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Nick Valentine, on some level, was sure he knew what being a child was like. He might not know from experience, but if he spent enough time digging around the dusty old corners of someone else’s memories, he could pick up a few of the finer points. Being a kid meant that the world started and ended with Mom’s approval, that the monsters in your closet were more frightening than anything the radiation could come up with, that a well meaning adult with a kind smile could be the difference between laughter and tears, that the world divided itself into heroes and villains and it was always easy to tell which one was which. Maybe it was because he’d never been a kid that he’d tried to hold those memories so tightly, but that was something for someone smarter than him to figure out. For now, he was happy to leave it as a curious fascination.
Or he was until it suddenly became more relevant.
He— well, Nick and Jenny, they’d talked about having kids before. Jenny would describe them with a smile that set her whole face alight: a boy, a girl, and a third who would surprise them. Nick would nod along over his fourth cigarette of the hour and quietly hope that he wouldn’t screw any of the poor sods up too badly. When Nick the synth had come to terms with his odds of having a family being somewhere between pathetic and laughable, it was almost a relief. Three kids spared from his bumbling attempts at family life.
Then some dame from 200 years ago had to go thaw herself out and turn all his plans on their head.
And that was how Nick Valentine, the machine with fragmented memories of being human, sucked down his fourth cigarette of the hour while watching as his stepson played cops and raiders with Piper.
Stepson. The word wasn’t wrong, but something about it made him feel like a fraud.
“Sulkin’ ain’t a good look on you.” Hancock said, eyes glassy from the pair of mentats dissolving on his tongue. “Like you’re about to fry a circuit board.”
“Well if I do, let’s hope it’s the one for overthinking.” Nick ashed his cigarette, breaking it almost down to the filter. He had plenty more in his pack and five in an hour wouldn’t make any difference to him, but he had young, impressionable eyes on him now and they probably didn’t want to see him stained yellow with nicotine.
“C’mon, Nicky, don’t be like that.” He grinned. “You know you’re gonna be fine. I remember Diamond City, all the little brats rushin’ out of school hoping they’d get to see you on the way home…”
“That was different.”
“Only ‘cause you keep sayin’ it is.”
“I only saw those kids in passing,” Nick said. “They had homes and parents they went back to, once they’d heard enough stories for the day. I wasn’t the one feeding them or… or making sure they did their homework right…”
Hancock leaned in closer, eyes still out of focus but sharper than they should have been through the high. Nick had gotten used to that look over the years, glassy and far away and far more clever than he would ever let on, with little respect for any privacy or boundaries.
Or personal space, Nick thought, as Hancock’s breath tickled his cheek.
He pulled back. “….can I ask what it is you’re looking at?”
“Tryin’ to see if I can figure out where all those leaps in logic are comin’ from.” Hancock said, and his eyes flicked to the hole in Nick’s cheek. “Must be some kinda loose wire in there. Half those kids you were talkin’ to wished they’d had you for a dad. Now some lucky kid finally does and you’re too afraid to say hi.”
“I don’t think flattery is gonna fix things this time.” Nick said, though he struggled against a smile. “Besides, I’m pretty sure the kid’s already picked his favorite dad.”
Hancock grinned. “Course I’m his favorite dad. Don’t mean you can’t be a close second.”
Nick rolled his eyes even as he let Hancock pull him to his side. His hat fell to his lap as he rested his head on the threadbare coat. He cursed the fraying sensors in his shoulder and arm, sure that this would be nicer if he could feel the idle circles that Hancock was tracing into his coat.
Criminal mastermind Piper thwarted detective Shaun’s attempts to catch her once again, and Nick had to smile at her maniacal laughter. Piper’s flare for the dramatic certainly served her well with kids, a trait shared between her and the ghoul with his arm around his shoulder. How exactly was one old private eye supposed to compete with that?
