the best nurse you’ve ever had.” Zero puts his hands on his hips as he strikes a pose over the bed. “You’ll have to forgive me for not being in uniform, but tell me, how’s my best, most well-behaved patient feeling?”
Even as X grumbles, he can’t hide his smile. That’s a tone he hasn’t heard in a long time, not since—before Sigma’s rebellion. “Soon it’ll be your turn, and then we’ll see who’s laughing.”
“Then it’ll be your turn to take care of me.” The bed bounces with Zero’s weight. “Now, let’s see, Lifesaver’s orders…”