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Crocodiles weren't comfy. No fur to burrow your face in, no fuzz that could let you pretend you were snuggling a pillow, and most notably no warmth. Vector's scales weren't smooth like they could be on snakes or geckos; there were ridges, uneven lumps, and if a spot didn't feel like sandpaper it was covered in cut-sharp edges instead. Hugging his own mother back when he'd been a gaptoothed squirt, had felt like seeking comfort from a splintery plank of wood, and he figured that he hadn't grown up to be more physically pleasant himself. This was likely one of the reasons why Charmy, not even a week after the metal virus crisis had passed, had gone back to sleeping alone. The zombot near-apocalypse had naturally left the junior detective rattled, and for a few days he'd wanted to sleep in the same place as his boss — as well as caretaker (in all honesty) — to keep the nightmares at bay. The first night that Vector had let the bee share the agency couch — yes, he used the couch as a bed, yes, detective agencies never had as much business as in the books — he had needed to assure him several times that robotized people would not break into their house while they slept, but as soon as they had survived through that first night, the bee rapidly got over his worries, and this very morning they had jointly decided that he would rest in his own room again.
People often said children were hardy, but Charmy still astounded him sometimes with how quickly he would get back to his usual boisterous self after any traumatising event. The metal virus weren't the only example. Had their face-off against a murderous metal dragon caused any night terrors? No, that had just been fun and left Charmy begging for weeks afterwards to be let out on another robot-busting adventure. Eggman carried out a planet-wide war? Well, that was all yesterday and why get hung up on those downer memories when a bright tomorrow awaited?
Not even the experience of being turned into a zombot seemed like it would leave a long-lasting iimpact, although Vector personally considered the crisis to be one of the most harrowing events that he'd lived through so far. Mobian civilization had technically been even closer to its end on a handful of other occasions, but those catastrophies had brought more collateral damage than intimate loss. It had been personal the way the virus had steadily taken away all the people you knew and held dear. As terrible as it sounded to say, or think, as he did in this case, Charmy had been lucky to be infected at the very start. Vector himself didn't remember nothin' from being a zombot. The icky sensation of the virus taking over his body was logged in his mind for the foreseeable future, but the days following that were a blank space up until the moment he found himself cured. For Charmy the crisis had boiled down to one day of intense action with a terrifying event at the end. He hadn't lasted long enough to think the other Chaotix had abandoned him, he hadn't needed to deal with the sense of loss and anxiety as the infection spread out of anyone's control.
Although he had been keeping himself awake and listening for whimpering or sobs from Charmy's room, Vector concluded that his caution had been unnecessary and that the junior detective seemed to need no company or comfort. A relief for him as well, since it ment less accidental bee stings throughout the night — Charmy tumbled around as much in bed as he did in the air.
By this point most of the body heat he had generated during the day had left the body, and he was in that state of disquiting listlessness that came from being too cold for comfort. A mammal only needed to pull his bedcovers over himself for things to turn snuggly, while sleepy time for him easily turned into the process of feeling warmth slowly ebb away, until what remained was only the small kernel of flame deep down where he had his heart, or if it was his spleen — hard sometimes to tell with accuracy. Heated blankets were a heavenly invention made for these instances, but also a comfort he could only afford when the radiators broke down during winter. The mundane wool blanket that he had settled for instead was more of a formality, and it tended to, like now, get snagged by a jutting scale and dragged about as he shifted position in the couch. This time it had gotten stuck on his tail and pulled off his upper body, and since it wouldn’t help him get less cold anyway he had decided to leave it where it was.
Warmblooded friends and acquaintances would sometimes ask him how he could stand it — most reptiles could relate to constantly being asked that question. Really, it was a no brainer: Why shouldn't they stand it when they had been cold blooded their entire lives and evolution had adapted them to the arrangement? Being cold got him cranky and sluggish, but unless he was taking a nap in Ice Paradise he would survive it. What it did do was making it harder to fall asleep, the same way that a tootache or an infected toenail would. This constantly prodding unpleasantness would simply not let him drift off. That and something else. It could just be his own belligerent nerves, but his mind wanted him to think that somebody had entered the living room. There was absolutely no sound or movement that proved this really was the case, but he had been a detective for too long to dismiss what his instinct told him.
The closest tool to defend himself with was the baseball bat beneath the couch. Call him paranoid, but when you had spent enough time crime fighting you started to appreciate having blunt, swingable objects close at hand. Before he armed himself agasint potential intruders though, there was of course another possibility that he had to clear first.
«Espio,» he whispered. «Are you there?»
