Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The hot midwestern summer air breathes through the open hangar door like the odem of a sleeping dragon and Agent Stone pops open the second button of his collar. He idly sips at his last two ounces of espresso that have long since acclimated to the saharian temperature of its surroundings. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the doctor wipe his hands on a shop towel, reach for his tablet and note something down before turning back to the hollow steel carcass that occupies the majority of floor space.

It’s a shop kind of day in a shop kind of week, where the Lab space has been overturned to more-so resemble a garage than a laboratory. The cleanroom has been sealed off to protect it and the more delicate machinery inside from grime and dust, the industrial hoists have been lowered from the ceiling to move large pieces of material; tools and parts lay strewn about on rolling cabinets and desks and the floor, forming a chaotic obstacle course one must traverse every crossing of the room. One screen of the central holodeck has been dedicated to playing the entire 1981 Rock Montreal live-recording of Queen. Whenever a gust of wind bellows through the entrance to the cave, it rustles the papers in Stone’s tray and makes the heavy chains and hooks of the ceiling hoists gently clink against each other, barely audible over Freddie Mercury’s echoing voice. Stone has insisted on keeping it open, mainly because the doctor decided he needs to be welding in this heat. 

He's not sure if Robotnik doesn't care he's watching or if he simply forgets his existence, or maybe a mixture of both, but who would he be to complain. He's happy in his corner, working on schedules, occasionally observing Robotnik with a badly hidden smile. He can't help it, it simply wrestles its way to the frontlines, no matter how much barbed wire he wraps around his lips. There is energy around the doctor today, a bristling motivation so strong it bursts out of him like lightning bolts. He's a moving tesla coil bouncing between tables and tools, working on everything at once somehow. Each task is a gear that grips into another project with serrated teeth, slowly turning a larger mechanism that only the brain in the center fully understands. Whenever Robotnik switches tasks, he somehow finds time to squeeze in a ferocious dance battle with Freddie Mercury. He wins each round; he has the tape memorized after all and knows when and how to counter every move with one of his own. At one point, he takes control of the battle sim model that hovers in the middle of it all, puppeteering it with his hand mouthing along to “Another one bites the dust” while he lets it drive over little simulated soldiers like a Hot Wheels car and it's... Stone bites his tongue. It's adorable.

Things have found a familiar new balance since the events four weeks prior. The bruises and sprains have healed, Stone’s knee is now fine enough to not leave him limping around anymore. Tower’s task has been concluded and the doctor’s attention been pulled to other things. Stone makes coffee every morning, does paperwork at noon, and helps Robotnik around the lab in the evening. Looking at it from the outside, no one would know that it was ever any different.
Though it is different.

Something has shifted between them. It's subtle. It’s in the little things: The way Robotnik puts the paperwork of the day down on Stone’s desk instead of leaving it in the printer tray; the way Stone keeps a broom and dustpan in reach at all times in case something breaks and the view of shards sends the doctor into a stupor. When they do have altercations – because of course they still do – Robotnik doesn’t grab him by the throat anymore, which is only disappointing because Stone is a little freak.

It’s not like the doctor has never done things with Stone in mind (for example, Robotnik for sure didn’t know Arabic until Stone got comfortable enough around him to answer private calls within eavesdropping distance), they just haven’t been so... overt. He even had to evict himself from the break room on account that his back really hasn’t been the same since he quit active field work.

With each instance of... change, one more butterfly inside him comes out of its year-long torpor, carefully stretching and fluttering its wings. He dreads the day they will escape their confines.  

Whenever there is a lull in the action, Stone exploits Robotnik’s single-minded focus to sneak lingering gazes. Robotnik had already set up when Stone arrived, which doesn't necessarily bode well for his biorhythm, but Stone has upped the frequency of coffee breaks in turn to compensate and postpone the eventual crash. Right now, the doctor has slipped on one control glove over his grease-covered left and turns a disassembled holographic model in front of his eye, double checking the next step. The right one still holds the torch; he has pushed the tinted goggles up onto his head where they ruffle and spike his hair. It looks a little silly, and Stone suppresses a smile. Summer be damned, dirty-work is the only occasion he gets to see the doctor in jeans, so even in 90°F weather Stone would be the last soul on earth to complain. Especially if the worn out jeans are accompanied by an equally worn out white tank top, one that has stains of machine oil and sweat and at least as many small burn holes as years it’s obviously been in service. Stone enjoys the high fashion, the bespoke coats and fly fronts and bold shapes, but he has a feeling that more often than not the showy dress serves as distraction and armor for the doctor. This stripped down version, he thinks, may be the rawest form of Doctor Robotnik anyone ever gets to see, and it’s... it’s very appealing. Like opening the pristine back of a clock to watch the grimy gears spin.

“STONE!”

Stone barely manages to suppress the flinch. You’ve been staring. “Yes, doctor?”

“I need your fingers!”

He pauses, blinks, then moves to get up: “Would you like to rephrase that, doctor?”

“This is not the time for innuendos, Stone. Get your ass over here, and make it snappy.”

He gets up and rounds the table, stepping over to where the large unfinished construction thrones in the center of the room. Stone quickly eyes it, trying to familiarize himself with the basics before being asked to participate. He's puzzled together which part of which project this is from context clues – some sort of a remotely piloted compound vehicle, he thinks, he can see attachment points for wheel wells and axle bearings taking shape around the hollow middle.

When he looks back to the doctor, Robotnik casually (always casually, he has somehow managed to perfect the art of driving Stone insane without even the slightest hint of intent) lifts the hem of his tank top and pulls up the fabric to wipe his face. There is a smear of soot on the doctor’s side, right on the precipice between hipbone and abdomen, and Stone finds it way too hard to not look at it. What is wrong with you today? Robotnik, always observant, sends him a suspicious look from the corner of his eyes and Stone instinctively straightens his back, trying to not seem too frazzled while he searches for anything else to hold his attention, but the Queen-screen has started into the opening riff of “Sheer Heart Attack” and Stone finds that a little too on the nose for his situation.  

He quietly clears his throat and zeroes in on picking up the used shop towels on the way, pointedly not looking at the plethora of exposed skin which he technically has seen plenty of times and which really shouldn’t be so different and alluring just because they’re covered in sweat and dirt, but of course the one time he does lift his gaze he finds that the suspicious look has intensified. Shit. Better hope your pining doesn’t screw with the parameters.

He knows he's being observed. Stone doesn't know how long the study has been running for without his awareness, but he's noticed about six days ago. Of course he hasn't said anything, despite his curiosity about the nature of the experiment – if he can't figure it out on his own, he will eventually be informed. It proves an entertaining puzzle to occupy his mind in the background. 

It's not the first time the doctor has run social experiments on him, he's a readily available test subject after all. Although Stone doubts any results will be widely applicable to other humans, given the sample size of one, the lack of a control group and the fact that he is... well.
His grandmother once told him “There is something deeply wrong with you, habeebi”, and he’s lived by that ever since.

The worst part? Deep down, he likes it. He likes being in the doctor’s attention, the center of it even at times. The feeling of eyes prickling on his nape, the inquisitive glances shot his way every now and then, it makes him feel important and maybe even a tiny bit wanted. The bar is on the floor.    

Robotnik drops the shirt back down, throws him one last look, then reaches for his tablet to scroll through his notes. Stone feels a bead of sweat drip down his temple and absorb into his beard. Everything is too hot, and Freddie's short-shorts are not helping. You need to get laid. But then again, the Venn diagram of men he is currently interested in laying is a flat circle.

“Are you done with your leisurely stroll, sycophant? Or would you prefer to promenade the lab interior until it’s time for luncheon and tea?”

Caught, Stone clears his throat and hurries over to where he was summoned. “Sorry, doctor.”

“No, no, it’s fine” – dripping sarcasm – “It’s not like I have anything else to do other than watch you prance around like a little pony, smelling flowers left and right.”    

Seems like a pretty setup. Maybe this is as good a chance as any to prod a little. “I don’t know, you seem to be pretty keen on watching me in recent times.”

“I have not even the slightest idea what you are talking about, Stone, are you sure you have no lasting brain damage?”

He’s deflecting, but he isn’t surprised.

“I think I read somewhere that secrecy from higher up is the number one contributor to unsatisfied workers”, Stone continues to poke, not even because he particularly wants to know but simply because he enjoys the banter. He’s been getting more of it ever since the incident, and he feels like he’s slowly getting high on it.

“Oh, so Mr. I-had-my-first-name-expunged-from-every-record is lecturing me about secrets?”

“I’m just saying, six days seems like ample time for observation to me.”

“Six days?”, Robotnik replies, amused, and quirks an eyebrow. Stone squints at him. So more than six days. But how much more?

They have a little staring contest. Stone squints at Robotnik, Robotnik squints at Stone, Stone squints harder, Robotnik squints harder, and then the doctor does something that completely throws Stone off-kilter, which is lean back, thoroughly eye him up and down, and then pointedly grab his tablet to note something down without breaking eye contact.

Oh. Damn. Stone fails to suppress the urge to swallow. None of these thoughts belong in this room.

Robotnik grins, obviously satisfied having gained the upper hand. “Don’t be nosy, barnacle”, he states, then throws Stone a pair of extra gloves, “Here, make yourself useful.”

“What do you need?”

“Hold this.” The doctor heaves a large trapezoidal panel with a hole in one of the corners off the workbench and pushes it against Stone’s chest. It’s heavy, and Stone suppresses a sigh when he grabs the edges more firmly to keep it aloft. Another suit for the laundromat. “Right here”, Robotnik directs him over to the chassis and motions to the place he needs it, then crouches down next to him and shoves his arm through the hole, reaching for something inside the compartment.

“What are we doing?”, Stone asks, watching him fish around in the darkness. The doctor puts his tongue out a little when he’s focused.

“Sealing up the matryoshka-box”, Robotnik replies, “So pay attention to where you hold this bad boy, I need these edges precise within half a millimeter. If any of the panel angles are off, the compartment won’t fit inside the roll cage and the second vehicle won’t dispatch properly.” His eyebrows shoot up and with a triumphant “Aha! There you are”, Robotnik pulls his arm back out of the hole, a cluster of thick taped cables in his hand. Stone’s eye gets caught on a dark stain on his hand, transferred by the rubber. When Robotnik reaches out to brush a stray strand of hair back under the welding goggles, he promptly leaves a black smear on his forehead. Stone wants to reach out and touch it. It's enticing in a forbidden way, like red hot glowing metal or the sharp point of a cactus needle. Focus, Agent.   

The doctor stands up and retrieves the torch from its holder, pushing down the goggles over his face. “Close your eyes and look away. I much prefer you with functional retinas”, he commands Stone, who obeys by screwing his eyes shut and turning his head away from the spot where Robotnik now points the welding torch. He braces his back and tightens his grip, careful to not let the panel slip. The hiss of gas is the first thing he hears, then the electric hum of plasma, then the crackle of sparks and superheated metal when the doctor applies a spot weld. Bright flashes of light penetrate through his lids, leaving stars dancing in front of his inner eye.

“Not even going to attempt to lecture me about clamps this time?”, Robotnik asks when changing sides, “Or have you bravely overcome your fear of losing your distal phalanges?” There is something cheeky to his voice; he’s evidently in a good mood.

“I trust you”, Stone replies.

“Oh, that’s dangerous territory, Stone”

Something about Robotnik’s voice makes Stone shiver involuntarily. He clears his throat: “And I could see there are some weird angles here. Not a good place for clamps.”

Robotnik clicks his tongue: “Look at that, you are actually paying attention. Eyes.”

Stone averts his gaze once more, a smile on his lips, proud of himself that he’s been paying attention since day one. When the doctor motions that it’s okay for him to let go, he carefully loosens his grip and steps back. The compartment starts to take shape now, a neat box that slots right into the tank interior beneath the harpoon winch. It makes sense why it has to be solid steel. Stone absentmindedly rolls his shoulders; he should have expected to participate. And he should have worn a looser shirt. This one pinches uncomfortably against his bicep when he is lifting anything heavier than a ring binder. He begins rolling up the sleeves to at least let his forearms breathe before turning around, awaiting further instructions.

“Anything else, doctor?”

“Hm?” Robotnik startles slightly. He seems to have been in thought, though the goggles make it impossible to tell where he was looking.

“Do you need anything else, sir?”

The doctor clears his throat, removes the eye protection and reaches for his tablet to take something down. “Keep those gloves on, you can do the dirty work.” He doesn’t look at Stone. Interesting. The caged animal inside him opens a curious eye, emboldened by their increasing closeness the past weeks.

“Gladly”, he replies nonchalantly, which does earn him a look but unfortunately no further comment.

There is something... here. A feeling, a spark, a change in the air. The faintest of noise of a kettle boiling two rooms over. Stone couldn’t put his finger on it or name it if he tried, but he senses it, ephemerally. Like the beast he has spent years trying to subdue catches a scent of prey and all progress taming it is lost.    

In passing, Robotnik reaches for Stone’s chin and forcefully tilts his face to meet his eye. He’s done this regularly to check his recovery from the concussion, and Stone suspects it has become somewhat of a habit. Not that he’d protest. “Eyes still functional?”, Robotnik asks, “How's your head?”

“Haven't had any complaints.”

The doctor’s brow falls and he retracts his hand. “Looks like it’s terminal”, he bites before reaching for a wrench. Three-quarter inch wrench. Needs half-inch bolts.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad”, Stone tries to make amends.

“Bit of advice, Stone: If you attempt to make crude jokes in my vicinity, try to at least make them funny.”

Alright. Stone, who has intuitively reached for the screw box, picks out the size needed. “Would you care to provide an example?”

“Well...”, the doctor rips the bolt out of Stone’s hands without looking, “...for example, instead of relying on overdone tropes, you could have utilized your penchant for wordplay by asking me about my proficiency in drilling holes. Provided you are aware of how neurotrauma used to be treated.” He looks down and scrutinizes Stone’s choice, quirks first his eyebrow then his lips, then gives a brief nod. “Good job”, he mutters. Stone's heart does a little somersault.

“Drilling holes...”, he repeats the doctor’s words, which apparently was the wrong response because Robotnik rolls his eyes theatrically and drawls: “Yes, Stone, drilling holes, the process where I would stick a big, hard rod into your head in order to relieve pressure, or whichever variation of raunchy references you would prefer. You can also give me that nut, if we’re already at it.”

Stone... does not know how to respond to this, so he sheepishly hands over the corresponding nut for the bolt and clears his throat: “I... didn’t really think this was your type of humor, doctor.”

Robotnik simply offers a sly grin: “I have five PhDs, Stone. I spent a lot of time at college.”

“Still... I would assume that fellow students are quite a different demographic than...” Than what exactly? “...colleagues”, he chokes out, quite aware of how forced it sounds but unable to stop it. He’s powerless to withstand the raised eyebrow he gets from the doctor in return as well, and even less prepared for the words that follow: “I’ve had my bare fingers inside the bleeding meat of your thigh, Stone, that’s third base medically speaking.”

Right. This is something that happens now, too.

It’s rare, about once a week or sometimes twice, but occasionally their conversations – which is a development in and of itself: they have full-on conversations now – will drift off into a bantering territory where either refuses to back down until suddenly they're... flirting? Or at least that's what Stone would call it, in lack of a better term. He's hesitant to believe the doctor would label it the same. Just joking around. Between colleagues. It’s becoming more frequent, too. And there is knowledge Stone cannot un-know anymore; knowledge stained with blood-spatter and rubbing alcohol. 

