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Iso’s jacket is sticking to the metal box behind him. It keeps him where he is, rifle leveled at the doorway of the marketplace. BBNO$ blares in his eardrums, drumming through his pulse and sharpening his vision to the sunset washing over B-site. His fingers twitch on the trigger, running instinctively over the smooth carbon clip beneath his left thumb. Faintly, he can hear Clove and Gekko chattering quietly over his earpiece, though he’s turned the volume way down in order to better hear his surroundings.
The site seems quiet. No footsteps stir across the wood of the market, and no gunshots resound behind him in the middle of the city. Their mirror images haven’t shown themselves yet. Iso sighs out through his mouth and adjusts the collar of his jacket, scratching an itch at the corner of his jaw. His movements stay slow and methodical.
“Iso, are you still there?” Sage crackles to life, her voice practically towering over Gekko and Clove’s light chatter.
He pulls a knee up so he can rest his gun on it, pressing two fingers to the side of his earbuds, “Affirmative. No sign of them.”
“Unusual,” she says with a light sigh, something rustling near her, “Keep an eye out. Stay sharp.”
Her comm goes dead and Iso returns to watching the opening to the market, tongueing at his teeth. On every mission he’s been on while a member of the Protocol, it doesn’t take long for their opponents to try and push for the bombsite.
His breath whistles in the breeze coursing over this side of Sunset. There’s something so calming about this bombsite compared to the one his teammates settled on; there was more of the sun to bathe in while the floor took on a wash of blood.
A gunshot breaks the silence. Iso stops breathing, knuckles going white on the barrel of his gun. Gekko, in his ear, “Iso, Iso we need backup, Clove’s hit—Sage, Dizzy’s up!”
And then the line goes dead.
Iso shoves his gun into the holster strapped across his back and breaks out into a run, worn karambit in his hand. He tears through the main hall like a demon come to collect, sprinting across the open courtyard where he can see the empty city streets. His music seems to get faster as he hurries across the backside of Sunset, tucking the little knife away when he finds himself with his back to a wall, keeping his eyes on the tiled hallway in case someone decides to pop out from behind the corner. Clove’s smoke pops up in the archway, hiding Iso from enemy sights. He makes a note to thank them later when they get back to base and unstraps his rifle from his back. Iso flicks the scope open once and closes it, just to make sure it hadn’t been damaged.
“Iso, spike’s planted, you better hurry it up, ya mucker,” Clove hisses in his ear, sounding winded and worse for wear, but alive.
He doesn’t respond but pings his location on the watch sitting just underneath his sleeve. Iso creeps through the main hallway of A-site, briefly putting his gun away to throw a destabilizer in front of him and activate his double-tap. Before he enters, he presses up against the wall and pulls out his ancient, crumbling iPod that comes with him on missions and changes the song that’s playing.
The iPod disappears into the pocket of his pants and he swings onto the site, locking eyes with KillJoy, a nanobomb in her palm, and pulls the trigger. He hits the glowing ball above her body and opens up the comm link, “KJ down.”
“Go get ‘em, wingman!”
Iso throws out a quick shield into the back of the site, blocking the bullets spraying from that hallway into where he knows Gekko and Sage must be sitting. Wingman toddles around on the metal floor for a moment before imploding into a floating ball of goo.
“Iso, behind!”
He turns and whiffs a shot off of Brimstone’s head, ducking into the site while he waits for the other agent to peek into the corner. The bomb is starting to spark and light up, small pieces of the ground floating in stasis around the metal tube stuck into the floor. “Guys, the bomb–”
“I’ll cover you, defuse it!” Gekko appears from seemingly nowhere, gun still hot in his hands and fresh off a kill, pulling Mosh out of the carrier over his heart and launching the little green goop creature past Iso’s head.