Nora was home that evening, half a day before she promised and with arms loaded full of presents for her boys. Shaun came first, of course, with a lipstick kiss on his forehead and a collection of pre-war junk for him to take apart and piece back together. Hancock found himself with a brand new, heavily modded shotgun, which he immediately ran off to test on some mirelurks by the river.
“And for my Valentine.” Nora pressed her lips to his cheek, dark eyes coy under long lashes. “Perfectly preserved, never touched by radiation. I figured at the rate you’ve been going lately, your old pack might be running low.”
Six packs of Parliaments, clean and white as they day they were sold. No one could ever say she wasn’t thoughtful.
“Thanks, doll.” He smiled back. “You know, you coming home early is already present enough. Keep up like this and soon you’ll have three spoiled men to deal with.”
“Mmm. That’s the general idea.” She traced the line of his lapel, playing with the frayed edges. Even after two years, her touch shot sparks through him as if it was the first time they met.
“You know.” She continued. “A little bird told me that you’ve been awfully tense lately. Quiet, withdrawn, smoking like a chimney…”
“Only part of Hancock that looks like a bird is those chicken legs of his.”
“Actually, it was Shaun.”
Nick, with his awful tendency of overheating when he was stressed or anxious, cursed the hum of his cooling system as it decided right this moment was the best time to kick into overdrive.
Nora played with his tie. “You know we love you. Maybe we can help?”
“Hey now,” he said with forced nonchalance. “You know you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve figured my way outta worse scrapes, and I’ll figure this one out too.”
“Of course you will.” She slid her hand from his collar, trailing it down his sleeve before she could lace her fingers with his. “I’m trying to say that you don’t have to. I’m not with you just for your good looks, you know.”
“Is it my cutting wit?”
“That’s part of it.” She laughed. “But come on, out with it. I have to leave again in a week or so and I’d hate to spend my whole time here worrying about you.”
He glanced to her with sharp eyes. “Pushy, aren’t you.”
She only smiled, crows feet crinkling around her eyes, and he found himself giving in with a showy sigh.
“You’re a good woman, Nora,” He started. “You’ve done more for me than I can possibly say, and I… well… I can’t say I’m really cut out for being a partner in the romantic sense, being an experiment and all—“
“You’re more than that.” she interrupted, voice firm.
“—be that as it may, I can’t say I ever thought I’d be looking after anyone. Especially… especially a kid.”
Nora paused for a moment, leaving Nick to whir away in anxious silence. If he didn’t know better, he’d be worried that he was about to take off and fly into the sunset.
Nora leaned forward again, pressing her palms against his chest.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t pick anyone else to help me raise him,” she said. “He needs someone like you in his life to remind him that people are still worth fighting for, even if they aren’t always fair or just. I wouldn’t have bothered chasing you if I didn’t think I could trust you with my son.”
“That…” Nick found himself at a loss. “That means a lot to me.”
“I’m not just saying so, either. You’ve known from the beginning that I’m a mother first, I don’t make decisions without considering the consequences. And even if he’s… not what I expected, I know that we’ll all adjust and that given enough time, he’ll love you as much as I do.”
She stood on her tiptoes to press another kiss against his cheek, one that Nick was sure would leave the same peach-colored mark that Shaun had been sporting earlier. If either of them noticed the whirring that still hummed from under Nick’s chest, they were both kind enough not to bring it up.
“Hey, Mr. Valentine?”
Nick recognized the voice, even if his name sounded completely foreign in it.
“You can call me Nick, kid.”
“Hey, Nick?” Shaun looked at him, fully Norman Rockwelled in his wide-eyed innocence. “Do you ever get stuff stuck in your face?”
Nora, previously engaged in conversation with Curie, snapped to attention. Even from a distance Nick could see her, beet red with steam practically shooting out of her ears.
