Chapter Text
Sunshine filters through the windows, hearty laughter echoes within the confines of a comfortable space, and you can still smell the petrichor, the storm that had passed long ago. You lay on your shared bed, Boothill’s cologne, the faint smell of steel and oil, and your own cologne etched into the sheets, the smell of happiness. Your vision is blocked by Boothill’s hat, he had placed it over your face, teasing you about something you had done days ago. Something about stealing his hat, so why doesn’t he just give it to you?
You retort, saying something like ‘at least I don’t eat bullets’, kicking at his shins as he sat above you. But you are met with eerie silence, and then clicking, as if he was readjusting his limbs. You take off his hat, and in front of you, he stands ridged, face flat. You lean back, raising an eyebrow and nudging his hip with your foot.
“Real funny, Boots,” You groan, nudging him again and placing his hat down. Normally, he’d tell you ‘that’s not how you lay a hat down’ and flip it, but he doesn’t react, his body shows no signs of movement whatsoever. What you thought was a joke just to scare you now concerns you, heavily. “Boothill?”
He does not respond. You hear the faint hum of machinery within him, the faint pulse of his mechanical heart. You sit up properly and wave a hand in front of his face, and his eyes do not follow. Maybe he bluescreened? You nudge him again, and you are still met with no response. You lean back and reach for your bedside table, scavenging through the top drawer. You find a USB that Boothill had told you to use if he ever bluescreened. You reach back over to jack it into his waist, but he grabs your wrist near immediately.
His grip is bruising, causing you to wince and try and wrench your hand from his. You look back up at him to ask him to let go, but the words get caught in his throat as you watch his eyes shift, click, and lock on. They don’t dilate, not the way they do when he sees you after a long day, the way his gaze softens and his eyes dilate when you smile at him, no, they lock on. Still, you ask him to let go, that it hurts, you plead, and his grip tightens.
“Boothill–” You use your feet to push him away, pulling your hand free. “Ow, ow, ow–” The feeling is akin to pulling off a jade bracelet, too tight, your fingers all squeezed together. Worse, even, given his mechanical strength. When you finally pull your hand back, your wrist and knuckles are red.
You don’t want to run, but you feel like running. How many times have you promised Boothill that he isn’t a monster? You’d be breaking that promise if you ran now, but you had no idea what Boothill was going through. Was it a virus? It had to be, he’d never hurt you. His touches were always feather light, delicate, he treated you as if you were porcelain. He was afraid of his own strength. He was afraid of himself.
For now, you stare at him, sliding your legs out from underneath him, pulling your knees to your chest. He looks down at you like a starved wolf, and you feel like cornered prey. He looks down at you. You feel… useless. Pathetic. Not once has he looked at you this way, his eyes devoid of light and full of… nothing. Nothing. For once in your relationship, a pit forms in your stomach. You’re scared. You’re afraid . And Boothill doesn’t reach out for you, he doesn’t cup your cheek and whisper ‘Oh, buttercup…’, he doesn’t run his thumb along your cheek. He simply stands there, staring down at you as if you were a target. Another thug in his way for a higher bounty.
It stings. It reaches deep inside your chest and claws past your ribs, it rips your heart open and it makes you heave. In an instant, he’s ripped from you. Just like that. Aeons, it must be a virus, please, Aeons, please, Lan, let it be a virus. You aren’t quite sure how praying works. You aren’t quite sure who to pray to in your mind, but Lan feels like the best choice.
For a couple more minutes you two stay there, staring at each other, as if locked in a stalemate. It feels like hours, stuck in a room with a stranger in place of your lover. But there must be something you can do, there has to be something you can do. It’s not like you can exactly call for help, given whoever you do call will most likely want the bounty on his head. Perhaps a mechanic will do– a great idea.
You break eye contact finally, reaching for the bedside table again. Only, this time, you get a gun pressed to your temple. You don’t dare to move any further, too shocked to even gasp or cry. In that moment, it becomes so horribly clear to you, that man in your bed is not Boothill. There is nothing more you can do, simply stay still and hope help comes, hope someone comes to save you from the wolf in your cabin, in your hideaway, your sanctuary. Your sanctuary , gone in an instant. Desecrated. A stranger in your bed, and your life on the line.
It feels like hours more before you truly start crying. You do your best to bite your lip and shut yourself up, but heavy breathing gives way to hiccups, and eventually shuddering sobs. Boothill does nothing, he does not pull the gun away from your head, he does not stop. He does not break whatever trance he’s in, no matter how badly you want him to. You are desperate to get through to him, because it is just you two, far away from the world. You can’t even fathom hurting him, you don’t want to fight back.
“Boothill– hic – pl-please,” You stutter, a weak attempt to bargain for your life. Maybe he’s still in there, maybe he can hear you. “I’m s– I’m scared.”
For a moment, he pulls the gun only a centimeter away. A small flicker of hope bursts forth and you turn your head to look at him. He pushes the barrel of his gun to your forehead now, waiting for you to move. You didn’t even have the chance to smile.
Outside, footsteps break the silence. You are partially relieved, help is here, you assure yourself. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. And yet, you want nothing more than to hide away in Boothill’s arms, curl up, shut your eyes tight, and feel his body against yours, let his fingers card through your hair, whisper sweet nothings and wish the dark away. But that wasn’t possible. Not now.
There’s three, maybe four other footsteps, now. They trek right outside your bedroom window, voices muttering… commands? You can only pick up on a few words, but none of that matters to you. You try to calm your breathing down as you hear them open your front door, walking through your house with steady steps. When they finally enter the bedroom, your heart drops. An IPC agent, who stands in the doorway. You want to shoo them off and fix Boothill on your own, but you are essentially useless in this situation.