No reply, although after a moment the wall-clock in the room came alive and struck midnight with raspy jangles. He sucked in his breath, listening to that sound. The agency had recieved that old piece of clockwork from a poor and even older ibex man, in exchange for them helping him with a disappeared house deed — he never had the heart to demand the usual monetary payment from senior citizens — and ever since then it had hung on their wall and sounded as if there was nothing but rust left inside it. Each grating bong always seemed like it could be its last, but six months later it still hung in there, sounding off its spooky death rattle on time, and it felt wrong to throw out anything still-functioning that the agency had gotten for free.
«How did you know,» came a familiar voice from underneath the clock.
Vector had no good answer to give the chameleon that materialised from seemingly nowhere. Despite having known Espio for years, he usually didn't spot him whenever he was camouflaged, and he couldn't say what had been different tonight apart from his nerves being perhaps more wound up. Even so he took on a cocky grin, since it wasn't always that he feelt he had gotten one over the ninja.
«A detective never reveals his secrets.»
Espio huffed. A sliver of moonlight painted a silver streak across his scales, highlighting his hunter-yellow eyes, as well as the deep pockets beneath them.
«The member of the Deadly Six that I fought was also able to detect me, despite my invisibility techniques,» the chameleon commented.
To the untrained ear, he might have sounded blasé, but Vector knew how much it always irked the other to see his stealth fail.
«Any reason that you decided to pay me a visit past midnight,» he changed the subject, propping himself up on his elbows and and putting emphasis on the word "midnight".
Ironically Espio's brain seemed too dulled by exhaustion to register the nuance in his tone.
«I was just out on a walk.»
«How long have you had this walk,» Vector dug, while reaching up to scratch his head apprehensively. He avoided being obvious about it, but was studying the tenseness that marred Espio's normally composed face, and the way he was slumping a bit against the wall.
«I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll take my leave now.»
«Hang on,» Vector hurried to say as the other began to fade from view. «Now that we both are awake anyway …»
The chameleon stopped changing his colors halfway, leaving his torso looking like it was floating in the air. The unsettling sight only lasted for a second, as he fastidiously reverted the lower body back to a magenta coloring and looked at him bemusedly.
«We might as well talk,» Vector continued while he kicked the blanket off, and swung his leg over the edge of the couch, sitting up.
«Talk?»
«You know, about … if there is any way that I can help you?»
The other furrowed his brows, looking even more confused, or suspicios.
«There is nothing wrong,» he said.
«Just asking, cause … you know.»
«No?»
«The two of us haven't really talked about the metal virus, not like how I had that mini-therapy session with Charmy.»
The pupils of Espio's eyes turned as thin and sharp as his shuriken stars, and Vector suspected one would be able to strum his tendons like the strings of a harp, with how much he tensed.
«What is there to talk about? I was never infected.»
«That doesn't mean everything was sunset and rainbows for you. Guess I just want to know how you are coping.»
«Completely fine.»
Vector exhaled through his teeth; the late hour and chill did a number on his patience, and he could tell that Espio was one pretence away from taking his leave again.
«Then I figure what you want to say is it didn't bother you when Charmy and I were turned into metallic freaks of nature. Be my guest, in that case. I already knew you were striving to be this emotionless ninja archetype, but who could've guessed that required you to act so callous.»
He couldn't have made Espio look more aghast if he had dunked a bucket of ice water over his head.
«That's not! I would never even dream… How can you even suggest,» he stammered, before Vector cut him off.
«Because I'm pulling your tail. You're not remorseless, I know, but it can sure come of that way when you refuse to show any vulnerablility.»
He patted a free spot on the sofa. Espio hesitated long enough for Vector to fear he had pushed the other into sulking territiry, then he stiffly made his way across the room and sat down on the offered cushion. What followed was silence between them, and Vector measuring his companion through decreet glances. Espio looked not just tired, but haggard, staring off — either at the tomato sauce mark on the wall that Charmy had left the day before, or at nothing.
In the limited space that the couch offered, they inevitable brushed against each other. A scratchy experience. Espio’s scales weren’t like armour, but you couldn’t call them soft. Above all he was chilly, inhospitable to the touch, which probably suited him just fine. In this instance however he felt cold even by reptile standards. A wonder that he hadn’t gotten horribly stiff. If it had been him, Vector figured, his muscles would have flatly refused to move.
«I really didn't mean to imply that,» finally came out of Espio, as he cringed and squeezed his own forearms. «I don't see you and Charmy, not anyone, as insignificant.» Maybe he was remembering the way he'd been chewed out previously, when they were searching for Charmy and Vector hadn't been able to handle how calm and non-fretting he'd managed to be.