“Like, in the open parts.” Shaun gestured to Nick’s cheeks as he spoke, unaware of his mother’s imminent threat to his life. “There’s always bloatflies and things shooting stuff in the air, how can you get that gunk out after? Oh oh, can you brush your teeth through the—”
“Shaun!” Nora’s sharp voice cut between them, and he shrank immediately. “Who taught you that it was okay to speak to Nick like that? Or to anyone like that, for that matter?!”
“It was just a question!”
Nick did his best to fight down a smile. He was used to kids and their less-than-thoughtful questions; hell, it was easier to deal with than the adults who tiptoed around his inhumanity. Besides, despite not needing to brush his teeth for over a century now, he had to wonder how much easier it would be to reach those tricky molars with an extra opening.
Nora disagreed, apparently. “Shaun, I want you to—“
“It’s alright. Really.” Nick said, with a hand on her shoulder. “And for the record, I spend half my nights cleaning out all the garbage that got lodged in my noggin.”
Shaun’s eyes grew ten sizes. “Really?! What kind of stuff do you find?”
“Oh, you know, the usual wasteland junk. Dirt, splinters, ammunition, and probably a few of the things your mother brought home to stuff into that workshop.”
Nora landed a quick smack on his shoulder even as Shaun broke into a giggle fit.
Well, if nothing else, you can make the kid laugh.
“What?” He asked. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be storing coffee cups in there if you knew I had the extra space.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m about to store something else in there if you don’t ease up on my scavenging.”
“Is that what you call it? I thought you were building a collection.”
“So you’ve said.” She swatted him again, but that slight curve to her lips gave away her amusement. A pretty girl with a pretty smile, matched dimple for dimple on the smaller face beaming up at the both of them.
He’d be damned, the kid looked just like Nora sometimes. For a minute the resemblance was so startling that all he could do was watch them, take in the shine that lit her face and how Shaun’s was just the same, but brighter. More innocent. A kid who never had to see the misery that the rest of his family had to endure, didn’t know any stakes higher than finding clean water for the garden plot behind the house. He had exactly Nora’s smile, if Nora had never known what it was like to hang her flesh and blood as a tyrant.
A hand waving in front of his face snapped him out of his train of thought.
“Hey!” Shaun hopped once to get his attention. “You’re spacing out on us. Mom told me that’s rude.”
Nora gave a small smile, all thoughts of the earlier discipline forgotten. “I think Nick’s probably had enough for the day, let him be.”
“Nah, the kid’s right,” Nick said, shaking his head. “No double standards here. I had my head in the clouds, might be I’ve got something else stuck in there as we speak.”
“Can I look?!” Shaun asked, still glowing with that smile.
“Sweetheart…” Nora started with hesitation, but she always looked to Nick for the final word, and that was how the notorious synth detective ended up sitting on the ground with a flashlight shining between his ears.
Shaun examined the hole in his head with fascination, careful and gentle with consideration beyond his years. It mostly felt odd, with a pinch here and a tingle there, but he got a free cleaning out of the deal and it kept Shaun out of trouble for the better part of an hour. Nora knelt to Nick’s side, his hand in both of hers, fretting away and offering quiet apologies when Shaun prodded too hard.
Thank you, she mouthed, lips forming the words almost silently against his ear as she kissed his cheek. He squeezed her hand back, a silent acknowledgement that he was fine. Better than fine, really. She was always worried, always careful, keeping an eye on her son as he sorted the wires in Nick’s neck by function and stability, but it had been a while since Nick had let anyone new take a good, hard look at his innards and so long as he didn’t have anything sharp on him there wasn’t much damage Shaun could do.
“I’ve never even seen a servo controller like this!” He exclaimed, not bothering to hide his excitement. “Nick, you’re so cool!”
Nora’s lips quirked again, and Nick found he couldn’t help but match her.
Turned out, having a kid in Sanctuary who spent his formative years in the institute was surprisingly handy. It made sense when you stopped to think about it. Keep the kid hidden miles below the trash heap, holed up with some of the brightest minds in the post-apocalyptic world, and watch him learn. Watch him flourish. Watch him disassemble an old world telephone and crank out a laser rifle that would keep his mother safe.
