Stay Redux

a/n: Alexa did good on a mission. Why isn't Doug happy about that?

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, with some love to localizers 8-4 and all the English language voice actors. Built off of Alexa's quest "Rapid Misfire", hard spoilers to that.

Swears (sorry, but I can't make Frye say "shoot"), tears, you can imagine fluff but I'm telling you, nope. Set post game, set after Bromance 1.0 "How Can Skells Be Boring?" and "Stay", but you don't need to read those.

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Doug took another swig of his beer and tried to focus on Frye's plan to mug someone, possibly kill them. "I'm telling you, every time I see his smug little face, I get the urge to break it. Into tiny pieces. Then get Phog to invent a new way to blow those pieces up. I want a professional for that part."

It wasn't always easy to hear what he was saying, what with the surrounding noise from the parking lot and the passing patrons to the Repenta. The stomp of the occasional skell. The more distant but constant clanging from the industrial area. And of course, let's not forget the regular landing and takeoffs of the transport vehicle, now that was something loud. Doug preferred running to using that thing, but there were still plenty of people using it. He tried not to think of them as wusses, reasoning maybe they had a lot of materials to carry. Nope, sorry, wusses.

Luckily, Frye was happy to repeat a point, or even an entire couple sentences, if you missed something. You were lucky when he didn't repeat himself.

"Frye, man, that was a good two weeks ago. Time to get over it."

"He hurt that little girl, and I'm not done."

"That 'little girl' is 25, beating up indigen, and looking just fine, far as I can tell."

"How would you know?"

"Looked into it, okay? I actually asked her, you know, to her face, how's she doing."

"She's not in your division."

"She's not in yours either. She's fine, and if she's not, she can sic Irina on any problem."

"Shit, even I'm not that mean. I just want to kill him." Frye laughed and took another drink from his flask. He still wasn't allowed back in the Repenta – he wasn't the only one not ready to forget things that happened two weeks ago. Doug wasn't sure if he himself was welcome, even if he'd only been a witness to that particular brawl.

He flicked a glance at the Outfitters Hangar. Frye laughed again. "Stalking your girlfriend, classy."

"She's not … you know the drill, Frye. That joke is old."

"So am I. Didn't you just get back from a mission with her?"

"Yup."

"So ain't you had enough time?"

"It wasn't a relaxing stroll, Frye."

The other man dropped his satyr-like mask. "How bad?" he asked quietly, or as quietly as worked in the Repenta Diner parking lot.

"Fifty-fifty."

"Crap."

Doug shrugged. "We couldn't have saved the ones we lost, wiped before we left NLA, probably. We did good by the others."

Frye's face returned to its normal leer. He waved his flask cheerfully at the industrial building across the way. "Speak of the devil. There she goes. Gonna follow her at a distance?"

"See ya." Doug loped through the intersection and caught up with Alexa.

She looked less tired than he expected. Still had that Alexa bounce to her step and a snap in her eyes. He hesitated a second before speaking to her. "Hey, 'Lexa, wanna hang out?"

"I was headed home, Doug. It's been a looooong day. Aren't you tired?"

"Yeah, well, I thought a little video and pizza wouldn't go wrong. Pizza's better if you share it."

"What video you got?"

"Actually, I was hoping you had something. I'm kind of dry."

She laughed. "Oh, Doug, I've got a list you wouldn't believe, and we haven't even scratched the B level ones. Sure, okay. Meet you at your place?"

"Sure."

Three hours later, he still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. Things had been run of the mill during Douglas' Dinner Theater, featuring Army Pizza's latest creation (Surf and Turf – fatty fish belly and BBQ suid, okay but never going to become a huge favorite) and a Norwegian horror film (with skells, of course, don't be silly, and CGI trolls that would give some of the local tyrants a run for their money). They'd shared the couch like they had a million times before, and Alexa had warned him about the really scary parts. "So you can get ready to cover your eyes," she'd hooted. "My youngest brother, man, he loved zombie films, but we'd always find him awake in the middle of the night, with a flashlight and a dumb look on his face."

"I'm not your brother. Movies don't scare me."

"Easy for you to say now. Wait until the troll-related avalanche happens after this scene."

"Jeez, Alexa, spoilers!"

He'd spun it out as long as he could, offering to make her some cocoa before she left. Finally, when they were both failing to hide their yawns, he broke down and asked. "Hey, Alexa, I'm sorry to spring this on you, but would you mind staying?"

"What, tonight? Uh, sure. Something bothering you?" Her face didn't match her cheerful tone, but he didn't comment on it.

"Nothing much, but I kind of got a weird feeling. I'll take the couch."

"Yes, you will, because I'm not stupid enough to get all noble and self-sacrificing. Your apartment may be a dump, but you got yourself a nice bed." Again, Doug decided to pass on any comments, merely grabbing up an extra pillow and blanket before getting as comfortable as possible on his too short sofa.

He didn't fall asleep. He still wasn't convinced it was a smart idea, but the fact that his feet hung out in the cold air whenever he stretched made the final decision for him. He'd examined his ceiling. He'd counted his breaths. He practiced not looking at the numbers of the clock, winking at him in the semi-darkness. He'd give it a few hours, maybe get up and read toward early morning.

He didn't need to wait that long. A small sound, no louder than a hiccup, had him checking the clock (again). 0140. He'd expected it sooner, during the movie, honestly. He got up, quietly but not stealthily, and walked towards his bedroom.

"Hey, Alexa. What's up?"

She flinched and flipped away from the door, but he could hear her uneven breathing. And the shaking. She was shaking hard enough to make his bed wobble, just slightly. He padded into the room and crouched on the floor next to the bed. He laid his head near the pillows and flopped his arm over her. He was relieved when she grabbed his hand and dragged it towards her face, nuzzling it fiercely and damply. He'd been right.