It has taken him a while to decide if this is a good or a bad evolution, and in the end he has come to the conclusion that it's bad. Very, very bad. It supplies the beast of hope inside him with more and more teeth, which it uses to relentlessly gnaw through his ribcage. His grasp on it is progressively slipping and it puts him on edge in a way that so far only the thrill of combat has managed to do. Which is dangerous, because there is a reason why he does what he does for a living. The flash of adrenaline, the way his heart beats in his throat; it’s like every time he experiences a re-ignition of this feverish fire, he becomes aware that he’s been going through withdrawal.

He has not yet figured out how to adapt to these new and exciting changes. He trips over his missing heartbeat every time they happen and truth be told, he has not been brave enough to actually sit down and think about the implications yet. If he thinks about the implications, it becomes real. So he’d rather tag along and see where the fishing line pulls him, even if that means he ends up on the butcher’s block.

Robotnik is bouncing between tasks again; he has affixed the bolts to the side of the chassis and is now looking at the welt again. He has pulled out a rag and polishes it over the surface of the steel repeatedly, apparently unhappy with the shape; Stone can’t help but follow the movement with his eye.

“Is third base allowed to ask why this supposed tank only has structural support for light armor?”, he asks, and Robotnik throws him a weirdly intense look that probably wasn’t intended to make his neck hairs stand on end.

“Because they want it to go faster.” The doctor is over-enunciating again, which speaks volumes about his opinion on that.

Stone furrows his brow: “It’s a tank.”

“Congratulations, sycophant! You are officially 100% more observant than everyone else I showed this to. I’d award you a medal, but I’m all out of gold. No, this?” He tosses the rag to the side and runs his thumb over the newly produced welt. “This is a hare-brained retro-fix for a problem which only exists because the gaggle of geese with the combined intellect of a bag of gummy worms that call themselves my employers couldn't even change the batteries of a TV-remote, let alone comprehend base-level engineering.” Dissatisfied, he holds out his hand towards Stone, snapping his fingers against his palm in a gimme gesture, and Stone quickly surveys the workbench before handing him a sharpie. A hum signals him that it was the right choice. 

“At some point, you have to wonder why they still call on you to explain your process when they are going to screw it over anyway”, he dryly comments while watching the doctor start measuring something along the new seam. Robotnik rolls his eyes, mustache bristling in distaste, and consecutively launches into a monologue: “I cannot explain to them why burning more fuel to make it go faster is a terrible idea, Stone, because to do that I would have to explain the mass to force conversion of the industrial standard benzene formula, the atomic density of a steel reaction chamber, the interaction between the ignition voltage and the spray valve as well as the maximum flexibility of a titanium piston –”, he wildly gesticulates with the sharpie, “– and it would already soar so high above their squishy little heads by step two that Mount Everest could fit in between with space to spare! Not even speaking of the fact that ALL OF IT could have been easily avoided if they had just let me use my prototype hydrazine engine, which I proposed two months ago, and which they vetoed because it was TOO EXPENSIVE.” He flings his hands into the air like an exasperated circus director – look at all those clowns – then shakes his head and flicks the eye protection back down. 

“At least it's nice to know that they'll ultimately sink more money into fixes than if they hadn't chosen the cheapest solution at every turn”, Stone says, picking up the sharpie that was haphazardly thrown onto the workbench and returning it to a penholder, “Serves them right.”

Robotnik reaches for the angle grinder. “All those tax dollars could've gone into better materials and manufacturing”, he mutters, then the wheel spins up with a metallic howl and all conversation is drowned out in the noise. Stone swiftly steps out of the way to not be doused in a shower of sparks while the doctor calms his nerves by inflicting violence upon the dissatisfactory steel welt.  

Stone proves to himself once again that he is a massive hypocrite, because right after being praised for paying attention, he has stopped doing it. Instead, he is looking at the doctor’s hands. Robotnik dislikes touching things without his gloves, but he dislikes getting those dirty even more (considering they are basically unwashable), and seeing his bare fingers covered in black grease gripping the angle grinder with veins popping from the exertion... does something to Stone. You’re like a Victorian staring at exposed ankles. He’s being conspicuous, he knows that, and he doesn’t like it one bit. The spotlight was never his preferred place, he’s built his career on fading into the background, except it turns out fading into the background is quite hard when you stumble over your feet every time your crush walks by. But he can’t help himself. He’s always had a thing for them, for that precision combined with the experience and the skill. And he thought it was bad before when he only knew first hand how much grip strength they could muster, but it is so much worse now that he also knows how it feels when they are gentle.

His mind has never stopped replaying that moment in the bath. It taunts him while he wakes and it haunts him while he dreams. Every skin cell yearns for another touch, just one, just once, wantonly tearing him apart with the uncertainty of if he is ever going to get it. In a strange way, he almost feels vindicated for his self-constraint. This is what happens when you get what you want but not how you want it. Into the vindication mixes a small stream from beyond the cage, a tentative toxin infecting it with: Maybe you should get what you want. It’s getting harder and harder to block it out.   

Maybe he should have listened to his grandmother when she told him stories about Karma, because he thinks that thought and immediately pays the price for it. He feels an impact against his shoulder, which rips him out of his rosy veil. The angle grinding has stopped, the doctor has pushed up his goggles again and is looking at him with an expression on his face that is somewhere between annoyance, curiosity and schadenfreude. A shrill beep sounds from his shoulder, and Stone looks down.

Robotnik seems to have thrown a cling grenade at him. Its small metal teeth have buried into the fabric of his shirt, and the red LED in the center is flashing in time with its alarm calls. Stay calm. It’s just a prototype. He looks back to the doctor: “What was that for?”

“Staring unauthorized holes into my torso.”

Stone feels himself flush. Shit.

“You should get rid of it if you don’t want to be blown to smithereens.”

Stone has been counting already. He reaches out to grab the beeping sphere, feeling the clinging spikes dig into the fabric of his gloves. Twenty seconds left. Without luck, he rolls his fingers to see if he can maybe detach it from the shirt. Ten seconds. He sighs and throws Robotnik a pleading look. The doctor just lifts both eyebrows expectantly. “Tick tock, Agent”, he says.

Robotnik wears an expression that is hard to parse. He’s obviously watching him like a hawk, and his posture – crossed arms, hip leant against the chassis – tells Stone he is deriving some form of entertainment or pleasure from this. But his face... there is something deeper there, something Stone hasn’t quite seen before, and he is unsure if Robotnik is aware that Stone can see it.

He awards himself one second to silently say goodbye to the laundromat and make peace with it, then he grips the grenade firmly and rips it off. The delicate cotton of his dress shirt gives easily. A good portion of black fabric comes off with it. He feels the upper part of his sleeve, now detached from the body, slip over his shoulder. With an effort to not let his minor discontent show, he turns the glove inside out, slips it with the grenade inside off his hand, rears back and throws it out of the open hangar door in a large arch. 

“Touchdown!”, the doctor proclaims as it hits the ground. In one movement, he slips on a glove, snaps his fingers, and the grenade detonates, leaving a dark scorch mark on the dry lawn in front of the lab.

Maybe it’s the spike of adrenaline that hits him after realizing that the grenade was live, maybe it’s something else that possesses him in the spur of the moment, but Stone hears himself say: “If you wanted me to undress, you could have just asked.”

“I could have what now?” Suddenly Robotnik’s words are bladed again. Shit. Too far. Too soon. Abort, abort, abort.

Stone starts: “I mean-...”, but he doesn’t get any further because when he turns around the doctor is directly in front of him with only millimeters to spare between their noses. Stone instinctively holds his breath, he wasn’t prepared for that; he isn’t looking up at the doctor’s face but straight ahead at his neck, which is in his field of view because Robotnik is so freakishly tall, and they are so close that Stone can see the skin glisten from sweat and feel the warmth of exertion that wafts off of the doctor’s body even over the summer heat.

“I could have asked, sycophant?”, Robotnik hisses, which is good because it exposes that the problem he had with the sentence is not the problem Stone was worried about, and bad because it burrows into Stone’s brain and starts producing pictures. Stone swallows and dares to look up, which prompts Robotnik’s eyes to flick back from somewhere else they were looking. In this sudden violation of his personal circle he feels flustered and naked, his cheeks have a tell-tale heat in them and he has to resist the urge to cover the self-inflicted hole in his shirt with his hand. 

“How about I ask you to go back to your desk where you belong instead of standing around in my way doing nothing but being a little Johnny Head-in-the-air, hm? How does that sound? Would you like a ribbon with that as well, and a little participation trophy? In case you need to be reminded of WHO DOES THE ACTUAL WORK HERE?”

Stone sighs and hangs his head. Today is decidedly not your day. It’s almost as if the doctor wanted to keep him at a distance by following up every slightly too amicable interaction with the appropriate opposite reaction. Which does sound quite like the doctor, in all fairness. But it is grating all the same. He slinks back to his paperwork.

Stone sits, banned to his corner, for ten minutes. He is transfixed watching Robotnik’s steel work. The golden sparks cast him in a flickering rimlight that bounces over every ridge of his face and tangles in the whiskers of his mustache as he methodically whittles down the metal to the desired shape. He’s having trouble, Stone can hear him quietly muttering to himself while he adjusts and readjusts his grip on the handle in between bouts. Sometimes Robotnik looks up and into his direction, in which case Stone quickly goes back to the menial task in front of him.

All but ten minutes this continues, before Stone decides the tension has ebbed far enough that he can go help the doctor again, because said doctor has now moved to holding one of the pieces in place with his foot and Stone has already lost a sleeve, he doesn’t want to add an entire arm to the collection.

“Sir?”, he begins, but Robotnik ignores him. When he adds “Doctor?”, Robotnik stops the power tool and turns in his direction: “Haven’t I told you to stay in your corner? This better be important.”

“I just thought you could use a hand-...“

“You thought?” Robotnik turns all the way now, “You thought? I don’t pay you to think, Stone, I pay you to do what I say, and I think I was quite clear in my phrasing.” He moves forward, encroaching on Stone as if to herd him back to his desk like a sheepdog. Stone decides to not hold his ground, he doesn’t like what close proximity does to him today, but the doctor doesn’t seem to have the same qualms. If he just wouldn’t be so stubborn.

“What if you hurt yourself?”, Stone makes one last attempt.

“Hurt myself? Your oculi seem to be impaired after all, Agent, your observance is decreasing exponentially. I’m not the one in danger of damaging myself around here, evidently”, Robotnik says snidely, reaches forward and pulls on one of the frayed edges of the hole in Stone’s shirt. It tears loudly, the gash in the fabric opening even wider. The doctor blinks, as if he somehow hadn’t expected that to happen. “...you should probably fix that up”, he catches himself, flicks the fringe back towards Stone and quickly turns around, flexing his hands, “And stay like a good boy.”

“Don’t say that”, Stone slips before he can catch himself. It is a plea, an implied right here, right now missing from the tail-end of the sentence, and it sounds a lot more desperate that he would very much like to, but he’s not sure if the doctor caught that because Robotnik spins back around, forearm flexing and hand already outstretched, but his momentum is not quite enough to bridge the distance. Two fingers hover in the air, less than an inch away from Stone's chest while the doctor stares him down. A beat passes, the silence before the breath to kickstart a tirade is drawn, and in that silence Stone instinctively, intuitively takes a step back. His back hits the wall flush, and something in the doctor's eyes changes.

It's fascinating. It's like watching a fuse blow out in real time. He can almost picture the sparks spraying out of Robotnik's temple when he stills, fingers unmoving midair, and his face goes from an animated expression to just... blank. Only his eyes are moving, and rapidly so – eyeing over the scene, taking everything in while his mind seems to wander far, far away, flung out of orbit by an unexpected impact vector.

The planned lecture doesn’t make it out of Robotnik’s larynx, he starts with “You...” and then gets a few words past that but Stone only sees his lips moving and doesn’t really hear it. His heart beats in his throat, blood thrums in his ears, and maybe he should concentrate on what Robotnik is saying (or rather, not saying), but the doctor smells like sweat and hydraulic fluid and all Stone can think about is eyes and lips and teeth, body close to his, fingers in his mouth, hands around his throat, shit shit shit shit shit.  

Just when he has finally wrenched control back over his unruly libido to gather enough breath to defend himself, they are interrupted by a piercing alarm that cuts through Freddie Mercury’s voice and leaves only deafening silence between beeps.

Simultaneously, they turn their heads towards the holodeck. A red warning sign is flashing on the display, with bold text beneath reading: Attention! Abnormal heart rate detected! Underneath that, a live monitor and BPM counter. Underneath that, a GPS aerial view of this very lab and a flashing red dot right smack-dab in the center of it.

Stone feels himself go catatonic. That’s new. And it certainly doesn’t help his heart rate. Calm down. Right now. Difficult when Robotnik now turns his head and looks back at him. He used to be proud of the fact that despite years of pining, he has never actually embarrassed himself in front of the doctor. Well, it seems like his lucky streak has suddenly come to an end. You’re cooked. For the first time since putting it back on, Stone wants to rip off the watch and throw it as far away as possible.

Robotnik opens his mouth, but says nothing. Micro-expressions flit across his face: anger, confusion, a hint of something that looks like... fear? No, that's not it, not quite, but it's gone too fast for Stone to properly read it. Beep, beep, beep goes the alarm and a twitch runs through Robotnik; he makes a sharp gesture with his hand and the noise shuts off. Only silence remains in its wake, no sound to cushion their collision, only breathing and the blood rushing in Stone’s ears and the war drum pounding in his chest and breathing (they are so close he can feel it on his face) and it becomes unbearable. “I’m sorry, sir”, he presses out, and like the flick of a switch Robotnik is now no longer staring at him but at the grout line in the wall right next to his head and Stone is unable to work out if that’s a good thing or not.

Watching his face, the doctor is obviously trying to hash something out inside his mind; his lips twitch sometimes around words unsaid and his gaze has turned inwards, before it suddenly snaps back to Stone with such an intensity that Stone instinctively lets his head fall back further against the wall, which 1) happens entirely against his will and 2) seems to have been the wrong option yet again, because the flash of something-that-is-almost-panic appears on Robotnik’s face again before the doctor retracts his hand as if the magnetic field between them had suddenly turned repellant. The paralyzing spell it had on Stone’s body fades. He instantly misses the proximity. Robotnik’s knuckles visibly pop beneath the black silk as he balls his hand to a fist, the twinkle of light in a wire the last thing Stone sees before it gets forcefully shoved into a pocket. 

“Back to your corner”, Robotnik commands, “Now”, not yelling (thank God), but like he is choking on the words as he says them.

“Yes doctor”, Stone manages in the same tone.

~

The doctor is decidedly withdrawn for the next half hour. Stone does not mind, in fact he feels like his indoctrination to Robotnik's music seems to finally take effect because "Bad to the Bone" blaring at full volume very effectively cancels out the very loud thoughts in his head for the moment.  

Robotnik himself is very much in his own bubble. He's hunched over his desk, hands stapled together, fingertips at his nose, staring blankly at the screen – or maybe through it, Stone can't quite tell. At multiple points, Stone watches him reach for his tablet, take something down, put it away, only to grab it again, delete what he just wrote, write something new, rinse and repeat. He dearly hopes it's not a write-up. Or a report for inappropriate behavior. You'd be screwed. Although the implications for the alternative – the study – are far more terrifying. New findings: subject makes absolute fool of itself when confronted with object of desire, spectacularly failing to meet pre-established code of conduct. Stone shudders at the thought. He’s read enough of the doctor’s papers to know just how much vitriol can be hidden even in the driest academic jargon.  

Eventually, Robotnik breaks the curse of silence by loudly slamming his hands on the desk (so abruptly that Stone actually drops the folder he is holding) and pushes himself to a stand. 

“Alright. Enough. Stop it”, he firmly declares to the empty air, then straightens his back, turns around and goes right back to work. And with that, the issue is seemingly settled.

Chapter Text

The sound of the steamer always calms his nerves. 