Shaun clearly came from his mother’s school of “showing love with presents”, and he had no shortage of presents to give to his mom. Or to Piper. Or to Hancock. If Nick ever thought he’d forgotten what that ugly claw of jealousy felt like, he suddenly had a very sharp reminder.
“It ain’t that he don’t like you,” Hancock tried to reassure him, but the words lost some of their impact as he played with the ballistic weave laid so carefully into the cuffs of his frock. “Trust me. Kid’s just makin’ what strikes his fancy, he’ll have some kinda plan for you.”
“I know, I know,” Nick said, though he didn’t. He waited and time passed, and no presents came. It felt awful for him to expect anything, awful, rude, intrusive, and self absorbed, and the more days that went by the more Nick wondered what it was that made him think he was entitled to the kid’s thoughts at all. What made him think he deserved any sort of handmade present, just because the kid had called him cool once? He wasn’t family, not really, even if Nora and Hancock tried to convince him otherwise.
So when Shaun finally did come barreling towards him with a smile splitting his face, Nick still couldn’t quite get his hopes up.
“Nick! Nick Nick Nick!” Those dimples would be the death of him. “You have to come with me! Right now, it’s really important!”
“Easy there,” Shaun’s smile was infectious, but Nick tried to hold himself back. “What’s got you all riled up?”
“You have to come with me and then you’ll see!” He took Nick by both hands, tiny fingers threaded through plastic and metal alike, and dragged him back into his “workshop.”
Nora had spared no expense in renovating Shaun’s bedroom, and whatever expense she hadn’t thought of Shaun took it upon himself to scavenge and build. The former nursery housed one child-sized bed in the corner and a small steamer trunk full of clothes, but every other available space was covered in workbenches and terminals. Tools hung from the ceiling, as all the wall space was reserved for posters, diagrams, dissected bits of circuitry and fiber optics.
Nora had every right to be damn proud of the kid.
“I think it’s finally done, but Mom says we have to be really careful putting it in, okay?” Shaun said, elbow deep in salvaged parts. “We might need Sturges’ help, too. I think it’ll work but I don’t know how to put it in.”
“Hold up, put what in? What is “it”?”
Shaun bounced on the balls of his feet. “It’s an upgrade. For you!”
If Nick had a stomach, he was pretty sure it would be falling out of him right now.
“Hold up. You built a— what, exactly?”
“I got the idea when you let me look in your head. You’re a generation two synth, right?” Shaun blinked up at him. “Father always used to talk about generation twos, how the institute never managed to get the… the stomatosense… you know, the touch and feeling parts! He said he never got those right until the generation 3. But I watched all the scientists when they were designing the new ones, so I thought I could try to make one for you, too!”
Shaun pulled a small drawer out from his workspace, revealing what looked like an implant threaded with tiny copper wires, fine as silk. Nick stared it down for a moment, wondering if it was really possible that an eleven year old child could have constructed a whole new nervous system for him out of salvaged wasteland scraps.
“I’m sorry it took me so long. I wanted to have it ready a long time ago but mom was gone for a really long time and I didn’t have enough stuff to work with, and then I thought if I had more time I could add the smelling parts too…”
Nick reached out, hesitant to touch something so fragile. On further study he recognized it, or a version of it, from all the times he’d needed repairs and replacements. It was thinner than any of the sensors he’d had threading through him before, sleeker, with a structure almost reminiscent of human nerves. A hand here. A foot there.
Nick could feel that telltale hum starting from within his chest.
“You’re something else, you know that?” He said.
Shaun shook his head. “Is that a good thing?”
Nick wrapped his arm around Shaun’s shoulders, pulling him to his side in a semblance of a hug. “It’s a great thing, kid.”
Shaun lit up like the Cambridge crater, still bursting with more excitement than one eleven year old body could handle.