Another one of Clove’s smoke clouds drops in front of the bomb and hides it from view. He checks over his shoulder and dashes into the cloud, fumbling for the defuser KJ programmed for him and holding it over the bomb. Iso can’t get it working in time for the smoke to keep him hidden forever, but he’s halfway done when it dissipates, able to watch as Gekko leans into the sight of his gun and takes Fade out with three bullets and a whoop. Sitting on his left wrist is a bracelet, no more than a few pieces of string, and Iso can’t tell what the exact colors are, but they look like the colors of his radivore pets.
“Iso! Less ogling, more defusing!” Clove screams from the back of the bombsite, “I’m out of smokes and I can’t cover yer arse forever!”
He tears his gaze away from Gekko and his gunplay, turning back to the rapidly deteriorating bomb in front of his face. A gun goes off somewhere on his left and the bullet that left its chamber makes a home in the meat of Iso’s shoulder. “Shit!”
Sage appears in the corner of his vision and throws a small jade ball, leveling her gun and firing. “No more hunting, Reyna.”
“Almost, almost–got it, we’re clear.” The spike drops into a little, unassuming triangular box, and Iso pockets the defuser again.
Gekko reemerges from around the corner, BlastX knife that he picked up from a corner store somewhere around here swinging in his hand, “Let’s get outta here. I think the last one is somewhere on the other site. Clove, amigo, you got yours?”
They appear, bloodied and battered, parts of them a translucent, vibrant purple. “Aye, aye, Captain Gekko!”
“Landing in two. Be at the drop zone when I arrive,” Viper says curtly over the comms.
Iso forces himself off a knee, angling his heavily bleeding shoulder away from Gekko. “Let’s head out. Gekko, make sure you get Phoenix before we leave. Yoru and Jett will kill you if we leave without him.”
“He heard the comm, calmate!”
As they’re talking, Iso’s watch pings and he checks it to see a message from Phoenix. ‘Earpiece melted, Skye handled. On my way back.’
“His earpiece melted?” Clove says with a surprised laugh as they jog up to Gekko, holstering a pistol at their hip. “KJ’s gonna kill ‘im for that one.”
He leaves them to talk, going through the alleyway instead of walking with his teammates, hauling himself up the step and forcing himself through every step toward the auto shop where they’d agreed on being dropped off and picked up.
“Zhao Yu, are you alright?” Sage asks in his ear, close enough to be heard over the music bolstering every movement of his body.
Her hand rests on his injured shoulder, and he swallows the bite of pain that clashes against his teeth. “I’m alright. Nothing a good shower and a cup of tea can’t fix.”
She scrutinizes him under her heavy jade-green gaze, hair swinging behind her. Iso’s sure that she can feel the bullet wound pulsing in his shoulder, but the VCT/R touches down behind her before Sage can properly admonish him for even trying to cover up a bullet hole.
The ramp drops onto the slowly separating ground and Iso is the first to hike up it, desperate to collapse into a cot or even a chair just to catch a few awful hours of sleep before his shoulder keeps him in enough pain to seek out Sage or the bottle of Ibuprofen in Clove’s bathroom cabinet.
Iso glances over his shoulder to make sure his team follows, out of some wicked sense of self-preservation or just because. Creeping out from the right hallway is Jett, her hair the same white ponytail but something is different about the way it swings, a thin-looking pistol held steady in her two hands. He bites down on a cry of pain and shoulders past his teammates ascending the ramp, pulling out a destabilizer from the dregs of his energy and tossing it in her direction.
She turns a light, sweet purple, and Iso’s gaze narrows to points of light and color as his gun goes off, the bullets flying true right between her eyes.
No one says anything as they watch her body drop onto the pavement. Clove breaks the silence, exclaiming, “Iso! That was…that was beautiful!”
“I had a job to do, so I did it,” he says in reply, turning to face the team.
“Hermano, your shoulder!”
He’s no longer conscious to hear Gekko’s shout or to see the man run up to him with Dizzy perched on his shoulder. Iso is out cold on the pavement, bleeding a river from his shoulder. Bits and pieces flash through his vision, Sage’s cold hands pressing into the bare skin, the jade-colored string bracelet around her wrist brushing up against his bicep. Clove’s anxious pacing and tugging at something on their wrist, Phoenix’s low chatter to Gekko. It’s all warm and itchy at his shoulder when Iso’s consciousness finally lets go and he trips right into sleep.