Its soft little bubbling layers overtop the bassline of the coffee machine, forming a pleasant polyphony while Stone carefully watches the milk aerate until it doubles in volume. He has to pay attention, that’s why he likes it.

He’d love to say that the nature of his daily tasks simply carried him over here, but in truth, he fled. Trying to act normal when finding the current definition of “normal” increasingly feels like playing darts blindfolded really isn’t it, especially not today, so he picked the first excuse he could get to bring some distance between them: Coffee break. This way, he can at least enjoy a brief moment of respite and focus on his art while the doctor takes a siesta.

One of the big door panels leading from the kitchenette to the hangar has been left open, and closing it now would probably wake Robotnik, so Stone has a front row seat to observe him while he waits for the coffee: sunken into the big cushioned chair, legs propped up on the desk, arms crossed and half of his face obscured by a sleeping mask. Stone suppresses a besotted sigh.

Trying to stop himself from gawking like a cartoon character, he turns back to the counter, first wiping off minute dust specks with a kitchen towel and then grabbing the spray bottle for the plants. He makes sure to accidentally bump into the wall panel that hides the surveillance cabling switchboard, which he knows will screw up the audio.

“You’re coming in nicely, aren’t you?”, he says out loud to the oleander while watching the soil happily soak up the moisture. “I’m surprised he hasn’t complained about you yet.” It is only the most recent addition to his growing collection, and even though Robotnik certainly looks bewildered by the increasing volume of planters filling up counter-space, even a genius seems unable to find a compelling argument against some more greenery. They do brighten up the room. It looks like the daffodils are close to flowering, too, so he makes sure to give them a little more water before he moves on to the next. “Maybe it’s because I take such good care of you”, he muses with a smirk. Stone tries to tell himself that he doesn’t play favorites, but if he’s honest, the coffee plant is his favorite. He absentmindedly picks a few dry leaves of the stem. “Or maybe it’s because he secretly likes you”, he murmurs conspiratorially. Side eyeing the plant, he asks it: “Be honest, has he checked your pH again? I saw the Litmus strips in the trashcan.” The healthy green leaves give no reply. Stone sighs: “Or maybe I’m just projecting...” His eyes wander back to the door. It feels like looking through a man-sized peephole. Stone’s hand stops the pruning and instead just rests on the side of the pot, running his thumb along the ceramic, lost in thought. From here, he can just barely make out Robotnik’s chest rise and lower with every slow breath. It’s not just the proximity, or even the banter. There’s something about quiet moments, too, that’s gotten way worse in the past weeks. Something that constricts his chest and makes his ribs fold in on themselves, threatening to squeeze out all the words he’s ever held back and the air he needs to live to boot.

If it were just that he is in love with his boss. That would be a perfectly reasonable problem, a respectable problem even if he were someone else; someone working a regular nine-to-five office job pining after the CEO. Unfortunately, his situation is much more complicated than to be solved by the simplicity of a secret affair. And much more is at stake than a business career and maybe a loveless marriage. The military branch they operate under really does not like fraternizing. Fraternizing. He mentally slaps himself. Pull yourself together, Agent. This is just a new marionette Robotnik found. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s playing with Stone’s heartstrings. It stings, pulling off the rose-tinted glasses to stare right at the eclipse. But it’s necessary so he doesn’t get lost in hypotheticals and falls out of line. And good God, he's actually trying to not fall out of line, because he's afraid if the doctor crowds him against a wall one more time, a cold shower won't suffice to calm him down anymore.

And yet. Being interested in a toy is still interest, a devilish voice whispers from the deep dark depths of the well.

“You think he’s as cute as I do?”, he asks the coffee plant.
Grabbing the pot and lightly shaking it to make the leaves rustle, he replies to himself in falsetto: “You have a screw loose, Agent Stone.”
As if contemplating the answer, he nods his head and sighs: “I know, I know.”

The machine beeps and rips him out of his soliloquy.    

~

He puts the cup on the table, just outside of the radius where it might be accidentally knocked over upon awakening. 

Just when he turns to leave, his eyes fall upon Robotnik's tablet, which now lies unattended out of his possessive grasp. Stone bites his lip. He's... curious. A glance over to the doctor – fast asleep – then back to the item. Tentatively he reaches out a hand, only halfway, two fingers extended, contemplating. 

It's cheating. He'll be told eventually. But how long that might take? Maybe it is a bad thing, maybe he has crossed boundaries and in that case... in that case... You should know. Then again. He's never been hesitant to tell you to back off. He'd ruin the study. And he'd ruin his own achievement of figuring it out. Could you even bypass the security? With enough time on his hands, probably. Time you don't have.

Robotnik moves in his sleep and Stone retracts his fingers, startled. Now or never.

He grits his teeth, expends all of his self-control to turn and leaves the platform without the tablet.

Not a moment too late, it seems, because jostled by either Stone’s presence or his steps, Robotnik comes to. Stone acts like he didn’t notice him pawing at the sleeping mask and quickly retreats to the kitchenette.

Through the crack in the door, he can just make out Robotnik rubbing his eyes, then staring at the cup for a few moments, before putting his face first in his hands and then on his desk repeatedly. Stone frowns. That's... not the kind of reaction he expected. Should you be worried?  

~

When Stone reenters the lab some odd safety-minutes later, Robotnik is right back behind a shield of steel and welding goggles. Stone averts his gaze to not look directly into the arclight as he makes his way back over to his desk, but can’t help but notice that the cup is still in the place he put it, untouched. His gait falters slightly. Did you do something wrong?

“...was it not to your satisfaction, doctor?”

“Hm?” The sparks stop flying.

“The coffee.”

“Oh.” Only the slightest head-tilt betrays that Robotnik’s gaze briefly drifts over to the lonely cup.

“Was it not to your satisf-“

“I heard you the first time, sycophant.” There is an odd twitch to his lip; it rustles the outer hairs of his mustache ever so slightly, careful to only let a couple of words through at a time: “It was... fine.” It doesn’t sound like the truth. Stone squints, unsure how to proceed. Is this still about earlier or is this another thing altogether?

A beat of silence passes, then Stone awkwardly clears his throat: “I can make another if you’d like?”

Robotnik doesn’t get to reply because the e-mail notification sounds from Stone’s desk. “You should probably get that”, he says, pulls the goggles down, turns around and goes right back to pretending he isn’t there.

Stone squints at him for a moment longer. It’s not the evasive conversation that irritates him, it’s the... flightiness, for lack of a better word. He can handle being reprimanded, hell if there was ever a situation he deserved it more, but the sudden lack of motivation for putting-Stone-in-his-place is new. The stirring beast presses its nose against the cage, eager to pick up a trail, and for a moment Stone considers pushing. Then his eye moves from where it rested on the cup back over towards the tablet next to it. He reconsiders.  

Uprooting himself from where he stood, he finishes the last few meters to his computer to check the new e-mail. One look at the subject makes his face fall and his limbs grow cold. Oh, good you checked that. He swallows.

“Doctor”

“What?”

With a drag of his finger, Stone pulls the e-mail to the second monitor and projects it onto the holoscreen previously housing Spotify. “They're sending an inspection.”

“SHIT”

Within the same motion, Robotnik rips the welding goggles off his face and spins around to inspect the text with wild eyes. “When?”

“They're required to notify us at least an hour in advance, so I'm guessing in an hour.”

The doctor curses in three different languages, two of which Stone doesn't speak, and punches the emergency stop for the argon gas supply. 

~

"You think this is Tower?"

"You can bet your besuited ass that this is Tower”, Robotnik growls. They’re hurrying through the corridor towards storage, Stone having trouble to keep up with the doctor’s long legs. “I’m sure he went straight crying to daddy after we were done with him like the overgrown infant he is. I'm astonished it took only four weeks, considering paperwork in this ratchet conglomerate that calls itself government moves at the average speed of continental drift”, Robotnik turns on his heel, continuing to walk backwards while he rants to Stone: "That little toad must be really good at dick-sucking to get the feds to put on their diapers this fast. If even a third of our forms moved through the system at that velocity, we would run into significantly less issues."

He manages to round the corner even backwards with astonishing grace and spins on his heel, stopping right before an unassuming piece of wall paneling. Robotnik pressing his finger in the intersection of joint lines reveals the secret fingerprint scanner. Something beeps quietly behind the wall: authorized access. Stone steps aside just when the floor beneath his feet begins to hiss with hydraulic ferocity.

Neon tubes flicker to humming life and illuminate the subterranean storage chamber artfully hidden behind the hydraulic floor panel. Stone chooses to believe the doctor excavated it himself, simply because the image of a determined Robotnik with shovel and miner’s lamp lopping around TNT like an old-fashioned prospector is impressively hilarious. But the only gold in them there Green Hills are the rare-earth elements wired into the catalysts and semiconductors of all the projects stored in here that the government really doesn’t need to know about. 

He would be lying if he said he weren’t glad for the distraction. Being united against a common enemy usually makes them overcome their differences, and running around relocating illegal weapon development plans is much better than discussing (or not discussing and sitting in awkward silence) what happened earlier.

Stone glances briefly at the stack of blueprints in his arms he removed from the vision board while he begins to sort them into files as quickly and gently as possible. They are unique after all, the kind that is written on archival paper shelf-stable for at least a hundred years, the kind that is only written on paper because firewalls can be broken and hard-drives can be cracked. Stone recognizes some of the plans: near-light-speed flight module, giant mech robot, orbital sky laser... Looks like the doctor was thinking about the ultimate power source again. The same doctor is currently attempting to fit eleven condensed micro-shock-grenades into a ten-egg-carton. He seems... frazzled. Stone decides not to comment and instead goes looking for his jacket. He usually wouldn’t mind his shirt being in disrepair, especially not during summer, but uninvited company complicates things.    

Cramming the satellite down the stairs takes the longest. It is large, heavy, unwieldy and worst of all full of delicate instruments it really needs for its virgin flight. Stone already dreads hauling it back up the stairs, because the launch window is next week and if they miss it they’ll have to wait months for the next opportunity. By the end of it, he is sweaty and out of breath, with an uncomfortable twinge flaring back up in his knee, reminding him that he isn’t quite back to a hundred percent yet.

“Have you got the breaker?”, Robotnik asks, eyeing the door down the hall like he expects it to bust off its hinges every moment. He has thrown a black button down over his sweaty tank top, fidgeting with the collar. 

“I have”, Stone replies, “Power grid should only show what it’s supposed to show. Not that they ever check.”

“I do not take chances, sycophant. The vision board?”

“Wiped. Your notes?”

“Encrypted twice. Security tapes?”

“On loop. Same story as last time?”

“We need to show consistency or they’ll get suspicious. I can scare off Tower but I can’t scare off-”

“Knock knock!”, a voice interrupts them, not from the door they were expecting but from the opposite direction, next to the open hangar gate.

Robotnik takes a deep breath and straightens his back, his face turning as sour as his voice when he dourly completes his sentence: “...Walters.” Without further word, he strides out of the hall.

Stone remains for a moment longer, checking the fit of his holster before methodically buttoning his jacket. He can hear Robotnik greet the arrivals through the cracked door: “Do you not even have the decency to ring the bell?” and the reply: “Good afternoon, Commander. Good afternoon, Ivo, it is good to see you, I hope you are doing well.”

“We agreed on an hour minimum. You’re early.”

“Am I?” A brief pause. “See, I told you your driving has gotten better.”

A new voice: “Thank you, Commander.”

Of course he isn’t alone. Not a voice Stone recognizes though. Retrieving his gun from the counter, he checks the magazine, makes sure the safety is on and holsters it.

“Tower sent you, didn’t he”, he hears Robotnik observe upon brushing down his lapels and pushing through the door. Two steps to the side and the view clears on Commander Walters himself, standing just outside the lab boundary on the driveway. His appearance presents very casual, wearing his military overcoat over what looks like a Hawaiian shirt and slacks; the smile on his face slightly falters as he nods in response to the doctor. Undermining that casualness are the two guards that flank him – a man and a woman, dressed in identical neat suits with white shirts and black ties and that tell-tale bulge of a shoulder holster you can only notice when you know what to look for beneath their jackets. Or rather, they would flank him if the woman didn’t decide to take spot directly behind Walters on the pavement instead of standing to his side on the grass withering away in the midday sun.

“I told him that you are a valuable asset and that we likely wouldn't find anything”, Walters continues, “But he insisted, and you know, rules are rules, so we're just going to take a quick look-see.”

He smiles, wide and kindly, and loses the immediately following staring contest with the doctor. “Agent Stone, good to see you!”

“Commander.”

“Now. Will you let us in?”

Robotnik stares at him for a second longer, then says: “Wipe your fucking shoes” and moves out of the way. With a long step, Walters’ heel hits the linoleum and the government infiltrates the building.

Stone doesn't know much about the nature of this contract the doctor has been roped into; the arrangement was already long in place when he started his work as Robotnik's assistant, but he's learned a few things over the years. Robotnik doesn't like to talk about it, but he and Walters obviously share a history, and the fact that even after all those years the amount of exploitable loopholes still keeps to a minimum speaks volumes about how the Commander is not to be trifled with. He may not be a genius, military or otherwise, he may not understand a lick of the work that he commissions, but he has not made it to his status without reason. Contacts of his who’ve done Undercover have told tales of the sheer lengths Walters will go to to ensure a particular outcome. The kindly demeanor and grandfatherly smile hide a cunning politician who knows exactly how much power he holds over his personal hamster running in the wheel that powers the majority of the US elite military forces. Stone despises him. 

The agents overtake the Commander and position themselves further into the lab while Stone finds the gate control and pushes the button to close the big hangar door. From underneath her jacket the woman pulls out a clipboard, curiously surveying the perimeter. The man fidgets with his cufflinks. Stone knows this song and dance, the eager sheepdogs wait for a signal to be set loose. Bring a magnifying glass and a forensics kit next time. Or rather, please don’t. The Commander doesn’t look like he is in a rush, though. Instead of passing Stone without further notice, Walters stops and surveys him. Stone resists the urge to pull his jacket tighter, especially when the Commander’s eye obviously falls on the damage done to his shirt. Walters clicks his tongue disapprovingly: “Rare to see you in disarray, Agent. Is everything alright?”

“It was an accident. No reason to worry”, Stone replies smoothly.

Walters puts on a face that a layman could mistake for empathy: “You know you just have to say the word and I’ll have you transferred lickety-split, Stone. No reason to endure this for longer than necessary.”

“I’m aware, Commander”, Stone replies less smoothly.

Walters reaches out to touch and press his shoulder and Stone has to go somewhere very calm and tranquil to not twitch-react and break his arm. With a lowered voice, Walters says: “You truly are one of our bravest. The service you are doing for this country will not be forgotten.” Stone refuses to let his irritation at this needlessly overdramatic statement infiltrate his face.

Walters passes him and follows his suits into the room. “Before we proceed with the formalities, would you mind discussing what happened when you were visited by General Tower?”, he addresses Robotnik, who has watched him with crossed arms and distaste written on his face. “I know his report, I’d like to hear it from you. He mentioned something about a... flying saucer?”

“There was a fluid spill at the flight pod”, the doctor divulges, “This is a workspace, not a cleanroom, accidents happen. But Tower’s manicured fingertips have probably never touched an ounce of dirt in their life, so I’m not surprised he gets a crease in his panties from seeing a floor he can’t check his hideous reflection in.”

“And what about large patches of product that had mysteriously absconded?”

“I can explain it for Tower but I can’t understand it for him.”