“Can we try it and see if it works?” he asked.
Nick thought back to the fraying sensors on his arm, on Hancock’s fingers playing along his shoulder and what it might mean to feel that pressure again.
“Absolutely.”
Never in his life did Nick think he would appreciate the smell of fresh brahmin shit quite as much as he did now. He had always known it was there, wafting up from the cobbled together stables, but the only time he’d ever experienced smells so vivid were in memories from 200 years ago. Now he could smell it all. Dried razorgrain and corn husks in feed troughs, the motor oil of turrets and generators, the chemical tang of antiseptic and smoke that clung to Hancock’s coat.
And yes, the endless piles of brahmin shit.
The improvements to his sense of touch after the implant were definitely noticeable, but he was prepared for that. It was the changes in smell and taste that really floored him. His first cigarette post-op nearly had him short-circuiting, and the gentle scent of soap and leather as Nora walked past could have lulled him to sleep. Nick owed the kid, little genius that he was, and he was sure to remind Shaun of it every time he saw him.
“I don’t want you to owe me,” Shaun said every time, though his smug smile might say otherwise. “I’m just really glad it works.”
“Like a charm. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Even in the broken hand?”
Nick nodded, flexing his skeletal fingers. “Sturges said it might not last as long, seeing as I haven’t got any kind of skin to protect it, but oh boy, it works.”
“Good.” Shaun grinned. “Someone has to make sure that synths can stay healthy, right? The Institute used to do it, but they’re gone now. Mom says the Railroad is learning, but they’re still really behind where the Institute was, so I might be the only one left who knows how to do this stuff.”
“Hey, don’t start thinking of this as something you need to do, okay?” Nick nudged Shaun’s shoulder. “What goes on under my skin isn’t anyone’s responsibility except mine.”
Shaun was never good at hiding emotions, even when he tried his best, and Nick caught the waver in his smile even as he struggled to cover it.
“Kid?”
“Hey, Nick?”
“What’s the matter?”
Shaun paused, shifting where he stood. “…Do you think that if I break, I’ll be able to fix myself?”
It wasn’t something that Nick had really realized, an important fact that Nick always known and now cursed himself for somehow managing to gloss over.
Shaun was a synth, too.
Nora’s son, the one she created and birthed and fought tooth and nail through the Commonwealth to find, that Shaun was dead. Nora had seen to it herself. The son she brought back, the one she smothered in love and affection was as much of a shell of human Shaun as he was of Nick Valentine.
And there would come a time that Shaun would realize that.
“I mean, I know people outside of here don’t like synths very much, and even people in the institute always threw synths away if they didn’t work right anymore. No one would really bother to learn how to fix one…”
“That’s…” Nick hesitated, plastic heart heavy with the sympathy he never managed to show to himself. Shaun watched him, hanging on his every word.
This was the part Nick had feared. The turning points where his voice would make or break a kid’s future, give him hope when he was struggling or haunt him every night of his life. He had to be careful, he knew just how damaging the wrong words could be for a child.
A synth child. Who would have thought.
“Listen,” Nick said, kneeling to better meet Shaun’s eyes. “I don’t know what they were teaching you down in the Institute, but I will tell you that a lot of kids your age wouldn’t know a circuit board from a cutting board. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you got a bright future as the Commonwealth’s best new engineer. Anything you have that needs fixing, you can do it.”
Shaun wiped his eyes. Nick was glad the institute had found some humanity; at least the new bioengineered synths had the ability to cry.
“Do you really think so?” Shaun asked.
“I know it.” Nick said. “Trust me, I’ve been around long enough to have a pretty good sense of this kind of thing. I don’t let just anyone start stuffing things into my skull, you know.”
“Mom said you used to let people put stuff in there all the time,” Shaun said, skeptical. “She said you even put a bad guy in there once.”
