Chapter Text
An uneventful day at base.
At least, that’s what Killjoy assumed—she had woken up at around noon, managed to sneak undetected into the communal kitchen for a cup of lukewarm coffee and a bagel, before she stayed holed up in her lab to tinker with her turret for the entire afternoon. But, considering Brimstone isn’t flooding her phone for project updates and that the most notable message in the VP group chat was Cypher complaining about packets of his expensive tea going missing…yeah, this day was chill, and Killjoy aimed to take full advantage of that.
So there Killjoy sat, in the middle of her lab; legs crossed across the floor as she did some light repairs and maintenance on her turret who seemed unenthused, with nothing but the steady whirring of the turret and the lively beat of some EDM music from her playlist keeping her company.
Then, suddenly, a familiar, soothing hiss of the automatic sliding doors slid open, briefly breaking Killjoy’s concentration on readjusting her bot’s wiring. Despite that, she doesn’t look up, figuring that it was one of her fellow agents simply dropping off their gear for the genius to do repairs on. When the tech genius had first started offering her repair and maintenance services on everyone’s gear, the agents had initially politely greeted the engineer whenever they came by her lab, sheepishly and shyly asking her to repair their bullet-ridden equipment after battle. But it had been happening long enough that there was no longer any need for any pleasantries or small talk, so the agents had simply started to come by Killjoy’s lab and wordlessly drop their gear off. Killjoy didn’t mind, she was familiar enough with everyone’s equipment to fix it without their input, and while she was chatty; there really were times where she’d rather not be interrupted with her work, especially those with pressing deadlines—which, in her line of work, really could mean the end of the world if she couldn’t accomplish it on time.
Briefly, she wondered whose gear she will need to take apart and fix again; would it be Sova, after his owl drone had been mercilessly shot at during battle? Or it could be Deadlock, her sonic sensors possibly malfunctioning and failing to detect flanking enemies? Perhaps it could even be Cypher—not that he needed her to repair his gear, but that he wanted to steal-ehem, borrow her equipment from under her nose?
“Helloo? Killjoy, Gatinha—you here?”
Killjoy paused from cutting off a wire; hm, it was Raze, so none of her probable guesses were correct. Regardless, she wasn’t surprised either. If one were to ask any agent that had spent enough time within the Protocol of who they thought had spent the most time in Killjoy’s lab other than Killjoy herself, everyone would have unanimously agreed it was Raze.
Not that Killjoy minded in the slightest—Raze was enjoyable company while the two of them tinkered or messed around in the lab with her amazing taste in music and her affable demeanor, and working with a fellow engineer meant Killjoy finally had someone knowledgeable about robotics and mechanics to bounce ideas around with. They had spent so much time with each other that they considered each other friendly rivals and best friends; even outside of the lab and work, often sneaking outside base together to go clubbing and attend concerts.
Not to mention…
Inadvertently, Killjoy let out a small, fond smile at the thought of Raze—in the way the duelist brightened up every room she entered with her lively vibe and jokes, in the mesmerizing manner her body moved and danced under disco lights, in her insightful and creative inputs and suggestions in regards to Killjoy’s tech.
Easygoing, intelligent, and drop dead gorgeous—
Exactly Killjoy’s type.
Killjoy wasn’t some lovestruck teenager grappling with her first crush; she has had enough relationship experience to discern and admit to herself that—yes, she does have a crush on Raze. She liked Raze, a lot and for good reason—with the duelist’s frequent, yet casual flirting not helping at all.
Would she admit it out loud, though?
Scheiße nein!
There’s not only the likely possibility that Raze might not feel the same way—even considering her casual flirting, which might actually be taken as literally casual—but there was also that rule clearly and explicitly stated in everyone’s contracts that they had to sign before joining the VALORANT Protocol; no fraternizing with fellow agents.
It had been a rule established when the Protocol had first formed, and when agents were typically assigned on solo missions. In the context of that specific era of VP; it made sense, Killjoy had no reason to fraternize with agents she barely saw anyway. She hadn’t properly met Phoenix until they were assigned on a mission together with Viper on Bind, and she had first thought Omen was a ghost haunting the halls in headquarters until Brimstone told her, in stifled laughter, that Omen was, in fact, VP-03.
With more agents being recruited into VP, and the transition of mission arrangements from solo endeavors to more team oriented meant that agents needed to bond and build trust with their colleagues for more teamwork and cohesion in combat missions. Gradually, Killjoy saw and met more and more of her fellow agents as Brimstone and Sage facilitated teambuilding activities such as vacations and parties, encouraging friendships and trust to build between agents when the rulebook had previously discouraged such activities. So, slowly but surely, the anti-fraternization rule eventually removed the prohibition of forming friendships, and only the formation of romantic relationships remained.
Even with those events in mind, Killjoy really doubted the senior agents would even think to revoke the romance aspect of the anti-fraternization rule—too many risks, barely enough advantages.