Stone watches the two have their repartee and can’t help but get an uncomfortable prickle in his neck. Something isn’t right. He silently positions himself behind Walters, in view of the doctor, just in case the situation goes completely awry. As he does, the woman with the clipboard tracks him with her eyes. She definitely clocked that. When her gaze flits over his form, giving him the same once-over he gave her, catching on his concealed sidearm, he awards her a smile and watches her narrow her eyes before scribbling something on the board. She clocked that, too.    

“...and I have proven more than enough times I am perfectly capable of working within your ridiculous time constraints, which by itself is a miracle, but the deterministic nature of this overly complex system we have does not make the outcome of any particular test run predictable, Walters. It’s basic chaos theory.”

Walters nods as if he is listening, but the air coming off him smells like confirmation. He inspects his fingernails: “And how high would you estimate the material damages you caused with this test run, in total?”

Robotnik squints: “What are you talking about?”

Stone’s alarm bells start ringing. That’s what’s wrong. He knows.

Maybe Robotnik sees the realization on Stone’s face, maybe he realizes it himself a split second before Walters sighs and leans in close: “Ivo, Ivo... do you really think your little stunt has gone unnoticed? I’m a little disappointed, really. I know you don’t like to ask for help, but things must have gone really cuckoo for your work to turn out this... sloppy.”

Stone has seen the expression that washes over Robotnik’s face before, when Tower started asking questions; that brief visage of frozen terror before it falls away into an unreadable blank stare. It’s a different sort of blank than earlier today – earlier Robotnik was entirely somewhere else, the empty console no longer receiving commands. This blankness is very much present. It’s constructed, not left. For someone whose face is usually so animated, it might serve as a shield, Stone surmises.

“Sloppy”, Robotnik repeats coolly. His eyes are charging up laser beams aimed at Walters’ face.

“Yes, Ivo. Sloppy”, the Commander answers. “I don’t know why you decided to take out your anger issues on a rogue bunch of thugs, but they surely have suffered a bad case of wrong place, wrong time, haven’t they. Tell me, how am I supposed to explain to our sponsors that my famed brilliant scientist likes to blow up hospitals in his free time?” He does his best to sound simply exasperated, but Stone can pick up on the annoyed undertone in his voice. He likes to play the sympath, but he clearly is not pleased about this.

“You can tell the landlord he’s welcome for the free demolition. The place was full of illegal squatters anyway.”

Walters sighs: “Don’t worry, we’ve already dealt with the local authorities and all the paperwork. From what we could gather from the wreckage, it turns out some of those criminals were wanted by the FBI anyway. Somehow, you’ve actually done us a favor.”

“Look at that!”, Robotnik lifts his arms presentationally, “I do your work for you! Isn’t that so generous of me?” He turns to the agents left and right of him: “Shouldn’t he thank me? I think he should thank me-“, his gaze snaps back to Walters, “-for ONCE, for all the good work I do for him.”

Stone tenses up in preparation. This is not going well. He can clearly see that the doctor’s usual evasive strategies aren’t working. Walters has straightened up and looks at Robotnik slightly over his nose, not exactly thankful. The agreeable smile fades somewhat, undermined by a military hardness.  

“Have I not been thankful? Look around you at this place in which you stand and tell me if I have not been thankful, Ivo.” He shakes his head in disappointment. “I award you space, I award you time, I award you connections, I pay for your little toys, do not ever accuse me of not being thankful again.”

Robotnik’s face telegraphs exactly just how little he plans to follow that order. Stone can see his neck muscles convulse and knows that later this day the doctor will complain of a headache again. The tension in the air is thick enough to be cut with a knife.

Walters continues: “I have learned that I cannot stop you from being abrasive and making enemies, and I have graciously compensated for many of your social shortcomings, but when you start dragging in my agents to clean up your unprecedented messes, my patience starts to run out, Ivo.”

“It was not unprecedented-...”, Stone attempts to insert himself between them, but his sentence is cut short by Robotnik’s laser eyes. Walters also lifts a hand: “Please, Stone. I don’t know what you think you might gain by protecting him, but let me tell you, it sure as heck isn’t a promotion.” The intentionally placed good-natured chuckle does not manage to cover the underlying disparagement in his voice this time. Look at that. So he does suspect you have hidden ambitions. Stone keeps eye contact with Robotnik for a moment longer (the eyes say “shut the hell up or I will make you regret it”), then dutifully lowers his gaze and imagines breaking Walters’ outstretched fingers instead.

“They angered me”, Robotnik takes over. He has forced the blankness into a caricature of a sardonic smile. “They stole something that was mine and I quite enjoyed taking out my revenge by disassembling their base of operations on a brick-by-brick basis.” Excellent choice of omission.

Walters’ eyebrows rise: “Corporate espionage?”

“Corporate thievery.”

“What did they steal?”

“Nothing of importance.”

Walters’ eyebrows wander higher. Something inside Stone constricts tighter. That was extremely unconvincing. Which has implications. He forces the flutter back down. Really not the right moment, Agent.

Two beats of silence, in which Robotnik and Walters survey each other. The doctor has squared up to his full height and encroached into the Commander’s personal space to loom over him, possibly to compensate for his poor deception via the way of social discomfort. Behind them, the guards shift uncomfortably.

“I can work with that”, Walters then says and leans back, bringing more distance between the two of them. He nods towards the woman with the clipboard: “Write that down, please.”

“If you can’t, we can always terminate this arrangement”, Robotnik says, aggressively rolling the R in the last word. The Commander looks at him with shock and pity: “You really think I would do that to you, Ivo? When I know how much this all means to you?” He guffaws and steps over towards the roped-off machines not currently in use, gesturing vaguely at the lab space: “Look at this treasure trove of ethically questionable science you’ve built yourself. Who else will support that? Who else is brave enough to fund your creative endeavors but good old Uncle Sam?”

“I could go private”, Robotnik’s face is slowly becoming more animated again, but there is a clear strain to it; the anger is seeping through the cracks in the volcano’s cliff face, “Sleep with a couple millionaires, get myself a sugar daddy. Open some bank accounts in Switzerland.” His words don’t carry the right finesse to properly hone the sarcasm.

Walters nods: “Oh yes, I’m sure by now you must have embezzled a couple million dollars. Enough to keep you going for a while. But eventually you are going to run out, because we both know you like to keep expensive hobbies.” He casually runs a finger over the mass spectrometer console. “That rocket fuel you mentioned last quarter, what was it, kerosene?”

“Hydrazine.”

“Ah yes, I recall. How much was it per gallon? Seventy-five dollars?”

“Ninety in the refinement quality I need.”

Walters nods, rubbing the dust from the spectrometer between his fingertips. “And how much do you need for a single tank fill?”

“...nine point five tons.”

“Which is how many gallons?”

Stone can hear a growl rise in Robotnik’s voice: “I got the memo, Walters.”

“Please, Ivo. Spell it out for my agents, you know they aren’t as good as you at doing the math. Impress them, will you?” He turns to the woman next to him: “He’s quite fantastic at mental arithmetic.”  

“Yes Ivo, impress us”, Stone hears the male guard smugly murmur behind him, and that doesn't only cross the line but pisses right over it. Before the guy can even finish his sentence, Stone has spun around and grabbed him by the collar, harshly pulling his face down to eye level. “You take his name out of your unworthy mouth right this second or you will have a very hard time pronouncing any more words in the near future”, he growls under his breath. He's peripherally aware that the other guard has reached for her gun, but none of them get to react because Commander Walters' voice rings out: “Agent Stone. Will you kindly let go of my employee?” Stone hasn't taken his eyes off the guard, who now looks sufficiently terrified at least, and gives him one last sharp look before forcibly unclenching his jaw and opening his fists to let him go. It costs a considerable amount of effort. 

“Such childish behavior is unseemly for an agent of your status, don't you think?”, Walters continues. He sounds exasperated, almost disappointed with Stone. 

“I apologize, Commander”, he says calmly, before ordering his expression and turning back around, hands behind his back to hide how tightly the fists are balled. 

“And you can ensure me that it won't happen again, can't you?”

Stone wants to dislocate his jaw. 

“Yes, Commander.”

“Thank you.” Walters turns back to Robotnik, who has watched the whole ordeal. “Now, where were we?”

Robotnik hasn’t taken his eyes off Stone, but his gaze seems distant. “Seventy-one-thousand and sixty-four point nine four gallons, rounded to two decimals”, he says monotonously.

Walter nods, seemingly elated: “I think we can all see what would happen if you didn’t have us to constrain you occasionally, so you don’t blow your entire budget on a single tank-filling, yes?” He laughs as if it’s the funniest joke on earth, then steps closer to the doctor. It almost seems like Robotnik is shrinking in his presence. “You know I always have and always will be in your corner, doctor”, Walters says and places a hand on Robotnik’s shoulder, “I promise you, whenever there is an incident where your glorious talents would be well-applied, I will be there in the chamber, advocating for you. They don’t understand your genius like I do, but they can’t argue with results.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. Walters likes to say that the doctor is free to leave this arrangement at any time, but everyone currently in this room knows that if Robotnik decides to go MIA, there won’t be a single file to his name. It would be like he never even existed. Breathe in. Breathe out.   

“Are you going to let me work in peace now?”, the doctor asks defeatedly.

Walters’ voice reveals a previously well-hidden edge: “I am going to leave when I am satisfied, Ivo. I am not yet satisfied.”

He makes a hand gesture and the agents, who have watched the whole exchange with badly hidden glee, finally swarm out. They must be used to working together; the way they move through the space screams attunement – even though they do not have their weapons out, their paths correspond to a strike team securing unfamiliar grounds. Sight check, left forward, corners, clear, sight check, right forward, corners, clear.

Stone is already calculating how fast he can make it across the lab before the guards catch wind that he has turned hostile. Only the suits are armed. The woman – stiff posture, belt strapped clockwise, didn’t step a foot on the grass outside; likely Marine. Could prove a problem. Take her out first. Dive around the chassis, keep the screens out of the crossfire. He wasn't even aware that his hand wandered underneath his jacket, at least not until gloved fingers close around his wrist. “Leave it”, Robotnik presses out quietly. Stone glances over. 

The doctor is looking ahead, face iron and jaw set hard, staring after the inspectors with barely contained hatred. 

“Doctor...”, Stone says under his breath, but his reply is a simple sharp shake of head.

“It's no use”, Robotnik hisses between his teeth, seeping venom, and his grip turns vice-like. Stone can feel the buttons dig into his skin, the electric tingle from conductive fingertips raising his arm hairs. Robotnik holds onto him as if Stone is the only thing keeping him from committing atrocities. How ironic.  

“I don't like how he talks to you.”

“Neither do I, Stone."

Unable to intervene, they are both forced to let the inspection unfold around them. Walters occupies the desks; he rifles through Stone’s files and Robotnik’s folders, leafing haphazardly through note collections and log books. He doesn’t put the files back in the right order either, just leaves them on the table. Idiot.

“Ivo, would you unlock the computer for me? I’d like to see your apps.”

Robotnik, who has not yet let go of Stone’s arm, digs his fingers in even deeper. It produces a painful twinge, running up Stone’s elbow to remind him that this wrist was sprained not too long ago, but before he can complain the fingers unclamp one by one. “Don’t do anything stupid”, Robotnik orders under his breath before leaving his side robotically. Stone keeps his eye on the far side of the lab: “Right.”   

The sharks slowly circle the docking platform on their hunt for blood in the water. Walters gestures to Robotnik, who unlocks the flight pod doors with a grimace and a wave, so their noses can pour in and sniff every nook and cranny. If Stone can’t fiddle with a trigger, he’ll need other relief, so he feels around in his pocket until he grasps the remnants of the bullet Robotnik extracted from his thigh. He begins to meditatively turn it between his fingers; slow at first, then faster when the male agent pulls out a little ultra-violet flashlight. Blue spills out from behind the tinted glass dome. Stone dearly hopes the bleach he used on the backseat was strong enough.   

The tightness in his neck and jaw muscles lasts the whole while they are investigating the area, a steady thrum just beneath the skin of a spring tightly coiled, ready to release at a moment’s notice. He doesn’t even know what would happen if the truth were discovered – Walters would probably blame Robotnik, but the doctor has already seized the blame with both hands. Which is curious because it... doesn’t make sense? At least not to Stone. It was his carelessness that resulted in production delays, suspicious activity, destruction of property and significant product loss. The doctor has nothing to gain from not throwing him under the bus. If Stone were punished for it, the worst that could happen would be handing in his gun and badge. There is much more at stake for the doctor. The thought twists in his chest and rubs against his heart, refusing to fit into the gaps intentionally left open. You should ask him about that later. Maybe you’ll even get a response. Not right now, though. Right now, Robotnik looks like he’s fractions of a degree away from fusing hydrogen into helium.

Echoes fill the otherwise oppressively silent expanse when the woman’s shoes tap tap tap across the linoleum over to where Walters awkwardly uses his whole arm to scroll through one of the holoscreens. She shows him something on her clipboard, pen tip whispering over the paper, and he asks her something Stone can’t make out. She shallowly shakes her head. He nods. At the lift of a hand, the male agent clicks off his flashlight and stows it back in his jacket. Stone releases a long, silent breath.

“Are you done?”, Robotnik hounds Walters as they reconvene across the door.

“In here, yes”, the Commander replies, his chest puffed out in a smokescreen of satisfaction, “All tippy-toppy, just as I expected from you.” His friendly tone does not waver for a second when he addresses his agents: “Search the backrooms. I want a full inventory of the immediate storage.”

Robotnik should have expected this, it is standard procedure after all, but Stone can fully understand why he is fuming: “So you trust me enough to handle copious amounts of flammable chemicals but not enough to give an up to date inventory list? I am shocked and heartbroken, Walters.”

“I’m truly sorry, Ivo”, the Commander replies. He must have a lot of practice with this lie, based on how smoothly it slithers through his lips. “It’s simply formalities, there is nothing to be done about that. I have to follow the rules in this one. But if what was stolen was not of any importance, we won’t find anything illicit here, will we?”

“Oh no, no, please, have fun disrupting my meticulously organized, extremely specific orderly categorization system while raiding my personal workspace. Would you like some refreshments and a foot massage with that?” Robotnik’s hands open and close at the side of his body, grasping for unseen throats. Stone wouldn’t be surprised to see smoke pouring out of his nostrils. A chained dragon, unable to prevent the imperial cavalry from invading his cave.

“Refreshments would be wonderful!”, Walters exclaims in delight and turns to Stone: “I have heard tall tales of your talents as a barista, Agent. I would love a demonstration.”

Thanks, doctor, Stone thinks. “With pleasure”, Stone says. If only he could remember the exact volume of formaldehyde that goes undetected on the tongue.

The woman hands her clipboard off to the man, who takes it and vanishes into the adjoining corridors, probably to take stock of all their weaponry in development. Stone’s jaw muscle slightly unclenches. He’s confident this agent is to green around the gills to possibly locate the hidden panel. He’ll feel the imprint of your hands every time he considers touching something he isn’t supposed to. That knowledge sparks enough satisfaction to keep him going while Walters and the woman tear through the kitchenette like they’re realtors on a home inspection. Walters opens the fridge and pulls a face when he sees chocolate bars next to chloroform, the woman seems to have taken an interest in his plants.

Stone operates the coffee machine on autopilot, his attention is everywhere except the menial task. He’ll serve the coffee black; if they complain he’ll wax poetic about traditional Arabian practices or something else they can’t politely refute.

“Is this weed?”, the woman asks him after inspecting his planters, and Stone loses all the little hope he had in her being a competent recruit because the plant doesn’t even look like cannabis.