"S'okay," he whispered.

That was all it took. She started crying hard now, not trying to keep quiet. She shivered and gulped and cried some more. His hand was going to be pretty slimy, eventually, but that was okay by him. He was washable. He just whispered some "shhhs" and "you did good" and "I'm here" at her. After a bit, he reached over and grabbed the tissue box, then poked the back of her head with it. Classy and effective. She ditched his hand (soggy) and pulled out a generous handful. Several honking blows followed, and a deep breath.

"You knew I was going to lose it. How?"

"I didn't know, but I was worried. You're a nice kid, Alexa, and you're not used to seeing this crap."

"I'm older than you."

"No, you're not. I was shaving before you hit elementary school."

"Your mim is younger than mine."

"And we're trying to avoid talking about stuff."

She started crying again, he could tell, but not as hard. Her voice was squeaky when she said, "What's to talk about? My two friends get killed, well, not really, but it feels like it, and all I'm thinking about is skells. And I can't even feel wrong about it."

"So don't try to. You're fine."

"Everyone else thinks I'm crazy. Worse than that, they don't think I'm human. And maybe it's true. I dreamed about their skells, Doug. Not about Hannah or Fernand."

"Oh, Alexa." He waited for her to hiccup some more. "You Outfitters are tight. It was going to hit you hard."

"Not super tight. I didn't know Fernand so well. I liked Hannah. Even if skells weren't her specialty, she was a really nice person. She was always giving me fashion advice. Makes sense, she was focused on amour mostly, you know? She was generous, too, always giving people presents, nice clothes or gear. She gave me that pink t-shirt I wear a lot."

"The one that …" Doug stopped himself mid-sentence (…really). He'd never met Hannah (shows), but if Alexa meant what he thought she meant (off), then he owed Hanna a beer (your), once the Lifehold was in business (…). "Er, it looks good on you," he said awkwardly.

"So why am I crying about skells?!"

"Because you did your very best, and saved two friends, but nothing was going to save the other two. Nothing."

"Not even skells."

"Not even those." He let her snuffle for a minute before asking, "Hey, Alexa, why'd you never tell me about that jet-black skell before? The one you told us about after we'd rescued Camber and Mika."

"I'm not keeping things from you, don't worry," she said with a snap in her voice.

He smiled in the darkness. She was bouncing back to the sharp Outfitter he knew. "No, I know that, but if it was so important to you, why'd you never mention it? It saved your life after the crash on Mira, after all."

She sighed and relaxed. "When I first got to New LA, I told a few people, but they all told me there wasn't any skell like it. It didn't match anything we had, and there wasn't anyone acting in that area. A couple people thought I was making things up, but mostly they thought I had been knocked in the head or something. I didn't bother talking about it after a while. But I never forgot it."

"And I always thought you were a skell nut even back on Earth."

"I was a skell fan, oh yes, loved those things. But only as really neat tech. Really neat. Skells were something to play around with. I loved them, but not like I do now."

"Now they're the things that let you save people."

"Yeah." She shifted towards him and asked quietly, "Would you have believed me, back then?"

In turn, he pushed his head closer to hears, until their foreheads were almost touching. "When we escaped Earth," he began, just as quietly, "there were things some of the pilots saw. I didn't, but I heard about it. It was a black skell, like yours. The guys swore it moved quicker and better than anything they'd ever seen. We didn't talk about it for long, because it didn't make sense. There wasn't anything like it, right? So those guys must have been seeing things, mistaking enemies for allies, something. But, yeah, I would have believed you." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Ever notice how much Speedy looks like a baby version of something else?" He was referring to the prototype skell that had been Alexa's soulmate a few months before.

"Yeah," she whispered back. "I know Speedy was the model for the Ares line, but, yeah, paint it jet-black, give it some steroids, and you'd get something." She yawned. "Is it bad that I want to go back to sleep?"

"Sounds about right." He stood up and stretched, cracking his neck and admiring the painstaking attention to details for their mims. Neck cracking still brought relief, even if they didn't exactly have spines like before.

"Share the bed with me," Alexa said quietly.

"Nope. I'm not stupid."

"Jeez, Doug, I won't pounce on you, even if you do smell like skell. I just feel guilty when you look all stiff and sore in the morning."

He hesitated, then lay down gingerly next to her. "I gotta admit, I love my couch, but only for naps."

There was a shifting and rustling, as Alexa cleared up the used tissues and almost empty tissue box ("Eww, do not want to share the bed with these"), and then another repositioning as Doug reached around to switch the bed's recharging level from one to two bodies ("Doug, you are a dog." "I'm a good host." "How far does it go up?" "You can look in the morning." "Oh, you bet I will.") Then they settled in for as much sleep as they could manage.

"Good night, Dougie. And thanks."

"Your roommates would have helped. Don't worry."

"Maybe, but I'm glad it was you."

"Anytime. Good night, 'Lexa."

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a/n: He's done this before, you realize, on the Whale and with someone else; this is only a faint echo. (Somebody needs to write it, not me, go and make me cry, okay? Or make my nose bleed.) I can only hope that in other universes some Cross has grabbed him up, put him in their pocket, and made him smile. Or in my bizzaro universe (Redemption/Do a Test). Or maybe in this arc, eventually, because he does smell like skell.

Redux is pronounced ree-ducks. I've been pronouncing it wrong for several decades.

Next up: It WAS supposed to be about a skell related dream. Instead, I got hijacked by a private Day of the Dead ceremony. So that's what it is, kids.