—
Iso’s eyeballs creak open, staring up at his ceiling. He blinks twice, flexing his fingers and gingerly sitting up. His shoulder is unbandaged beneath a black t-shirt that’s a little too big for him, and his jacket sits pristinely white on his desk chair. A note falls off of his chest into his lap when he’s sitting up.
Written on it in Sage’s simple handwriting, is, ‘Your shoulder should be fully healed when you wake. Should it bother you, come find me. You are on light duty until the end of this week, Zhao Yu. You can trust us with your injuries. We will not shame you. -Ling Ying.’
He sighs and tosses the note onto his floor, rolling out the previously injured shoulder and delights when it only faintly protests from disuse and not true pain. When he lifts his sleeve, a white scar sits between his bicep and collarbone. Iso glances at his bedside table and sees his earbuds strewn haphazardly on its surface, alongside his karambit and iPod. He leaves the knife and iPod but takes the earbuds, fishing his real phone from the drawer and reconnecting his earbuds, putting them in, and changing the station to 90’s R&B just to have something playing.
The time on his phone says it’s just a few minutes past nine in the morning. Iso sighs, tucking his phone away and swinging his legs over the side of his bed, socked feet hitting the metal. He picks his jacket up off his chair and slides it over his shoulders but doesn’t bother zipping it up, padding out of his room and into the hallway.
His immediate neighbor’s doors are closed. Deadlock, further down the hall, has her door cracked slightly open. Gekko is around the corner, so he can’t tell if the man is in his room or not. He’ll appear one way or another after seeing Iso rather dramatically collapse after taking out a mirror agent.
Iso trudges down the hall, rubbing at his eyes despite the pull in his shoulder. Nobody stops him until he reaches the communal kitchen. Cypher stands at one of the counters, lording over a mug of tea that he’s stirring. “Ah, Iso. Glad to see that you are awake.”
“Hello, Cypher,” Iso hums cordially, “I appreciate the concern.”
He doesn’t know how to feel about Cypher. The man was one of few who knew about Iso’s involvement with Hourglass outside of Brimstone and Sage. Having the information just hanging between the two of them made Iso uneasy.
“Many of our younger agents were worried,” Cypher comments, picking up his cup of tea and preparing to leave the kitchen, “Gekko especially.”
“He’s compassionate,” Iso reasons as he opens the fridge and roots through it until he finds a pre-made salad with red wine vinaigrette and some other stuff in it.
Cypher hums instead of responding. Iso glances over his shoulder to watch him leave and catches a glimpse of a tawny, brown, and blue bracelet of strings over his glove.
Where are these bracelets coming from? Was there a shop somewhere on base Iso hadn’t made it to yet, or were they more like anniversary gifts for surviving fifteen missions?
That couldn’t be it. Iso was at twenty missions and counting. Maybe it was twenty-one.
Iso takes a stool at the island, pulls the plastic top off of his salad, and mixes it up while he ruminates over the bracelets, forking it into his mouth with sharp movements. He finishes the salad in record time, tossing the container and leaving the kitchen, trodding down the stairs and past the rec center where he hears Yoru’s flash go off and Phoenix’s laughter.
He keeps walking, fighting the urge to go and find out what’s happening for himself, stopping outside of Sage’s door. Iso stares at the cold, gray metal door, running a hand through his hair so it lies a little flatter against his forehead. Cypher must think he’s a mess.
Before he can knock, Sage’s door slides open and she appears in a plain white t-shirt and gray pants. She must have just come from training. “Zhao Yu,” she says with a slow dip of her head, “Is your shoulder bothering you so soon?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head and a spike of embarrassment for going to see her over something so silly, “I just—I had a question. The bracelet on your wrist–did someone make it?”
She glances down at the thread bracelet sitting snugly on her wrist like she’d forgotten it was there. “Ah, this? A gift from Gekko. Why do you ask?”