“It’s conium maculatum”, he replies coolly. When she just squints at him dumbfounded, prompting him to explain, he sighs in annoyance: “It’s not weed. It’s hemlock.” She nods, face bearing the expression of someone who tries to outwardly project that they totally know what’s going on despite being well out of their depth, and Stone can’t help himself. “Careful, it’s toxic”, he adds with maybe a little more sass than necessary, right when she touches one of the leaves again, and gleefully watches her immediately pull back, rubbing her hand against her lapel. She stares at Stone, who hasn’t moved from his spot, and then stops fussing with the plants altogether to instead strut over to Walters, probably to ask him if Stone is allowed to grow that. Absolute imbecile.

Robotnik’s shadow gives him away seconds before he silently slips next to Stone.

“Toxic upon ingestion”, the doctor quietly observes, but Stone expertly picks up on the amused undertone.

“She doesn’t need to know that.”

“I am rubbing off on you.” Robotnik reaches between Stone’s arms, grabs a spoon and licks it before sticking it into one of the prepared cups. The smallest act of spiteful resistance. Stone stifles a grin.

“I haven’t done anything stupid yet”, he points out.

The doctor’s mustache quirks on a smirk: “Yet?”

“Can't promise I won't forget myself if they touch my coffea arabica.”

“You'll never get the blood out of the counter.”

“The space needs a splash of color anyway.”

Robotnik’s answer is a quiet chuckle with a manic edge to it, probably imagining the implied scenario.

Stone manages to get the refreshments to Walters and his pack of dogs before they begin repotting his plants. They all pull extremely entertaining faces, which serve as a quite conclusive metric on how used the individual participants are to drinking strong black filter coffee. Walters stirs his liquid as if (unknowingly) further emulsifying it with the doctor’s spit might somehow change the taste. If the questioning glance he throws Stone is anything to go by, he will thoroughly question any rumor of barista talents before testing them henceforth. Stone catalogues this as a win.

Eventually, the man returns from his quest in the storage rooms, holding his clipboard like a shield to protect him from the repercussions of failing to find anything illegal (because he obviously didn’t, it would have been a whole situation if he did). He does his best to not shake his head too obviously when silently questioned by Walters, but their faces tell enough of a story for something tight to slowly unclench in Stone’s stomach. He keeps his eye on the Commander, who takes in the report while staring at the doctor, eyes slightly narrowed and with less and less of the patronizing smile on his lips. It’s not hard to conclude how much his greedy hands must be itching for an opportunity to draw the chains even tighter, constrain the cage even more, bring more and more of Robotnik under his control. Truthfully, Stone doesn’t know why the doctor allows Walters, or really anyone, to walk over him like that. He is smarter than everyone in this chamber combined, probably than anyone he’s ever worked with combined, and Stone has seen the numerous backup plans and contingencies he has prepared in case things go topsy-turvy. As soon as Robotnik wants to break free, Stone has his shoes on and his bags packed. They’ll survive. They have emergency funds, bunkers, a couple of safe houses, and soon even a private satellite in orbit. Walters may have Robotnik convinced that nobody else would ever agree to work with him, but Stone disagrees. He’s walking proof of the contrary, after all.     

Soon, the inspectors shift their search pattern to clearly just trying to look busy, meandering around the different rooms grasping at straws to maybe find a speck of dust that doesn’t belong where it’s supposed to. One of them has taken it on to look in every trashcan. Every once in a while they will throw looks, whispering amongst themselves, faces turning evermore sour and snobbish. The woman takes a truly inconsiderate amount of time to go through each of Stone’s sticky notes one the fridge one by one, twice over, ogling him as if gauging a reaction of any kind. Stone stares at her, maybe a little provocatively. Come on. Give me a reason. She looks equally as disappointed when she doesn’t find a secret code of any kind.

“Happy to see your break room is still up to code!”, Walters tells the doctor when he emerges from the annex himself, “I was afraid you might have reconfigured it into a computer lab or something, like you did with the lightning rod and the fire escape.” He laughs as if remembering a childhood prank.

“Are you done yet?” Robotnik has been pacing around, getting more and more agitated the longer the intruders linger with no obvious goalpost in sight.

Walters clicks his tongue, but waves his agents over to where he is standing: “You really need to work on your patience, Ivo.”

“You need to work on your efficiency”, the doctor hisses. He crosses the room in long sharp steps, herding the guards further towards the exit. Stone doesn’t fail to notice he tactically positions himself cutting off their path to both the lab hangar and the corridor with the hidden panel, just in case anyone gets the bright idea to double check.  

Walters takes the clipboard from his agent and makes a show of going through it page by page, hum-ing and haw-ing while Robotnik angrily taps his foot on the ground. Maybe he imagines it, but for just a second Stone believes he can see the mask slip and actual dismay shine through on the Commander’s face. Catastrophe averted. When he looks back up and at Robotnik, his smile strains to reach the wideness it had before: “Just as I like to see: all picobello. Tower will not be happy to hear that, but I told him to adjust his expectations. Please sign right here, and then we will get out of your hair.” Robotnik snatches the pen out of his grip before he is even done speaking, scribbling his John Hancock on the page with an illegibility only a true doctor can muster.   

“When you feed this to Tower, send me a video”, Robotnik grumbles, “I want to watch him chew on it like a sheep.”

“Not so fast. Now that we are off the record-”, he hands the clipboard back to his agents and turns to Robotnik: “A word.” The doctor’s mustache twitches like he wants to snarl and expose his teeth to scare away the bigger predator, but he remains in his spot when Walters steps closer and lowers his voice: “I acknowledge you have a perfect operations record, and that despite the kerfuffle because of which we are standing here your work in Pakistan was outstanding as always, but we are stretching the limits of what I am willing to handwave, Ivo. I have put my faith in you and your technology when nobody else was inclined to take a stab, and this is how you repay me?” His grandfatherly expression stays meticulously carved into his features, only his eyes harden: “I better not hear about a stunt like this again, or I will have no choice but to constrain you.”

“Oh, you won’t hear about it alright”, Robotnik growls. He is staring daggers at Walters; Stone wouldn’t be surprised if he’d hear the crunching of metal from the control gloves giving under clenched fists.

Walters tuts: “You must see that we need each other, Ivo. You’re not just a danger to the world, you’re a danger to yourself.” He scrutinizes the doctor from head to toe, then his eyes soften. The smile returns: “Consider this your slap on the wrist.”

“Will you just leave.”

“Of course, of course, we’ve already taken too much of your time. I know you are a very busy man, but you know, the regulations.” Finally, he takes up motion, down the hall and towards the door. Stone overtakes them and holds it open to expedite the proceedings.

“Mister Jones, Miss Parker”, Walters calls his dogs, “Will you get the car please? These old legs aren’t what they used to be.” They scatter out the door into the blazing sun. Stone can’t help himself but take an abrupt step towards the man when he passes him, gleefully watching him flinch.   

Shortly before the sill, Walters turns around once more: “You look tired, Ivo. Maybe you should take a little break. Go to Olive Garden. That always calms me down.” He grins and leans forward as if he were sharing a highly coveted secret: “The breadsticks are divine.”  

Robotnik's mustache is trembling under the force of his clenched jaw, desperately trying to dam in just where he thinks Walters can shove his breadsticks: “Get. Out. Of. My. Lab.”

“Well. Not like I expected a Thank You. Good day to you, too, doctor.” He actually has the audacity to wave. Stone stares after him for just a moment longer as he slowly moves away, allowing himself to appreciate the beautiful temptation of a perfect lineup and a clean shot, before carefully choosing to close the door.

Robotnik sits in the middle of the room like a stick of dynamite.

Stone runs through his rolodex of destructible objects in the lab and reaches for the nearest one. He's barely grasped it when it's ripped out of his hands already and flung in an impressive arch towards the exit, shattering loudly against the door panel. The cup Walters used, he thinks. Easily replaceable. He hands over the next one. 

“AND STAY OUT!”, the doctor yells after the inspectors, “COME BACK WITH A WARRANT NEXT TIME!” Crash! “I hope your valve spring jams and you meet the tarmac at such a velocity that not even your CHILDREN will recognize your mangled face!” Crash! Glass and porcelain dust the floor. Stone makes a mental note to vacuum thoroughly before removing himself from Robotnik’s sphere of influence to retrieve the dustpan.

The doctor earthquakes into the main lab, chest heaving and fingers yearning for destruction. “GAH”, he spits, wringing his hands in the air, “I can’t believe this. How dare they. How dare they?” Pacing around the room, he changes directions multiple times, unable to walk off the emotion while Stone hurriedly scoops up the worst of the debris. He really wants to say something reassuring, but in his experience it’s better to let the worst of the storm release before the doctor is receptive to his affirmations. 

“A lab rat. I’m a fucking lab rat”, Robotnik murmurs between his teeth, which is arguably scarier than when he is yelling. He has bent over a tool-holder rolling cart, shoulders shaking with thinning restraint. “Do you know where the word robot comes from, Stone?” He’s breathing heavily, knuckles tight around the edges of the cart. “It comes from rabota, Old Slavonic. And do you know what it means?” The doctor tilts his head into Stone’s direction just enough so he can see the glint of fire in his eye. “It means servitude.” It’s the spark before the lightning strike; in an instant, rage bends Robotnik’s limbs to its will and his arms fling the rolling cart across the room. It shatters with a cacophony of noise, metal screeching and glass fragmenting as debris clangs and clatters to the ground. “FUCKING SERVITUDE. FORCED LABOR! BACKBREAKING WORK FOR SOMEONE ELSES SPOILS.” A penholder violently joins the growing pile of destruction, then the coffee cup. “From the moment of my birth I have been conscripted by name and nature to be EXPLOITED, taken advantage of, a pawn in a game of paper and ANTS.”   

Stone dodges an off-cut metal piece before bravely throwing himself between a flying screwdriver and the fragile holoscreens like a top-league baseball shortstop. In a way, this is good – he doesn’t have time to be angry about the government’s treatment of Robotnik if he’s busy not catching strays. Not that different, you and he – both processing your emotions physically.  Pressure has been building for the past hour and now the kettle is going off, whistling furiously. 

“What am I DOING?! I am letting myself be bossed around by a posse of primitives, an ignorant APE whose ego is as inflated as his waistband! That posturing pig and his pack of primates couldn’t even reach to my knee measured in IQ! Is this really all my life will amount to? Getting curve-stomped by ANIMALS?!” He kicks the half-formed tank skeleton elephant in the room, but the only thing it brings him is pain, judging by the yowl and the curse and the hopping on one foot.

From the ground where he is picking up tools, Stone snorts: “They may be monkeys, but they are blind as bats. You’ll teach that disrespectful imbecile to fear you.”

“One day”, Robotnik grits exhausted, “One day I will find something so significant it will change everything. Nothing else will matter anymore. Nobody will stand in my way. No Walters, no government, no morals, none. The only limit will be the sky and the galaxy beyond. Mark my words, Stone. Mark my words.” He is leaning on the table now, bowed without sufficient blood pressure to hold him up from the inside. The pain seems to have shaken him out of the immediate outburst.

While Stone continues to clean up the chaos, he is staring at the unfinished project; when the cart is righted he robotically throws himself into motion, taking one of the tools before stopping and staring again, halfway between conditions, just holding it. If he’d only let you offer him a cup of tea. Maybe that’d help. The silence holds until Stone has picked up every single pencil, which is also the point where he starts getting worried.  

“Sir, are you alright?”, he dares to ask, pauses, then adds: “Do you want me to hack into the traffic system and give them a speeding ticket?”

“Out.”

“...doctor?”

“I need to get out.” He forcefully shoves the tool back into its holder, whips around and muscles past Stone. “If I put my hands on anything jackass-sanctioned I am going to rip it into shrapnel. I need to work on something private, now.”

“What about the-?”, Stone tries.

“Shut up.”

Stone shuts up.

The doctor reaches for his coat. His immediate rage may have been quelled, but Stone can just barely see his hands shake as he puts it on with deliberate, measured movements. “Get the car. We are leaving”, Robotnik commands.

“Where are we going, sir?”, he asks, already on his way to the door.

“We are going to install your security system.”

Stone almost trips over his own feet.

Chapter Text

Robotnik stops when he steps foot into the kitchen, so abruptly that Stone almost collides with him. It only takes a moment to be informed what has captured the doctor's attention: “You still don't have a window.” It's impossible to tell if the sentence is a question, an accusation, or simply an observation. Stone flushes and follows the doctor's gaze to the far side of the room, where the empty window frame has been temporarily taped shut with house wrap. He scratches his neck. “There's been a problem with the manufacturer. It's just delayed, that's all.”

Robotnik turns his head to give him a sneering side-eye: “Comforting to know we'll be wasting high-end technology on a space a mildly determined child with a pocket knife can enter.” He reaches into the crate Stone carried here from the trunk and pulls out a tool belt, strapping it around his waist with practiced movements. Dressed in the all-black attire that still covers his greasy undershirt, he evokes Batman somehow.

“I hope the manufacturer you converse with makes their glass bullet proof, at least”, he mucks while digging further through the box. “They do”, Stone affirms, trying not to think about the price tag on his order, “I’m working on having the others replaced, too.”

“Beats me why you didn’t do that from the start”, Robotnik grumbles, “Do they not train you lemmings anymore?”

“The usual strategy is to avoid being stationary. I didn’t think...”

“Didn’t think what? That you’d be catching strays? Didn’t think, period. Not like you are working a job attached to the biggest target this side of the prime meridian, right?”

“Right...”, Stone murmurs. He thoughtlessly fidgets with his sleeves. There is a foreign entity in his sanctum, berating him about his life choices; a black grain standing out against the grey tiles. The knowledge that Robotnik has been here before, alone, without him present to observe his blind reaction to the space, scratches the back of his mind. What did he see? What did he think? Stone has a good idea of the former, having spent at least five hours of his first day back home as disgruntled crime scene cleaner, but the latter couldn’t be more enigmatic. How did he react to finding out Stone was gone? Would you have asked him last month, Stone would have laughed at the very idea that Robotnik would even notice his absence. But many things he was sure of have been proven wrong in the meantime. What drove him to borrow your aftershave, of all things? The questions itch underneath Stone’s fingernails, but he knows he won’t get answers even upon asking. So he has to settle for this second look. Not exactly MTV Cribs. The doctor seems curious, at least – he shoots glances this way and that way while they unpack the crate, tracing the edges and corners that frame Stone’s life outside the lab. 

Sometimes, when he thinks he isn’t being observed, Robotnik’s face shifts into an expression Stone can’t quite make sense of. It’s the doctor’s eyes, he thinks, something about their movement is different; they roam across the surfaces of the rooms they occupy in a way that is weirdly evasive, like he wasn’t looking to absorb information as usual but rather avoiding something else. He looks... almost nervous? It makes Stone nervous by contagion. Are you doing something wrong?

Especially the living room seems to catch the doctor’s interest, maybe more as a distraction based on the way he paces by the shelves observing (and undoubtedly judging) Stone’s book and DVD collection.

Back when they were starting work on the satellite, Stone went through a phase of watching every space documentary he could get his hands on, and in one of them was a story about two black holes on a collision course. He sat mesmerized on his couch, watching them spiral round and around each other in the starry expanse, having multiple near-misses before being inevitably drawn back into orbit, unable to escape a center of mass that’s no longer just within themselves. He keeps thinking of it, lately. 

Stepping back into the living room after retrieving the stepladder from the garage, Stone catches Robotnik nosing through his furniture, having stopped at the drawer where Stone keeps his backgammon and chess boards. Upon his return, the doctor’s head snaps up, oddly startled.

“Fancy a party?”, Stone nods towards the drawer, which promptly slams shut.

“You think you stand a chance against me?” Robotnik appears oddly raw in this place. When the anger peeled off him like old wallpaper during the long, silent drive, it appears to have taken a chunk of self-confidence with it.

Stone shrugs: “I could give it an earnest try.”

