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Rain was frequenting the shore front for a while now.
“Think he made it?”
“No. I don’t.”
Doctor Lind scoffed with his breath, the smog of his cigarette choking out his lungs. He drew a slow drag of his lucky. It was nearly a bud in the snip of the wind that chased away the smoke, “Fuck, Strike.” He said, hands shaking, the end of the cigarette nearly squashed between his fingers as he gayly attempted to suck what he could from its fading ember.
“You’re goin’ crazy.”
“I know.” You settled into the snow, hips pressed against the crumbling wall of an old building. Its sign, The Mediapi Clinic, hangs in shattered chunks of wire, rimbar, and polymer glass. An ire between your brows at its colic swing, at the doctor dragging his boots into the ground as he wandered away for a time, the cold caressing the open guard of your face helm. or the emptiness between it all. It was a bitter promise of rue that you could never forget. The distution had become a comfort so familiar in the endless nights. Where life would be so uncomfortable to see.
A lovely dark bruise of blue and purple radiated the horizon, flesh tethered just out of the flat lands like new bark and sprigs of a tree. But the rain continued where the light of the sunrise could not. You stood. Your shuffling gear clanking sharply against the lots of old atrium windows, scraping the varnished soot and frozen soil as you rose. There was a rush of quiet after a lone call of the morning crow croaked from the rusty awning above.
You sighed away the post-tension in your lungs. Thudding your heel against the wall softly, peeling paint and dust sputtering from the cracks in a cloud around your ankles.
There
. You thought.
A tiny, tiny pebble. Skittering slowly to your feet. Opposition of direction in which you were kicking up debrief. He was here. The gesture was all you needed. No words. No broken twigs. Just a small discerning, little thing, unnoticed. No sound. Just how you preferred it. And then another before your perceptive eyes caught the little dots of red reflected in the end of your leg plate. This watchpoint brimmed in the bunkers with old soldiers and alike. To some level, many of them standing out, we’re commonly prone to triggers from their own passive hells that bothered them during the nights. The worst of, could swear they could clearly see it all again even under the light of day, eyes wide open.
You were lucky. Only fretting when alone for too long. Sometimes, even the darkness of your own room, encompassed the darkness swelling with pressure in your head. Your thoughts dulled the pain, but it left reminders, nails clenched so tightly in your palms. So frequent, the blood had permanently browned your sheet, the frantic washes undid the thread and tattered the edge. But as routined, you wake up every day before three o’clock, wash, change, fold, repeat.
“The sun… should be coming up.” You whispered. Almost believing it wouldn’t. It was there, at some point, soon. Just above the gamp thick clouds. Five minutes. It was all you had to see the sun everyday.
He kept walking, light and airy despite the density of his armour until he stood next to you where Dr. Lind had. The doctor's sputtering footsteps long softened beneath the sharp, steady jaunt of your new companion’s armoured toes. He said not a word as you preferred in this short solace. Leaned against the window pane and faded into the distance of your mind as you stared hollowly to the horizon sky. Those five minutes to see its hot breath barely clear the tree line, to close your eyes and imagine the sun's nuclear heat on your skin, flushing your face and chest. The moment had gone as it came, from behind the mist of bleak black hills and swallowed like an orphaned fawn to the hunting dogs of storms.
And only the cold rain, misted your cheeks and numbed your nose. It tickled like pins on pores.
“The rain will soon stop. It may sleet.” His voice was soft. You glanced at his feet, the soles of your own growing wet from the snow.
“It will… probably will.” But you weren’t keen to see it. It only made you unbearable colder than what you could stand. Quietly, you closed your face plate and locked its hinges. Compression engaged and defrosting your mirrored panel. You watch methodically from inside your helm as the glass’s liquid crystal molecules lined up to the electrical fiber lines before reverting to a closed current, scattering like a web of fungi
to render the helmet's glass an opaque black.
You faced the man at your side properly, standing at a leveled height with you, not sure to account for your thick heels or the uneven ground from the Omnic and grenade craters around the area. A breath has passed and the morning grew darker. His armor's burlesque lights grew just a bit brighter against the red pulse of your own. Ominously humming to your own breath. The suits controlled temperature, flushing up your neck and cheeks too quickly. You mildly missed the cold during that.