And so, as sad and pathetic as it sounds, Killjoy had decided to simply admire Raze from a distance, appreciating their time together as best friends and keeping her feelings to herself until she eventually got over it (unlikely) or she dies in battle and Sage couldn’t bring her back anyhow (more likely?).
Killjoy was fine with that.
Totally.
The sentinel kept her eyes trained towards the wiring of her turret, brows furrowed as if scrutinizing it, to the point where even the bot tilted its head in confusion. Eventually, she snapped out of it and shook her head, almost embarrassed at the distress she was under at the mere thought of her (unrequited?) crush on Raze.
Speaking of Raze, the sentinel suddenly remembered that Raze was looking for her—she was kneeling behind one of her desks while doing repairs on her turret, so it made sense that the duelist hadn’t spotted her. Killjoy put her hand up high enough for the duelist to see from behind the table, waving it.
”Ja, Raze, I’m over here!”
“Yo, Killjoy,” the sentinel could hear the duelist’s voice perk up as the sounds of footsteps shuffled their way to her, rounding around the table before Killjoy could feel Raze’s presence in front of her. Regardless, Killjoy kept her eyes on her bot, pretending to be occupied. “You busy?”
“I suppose not. Just doing some light maintenance on Botty over here,” finally, Killjoy looked up and smiled up at Raze as she patted her turret for emphasis. Raze looked the same as ever; beautiful, stunningly so, with small smears of paint and oil marking parts of the duelist’s body and clothing, showing she had probably just finished tinkering.
(Briefly, Killjoy wondered how it would feel like to help Raze clean off those stains under the shower, her hands stroking bare skin under running water, fingers slipping under the waistband of Raze’s pants, or caressing the area of her chest usually covered by her crop tops. And her lips—
Abruptly, Killjoy shoved those thoughts aside deeper in her mind. Raze was no mind reader—she was sure—but she was afraid if her wandering thoughts were left to go on unchecked, then it’ll show in her expressions and mannerisms, and she definitely didn’t want the annoyingly perceptive and caring Raze to ask why the tips of her ears are red again.)
“Great!” Raze’s expression brightened and she gave off a big grin, as if it wasn’t already bright and wide before, as she threw herself into Killjoy’s desk chair, rolling it towards the sentinel. It was only now that Killjoy noticed that Raze had one of her hands behind her back the entire time she’d been here, and considering the duelist’s cheeky nature—Killjoy couldn’t help but feel a sense of playful suspicion. What had Raze broken or stolen this time?
“What did you do this time?” Killjoy asked in a playfully accusatory tone, one brow raised for emphasis.
“Whoaa! I didn’t do anything wrong this time,” in an equally teasing manner, Raze put both her hands up to emphasize her innocence, yet her cheeky grin never left her expression. Killjoy took note of her empty hands, and figured that she left whatever item she previously held still hidden behind her back. “My heart is wounded deeply that you think that way, Gatinha.”
Killjoy squinted, clearly not believing Raze, before she laughed and turned back to her bot. “Alright, alright, I believe you…I think. Then, what is it that you need?”
“Actually…” Raze trailed off, sounding less cheerful this time. The sentinel felt the woman shift in her seat for a bit, as if gathering up the nerve to say whatever she wanted to say. Slowly, Killjoy looked back up towards Raze, seeing that the duelist had dropped her smile—lips pursed as she looked at the sentinel. “We need to talk.”
Raze looked serious.
She rarely ever seemed serious.
Pair that with her words— “We need to talk.”—that usually almost never meant good news of any sort, and Killjoy couldn’t help but suddenly feel nervous. She didn’t remember having done anything particularly serious that could warrant this reaction from Raze, so what could have happened that made the usually cheerful duelist seem this serious?
“Alright. Shoot,” Killjoy said, trying to seem unfazed by the duelist’s change in demeanor, yet she couldn’t help but gulp.
Raze stared at Killjoy, almost too intensely. It made Killjoy even more nervous, heart now pounding against her chest in anticipation of what serious news the duelist was about to say.
What did Raze want to talk about? Was she about to admit her (unlikely) feelings to Killjoy? Was she about to reject Killjoy before the sentinel could even have a chance to admit it? Or maybe it wasn’t those; Killjoy and Raze were best friends after all, maybe Raze wanted to confide about her crush, her feelings towards someone else? It was normal to open up about your crush to your best friend, right?
Killjoy would have done the same, if it weren’t for the fact that her best friend and her crush were the same person.
Who would Raze’s hypothetical crush be, then? Could it be Jett, another one of Raze’s very close friends? Or Neon, a fellow recipient of the duelist’s casual flirting? Perhaps it could even be Reyna, a fellow duelist that Raze very clearly respected and admired?