Robotnik snorts with amusement but turns away from the drawer: “We have things to accomplish, no dilly-dallying. I hope you have an impact drill because I didn’t bring one.” Stone can’t help but notice his fingertips trailing along the edge though, clinging to it until they’re forced to break contact. He squints and files that away for later.

The innards of the crate way overshoot the idea of a canned ready-meal. Stone can identify the classics: wide-angle security cameras, infrared sensors and motion detectors, but there are some oddities like fiber optics cable and arduinos whose purpose is unknown to him, which tell the tale of a larger, more intricate system.

He waits for a sign, but it doesn’t come; one task just feeds into the next and step by step they’re fully in it without consciously having chosen to start. He falls into lock-step behind the doctor, who prepares stacks of hardware here and there, ever the one-track-mind amidst the chaos. An odd synergy emerges: where Stone is used to integrating himself into Robotnik’s systems and flow at work (though isn’t this also work, technically?), here it is the inverse. Everything is twisted. Suddenly it’s Robotnik who is asking questions and Stone who’s answering – Where does your mainline cable run? How high is your gable? Where do you want this?

It throws Stone for a little bit of a loop, considering the doctor’s incessant rant about backbreaking work for someone else’s spoils, that he would choose more work for someone else’s spoils as his calm-down-project. The doctor never comments on it, though, not even the slightest undertone indicates that he regards this as anything similar to the commissions he so detests. He waltzes through Stone’s house like it were merely an extension of the lab, with the countenance of the one who owns it. In a way, he does – he pays Stone’s salary, after all. But Stone cannot help to viscerally feel all the ways his home easily bends to accommodate Robotnik. It almost feels like a betrayal.

This is supposed to be his safe space. Where he can unwind, where he can allow himself to freely indulge his fantasies without the ever-present reminder of their unachievability gnawing on his periphery. Seeing Robotnik, in the flesh, stand in the epicenter of where his name has been secretly whispered uncountable times conjures a strange feeling of shame, as if the doctor could ephemerally sense every attempt Stone spent practicing carving the curve of his mustache into latte foam, every longing sigh uttered over empty space on the couch, every desperate cry with his hands in debaucherous places. Robotnik was never here, yet he permeates the place with his profound absence; a space carved out in his shape, longing to be filled. And here he stands, on Stone’s stepladder, rawlplugs between his lips, drilling into the ceiling beams while Stone holds the vacuum, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Stone is not sure if he holds his breath against the dust or because he naively thinks the air pressure might prevent his heart from cleaving in twain. 

“Do you need me to do anything else, sir?”

“I need you to...”, he pauses briefly, cutting himself off by unsuccessfully shaking dust off his fingers, “...come up with some more creative epithets.”

Stone blinks. “Pardon?”

Robotnik grabs him by the corner of his torn sleeve and pulls him over. “It’s always ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes doctor’ with you. I’m getting bored, Stone”, he says while they are standing close, wiping his hands on Stone’s already ruined shirt, “I’m sure those aren’t the only two words you know. Use that little brain of yours. Entertain me like a good little dance monkey.”

“Would you like me to throw in a ‘no doctor’ once in a while to mix it up?”, Stone teases, which earns him a warning but amused glare from Robotnik’s steely eyes: “Don’t get cocky.” 

“I would never, your honor.”

“Not a judge, Stone; if I were, many things in this country would be ruled differently. Try again.”

“I’m sorry, monsieur”

“Getting worse.”

“Would you like me to stop, my liege?”

“I’ll write you up for disrespect if you continue. Go on, dig your own grave.” Robotnik has crossed his arms, looking down at him over his nose, trying to ban the amusement from his face with visible effort. Stone wants to tell him he’s beautiful.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he bows before the aluminum throne, says “Pardon me, I have given grave insult”, and quickly dips out before the doctor comes up with any funny ideas that involve the impact drill. Maybe also before he can see his misbegotten smile.

They route the power cable towards the hidden security cameras the doctor deposits in the drywall. They un- and rehinge the door together, installing an automatic lock that only opens on the scan of his eyeball. Robotnik presents him schematics for an Indiana-Jones-esque trap system so tailor-made for his floor plan that it betrays countless sleepless nights, on which Stone spends longer than he’d like to admit considering if he wants to trade his space to maneuver for the ability to dispense spikes on command.

When they move Stone’s kitchen herbs out of the way in order to reach the window sill, the doctor pauses for a moment.

“...hemlock”, he says.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re growing hemlock in the lab.”

Stone puts down the rosemary. “...I am, yes. I’m surprised you didn’t identify it earlier.”

Robotnik sneers: “I’m not going to spare a second look to your weird horticulture, Stone. Why?”

“Why am I growing hemlock?” Stone grins: “You told me, and I quote: If I bring anymore organic waste into the lab, it better be useful at the very least.”

A brief pause, then Robotnik starts to cackle next to him: “That’s your definition of useful? Deadly poison?”

“They all are.”

“Poison and coffee, huh?”

“I’d argue caffeine is a poison.”

“It’s a neurostimulant.”

Stone clicks his tongue: “Semantics.”

“So, is that your master plan? Infiltrate my circle of trust and then slowly poison me in my own four walls? How black widow of you.”

Stone can’t help himself: “...circle of trust?”

The flightiness is back: “Figure of speech.”

~

Installing the upgrades is only half the work. The other half is cleaning up the mess. Stone doesn’t mind, he finds vanishing dust satisfying and repetitive tasks meditative. The doctor, however, apparently holds different opinions.

“Would you like to help?”, Stone asks, amused, while emptying the vacuum bag into the trash. Robotnik, who is currently not helping and instead absentmindedly fidgeting with his tablet, looks up. “No”, he says bluntly, with that irritated Shouldn’t-that-be-obvious?-undertone Stone is well familiar with.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but I’m the installer, Stone, you’re the cleaner-upper. That’s how I roll.” He scoffs: “Besides, I have better things to do. Metrics to check.” Stone does neither miss the split second of hesitation nor the glance down at the tablet screen. He leans onto the vacuum handle, curious about those metrics: “One could argue I helped you install, too.”

“What, do you want me to don a maid costume and float through with a feather duster?”

“I... that would look... very...” Stone fails to come up with an appropriate adjective in the socially acceptable window. That’s gonna be stuck in your mind now.

“Life isn’t fair, Stone. Suck it up. Literally!”, Robotnik barks a laugh and extends one long leg to kick the vacuum, making his point. Stone pauses though.

“It should be”, he says. “We should get what we deserve, rightfully.”

“Boo-hoo, cry me a river.”

“Do you think it’s fair how Walters keeps you under his greasy thumb?”

Robotnik’s face hardens. Stone closes both his hands around the handle, ready to make his case: “You’ve been working for scraps! You give them diamonds and all they return is broken glass. That’s not fair!”

“It’s more complicated than that, Stone.”

“You regularly solve problems labelled impossible, you can’t tell me complicated would stop you, doctor. I know you’re more than capable enough to seize the means of production.”

Robotnik’s face goes through a convoluted series of expressions: “I appreciate the flattery, barnacle, but I’d prefer if you’d keep your nose out of matters that don’t concern you.”

‘Don’t concern you’ my ass, Stone thinks. Why else would the doctor lie to Walters if it didn’t concern him in some way? He decides to make one last push. “Then tell me”, he pleads. “I’ll help if you’d just let me. Tell me which buttons to push and I’ll do so in a heartbeat.”

Fazed by this declaration, Robotnik stares at him. A twitch runs through his lip, then he says: “That one” and extends his leg again to push down on the vacuum button, drowning out any further conversation. Stone looks at him for a moment longer, mildly disappointed, but the doctor has elected to actively ignore him.

~

The hammer that has been slowly dropping over the course of the day meets the anvil in a shower of sparks when Stone, putting away the stepladder, looks through the focal lens of the hall towards the kitchen and is struck by the image that presents itself. He hadn’t even realized how much he had lost his grasp on time until now, when the golden hue permeating through the windows paints the scene in shades of bloody sunset. A cave painting scrawled onto the domed inside of his skull, papering the walls of his mind palace

This... this is what he was afraid of. Why he postponed and procrastinated to the point it got him shot. A quiet moment, a lull in the action, enough to prevent his mind from snapping to the nearest task and to just... pause. To take in the scenery. It's beautiful, and dangerous at the same time. Robotnik has sunken into the intact chair, long legs propped up on the table in a position that looks oddly comfortable yet makes Stone's back ache at the same time. His pants have slid up to reveal slim ankles, the reflection of the setting sun through miniscule holes in the plastic shimmers in the shine of his shoes. When he lifts his hand and idly plucks at his mustache in concentration, Stone's heart constricts and shrinks into itself, because it would be so, so easy to imagine a world where he could wake up and walk down the stairs and be greeted by this sight every morning. 

It’s funny how the part of him that craves this domesticity is fundamentally at odds with the part that fell in love with Robotnik in the first place. That uncompromising drive Stone finds so alluring is the very thing that prevents him from ever settling or slowing down. Robotnik is devoted to progress above all else, at all costs. He lives his life with a brick on the accelerator, stopwatch in hand. He’ll never be satisfied. Not with anything Stone could give him.

His heart has not gotten the memo, though. Shackles rattle as something paces back and forth inside the confines of his chest, agitated by the trail it has picked up. It sticks its muzzle through the cage and sniffs at the inconsistencies, points at the patterns like a gundog. His pathos and logos are in a fistfight. For as much as he prides himself on his willpower, he knows his strength is waning; he can’t keep pulling the leash forever. But if he chooses to let go, there is no feasible way to predict what would happen, and he’s... gosh, he is scared. You got where you are by taking every possible risk, only to play it safe now? Stone watches Robotnik type notes on his tablet and swallows the lump in his throat. Coward. 

The doctor clearly needs cheering up, though. Between his eyebrows sits the tell-tale wrinkle of overthinking, maybe he is drafting strongly worded e-mails to Walters and his monkeys. A part of Stone regrets bringing it up, the afternoon outside of the lab has gone way too well to be tainted by the before-ness of that whole debacle now. He still has questions though, one in particular that sits on his mind, and to receive an answer, he’ll need distance and distraction. Well. If he can’t take action for himself, maybe he can for Robotnik. In fact, that gives him an idea.

~

Clack, it makes when he drops the chessboard down in front of Robotnik. The doctor looks up, a smirk forming on his lips as he sees the black and white squares.

“Getting cocky, huh?”

“I said I’d give it my best attempt. Maybe I can learn something.”

A fleck of light glints in Stone’s periphery; he looks up from where he is assembling the pieces only to catch the tail-end of Robotnik pulling off his gloves. “Then better pay close attention”, he says, stretching his fingers, “and better be worth the while to finish the party, otherwise I can just order you to lose and write you up for insubordination if you don’t.”

“Technically my shift ends at six”, Stone points out. “Until then, you are my boss. After that, you are my guest.”

Robotnik grins. “Then you better pray I don’t pulverize you in the next-”, he glances at his watch, “-thirty minutes.”

Stone has already begun setting up the pieces.

“I suspected you played”, Robotnik continues, watching him, “Where did you learn?”

Stone shrugs: “Here and there. My grandfather, a couple of matches with an old superior officer, stuff like that.”

“Trained in the art of war, I see. A dangerous game for a dangerous man.”

This time, he doesn’t bother to repress the smile: “Thank you, maestro.”

That elicits an honest-to-god chuckle: “I like that one. You may sprinkle it in once in a while.” He glances back to what Stone is doing. “Oh, no.” Wood scratches over the table when the doctor takes the fully furnished board and spins it around, not at all careful enough to leave any of the pieces Stone painstakingly assembled standing. “You’ll be playing white.”

Stone’s eyebrows draw up: “You’re giving me the first turn?”

“It’s more fun to beat you at a disadvantage.” He leans back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head, watching Stone sigh and set up the pieces once more.

“Ready?”, he asks when he’s done, only to be met with a snort: “Please, sycophant, I was born ready. Make your move.”

“Alright.” Stone looks to his pieces, thinks it over, then makes a decision. Pawn to D5. The game is on.

In hindsight, he should have expected the mind games; whenever he moves one of his pieces, Robotnik looks at him over his nose with a sometimes silent, sometimes verbalized: “Are you sure?”

“You’re just trying to make me second-guess.”

“I’m twelve moves ahead of you, sycophant, I’m trying to give you a chance.”

Stone hums: “But that would be nice of you, wouldn’t it? And I know you’re not nice. I think you’re bluffing.”

His reply is only a nasal scoff.

They dance around each other for a few turns; Robotnik stops commenting and instead leans back, observing the game (and sometimes Stone) over the bridge of his nose with mild curiosity bordering on disinterest. It is a strange regard, one that makes Stone recall being ogled by a teacher during a test and simultaneously stokes a competitive ember in his chest. You need to step your game up. He needs to impress the doctor if this shall turn out a positive experience, and he oh so dearly wants it to. So, he does what he promised – giving it his best try.

White bishop to G5. Robotnik captures his bishop. Pawn to E3, bishop to D4, check. White pawn takes black bishop. Move by move, they fall into the easy rhythm of turn based combat, locked in a moment of companionable silence only broken by the sound of lacquered rims on checkered tiles.

In that silence, Stone sees the chance to ask one of the questions that has been haunting him ever since the midday: “Why didn’t you let me tell Walters?”

“I don’t think you should be playing this game if basic tactical proceedings are really that enigmatic to you.”

“I just don’t understand what you have to gain from throwing yourself in blame’s way.”

“Of course you don’t”, he moves his pawn to put pressure on Stone’s knight. “Alright, barnacle, let’s assume we went with your option and told Big W the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth like a good little boy, what then? They take stock and find out the imbeciles took a long shot and got you in order to get to me. Unsuccessfully, but people start talking. Walters and his council of wheat starch will want to avoid any future disruptions, now you’re liability number one, congratulations. They withdraw you from your post, put you in a neat little terrarium with a heat lamp and an office desk to live out your next twenty years until retirement, and I get a brand-spanking-new blank-faced Barbie doll who is less knowledgeable than you, less experienced than you, less skilled than you, less fun than you, and makes less good coffee than you-”, he has talked himself into a frenzy, dramatically counting each affront on his fingers; Stone pushes his knight out of the way, “-and who I’m going to have to break in right in time for the end of year crunch, which I really do not have the time, resources OR patience to do.” Without even really considering the larger board, Robotnik follows the knight with his pawn.

“I... feel the need to thank you.” Pawn to E4.

“Do not mistake my selfishness for altruism, sycophant.” Pawn to E5.

Stone feels a smile creep up through his throat, which got suspiciously tight for a moment. “So what you’re saying is... you prefer having me around?”

“That is not what I said. It’s a matter of protecting the status quo.” 

Stone lets two beats pass before he follows up: “You think I’m fun?”

Robotnik groans loudly: “Make your move, Stone, I’m getting bored.”

Alright. Let’s make this less boring then. Stone considers the board for a moment before picking up his queen and placing it at the front lines, capturing the other black bishop. A risky move. If he falls for it, you may have a mate in five. If he doesn’t, you’re screwed.

Robotnik sighs: “Now what’s that supposed to be?”

“You tell me”, Stone grins, “I thought you were twelve moves ahead of me.”

“Why would you open yourself up like this? Come on, you’re supposed to be smarter than that.”

“Maybe I have a plan?”

“Is your plan blundering so hard I lose interest?”

Stone lifts an eyebrow: “Maybe I’m bluffing.”

“Maybe-”, Robotnik apes, “-you should have gotten out a poker deck if you’re hellbent on playing mind games.”

“I thought chess was supposed to be the mind game.”

Robotnik guffaws in his throat: “You should see what kind of abominations a bunch of bored and drunk ivy-league Oxford white-collars can twist it into.”

“Like what?”