Vector sighed, already regretting his own harshness toward his companion, even if it had suceeded in making him give up the pretenses.
«I know, and you don't need to worry. Nobody that knows you would call you uncaring. So, can I just ask? Is this the first time you've had these nightly walks?»
Before now he hadn't made a deal worrying about Espio showing signs of exhaustion. It wasn't like he hadn't noticed, but then every member of the Chaotix had been more and less tired these last few days, taking on missing-person cases left and right. He didn't want to complain, because focusing on a job and helping people had done wonders to help them regain a sense of normalcy after everything, and Espio hadn't seemed any more worse for wear than him and Charmy, but now all that started to look like askillfully mantained facade, and he started to wonder how many naps the chameleon had gotten at all.
«How many hours of sleep would you say that you've gotten lately,» he decided to ask outright.
Trying to scrounge his own memory for the last time that he'd seen Espio sleep was a pretty hopeless venture, since the other pre- and post-crisis, hadn't been one to rest anywhere that wasn't perfectly enclosed and hidden from everybody else if he had the choice. He was a private fellow, and being mildly interrogated about his sleeping habits had him gripping his own arm harshly, likely coaxing himself not to squirm.
«Admittedly, I've been feeling some restlessness,» he said.
«Things gnawing on you?»
No response. Trying to address the issue that directly at its root, looked to be a dead end. He often thought Charmy was annoying, but Espio could be his own bad-in-mouth taste of aggravating. If he had been a creature with fur, Vector suspected he would be going bald with how much this situation made him scratch his head. Actually, were scales able to recede if you rubbed them too much?
«Tried anything to help you relax and sleep better? Warm milk? Chamomile tea? I doubt ninja training covers how to battle insomnia.»
«Actually, a practitioner of ninjutsu does learn the secret to remaining functional for days without sleep, through exercises and remedies.»
«That ain't combating insomnia; it's just forcing your body to endure it.»
«Schhh,» Espio hissed sharply, pressing a finger to his lips.
Both of them looked in the direction of Charmy's room, where thin walls did very little to prevent noises to disturb their youngest resident. Vector held his breath because a freshly napped Charmy was seven-warm-milks-and-seventeen-bedtimes-stories hard to urge back to sleep. He counted twenty ticks before he relaxed again.
Espio's mouth was still flattened into a peeved line.
«How about meditation,» Vector resumed, while keeping a hushed tone. «You've been trying that, right? Mmm, reading a really boring book …»
«The only thing that sometimes works is these walks,» Espio muttered.
Admitting this robbed him of even more dregs of energy, and his head dipped.
Vector hesitated before replying.
«What do you feel about sleeping with me tonight then?»
He often hesitated to make offers of this nature, because Espio wasn't a guy you should offer to comfort or help. His thing was being the one doing the helping, the ever unflappable ninja that kept his two more impulsive teammates from going off the rails — and even when he couldn't prevent a derailing, he would still avoid the off-rail tumble ending in a messy crash thanks to his handy ninja-skills. It hurt his pride to feel fallible, to know that someone else thought him to be in distress. How could the sensible Espio ever admit that he had snuck into his boss room at night, maybe out of the irrational fear of finding him gone or transformed into something twisted?
The question had Espio look at him like that time he'd suggested they would go under-cover as daycare workers, back when they had entertained the notion of putting Charmy in pre-school during work hours, and wanted to make sure that the ones in their price range weren't simply picky-sties with a nice coat of paint. (Incidentally, one of the daycares they investigated turned out to be the cover operatio for a gang of home breakers, an event dubbed "The case of the Prepossessed pre-school plunderers". That and Charmy crushing the spirit of three baby sitters in a row, had them reach the conclusion that bringing the kid along on work was the safest solution for everybody.)
«That won't be necessary», Espio said.
«Maybe a change of your surroundings is just what you need. This couch is more comfortable than sleeping in the rafters right?»
«I don't do that.»
«You can't convince me that futon mat-thingy in your room isn't just for show.»
His attempt to make the suggestion less loaded through levity did not have the hoped-for effect, as Espio shook his head, elbows stiffly crossed so far up his body it looked like he was caging himself.
«I'm not like Charmy.»
«Yer not a kid, you mean. That's not …» Vector had at this point begun to scratch at his neck instead, to save the scales on his head. «Age 'snot what's relevant here. I just see that you got issues. If ya already tried to deal with it on your own and it hasn't worked, can't you see the logic in letting a friend assist you? Like how we work together when fighting robots.»
Espio looked obstinately down at his kneecaps and spoke with strain in his voice.
«This time it wasn't exactly robots. Not simply robots.»
«I know.»