They are clearly surprised to see you, too. They had not expected any civilians, they hadn’t expected anyone . They mutter half-assed apologies as they approach Boothill from behind. The sight of them reaching for his off switch, sending him to sleep. In that moment, you could care less that he’s finally lowered the gun to your head. The IPC doesn’t deserve to lay their hands on him, not after what they had done.
Given the fact that you were an unexpected variable, they needed to take you in for questioning. While one agent hauls off Boothill’s now limp body, another attempts to console you, asking you to come with them. You hunker down, shaking your head and refusing to move. It’s childish, but the last thing you would want to do is help them. Unfortunately, they had to drag you out of your cabin, throw you over their shoulder like you were just another hunk of metal to them.
. * ✦ . ⁺ .
The IPC had only questioned you because they thought you were harboring a fugitive. It turns out that they had managed to wriggle their way into Boothill’s coding and consciousness and activate his kill switch, essentially setting him to default. They did not know that you were with him, and released you from custody with a hefty sum of credits as an apology. The thing they didn’t account for is that they had taken your lover from you. They had stolen him from you. All they could say was ‘sorry’, and send you on your merry way.
The days after, you hole up in your cabin. Your bed is empty every morning, the mattress sinks with the outline of your body. Boothill’s hat sits on the bedside table, set on its rim, and most likely flattening with each hour, each day that goes by. Your sheets are tear stained, most days blur together. You only remember waking up every once in a while, crying, and going back to sleep. You can’t remember the last time you ate. You can’t think of eating. Silence fills the cabin, day in, day out. You can’t even bear the sounds of your own sobbing, your own breathing. It makes you sick. No silly censors when Boothill comes back from a long trip, no more laughter, no more tickling you to get out of bed to spend a day with him. Silence. Terrifying silence.
You tell yourself he will come home, that this is not unlike the usual routine. He’ll leave for several months, causing a little mayhem, getting into scuffles, touring around the galaxy, whatever Galaxy Rangers do. Then, he’ll come home with a toothy grin on his face, nose scrunched, eyes squinted, practically singing your name. He’ll usher you back to bed, lay down on top of you and press his ear against your chest. He always loved listening to your heartbeat, usually when he got back. But he’d do it as often as he could, the rhythm of life lulling him into a much calmer state. A happier state.
But, as the days go by, you are met with emptiness. Sunshine isn’t as sweet, it is simply another facet within human life. When you get up and look out the bedroom window, the grass is drying out, the land around the cabin is dying. There is no reason to feed the soil, a world borne of love and devotion, ripped of its source. The land is parched, and you cannot feed it.
What the IPC failed to mention, or even send word of, is that they had wiped Boothill’s hard-drive. It is only at the five month mark that you dare question where he’s been. But when you try to call him, it goes straight to voicemail. You chalk it up to the fact that perhaps he’s across the galaxy, and that the reception just… won’t work. But after a week, you start to wonder if it’s anything different. However, you refuse to contact the IPC, and you seek answers through Boothill. But even your messages don’t go through. And you truly start to worry.
One day, you awaken to a message from him. Your heart soars, shaking off the lingering exhaustion easily as you open it. But your happiness is shot, burned, and scattered. In response to your ‘I miss you. Come home soon.’ text, all you receive in response is a ‘Who are you?’.
Who are you?
Who are you?
You stare at the message for an impossibly long time, your eyes dry as you realize you’ve forgotten to blink. And when you open your eyes again, the text is still there.
Who are you?
The heartbeat against his ear, the skin beneath his fingertips, the hands in his hair, the smile on rainy days, the morning light, the very essence of what made him human, the ring on his finger. That's who you are.
Who you were.
It is scary how your life can change with just a few words. A quiet life nestled within the forest, full of life and cherished moments, wiped with a simple prompt in a system. Promises of marriage, a proper life, intimate nights. Gone. Left to wither in the furthest reaches of your mind. You want to tell him who you are, that you were the love of his life, that you were his . You wanted him to respond, tell you he was ‘just joking buttercup’, that he’ll see you in a couple of days.
Tears fall against your phone screen, typing out a pitiful ‘ajsgj’ for you. You struggle to delete it, and end up accidentally sending it in the process. What a shame. The last thing you will ever send your lover is a sad keyboard smash, something he’d surely appreciate seven months ago.
All you can do is set your phone down and go back to sleep, or try to, anyways. Curled up in a ball, you sob and writhe and cry, hoping for this to be some twisted nightmare. You will wake up to his chest against your back once more tomorrow, you tell yourself. He’ll act like he wasn’t clinging to you, brush it off and say you were dreaming, and laugh when you say you swear he was getting cozy. And when he decides to get out of bed, he’ll groan about the way you put his hand down, dust it off, and put it on. He’ll look as dashing as ever in it, smile at you and promise he’ll let you wear it later. Then he’ll drag you out of bed and tell you to stop moping around, that he’ll make you two something good for breakfast. He’ll throw all sorts of cheesy names at you; buttercup, your favorite, sweetheart, darling, baby, angel, little bird, and tickle you till you finally laugh. And at the end of the lengthy morning routine, when you two have brushed your teeth and set yourselves down on the couch to enjoy the mundane, he’ll insist on taking a nap, because ‘you just look too tired, darlin’...’. He’ll intertwine his fingers with yours, rest his head against your chest, and listen to the sound of your heartbeat.
You pray that you will wake up, that Boothill be right there. And your days will carry on just as you imagined them. You pray to Lan, you tell THEM that you miss him, that he is what you truly wish to have in this life. That he was yours . That you want him to come back home.
Lan does not answer.