“Strip chess. Real popular during my material science master’s.”

Stone clicks his tongue: “That sounds kinda fun, actually.”

“It has its applications.” A sort of reminiscent smile plays around Robotnik’s lips: “Particularly when you’re good at the game.” The suggestive comment doesn’t quite manage to overshadow the wistful note underscoring the anecdote, which surprises Stone. It is only very rarely the doctor lets on that during his long and studious life there are things worth remembering outside the factual information absorbed.

Allowing his mind to wander, Stone imagines a different Robotnik, younger by two decades or maybe three, bowed over a chessboard shirtless, surrounded by future Oxford graduates disproving their image as stuck-up nerds, cheering and drinking while he is locked in a battle of wills, wits and wiles with his opponent.

“It changes the strategy, you see”, the doctor continues, in the same dry tone one would use to describe a baseball game, “If every piece lost is clothing lost, the goal is no longer just to checkmate, but to capture as many pieces as you can before you checkmate. It becomes not just a game of skill, but a game of dominance.” The wistful expression has turned into a fond remembrance with a wild edge to it; the mustache obscures it but Stone is sure he can see a canine tooth edging the doctor’s lip. “Nary a thing more empowering than stripping down your foe to nothing but lint before you take their king.”

Stone swallows. Stone clears his throat. Stone squeezes out: “I can imagine”, but the things he imagines have little to do with chess and everything to do with the way Robotnik eyed the white king on the board like it was a prize he’d like to claim.

“Alas”, the doctor sighs overdramatically with eyebrows drawn to the edge of his hairline, “I’ll have to settle for Lady Macbeth.” Tap, tap, tap, he counts out every square between his rook and the target it is aiming for. Demonstratively he runs his fingernail over the crown-ridges of Stone’s queen before he flicks it, letting the wooden ruler roll lifeless over the checkerboard. “Oops”, he says, “Looks like you’re a widower now.”

“How’s that change the outcome of the play?”

“The king needs to grow a spine now.”

“All’s fair in love and war, as they say.” Stone locks eyes with Robotnik as he nonchalantly moves his own rook into the weak spot the doctor has opened up in his ranks: “Your move.”

Robotnik’s eyebrows rise, first in surprise, then on a grin. “Clever”, he murmurs. Squinting at Stone with flashing eyes, he staples his fingers together and thinks. Look at that, you made him think. And he does so for a while – Stone is a little proud of that, he has to admit – long enough that Stone can study him and his reaction to his risk-taking.

What confounds him is that Robotnik seems not only pleasantly surprised by the turn of events, but delightedly so. Like he wanted Stone to surprise him, even if he didn’t necessarily expect it. Stone knows Robotnik is a realist at his core, which makes him a pessimist to everyone incapable of understanding the full scope of his genius, but in this specific instance Stone gets the sense that he’d have been disappointed if his calculations had proven correct. Like he wanted to be wrong. Robotnik never wants to be wrong. The feeling of pride nestled in Stone’s chest swells, from a little lantern light to overwhelming radiance; he feels his face positively glowing. Of course, the doctor notices: “Stop it with that thousand-watt-smirk, sycophant, this doesn’t mean you’ve outplayed me.”

“I surprised you, though.”

“I calculated for that possibility, I just didn’t expect its probability.”

“Maybe next time you should expect to not expect something. Then it doesn’t count and you won’t have to admit mistakes.”

Robotnik raises his eyebrows: “You’re talking big game for someone who just sacrificed his queen.”

“Make your move and show me if it was worth it.”

Robotnik’s eyes flash with newfound competitive spirit.

The energy of the game changes. Robotnik leans forward, he plays less aloof, takes more time between moves. Something giddy bubbles through Stone’s veins when he notices that the doctor looks actually engaged in the party. Genuine amusement twitches his lips whenever Stone puts one of his pieces in danger. He looks like he’s having fun. It occurs to Stone that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the doctor this relaxed. His shoulders have dropped down, the hunch in his neck has straightened out; he leans loosely against the chair while thoughtfully twirling his mustache and he’s smiling. Not smirking, or grinning, or grimacing. Smiling. It’s beautiful. Maybe you shouldn’t look at it so long.

Stone doesn’t get to pull off the mate in five, because even with fewer pieces on the board Robotnik manages to somehow very effectively outmaneuver him. Turns become longer, and quieter, both of them done feeling each other out, locked in what could very well be the endgame because Stone quickly discovers he is losing ground. This is fun. You should do this more often. What might their matches look like after they’ve attuned to each other’s play styles? Would that eagle-eyed focus with which the doctor observes the board ever be fixed on him, gears turning behind that wrinkled forehead, trying to crawl inside his mind and read his intention? Stone shivers at the thought.

“Heh”, Robotnik grins at one point, “Let’s do something funny”, and three turns later Stone understands what he means when the black queen moves into a truly devilish spot where he is practically forced into Zugzwang. He’s mirroring you, Stone realizes. Robotnik is no longer playing against him, but with him. Oh dear. Stone swallows. He’s beginning to sweat and this time, summer has nothing to do with it.

Very reluctantly, he takes the queen, causing the doctor’s grin to widen into something one could very well describe as predatory. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, let’s settle this man to man”, Robotnik taunts, “It’s called the game of kings for a reason, isn’t it?”

The glint in his eyes gives Stone pause, it raises his arm and neck hairs. A chilling touch that runs down his spine, his sixth sense is tingling: You’re in danger. Not mortal peril this time, but a feeling he knows all too well - the flash of adrenaline, the way his heart beats in his throat; the addicting exhilaration creeps up on him again and makes him nervously fidget with one of the pawns he claimed. You may have shot yourself in the knee with this one, Agent.

“Bing bong – You just wasted your third chance to honorably forfeit”, Robotnik notes, his head playfully cocked to the side. If he wasn’t having fun before, he certainly is now.

“I’m not forfeiting”, Stone breathes.

“Really think you can pull this out of the mud, Agent?”

Shit, you like it when he calls you that. “Maybe”, he lies, “Besides, it’s not satisfying if you stop halfway through.”

Robotnik’s eyes invade his space. “Satisfying, huh?” He picks up his knight and moves it – forward, forward, left, rounding Stone’s pawn like a wolf circling a wounded deer. “Then you better have enough stamina for the endgame, else I’ll force you into ludus interruptus”, he doubles down on the entendre.

Stone carefully moves his last remaining bishop to safety. This game was supposed to be a fun distraction, not make him sweat like he was trying to light a candle in a pure oxygen environment. But that’s fun for you, isn’t it? “If there’s one thing I’m good at, doctor...”, he dares to participate in the tone Robotnik has struck, “...it’s enduring punishment.”

Robotnik’s face goes through an interesting twinge before he aggressively pushes forward his rook. “Your move.”

This is so much worse than in the lab, because in the lab there at least were things he could distract himself with. Tools to close his hands around instead of clawing them into his legs, distance to bring between them when it became too much. He’s unfiltered in this familiar space, unable to fully catch himself even though he’s still technically on the clock.

Pawn to H5. It gets taken by its opposed peer. He tries to escape, but it’s short-lived. You have dug your own grave. Though Robotnik is not at all innocent in that matter, because he is not playing fair, not if you ask Stone. It takes all of his focus to think about game moves and not about all the other things that fight to take up his attention – like how the doctor chews on his lip when he’s smug or how his fingers caress the chess pieces or how his voice drops into a deeper baritone when he’s being sardonic. Is it honest or tactics? Mettle or mind games? Whatever the intention, it is working. Thank the star’s you’re sitting down. Back at the lab, the watch alert is probably firing up a storm every time Robotnik’s eyes dart up from where they trail the table. A table you would much rather be bent over.

The doctor puts his king in check and Stone moves it to possibly the worst place on the board just to keep the game going for a few moves longer. “Run all you want, little white rabbit”, Robotnik grins smugly and Stone feels the sudden need to bite into the tabletop. Hard. He’s right. There is no escape. But Stone doesn’t want to escape, he doesn’t want it to end. He sacrifices his pawns and his knight, throwing them in the doctor’s way like cannon-fodder to postpone the inevitable. All in vain, of course in vain.

“Check...”, Robotnik sing-songs, letting the word run over his tongue like honey, “...mate”, he picks up the black king and places it onto the final square with a grip so ginger it is usually reserved for the most fragile of mechanisms, and sometimes on rare occasions Stone’s face when he is presumed unconscious. Fully aware the doctor is staring at him, he can’t take his eyes off the single finger still resting on the black cross.

“Do you surrender?”, Robotnik mocks. “Finish it”, Stone replies. His own voice sounds hollow in his head, like he’s hearing it from the far side of the empty cavern where his brain used to be before it leaked out through his ears.

There it is again, that flash across the doctor’s face – a volley of emotions, like forwarding a video tape too quickly. All gone too fast to examine but unquestionably there. Only the movement of mustache hair betrays the in- and subsequent exhale, before Robotnik slowly moves the black king forward and into the space of the white king. He doesn’t push it over like he did to the queen, instead delicately picking it up between index and thumb, turning it in the light for a moment before it vanishes into his fist, completely enclosed. “I win”, he declares.

Stone stares at the place his king used to be, thoughts racing around an empty head. He feels the need to apologize, for some reason, as if Robotnik could look in his eyes and glean the turmoil of his insides through the windows of the house. If he speaks, the butterflies will surely leave their prison through his teeth and swarm the room, eclipsing the sun. The cage strains under their onslaught, daring to splinter his ribs. Somewhere in the darkness of the well, dribbles of slobber hit the ground in rhythm with his breath.

“Thank you”, he slips. Which, between that and I’m sorry, is arguably the worse one.

The doctor blinks like a woken sleepwalker, suddenly become aware of his surroundings. He stares at Stone, then through Stone, then at the house-wrapped window gently bowing in the summer breeze behind Stone (who has thoroughly lost the ball on how to interpret this particular pattern of behavior).

“Chrm”, Stone clears his throat and forces a smile, fully aware that the doctor can tell when he is and isn’t honest: “Good game, I mean.”

Two beats of silence. “...yes”, Robotnik then says. The word sounds drawn out and not at all like an affirmation (or even an agreement for that matter). “Good game.”

Stone feels his smile strain. He covertly adjusts his erection into his waistband and quickly exits the room – to return the chessboard, and maybe also to leave a bite mark on his fist.

When he returns, he finds Robotnik bowed over in his seat, face flat on the tabletop, tablet limply held in his grasp, logbook open but page empty. It looks like he’s tried to take something down and has just... given up. Stone stops in the doorframe, unnoticed. He can see the doctor’s back moving up and down with every breath. He wants to place his hand on it, give reassurance, or maybe just feel his warmth.

Allowing himself one last look, he quietly clears his throat as to not startle the doctor. It doesn’t work, he startles anyway: “STOP sneaking up on me like that!”

“I’m sorry, it’s a habit.”

Robotnik has reflexively turned off the tablet, so that Stone couldn’t catch another glimpse even if he wanted to. They have a moment of eye contact, Robotnik from his seated position looking up at him for a change. Stone has to think about the black holes again.

Like a rubber band being stretched, the moment bends but doesn’t snap when he unintentionally wins against the world champion of staring contests, the doctor suddenly becoming very interested in the right fit of his sleeves when he moves to get up. Disappointment throbs in Stone’s chest at the sight; he had hoped to not give an impulse in his escape, but now the precedent has been set. The patriarch has slapped his thighs at the barbecue – this gathering is being dispersed.

Outside, the sun has almost fully set. Only the faintest slivers of orange are visible through the treetops outside the unobscured window, the lit inside of the house creates a flickering fire-side island in the dark wolf-infested wild. Caught in his musings, Stone feels the presence before he consciously registers it; the warmth and the scent and the electrochemical tingle right underneath his outermost layer of skin.

Robotnik has stopped in his momentum, lingering in the doorframe like a pendulum at its apex, unclear in which direction it will drop. A strange sense of deja vu, that. His pupils are unable to decide what they want to focus on; Stone watches them flick between multiple different targets – his eyes, window, table, chair, eyes, counter, eyes, door, eyes, door, face, floor, eyes once more. As usual, he feels short of breath when they are this close, air drawn from his lungs by the gravitational anomaly that is the doctor. 

Would you like to stay?, he wants to ask, For coffee or tea or maybe a rematch?, but he doesn’t get the words out. “It’s past six”, is all he manages to state.

“I should go”, Robotnik says, his voice hoarse. He doesn’t move.

There are points here; little hints spilling out between the gaps of congruency between what the doctor says and how he acts. The elliptical orbit of their interactions, close one moment then distant the next. The nervousness. The study. Bits and pieces that if put together correctly might form a more coherent picture of what may have been going on in Robotnik’s mind for the past weeks. Words, words, the problem is always words.

Maybe he imagines it. Or maybe it is wishful thinking. But once, just once, he catches the doctor's gaze dip down to his lips, and that’s all it needs for something inside Stone to quietly unravel.

“Permission to do something profoundly unprofessional?”, he chokes out before he can change his mind.

The question obviously rips the doctor out of whatever intense machinations his mind is currently ruminating on (door, eyes, floor, eyes), and his gaze suddenly snaps to awareness. “Hm?”, he makes before gesturing impatiently and muttering something that Stone knows to roughly interpret as “Go ahead and don’t waste my time”.

It's not a No. Did you hope for a No? Too late to back out now anyway. You made this bed, now lie in it. The look of sudden surprise on the doctor’s face when he grabs him by the lapels of his coat is the last thing Stone sees before he screws his eyes shut and kisses him.

Robotnik is a wall. Completely frozen in place, a column of chalk that Stone is clinging to as if his life depended on it; hands fisted into the coat, he could just as well be kissing a robot. How ironic. And he tries, he tries to pour all of his desperation and longing and years of words piling up beneath his tongue into the kiss, to breathe life into this statue like Pygmalion once did, but he is not blessed by Aphrodite and his lips are not magic and his efforts are futile and his opposite remains ivory.
What were you thinking?
It slowly dawns on him that he has just made a terrible mistake.
You weren't thinking.
When desperation turns into the cold grasp of dejection and the doctor still hasn't moved, he slowly loosens his grip and starts to pull back, apology already forming on his tongue.

Robotnik is having none of it. Just instances before the last bit of contact is fundamentally broken, the spark of animation finally takes hold and the previously inert machine sputters to life. His arms fly up, both hands grasp the sides of Stone's skull and the doctor – kisses back. 

It's whiplash, physical and emotional. Instead of kissing, Stone is now being kissed, and instead of a wall, he is now faced with a living, breathing, active, responsive human being. The desperation he traded into the kiss gets absorbed and flipped and turned upside down and inside out into something unrecognizable and aggressive; his head collides with the wood of the doorframe, he gets shoved and bitten and it's violent and it hurts and it's perfect. Stone's hands find the lapels again and pull him even closer, the hair on their lips tangles and creates an exhilarating new contact point, he's trying to keep up but it's like attempting to keep up with a cresting wave, or a tornado. Suddenly he is glad about the doorframe at his back, because his knees are getting a little weak.

It’s over before he knows it has begun. Robotnik flies away from him – not out of orbit, just out of reach – and for a moment they both stare at each other, mutually shocked about what just transpired.

"I'm attracted to you", the doctor says like he's just solved some grand mystery, and Stone can't help but laugh: "What?"

“I am not repeating myself.”

Yep, Stone is most certainly dead. Fell off the stepladder, cracked his head open and is now vividly hallucinating while his brain juices slowly seep into the floorboards.