«No you…»
Vector wasn't prepared for a shudder to pass through the chameleon, harsh like a seizure. His scales were whitening.
«Whoa, whoa,» Vector exclaimed, lurching forward. «Are you okay? Tr… try to relax will ya. Deep breaths. Geez — you are too cold. Thought you said you'd been moving around. Why didn't you …»
He was babbling, which often happened when he got nervous, and hovered his hands just above the other's shoulders, swearing that somehow the chameleon’s body had gotten even more chilled than before, and that he wasn’t breathing right, too shallowly.
Espio wasn't exactly prickly about close-proximity stuff — the guy would accept a hug or two, willingly play the part of throw-ball whenever pitching your armed and dangerous friend at bad guys would wrap up a battle real quick, and anyone who regularly interacted with affectionate kids like Charmy had to become, out of necessity, less touch-averse than a jungly gym — but at the wrong moments he would get startled by it. Vector’s hands were large enough to wrap all around his frame if the crocodile wanted to, and even though he almost never took advantage of this, at this moment it set of the ninja’s flight instincts.
Espio gasped sharply, then made to spring away from the sofa. His tail had other plans however, snaking around Vector's arm and stopping him dead, so instead of leaping across the room, he tripped and barely managed to prevent himself from prat-falling through some unglamorous arm waving. They both turned their heads to stare at the tail now tightly curled around the green arm like a second armband, anchoring them together by its own apparent will, because chameleon tails were cute like that, like how a dog's would vag with or without the owner's permission.
This was just the kind of thing that Espio was primed to react in horror to. While he had gotten pale right beforehand, now his colour flushed a rich, mortified wine red, and he pressed his face into his hands. When it looked like he was fully prepared to stay like this indefinitely, Vector cleared his throat.
«Sorry, could you lighten your grip? It's kind of choking the blood supply to my hand.»
«Ah, I'm … apologies, I'll just.»
Espio stared at the willful appendage as if having a silent argument with it. Slowly the tail loosened its grip then completely let go, allowing Vector to rub back sensation into his wrist. Meanwhile the chameleon lingered in indecisiveness for a moment, mimicking the movement somewhat unconciously with his own arm, then he lowered his head with a sigh, gave his tail one last withering look, and climbed back onto the sofa. Vector tried to not seem neither surprised nor overly pleased at this change of heart — ideally he didn’t want to come off as anything — only shifted to lie down and make room for the other to do the same in the bend of his legs and tail. Espio looked uncomfortable as he settled in place, but not the wrong kind. It was just pride.
«I am tired,» he finally admitted.
Vector expected the other to lie down on his back like him, but instead he put all limbs on the cushion, and curled up like when he was about to perform a bouncy spin-dash, crossing his arms to rest his chin on and letting his tail loop around his body. Vector had no idea that he could choose to sleep like that, though the choice might be one of necessity with the limited space. Like this Espio seemed as small as Charmy, as if he was attempting to disappear without his invisibility. The crocodile wasn’t confident in his ability to hide how cute he found the sight, so he put his head firmly down on the armrest of the sofa and fiddled with his pillow, a flattened, old thing with more patches than stuffing, trying to find a comfortable position, giving up before long and settling to stare up at the ceiling instead.
«You know,» he muttered after having listened to the clock for a while, «if I hadn't insisted on taking zombot-Charmy to that bunker, ya wouldn't have had to go on alone.»
He could feel the cold bundle of Espio pull his tail tighter around himself.
«If you are set on taking the blame for what happened,» he muttered, «then from the very beginning in Seaside city, if I hadn't failed to catch Charmy before he flew away from us …»
«Who’s to say that even if you had caught him, the zombots wouldn’t have infected him later? There’s no way to say for sure that if this or that hadn’t happened things would have worked out differently. Any one of us could have ended up touching them.»
«And in the end it doesn’t matter who got infected and in what order because the virus was eventually purged from everybody.»
«Well it might still matter … but wether it had been Charmy or you, and whatever it would have happened in Seaside city or some other village, I would have done the same thing: found you and kept you as close as I could, at the risk of everyone else. I put my feelings above the majority.»
«I should have stopped you.»
The advantage to the darkness was that Vector could discreetly roll his eyes at what they were doing, competing about finding the most fault in themselves.
«Nah, I'm the boss. That one was on me.»
«Yet, if you travelled back in time right now, would you have chosen not to track Charmy down?»
He breathed in long and hard through his snout, since the answer was no. If he were to suddenly find himself back in time, in the same spot with their junior detective lost in the apocalypse, and the choice to forget about him in favor of protecting more uninfected people, he would still have gone straight for the closest aircraft mapping the skies around Seaside. Sure, he would try to change the events that led to zombot-Charmy escaping, but nothing else. Even knowing how badly things would end up, it would have been impossible to shrug and leave the kid on his own.