Nick laughed. “I’ll have you know that was for a good reason. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t trust your mother to look after me. And I sure wouldn’t let you touch anything unless I thought that you knew what you were doing.”
Shaun paused for a moment, still watching him, waiting for him to be that well meaning adult with a kind smile. His eyes watered, filled with fear, and damn the Brotherhood or anyone else who thought that he could be anything but a child in need of care.
Nick pulled him to his chest, letting him bury his face in his coat.
“You and me, we can look out for each other.” Nick said. “You fix whatever needs fixing, and I’ll make sure nothing gets broken in the first place. That sound good to you?”
Shaun sniffed, nodding even as his eyes stained wet spots into Nick’s coat. Small arms reached around Nick’s shoulders, barely fitting across the width of his back but still pulling him close as he could.
Nick leaned down, pressing his broken cheek to Shaun’s head and hoping he offered at least a little bit of comfort. He was acutely aware of how Shaun shook, how hard he tried to keep quiet, to not say that he was scared of being one of a kind in a world that hated one of a kinds. He caught the smell of freshly washed hair and burnt copper, and that slight hint of salt that only came with being close to human.
Never in his life did Nick think he would appreciate his sense of smell so much.
At this point in this life, Nick wasn’t about to be ungrateful for anything. He knew how lucky he was to have survived in a synth-hostile world, to have built this mishmash family alongside some of the most curious rejects of the Commonwealth, to have Nora so much as look twice at him when she could have any man, woman, ghoul or synth eating out of the palm of her hand.
But here he was, finally chosen to go with her on her errands down south and all he could think of was when they would get home.
She was going to catch on if he wasn’t careful, too. She’d already asked him once if he was sulking for a reason, trying to hide her hurt with a sly smile and a joke. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her, he was always happy to be able to spend time with her, but…
Well, he and Shaun had been so close to finishing that new level design for Red Menace, and he wanted to be there when they asked Piper to try it out.
“You’re quiet again.” Nora said, and Nick cursed himself for being so selfish. “Are you sure there isn’t something on your mind?”
“Oh, nothing special.”
She sidestepped, putting herself briefly into his path. “Are you sure? Nothing you might want to tell me?”
Nick glanced her way, giving her the best smile he could manage. “There’s a whole lot I want to tell you, doll, but I’m not sure our language has strong enough words for it yet.”
“Flirting as avoidance, aren’t you clever.” She smirked. “You know that never works on me.”
“It was worth a try.”
“So are you going to tell me why you’re sulking or are we going to keep walking in silence? Because I don’t mind the quiet, but that sad face of yours is going to keep me up tonight.”
“And we all know a pretty gal needs her beauty sleep.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Alright, alright,” he sighed in defeat. “Me and the kid were working on a project, and I’m just a little blue about missing the big debut.”
Nora stopped abruptly in her tracks, and Nick very nearly crashed into her. “You and Shaun were? Together?”
“Yeah. Nothing major, just a little tweaking on one of those holotape games, but Shaun was real proud of it and wanted to show it off. Honestly, I was hoping it would be ready by the time you got home, but you know how it goes.”
“How long were you working on this?”
“Few weeks now. Before that it was a matter of tweaking the new hardware he built me, but we’d been talking about an upgrade for Red Menace for a while. The kid’s great at keeping himself occupied, but sometimes you just need something private to do and he was almost out of—“
Nick was cut off abruptly with Nora’s lips on his, her hands fisted in his lapels as his cooling system struggled to keep up with the current development. For all his flirting, this part of the relationship was still new to him, and it took him a few moments of stunned silence before he realized he was meant to kiss her back.
He’d just settled his hand around her waist when she pulled back, eyes glassy and full of… something. Something more than even Nick’s detective instincts could place.
“I was so worried that he’d be lonely here,” she said, her voice thick. “He’s so smart, and he’s friendly, but considering what he is and where he’s grown up…”
“…You were worried we wouldn’t like him?”