Robotnik has started pacing up and down the hallway. His coat trails behind him at every sharp turn, on some paces he clasps his fingers in front of his mouth and murmurs unintelligibly into them, on others he runs them over his head and ruffles his hair. Stone can’t do anything more than follow his path with his eyes and wait. The little computer in his head is stuck at processing. Error 101: Unexpected Outcome. He reaches up and runs his thumb over his lip, right where he can still taste the memory, and like the press of a button Robotnik stops dead in his tracks and stares at Stone. “That”, he begins, lifting one finger, “...was by far the stupidest, most idiosyncratic thing you ever did in my presence.”

“You technically gave permission.”

“I didn’t give shit, Stone. You exploited conversational quirks by obfuscating your intent behind an equivocal inquiry to achieve a desired outcome.”

He can’t even argue with that. “I only started it. You finished it.”

“I...” Robotnik curls his lips into a frustrated frown. Stone watches his jaw clench and unclench, fighting the truth before it forces its way out: “I did.”

“...on accident?”

The doctor’s face has crumbled together into a shriveled lemon of an expression. “No”, he says around his teeth, sounding equally surprised and unhappy with the revelation.

Stone feels his own face slowly contort without his active permission. Mouth corners tug into a smile that grows wider and wider with every second. Something flutters in his chest, straining against the restraints. He probably looks unhinged. And Robotnik notices: “Stop grinning like an imbecile! As if this isn’t your fault! I didn’t choose to be attracted to you, you made me!”

“And here I thought you had a PhD in chemistry.”

Robotnik's mustache bristles when he pulls a face somewhere between an exasperated eye-roll and a badly hidden snort. “That chemistry degree is about as far back as the last time I was attracted to someone. I really have better things to think about most of the time.”

Stone raises both eyebrows, surprised: “Really?”

"Really?”, Robotnik apes back, “Oh for the love of–... Yes, really, stop looking so incredulous, what would I gain lying about this? Your brain is at least half of what's attractive about you, if you stop using it now this was a tremendous waste of time and effort.” 

There is a lot of information in that last sentence that would be worth investigating, but in his love-drunk state, Stone of course latches onto the most trivial one: “What’s the other half?” He leans against the frame, still with that stupid grin plastered onto his face. He can’t remove it, it’s stuck there forever now.

“If I tell you, you’re going to be annoying about it, so I won’t. STOP looking like a kicked puppy.”

Stone tries his best, but his facial features do not obey him anymore. He lies in a crater of his own crumbled walls. Robotnik squints at him. “What interests me is: You started it. Why?”, he asks and once again Stone can’t help but laugh. Well, less a laugh, more like a manic cackle. It sounds awkward in the silence, way too loud for how close they stand together, with the weird echo of sound bouncing around between two rooms. He rests his head against the doorframe. “I’m sure you can figure it out, doctor.”

“I’m sure you can figure it out”, Robotnik apes back again, then huffs and stares at Stone like he wanted to x-ray him with his eyes. Stone lets it happen. He’s decided to shatter his own safety cage when he made the move, this is the most open and vulnerable the doctor will ever see him. There is nothing left he could hide behind. If Robotnik wanted, he could kill him right now. A stab to the heart, nothing more needed.

Instead, he slowly watches Robotnik’s features shift from their sour positions as he takes everything in. You can see the gears working behind the scenes; a little twitch in the lip that bobs one half of the mustache up and down like a nervous cat’s whiskers, eyebrows drawing together into a labyrinth of wrinkles, eyes flicking from one place to the next but periodically landing back on Stone’s face as if to double check. Gradually, the frustration and perplexity slide off his face as it settles into something blank and strangely familiar. 

“You never said anything.” Above all else, he sounds confused now. It’s the same tone of voice he uses when confronted with an irrational problem that defies him: That doesn’t make sense. Weirdly enough, Stone feels like he’s looking into a mirror. Error 101: Unexpected Outcome. Maybe they’re not as different as he thought they were. 

Stone snorts: “What was I supposed to say? Hello doctor, I see that you are upset, have you considered blowing my back out until you feel better?”

Robotnik stares at him as if he'd grown a second head. 

“You see how little that would have helped?”, Stone defends himself. “I kind of thought you knew already. Given how you were studying me and all.”

The doctors eyebrows shoot up: “You really think I was studying you?”

“...weren’t you?”

Robotnik starts laughing, and a part of Stone feels reassured because it has the same manic edge to it as his own. “I know you’re a man of many sins, Stone, but I didn’t think vanity was among them. No, sycophant... you’re just a variable.”  

Stone needs a moment to metabolize that. In his mind, he runs through every index where he noticed Robotnik taking notes with the new context. He feels like laughing again.

“What’s your null hypothesis?”, he eventually asks the doctor and when their eyes lock, he sees resistance well up in them for a moment before the contrite expression takes back over. Robotnik curls his lip and exposes his teeth. “I am not currently experiencing attraction”, he answers Stone’s question, making it sound like a dare.

Stone nods: “So that’s your null. You didn’t even start with it as your main thesis.” Blind, blind, blind; the metal of his ribcage fissures; your eyes can be tricked but your instinct cannot.

“We are ending this line of questions.”

“Wanna test for consistency?”

The silence is deafening for a moment, before the doctor makes an amused sound deep within his throat and his expression takes on a sly, almost predatory line: “You are truly deranged, aren’t you?” It’s an observation, not a question, and something about it makes the laugh bubble up in Stone chest again. Giggling like a maniac probably doesn’t help thwart the accusations of derangement, so he just shrugs defenseless.

The doctor stares at him, teeth worrying his lip, obviously overthinking something. Then a twitch runs through his face and he presses out: “Argh, screw it”, and the next thing Stone knows they are kissing again.

Stone has thought many times about kissing the doctor, uncountable times; in crowded meeting rooms and in the darkened solitude of his own bedchambers, with his hands on coffee cups and with his lips pressed on strangers'. Both his humble expectations and his wildest fantasies fizzle into atoms upon contact with reality.

Robotnik is vigorous. Inquisitive. What he lacks in sensuality he makes up for in curiosity, he doesn't only kiss but probes, tests, explores, with a thoroughness as if he were planning to write a paper about the experience. He's also rather bitey. When yet another nip sends a spike through Stone’s nervous system, he decides he is done being steamrolled and starts contributing to the kiss. He doesn’t know what this means to the doctor, if it even means anything at all, but Stone is going to take everything he can get his hands on – arms, shoulders, chest, neck, lips – everything Robotnik is willing to give he will take and hoard and treasure like a dragon, even if it’s just a single moment turned memory upon morrow. Warm skin touching his face because the doctor hasn’t put his gloves back on summons a longing tinged by last months memories, heavy with the accumulated weight of every night it has haunted him. Robotnik’s thumb brushes along his ear and the longing turns into a sharp pain behind his breastbone. The beast howls and rakes its claws across Stone’s heart. Ache mixes with ecstasy into an exhilarating liquor that burns through his blood vessels heartbeat by heartbeat, smokes through his lungs like nicotine with every breath traded between kisses. It only takes one taste of the drug that is Doctor Ivo Robotnik to become helplessly, hopelessly addicted. If you’re a distraction, you’re going to be the best goddamn distraction there ever was.

He reaches up and hooks his fingers behind Robotnik’s jaw, pulls him closer and chases after his lips when they break contact to breathe. Their teeth knock together unpleasantly before they find their rhythm again, another attack sends a thrill of pain through him and Stone decides to take revenge with a bite of his own, which draws a sound from the doctor that will follow Stone into every lonely hour for the rest of his life. Maybe you can die happy after all. He tastes blood and mustache wax and he doesn’t care. Robotnik's hand lies loosely above his collar bones, span between index and thumb resting against his throat, not doing anything, just laying there, and it's driving him insane.

A part of him, robbed of its reins, yells at him to stop, to think, to pull back and shield his heart from inevitable breaking, but its voice is drowned out. The beast is inherently selfish in nature. It ravenously gorges itself on all that has been made available, with no regard if that may be rotten to the core. Robotnik’s fingers are bare and vulnerable on his skin, Stone reaches out and covers them with his own.

Eventually Robotnik pulls back and reaches up to thumb his bottom lip where Stone had bit him, expression something of mild surprise and intrigue. Stone breathes heavily and follows the movement with his eyes – he is staring blatantly and openly now; something locked away at the bottom of a well has broken free of its shackles and it is hungry.  

Robotnik locks eyes with him and grins: “You should look at me like that more often.”

Stone doesn't compute because his brain is too busy liquefying in his skull cavity. “I get the sense our productivity would significantly decrease if I did that”, he hears himself say.

Something about that rattles the doctor, even if it may just be offense that Stone would bring up something as distasteful as productivity while making out. He immediately regrets his words, too. Attempting to make up for the slip he tries to pull the doctor back into a kiss, but it turns up shallow and unfocused. The moment is broken. He separates, keeping close. His hands still rest on Robotnik’s, but the doctor slowly pulls them out from underneath. Unsure of what happens now, Stone focuses on breathing, trying to get the oxygen in his brain back up to normal levels. The space between them stretches when Robotnik turns, covering the bottom half of his face in a gesture that could be anything from rubbing his chin to wiping spit off his lips.

“I should fire you for this”, he says.

“Please don’t.”

“I said I should, not that I’m going to. Were you even listening to me when I explained how much of a hassle that would be? Or were you busy planning to shove your tongue down my throat?”

 “I wasn’t exactly planning this, you know”, Stone admits.

“Good. If you were, I’d be severely disappointed. I can think of two dozen better places for a first kiss than between doors. There’s not even champagne.”

“I thought you hated all that kitschy stuff.”

“I do. But you evidently don’t, I’ve seen those chick-flicks on your shelves. You’re probably the kind of guy who cries at Dirty Dancing when the insufferable love interest leaves.”

“You’ve seen it?”

Robotnik rolls his eyes: “I had expected more from the title.” He crosses his arms, moving even further out of Stone’s space, avoiding eye contact.

“So... I was right”, Stone continues bravely, “You do want me around.”

“It’s not that you’re right. It’s just a coincidence that what you said happened to line up with the facts.”

Stone snickers, overwhelmed. Looking at the doctor, he allows his eyes to linger – maybe for the first time without the pressure of averting them at a moments notice biting his neck, and also without forcibly shading them with doubt. Robotnik has slipped one control glove back on and twists his fingers inside the wire-studded fabric, pinching seams into a never-right position. It’s a sight Stone would have thought impossible, witnessing the doctor in a field he is not an expert on. He almost doesn’t dare to think of him as unsure; it’s so contradictory to everything he is and yet it seems the word most fitting to describe him in this very moment. Every gear in the clockwork is turning; he can see it in the nose-wrinkle, the lip-murmur and the occasional twitch in the right ring finger.

It strikes Stone that the gloves serve as much as armor as the rest of his getup, maybe even most above all; a barrier against the unfamiliar, blocking the outside from breaking in and the inside from leaking out. Stone wants to kiss his knuckles and tell him it’s okay. But he doesn’t know how to do or say that, so he does what he does best: he observes and stays quiet.

“You better not skip town as soon as I’m out the door”, Robotnik admonishes, even though they must both be aware that it’s not Stone who is in danger of doing that between the two of them, “I need your fingers to finish the stupid tank Walters wants.”

Stone chuckles. If anything, he’d be even more difficult to get rid of now. Inconsistent rewards prove addictive; he’ll be glued to the doctor like a piece of gum sticking to his sole. He may very well be the rat pushing the pleasure button until it dies. He’s okay with that. “Are you sure that’s the only thing you want my fingers for?”, falls out of his mouth before he can stop himself. Robotnik’s eyes gloss over with that thousand-yard-stare again, and Stone pinches his nose bridge: “Sorry, sorry. I’ll shut up now.” You can think about that in private with a glass of single malt. The doctor looks like he is this close to start pacing again.

Would you like to stay?, a voice whispers from the back of his head again. Stone admires its optimism – it’s quite obvious from the doctor’s phrasing that he plans on continuing with his plan to leave. The smile he gives Robotnik is apologetic, and maybe a touch wistful, before he fully severs the connection and slips out of their bubble, retrieving the empty crate from the floor. Partially just so he has something to do that isn’t standing and staring.

“Yes, you better”, Robotnik mutters his reply, “I don’t want to hear another word unless it explains to me what the hell you’re expecting to gain from this.”

“If I can be honest with you, doctor, this is as far as I’d gotten.”

“Of course.” The ‘I expected more foresight from you’ remains unsaid, but it is certainly implied.

This is... weird. It’s like in a matter of minutes they’ve gone from standing on separate cliff faces connected by telephone wire to only a few feet apart but talking through a brick wall. It’s not bad. Just different. For the moment, it is preferable. He’s not really a sledgehammer guy – metaphorically, that’s the doctor’s forte – but maybe he’ll invest in a chisel.

Taking the crate from his hands but obviously not really knowing what to do with it himself, Robotnik stands in the hall looking a little lost, in Stone’s opinion. His expression is quite similar to every brick of the construction crumbling away in the lab earlier today, when he had Stone flush against the wall, actually. Which, with renewed context... hmm. Maybe you should do that more often. Claws dig into one of his shoulders, a leash yanks on the other one:

Go on, whispers the devil, take his hand and kiss it, turn on the charm, he won’t be able to resist you. You will get what you want.

Leave it, the angel whispers, this already has the potential to ruin you, do not worsen it by rushing. You got a kiss, that alone is a win.

He’s gotten quite practiced at curbing his own enthusiasm. Emotionally, there is not much more he can do. Stone has given the impulse; he has sent his signal out into space, bravely announcing to the void: I’m here! Are you receiving? It’s now on the void to signal back.

“Alright. Enough”, Robotnik says, violently straightening up. He wrenches himself away from his spot and opens the door, crate under one arm. Stone can see the strain of finger tendons underneath black nylon where they close around the handles, and he needs to avert his gaze lest he pulls the doctor back mano-e-mano.

“I will see you tomorrow. Do not dare to be late”, Robotnik continues, one leg over the sill, lingering. Reluctant reassurance, but reassurance nonetheless. When Stone goes to smile, he discovers with horror that he has never stopped. It may be well and truly permanent.

“I couldn’t”, he says, “Not with your work protecting me.”

Another step in front of the sill, although it looks more like a stagger. “Aside from the window”, Robotnik’s voice sounds tight.

“Aside from the window”, Stone admits, “But I think I can handle a mildly determined child with a pocket knife.”

Something in the doctor’s countenance relaxes ever so slightly at those words. Maybe it’s the mutual reassurance, maybe the echo of his own words, maybe something else altogether, but Stone watches his shoulders slump and the lines on his face soften. Robotnik snorts, then turns without another word and starts strutting out into the warm summer darkness, over to where the car is parked. Only a few feet and you can’t hear his steps anymore over the mating calls of the cicadas.

Stone stares after him for a moment longer, then he manages to close the door before all tension drains out of his body and his back meets the door panel. Counterintuitive impulses mix together and from the simultaneous urges to both do a triumphant fist-pump and double over crying arises a balled fist that he sinks his teeth into to stifle a throaty noise, before thumping it back against the door. He hasn’t expected a proper goodbye, but it still momentarily feels like the air is being drawn out of his lungs. Then again, it’s not a goodbye, is it? He did say he will see you tomorrow. Definitive future, not conditional. Truth be told it almost sounded like a threat. Like the alternative is too scary to consider. The manic laugh returns to Stone’s throat, free enough without audience to mangle into something halfway to a sob, tinged with shock, anxiety, relief and joy. He feels the need to take a hot shower, and go on a long jog, not necessarily in that order. Inhale, exhale. It still smells like sawdust and silicone in the hall, with the slightest hint of motor oil and mustache wax. Stone pushes off the door to go get changed and pour himself a drink.

The earth continues to rotate, the planets continue to orbit, and with a cloak of stars a new world order settles into trajectory. Stone continues his evening with a spring in his step. He can’t wait for dawn.