Iso shifts on his feet, digging his hands into his pockets to hide his bare wrist. “I was just…wondering.”
“I see.” Sage looks him up and down, glancing back at her bracelet and then at him. “He just returned to his room from training.”
He blinks rapidly. “I–um. I didn’t—alright. Thank you, Ling Ying.”
She nods with a furtive, knowing smile like she knew something Iso didn’t. They both know what she knew and Iso would rather eat glass than talk about it. He dips his head and turns on his heel, walking past the rec room again and up the stairs to where his own living quarters are. Iso takes another left, walking down the short hallway until he comes to Gekko’s closed door.
Music is playing on the inside. Iso stares at the stickers on Gekko’s door, placed there by his friends. A drawing of Jett’s windball is semi-scratched off near the top left corner. He steels himself and knocks, popping out an earbud and tucking it into the same pocket his phone sat in.
The door opens and Gekko stands there in a loose blue shirt and comfortable-looking pajama pants. “Hola–Iso!”
Iso staggers from the force of the hug Gekko flings
around his shoulders. Cautiously, his arms wrap around Gekko’s middle, linking his fingers together over his spine. Gekko smells like Irish Spring and ocean-scented deodorant. It wasn’t bad. The collar of his shirt was wet–must’ve just come from the shower.
They separate when Gekko pulls away, holding Iso at arm’s length and looking him up and down. When Gekko is satisfied, he frowns and flicks Iso directly on the forehead. “Stupido! Why didn’t you tell us you’d been shot?”
He blinks up at Gekko, rubbing his forehead. “I didn’t think I needed to. It’s no big, all in the past now.”
“Dios, la clase de hombres de los que me enamoro,” Gekko bites out, stepping back, “Anyways, hermano, did you just come by to see little ‘ol me?”
Iso shakes his head, “I had a question, actually, about the–um, the bracelets.”
“Huh?” Gekko’s head tilts and his eyebrows pinch. “What about them? They can get wet and KJ reinforced the thread after the third time she snapped hers pulling out her turret, so that shouldn’t be an issue–”
“It’s not that,” Iso cuts him off, “Nevermind, Gekko, it’s stupid–”
“It’s not stupid.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t even know what it is.”
“So?” Gekko challenges, crossing his arms over his chest.
Iso sighs in defeat. “I don’t—is there a reason I don’t…have one?”
Whatever Gekko was going to say stalls in his mouth, peering down at Iso like he was forgetting something. “Did I not…give you one?”
“No.”
“I swore—Iso, dÃos mio, and you’re just now telling me?” Gekko grabs Iso by the forearm and pulls him inside the room, depositing him at the bed.
“I didn’t know that I was supposed to?” Iso says helplessly, sitting down on Gekko’s admittedly cushier bed. He must have a mattress topper or something.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you that you didn’t make me a bracelet when you made everyone else one, I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you I got shot in the shoulder,” Gekko bitches, doing an awful impression of Iso’s voice as he shuffles around the room, “Jesus, Iso, do you know anything?”
Iso doesn’t dignify the taunt with a response and takes the higher, mature road of frowning and looking around Gekko’s room. Posters cover every wall and there’s a small gaming console hooked up to the one wall that acts as a screen in every room. Dizzy snores in a pet bed in the corner and the other two are nowhere to be found.
Gekko settles down on the bed next to Iso, holding a handful of things. “Give me your wrist.”
“What?”
“Give me your wrist,” Gekko says plainly, holding out his hand like he’s asking for five bucks instead of a part of Iso’s body.
Iso extends his left wrist to Gekko, who takes it in his ungloved hand and wraps three colors of string around it a few times, undoing them and depositing his hand back in Iso’s lap. Gekko hums under his breath as he ties a knot in the string and tapes it to his knee.
“I picked it up before I joined the Protocol,” Gekko explains as he starts to tie knots into the string that Iso would give himself a condition trying to figure out, “Summer camp.”
“You went to summer camp?” Iso tilts his head, trying to picture Gekko in one of the shitty blue t-shirts he’d seen on TV, and it’s not as hard as he thought it was.