She collapsed into his shoulder, arms snaking around his back, holding onto him as if he was the last safe thing in the wasteland.
“It’s not that,” she murmured into his coat. “But with me being gone all the time, and everything we are and everything we’ve been through… how were we— how were we supposed to become a family?”
Nick settled her against his chest, playing a hand through her hair while she laughed or cried or something in between.
Was a family really what they were now? He had someone else’s memories of what parents were like, and lacked all memories of the brother he was created with. But this, with Nora and Shaun and Hancock back home, even the word “home” itself…
“You know, if you wanted to stay behind a little longer, you could have said so,” Nora sniffed. “I had other things I could have done.”
“And disappoint my girl?”
“I wouldn’t be disappointed,” She muttered. “When we get back, will you two show me what you’ve been working on?”
Nick nodded. “Detective’s honor. When we get back, you’ll be the first to see.”
Nick did his best to honor his promise, but between Shaun insisting on tackling them round the middle and Hancock insisting on smacking them on the ass (one each, “for luck” he’d said), it was a good long while before either of them had so much as a minute to spare. The mayhem of coming home, Nora called it, though she was probably more used to it than he would ever be.
If Nick would always get this kind of welcome coming home, he’d have to start heading out more often.
Once the dust settled, Nora and Hancock curled up in the corner with their brand new copy of Red Menace 2.0 to fight over while Shaun brought him up to speed on everything he’d missed. Curie was teaching him how to work in the garden, teaching him all sorts of biological and botanical terms that he didn’t quite have a handle on pronouncing just yet, and Piper was, surprisingly, turning out to be a much better raider than a cop.
“She’s not fast enough to catch me when I’m the raider!” He said in mock complaint. “Even Nat can get me, but Piper’s never going to be able to and it’s getting boring.”
“You ever thought she might be letting you get away?”
“Nuh uh!” He crossed his arms. “She wouldn’t do that. Piper has too much intelligry.”
“Integrity?”
Shaun nodded. “That one. She’d never let someone win who didn’t earn it.”
“Uh huh.” Nick said, more certain than ever that Piper was letting someone win who didn’t earn it. “So, does that mean we’re looking at the end of cops and raiders?”
“Well, it means she always has to be the raider.”
“So who’s the cop?”
Shaun looked at him like he was ridiculous, because they both were already well aware of both the next question and the answer to it.
Nick tried to conceal his smile. “I’m not much good at pretend games, you know.”
“You don’t even have to pretend, you’re already a detective!” Shaun said.
“You’ve got me there.”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?”
Nick gave a heavy sigh even as the smile finally cracked his face. “Alright, kid. Where do you need me?”
So Shaun took his arm and dragged him forward, setting him up at the desk in one of the ruined houses and pulling his hat down to look appropriately “detective-y.”. Nick followed obediently; he was no stranger to heroes and villains or make believe, but after Piper’s faux pas he wasn’t about to ignore the rules and lose his new position as PI-in-charge.
“Okay, okay that’s good. But now you have to close your eyes and count to one hundred, okay? That way I can get into place.”
“One hundred is an awful long time.” Nick said. “How about we make it fifty?”
“Seventy-five.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal, raider veteran. Better start running now, because the Commonwealth won’t stand for villainy like yours.”
Shaun grinned ear to ear, taking off across the cul-de-sac as Nick began his countdown.
Once upon a time, Nick had thought about having a family. The other Nick, the one who had a childhood, and a fiancee, a set of parents to emulate, he wasn’t sure if he’d be a good father but loved watching Jenny smile as she talked about the life they would have. Nick the synth didn’t have any of those things, but few people did these days and somehow life still went on. Maybe it would take a synthetic man to be a good parent to a synthetic kid, or maybe it was all the same no matter who you were, or how you were born, or whether or not you were planning on calibrating your optics to make absolutely sure that no one would be letting anyone win this time.
Right this second, it didn’t matter. All he had to do was close his eyes and count.