It wasn’t rational, since Charmy, as a zombot, would hardly have known nor cared wether he his teammates looked for him or not, but Vector knew this wouldn’t have changed what he felt he needed to do.
«I should have stopped you,» Espio repeated, «but I wouldn’t have wanted you to make a different choice.»
«I wouldn’t. Guess that makes me pretty stupid.»
«It’s why you are the boss.»
He had to swallow without knowing why — or maybe he did, because his memory flashed back to the moment right before he got infected himself, blocking the entrance to a launching dock and watching Espio fall to his knees right before heavy metal doors smashed shut between them. Instead of dwelling on that sight during what could have been his final moments, he had kicked and pushed back zombots until his body turned icy numb all over, and he lost all awareness. If he had allowed himself to think it would only have ended up as selfdeprecated wallowing. He’d been the boss of them. He should have protected Charmy while it still mattered, then done better a better job protecting everybody else from him. Time and time again, he’d claimed that the Chaotix never abandon their own, but then it became Espio’s turn to be left behind by him. Even as he was sure in his heart that the chameleon would be able to move forward, that nothing in this world could break the ninja warrior and make him stop fighting to protect people, the last thing he’d seen was the expression of somebody who was shattering on the inside. It had been years since he had last seen Espio look that way, and he’d always vowed to beat those responsible for expressions like that to a pulp if he ever saw them again. Accounting for this, being turned into a zombot had felt a bit like recompense, his just desert so to say; if there was ever a debt that Vector the Crocodile had to pay it was the one owed to his teammates.
Tentatively he reached out a hand and scratched across the Espio’s back, because he knew how nice that felt himself. Espio shifted toward the touch just enough to tell him that it wasn’t unwelcome, then he yawned. Yet another thing that Vector hadn’t seen in a long time.
«Works like magic doesn’t it,» he whispered, then yawned himself, infected by the other.
Espio, slumbering now, only hummed.
If they feel asleep like this, Charmy would find them the next day — neither of their morning energy could measure up to his, and while the bee would be buzzing about as loud as an engine, they would probably … Normally he would say act like zombies, but that concept didn’t feel harmless enough to joke about anymore. Undoubtedly Charmy would start teasing Espio about sleeping close to their boss, as if he was a small kid too, precisely because he knew that would embarrass the aloof Chaotix member. Yet another reason why this arrangement had to seem unappealing to Espio, but he either didn’t have the energy to remember this or to care. In a moment of inspiration Vector grabbed the blanket bundled in the corner of the sofa and draped across his knees and the chameleon to hide the latter from view, at least nominaly. Personally he would not find it very comfortable to be covered by a sheet of wool, but Espio had always, as a ninja, expressed a liking towards small and dark spaces, and for the first time tonight, he seemed to properly relax, double so when the crocodile resumed scratching his back.
«That time is gonna be the last time we leave you behind,» Vector mumbled, feeling the words chain themselves around him as he said them.
«You can’t promise that,» Espio whispered back, with true shinobi-cynism, like drinking week old coffee-dregs straight from the pot.
«I can promise anything,» Vector huffed, and pulled the Espio-curl closer. «It will just hinge on me being enough of a crock to make it true. I’ll wise up.»
The reply was barely audible.
«Roger.»
With his head covered up every sound Espio made was muffled, but the hand which Vector had on his back felt a tremble, and he could barely make out the breaths that shuddered and chocked. He kept petting him for a few minutes, until the tremors died down.
«You good?»
«Yes.»
For once tonight Vector believed that he wasn’t lying. The chameleon breathed more easily now, and was relaxed. The talk before had aired out some of the apprehension that lingered like a strained classmate-reunion between them, and even if there were things left that Espio hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk about, what weight they had dropped off of their respective chest’s deserved a few hours of sleep. Because Vector was sleepy. Dreadfully so. Espio even more so. Oftentimes a detective had to feel satisfied with only gaining part of the whole picture, and settle to be patient, trusting the gut that told you that the rest would follow in time. One of his trade-secrets, also useful in personal relations.
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, while Espio’s back pressed closer to his tail, as if looking for the warmth there that didn’t exist. It didn’t matter to either of them though. Not that a chameleon’s spines had a tendency to prod uncomfortably into flesh, nor that crocodiles tails were about as comfy as a swamp-submerged log. They could drift of like this, just the right amount of miserable and comfortably cold together. The clock on the wall clamored, and announced the new hour with a close-to-breaking rasp, but, like every time before, it then kept going.