Gekko’s chin dips in the imitation of a nod. “Yup. Spent my summers up north in the woods running around and getting covered in mosquito bites. Friendship bracelets were basically currency there, so I learned how to make all the fancy patterns and shit.”
Images of a younger, smaller Gekko with brown hair, maybe, covered in bug bites and weaving pieces of string together like his life depended on it filter in front of Iso’s vision. They’re pleasant and taste like sunshine on his tongue.
“I see,” Iso hums, watching Gekko’s nimble fingers as he worked.
They don’t sit in silence for long. Gekko is, apparently, incapable of staying silent for more than three seconds at a time, and he starts to talk quietly with his eyes turned to the bracelet, “I’d make you a chevron, but those take a long time and I haven’t found another movie franchise to binge since I finished all of Star Wars making Sunwoo’s, so, for now, you get a Chinese staircase.”
Iso bites down on a joke about his nationality. “I appreciate it, Gekko.”
He’s waved off with a flick of Gekko’s free hand, “I cannot believe I forgot to make you one. I made a bunch in a big batch and I swear yours was in there.”
There’s nothing he can really say to that, so Iso looks away and allows his eyes to trail around Gekko’s bedroom. The wall behind him is decorated with pictures, every square inch bears people and faces stuck by pins in the metal. Jett, Neon, and Phoenix smile back at him the most, but at the bottom Iso’s own wide-eyed face peers back from halfway between the bed and the wall. It’s from the first week he was a part of the protocol; the lighting sucks and Iso’s in his pajamas with Dizzy perched on his shoulder and Gekko thought the unadulterated fear on Iso’s face was funny enough to immortalize forever.
Iso forces himself to look away and instead focuses on the shelving tacked high into the walls of Gekko’s room. “Is there an obstacle course…on your ceiling?”
“SÃ, Wings gets restless when he doesn’t get out so I had Brim build my little guys somewhere high up to run around without bothering anyone else in this hallway,” Gekko chatters mindlessly, tying knot after knot with his pointer fingers and thumbs. “Wings likes to explore, little bastard boy.”
Wings’ head pops out from underneath a blanket in the corner. “Oh, were your ears burning, hermanito? Yeah, you heard me talking shit about you, bro.”
Gekko’s laugh sounds like afternoon traffic soaked in sweet syrup and Iso wants both to drown in it and inject it directly into his veins to keep it tucked behind his molars forever. Wings makes a soft gurgling nose and bundles down into the blanket again.
“Don’t move,” Gekko warns as he peels the tape off of his sweatpants and sticks it to Iso’s knee, shifting the strings enough to slide out from under them, “Just gotta grab something.”
Iso would sit here until he grew ivy and turned to stone if Gekko asked, but he nodded gently and watched Gekko get off the bed instead of saying all that. He watches as Gekko pulls open a drawer in his desk and fishes out something small into the palm of his hand, rushing back over and re-entangling himself in the web of thread.
Instead of taking the half-woven bracelet back, Gekko leans over Iso’s knee and resumes weaving. He hooks a small silver charm into the strands from the palm of his hand, and every time the backs of his fingers skate across Iso’s sweatpants the breath catches in his throat and chokes him out.
“Aaaaaand…finalizado.” Gekko pats around on the bed for small thread scissors.
He realizes with a start that Gekko isn’t good for his health. Iso sucks in a shallow, deprived breath, fingers drumming nervously on his calf.
Gekko’s teeth dig into his bottom lip as he snips off the excess string from the bottom of the bracelet. “If you want one like Sage’s, just let me know, chevron isn’t hard I just need some advance notice—okay, pick a wrist. Look at me,” Iso locks eyes with Gekko, afraid to breathe, “These do not come off unless you cut them off so choose very wisely.”
Iso pushes the sleeve up on his left arm and holds it out to Gekko, palm facing upwards. Gekko’s calloused fingers are warm on his skin as he ties an intricate knot into the thread, brushing up against the soft skin of his pulse. Breathing would be both treason and prayer when Gekko is bent over his wrist, soft exhales ruffling the fabric of Iso’s t-shirt.