“Lucky.” His accent is as the land he was born to, gently rolling and rising sharply with the tide. A stalking rock beneath the sediment. You wouldn’t entertain any notion of him losing it any time soon. It’s already been more than a decade and seeing him always brought a lightness to your chest.
For just five minutes. He was just as“—
captivating as the sun
..” You whispered thoughtlessly.
A crow passed. The cyborg tilted his head in exposition to such a phrase. It was becoming noticeable how comfortable you were in your momentary trance and he was all too happy to gain any attention of yours, the smallest of kind.
“Am I?”
You blinked and shook away your sudden goosebumps to his throaty question. “What?” You jittered.
“
Captivating
.”
You looked down and grinned beneath your mask. A slow
ha
escaping your chapped lips. How embarrassing. You perked and noticed that his hand was predictably close to yours, his index finger—in a furtive touch—tapped your own and you desired it.
Though you would have preferred the forward confidence of this man you’d see in the field, competitively boisterous and childishly smug. Guiding this feverish, quiet exchange of this same man. Standing so motionlessly, you could reel the tension in his body as his shoulder suddenly locked back. Squared and haunched. Mask moving so briefly to your hand as you brought it up to his face, fingers indulging in the plates curves and modulations. The glint of his heartened black eyes catching a red luster in a
dreaming commodity likened to your own eyes when you would stare guardedly at the rising sun.
“Lucky, I—“
“—
The transit leaves in five minutes
.”
He pulled back in abrasive surprise. As a man drilling himself with anticipation for your affection, you always announce the most unexpecting things. He grunted in confusion, the lack of expression in any form from you didn’t give any clue to how to respond. You always closed your face plates when he finds you. It only made his yearn to look at your face through its glass polish more apparent each time, he was shameless about it. Which is why he always kept his mask on as well. He’s seen you play cards. He’d lose his own hand if he couldn’t hide the lust for your cunning fingers on his bare face one day.
Peeling away from his side with a soft chuckle because for whatever could be gleaned from the shackles of your bodies unconsciously pressed together, conducting a sweet cold current, a hum to the preening ear. Outsiders looking in to your intimate moment, could guess that perhaps, with a shake of your prosthetics, that perhaps cyborgs like yourselves had predilection to one another. There were only so few of you in the world and no place to accommodate your
situations
.
Though he thought you couldn’t have heard him, he muttered callously to himself, a distinct ”まだまだ” carrying down wind to you and some short fumbling sentences. Followed by a crisp echo through your intercom. There is a kind of voice that resonates and feels as if the soul is being massaged, and when the accent does the same, when it exaggerates that feeling of frustrated infatuation, a surprising youth of shyness of the heart, they are entirely captivating. You laughed with a hoarse cough, turning causally to the side as you tapped the side of your head. Feet lazily gaining track.
“Your mic is on.” Though you knew that already. You had turned it on and connected the two frequencies with the intention of saying something utterly cheesy and butterfly provoking as you currently ran away. You were just as shy if not more than him. Obviously fight or flight, flight being branded on your forehead.
A deep flurry of expletives fluttered into your ears before the intercom's connection was cut so dramatically that it only gripped your stomach with a belly aching laugh, furthered by his flustered hand gestures in the distance.
“I like you too… Genji.”
Your voice hitched highly, barely stamping it out as the abashment pounded your blood up your ears. Saying his name was more difficult—
and adamantly salacious
—than admitting your sinful heart, your rambishly beating cog of a heart. A few harsh exhales through your nose quickly calmed your flush. A minor encouragement to your brisk pace.
There was not a soul to hear that thankfully. Just an oblivious cyborg nearly hot on your tail as you headed back to the station like foolish teenagers. His footprints in the snow matching the cool stride of yours.
As time continued the pass and the future progressed. You rubbed hands together, running over each knuckle as if they were his. You grimaced when you realized what you were doing, pointedly ignoring Genji’s petulant stare from across the station car as he sat straight. Only his head turned so noticeably your way. You sighed;
Oh Lind… He’s driven me crazy.
For however long it takes. You don’t think he’ll ever leave your side each time he finds you. Not even for five minutes.