The sentinel felt a sense of dread as she let her thoughts get the better of her, now being sure as ever that Raze wanted to confide about a crush that wasn’t Killjoy, and how she’d have to tough out her broken heart and act as if nothing was wrong, that she’d help Raze with her crush as long as it made the duelist happy.
Raze was opening her mouth to speak, and Killjoy took a deep breath in tense anticipation.
What was Raze about to say? Her mind questioned to herself wryly.
[a.] Raze has a crush on Killjoy
[b.] Raze somehow found out about Killjoy’s crush on her, and rejects her
[c.] Raze has a crush on someone else
Here goes nothing.
“I’m having a baby,” Raze said, staring into Killjoy’s eyes, as if carefully parsing her reaction. “It’s yours.”
Wow.
None of the above.
Superb guessing skills today, Killjoy.
Then, silence.
Absolutely stunned silence followed after.
Killjoy blinked rapidly, once, then twice as she adjusted her glasses in disbelief, thinking—in vain—that maybe if she heard it wrong, and adjusting her glasses meant she could hear more clearly.
“What?” Killjoy eventually sputtered out; her tone how suggested more confusion than shock. A baby? Raze was having a baby? And Killjoy was somehow the other parent? Disregard the part that it would’ve been biologically impossible, but the sentinel hadn’t even done it with the duelist. Killjoy was an adult; she knew about the birds and the bees and that it took two to tango and make a baby but—she didn’t even do the tango with Raze!
She had never slept with Raze.
(At least, not that she was aware of. Their clubbing sessions and raves do go out of hand occasionally, but she doubted anything actually happened between them.)
“That’s not poss-!”
“SURPRISE!” In her shock, Killjoy hadn’t even noticed Raze sneaking her hand behind her back, seemingly retrieving the item that she had kept hidden from the sentinel this entire time. So, surprise colored her expression when Raze enthusiastically presented an orange object to her face, almost shaped like a cubic football. “Here’s our baby!”
Killjoy’s jaw hung as she kept darting her eyes between Raze and the mystery object she held very questionably. Raze only gave a wordless, cheeky grin, and as a response, she started gently pounding on the top area of the object; seemingly prompting it to wake up. Killjoy watched as the steel shell of the object shifted around, making way for wheels on both of its side and a yellow screen as its face showing the [ :3 ] emoticon.
“Or our bot baby, more like,” Raze laughed, and in response—the bot grinned, the screen flashing between [ :3 ] and [ :D ]. “Should’ve been more specific. Hehe.”
Maybe the rollercoaster of emotions that Raze and her own overthinking mind had put her through exhausted Killjoy to the point where she couldn’t find it in herself to keep being shocked, but the bot’s expressions—paired with Raze’s enthused, wide grin at showing off her new invention—definitely made her feel soft.
“It’s so cute!” Killjoy gushed after all the shock had left her system. Excitedly, she held her hand out and without prompt, the bot immediately rolled out of Raze’s hands and into Killjoy’s. The tech genius cooed as she examined the piece of robotics that Raze had apparently build. “Have you named it?”
“Boombot! And it—uh, does exactly what it says.”
“So, you plan to use it for combat,” Killjoy said, and the duelist nodded. “Impressive…and I absolutely cannot get over how cute it looks.”
“It’s still a work in progress—still need to work out some kinks, slap some paint on it,” Raze shrugged, “I was hoping you’d help me. It’s, uhh, our baby—after all.”
“Wait, how is it our baby? You made it,” Killjoy paused from observing the bot and tilted her head at the duelist questionably.
“Remember one of your busted up alarmbots that you gave me?”
Recognition lit up in Killjoy’s mind. It had been after one of her combat missions, she had been complaining to Raze during their tinkering session that her alarmbot endured an entire Odin magazine from the enemy team and had been damaged beyond manageable repair. It would have costed more to repair the poor thing than make a new one from scratch, and that she would have to dump it into a scrap pile. She remembered Raze immediately insisting that she kept the broken bot instead, play around with it and see what she could come up with; so, Killjoy said yes.
It had been a good idea that she said yes, she realized.
“I see,” Killjoy said, continuing to examine the bot. It looked unrecognizable from her standard alarmbots at a surface, but the sentinel’s keen eye spotted familiar wiring and parts that Raze clearly repurposed. “Heilige scheiße...you’re right, this is our bot baby.“
Killjoy had always jokingly claimed that she was a single mother to all her bots—all her creations. So now there was this bot in her hands, her old alarmbot with Raze’s signature modifications. This wasn’t just her bot child, but Raze’s as well.
“Exactly!” Raze exclaimed, “so, wanna take responsibility and help me co-parent this thing?”
The sentinel looked back up and stared at the duelist, almost perplexed at the odd question. She didn’t know what co-parenting a bot entailed, exactly. But if it meant spending more time with Raze, bonding over this piece of machinery they had made together…
Killjoy doesn’t see why not.
“Sure...”