“There, you should be all set!” Gekko releases his wrist with a gentle tap of his fingers on Iso’s pulse and pulls away. “I think you’re gonna like it, matches you.”
He looks down at the thread sitting tight against the joint of his wrist. It’s made of lilac, dark purple, black, and white thread in alternating sections. A raised line runs in a spiral down the length of the bracelet, and hanging off the middle of it is a miniature silver iPod and wired earbuds.
The only thing that comes to mind to say is, “It’s beautiful, Gekko. I will protect it with my life.”
Gekko looks at him sidelong. “It’s four pieces of thread knotted a couple hundred times, not the Ruling Ring.”
“The what?” Iso’s head tips to the side.
“You’ve never seen Lord of the Rings,” Gekko says slowly, trying to process it.
Iso nods. “I have not. Hourglass was not fond of Tolkien. Must’ve preferred Dostoyevsky, I guess.”
“That’s—that just isn’t right,” Gekko shakes his head, getting off the bed. “Are you assigned to anything for the next eleven hours?”
“I’m on light duty because of my shoulder, I’m not allowed on anything until Friday,” Iso says, a pout evident in his tone.
He was shot in the shoulder, it’s not the end of the world.
“Good, good,” Gekko hums, shuffling around his room and collecting items at random, “We’re watching all three extended editions and you are going to like them. I’ve got a couple Jarritos around here somewhere, I think…”
“I have boba in the fridge?” Iso offers, shifting to get off of the bed. “And I know Brimstone just stocked up the pantry with snacks, I heard the van pull in on my way here.”
Gekko fiddles with the game console attached to the screen wall for a second, then unceremoniously dumps everything he’s holding onto on the floor in front of it. “Come on, time for a heist!”
Iso watches as Gekko steps into blue shark slippers and stands by the door, waiting for Iso to follow. He stumbles off of the bed and trails behind Gekko, staring bullets into the back of his head. The roots have started to fade and if he looked close enough there were small specks of brown below the bright green.
“Coast is clear,” Gekko says after he makes a show of checking a corner, swinging around it like his rifle is in his hands, “Flashing.”
Dizzy is still sound asleep in Gekko’s room, so he makes a horrible imitation of the sound she makes and walks down the stairs. Iso shakes his head fondly and follows after him, flicking his eyes around corners as soon as he can.
They end up in the kitchen, devoid of any other agents. Iso nods to the pantry and Gekko migrates over, opening the sliding door and stepping into the small closet to rifle through. He goes to the fridge, opening up the old, beat-up thing. It isn’t the fresh kind like Iso prefers in a thin plastic cup and domed lid, but he grabs two light green and silver cans of honeydew boba. In a hasty decision, he also grabs a couple of bags of green grapes that someone had spent painstaking time bagging by hand.
Iso’s money is on Yoru.
Their heads snap up in unison when they hear heavy, sock-footed steps down the hallway. Gekko glances back at Iso with wide eyes and jerks his head towards the door where they came. Iso eases the fridge door shut and nods, counting down from three on his fingers. When all three fingers are down, they bolt towards the hall just as Deadlock and Fade enter the kitchen holding twin mugs of coffee.
“Matteo—” Deadlock starts, but they’re already gone.
Gekko’s laughter echoes through the hall as they clomp up the stairs and turn down the hall, snacks in their arms. His door slides shut and Iso slides down against it, leaning his head back and chuckling despite himself.
“Nobody would’ve—nobody would’ve cared we were even in there,” Gekko wheezes, dropping his pile of snacks onto the bed and collapsing down next to them, “Why did we do that?”
“Because we could,” Iso responds, breathless, looking at Gekko and immediately wishing he hadn’t.
The Mona Lisa looked like a children’s drawing compared to the sight of Gekko flushed red in the face from laughter, his eyes crinkled from a smile, fingers dug into the edge of the bed. Iso’s mouth goes dry and his face feels like it’s been air-fried. He watches as Gekko swipes under his eye, breath caught in his throat.
“What?” Gekko asks, blinking, “Is there something on my face?”
Iso clears his throat, shakes his head, and looks away. Desperate to change the topic from how red his face probably is, he says, “What did you get?”
Fortunately, Gekko is a merciful executioner, because he immediately shifts his attention to the pile next to him. “I found a bag of pretzel sticks, dry mango strips, some almonds, half a bag of that popcorn stuff that Cypher buys, and….an entire jar of gummy bears.”
In his hands is, true to his word, a glass jar completely full of multi-colored gummy bears. Gekko unscrews the lid and delicately picks out a green one, biting its head off. “S’okay. Still chewy!”
Iso holds his hands out for one, cupped like he was expecting water, and Gekko tosses a yellow bear into his outstretched palms. He pops it into his mouth and the taste of pineapple is muted but still present. “I got two cans of boba and a couple of bags of green grapes.”
“Fuck yeah,” Gekko cheers, hopping off the bed and wandering back over to the screen-wall. “Here, help me with these blankets and I’ll grab the spare mattress and we’ll make a mattress-slash-couch cushion bed.”
Gekko throws a brown comforter at him and Iso barely catches it before it slaps him in the face. He heaves himself off of the floor and walks towards the center of the room, snacks tucked into the pockets of his hoodie and comforter in his hands. Under Gekko’s meticulous guidance, the two of them build up a bird’s nest of blankets, Gekko’s spare mattress, and every pillow they could plunder from under the sun.
They end up barely brushing each other, Gekko wrapped up in a pink blanket with sloths on it, Dizzy curled up in his lap. Iso is cushioned against several thick pillows and has a simple blue blanket draped over him that feels like it weighs fifty pounds. Wings is snoring, curled up behind his knees.
Lord of the Rings is playing on the screen wall, blaring from speakers Iso couldn’t see. The snacks sit in the middle of their linen island, picked off of at their leisure. Gekko compares Iso to a hobbit, even though he stands at a proud 5’9 and Gekko being six foot is just cosmic punishment for Iso’s participation in Hourglass.
He ends up falling asleep twenty minutes into The Two Towers, stretching out towards the edges of the mattress. Vaguely, he feels fingers running through his hair. It feels good. Everything feels fuzzy and covered in syrup around the edges, and while his eyes are shut Iso sleeps easy, set free from the haunting sounds of Hourglass that slink through his dreams.
Iso wakes back up some time at the end of the second movie, and when he glances around his cheek is pillowed on Gekko’s stomach, and Gekko himself is working on something made of string that’s taped to his knee.
“Buenos dÃas,” Gekko murmurs, carding a hand through Iso’s hair like they’ve been doing this all their lives and this is just another day in a series of many, “How was your nap?”
“Mmmnng,” Iso grumbles in return, shutting his eyes defiantly and settling into his fellow agent.
Gekko laughs gently, pulling his hand out of Iso’s hair. He frowns into Gekko’s shirt but doesn’t complain about it.
When Iso eventually resurfaces, the screen-wall is blank, the room is dark, and he can hear Gekko’s faint snores mixing with his radivores’. Iso smiles to himself, peeling his cheek off of Gekko’s shirt and shifting around so he’s lying next to Gekko, intending to relinquish the other agent’s space.
He’s lying on his own for a second until Gekko grumbles and rolls over, starfishing his limbs over Iso’s torso and tucking his chin into Iso’s shoulder. His body is warm and he smells like artificial honeydew and sugar.
It’s a good feeling that Iso gets lost in, buried underneath it. They both fall asleep, wrapped up in each other, and when Neon peers in the next morning to find them intertwined at every possible joint, she takes note of the two bracelets sitting on Iso’s left wrist; one matches hers in its simplicity, the other a chevron pattern in green, yellow, blue, light green, and pink. She snaps no less than fifteen pictures, distributes them to the team, and shuts the door again, leaving them to their nap.