A/N: What's up it's your boy, and I'm here to publish a new story after I've been dead on this site for actual years because I moved on to AO3. This is purely a cross-post, and mostly done because I'm an attention-craving piece of shit who needs that sweet validation to convince myself that this shitty story is worth writing to the end. Yeah, I got cynical as all hell since you last saw me all those years ago. Enjoy, I guess? Idk, there's 5000 words worth of craptastic done already, and idk if I'll even remember this site exists in the future, so it'll probably be more reliable to keep up with it on AO3, under the same username and title.
"Arcade, look!" Klaus's excited voice sounded from up a hill, getting Arcade's attention. He didn't know what he was expecting when he looked up, but a courier sitting in a pile of snow, some of the fluffy powder in his hair and a massive smile on his face, was not it.
Arcade let out a small chuckle at the sight, shaking his head in amusement. "You're gonna catch a cold!" He called back, but as was his attitude towards most dangerous situations, Klaus didn't seem to care. He just shrugged, shot Arcade his 'Whatcha-Gon-Do-About-It?' look, and let himself fall backwards into the drift. Snow in the Mojave was almost as rare as non-irradiated sugar bombs, and Klaus wanted to enjoy this.
"C'mon, nerd. Have some fun fo-AUGH!" Klaus's playful teasing was cut short when a 70-pound cybernetic dog decided to barrel right into him, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of his mouth. Klaus got the wind knocked out of him, and he curled in on himself, coughing. When Rex decided to duck his head and give his owner a proper doggy kiss facial, Klaus started laughing, trying to push Rex aside and escape, but it was futile. "Arcade, help me!" he shouted through the barrage of dog slobber.
"No, I think you can get away from this one." Arcade deadpanned, crossing his arms as he approached the two. "Unless I get something in return for rescuing you from this ferocious beast?"
"Okay, fine. I'll-Rex!" Klaus laughed, trying in vain to shove his dog off of him.
"You're a dork." Arcade shooed Rex away from the courier, helping him up onto his feet and brushing the snow off of his hair and clothes, and fixing his crooked glasses.
"Yeah, but I'm your dork." Klaus shot him a lopsided smile as Arcade picked his hat off of the ground before Rex got to it, brushed his newly-mussed hair back and set it on his head, adjusting it to cover his scar.
Arcade rolled his eyes. "So where's that reward? I did just save you from the Mojave's most dangerous canine."
"Ready to have your mind blown, doc?" Klaus asked, but didn't give the other time to answer before he leaned forward and kissed him, sweet and meaningful.
They had kissed a thousand times before, but damn, Klaus was a good kisser. When they pulled away again, Arcade acted the part of consideration, as if deciding whether or not that was worthy payment, but the brush of light red on his face gave him away. "Hmm… I suppose that suffices."
"Well, good. Because we still gotta track down these runaway bighorners for Marcus an-" Klaus abruptly stopped speaking as a funny expression took hold of his face, followed by a hard sneeze that he just barely managed to cover with his arm. He sniffled, his nose having flushed to a light shade of scarlet along with his cheeks. "Aw, fuck," he was starting to sound congested.
Arcade shook his head, sighing helplessly. "Told you so, but you never listen, do you? C'mon, let's go find these livestock, and then I'll talk to Marcus about letting us stay the night in one of the lodges." He took Klaus's hand in his own, and began to lead them on the trail of hoofprints they had found before. "We'll get you warmed up and I'll see what I can do about your symptoms, then you're going to bed early, doctor's orders."
When Arcade uneasily awoke from the holds of his vivid dream, he was met with the dark of the room. He sat up, the space around him feeling all too large now that he was the only one that occupied the bed. Even with Rex's content snoring at the foot, it hardly felt the same. Klaus was usually here with him, sprawled out and, more often than not, babbling on incoherently as his dreams took him elsewhere. The bed felt too big without him.
As his eyes adjusted to the low lighting, Arcade felt around for his glasses on the nightstand, the world swimming back into focus as he slipped them on. No point in trying to get back to sleep; he'd been restless ever since the courier that stumbled like a Freeside drunk into his life, adventure and excitement in tow, just as suddenly disappeared. It wasn't unlike Klaus to go on random, spur of the moment adventures on his own, but he always told Arcade where he was going, when he'd be back. This time, he just up and vanished, and Arcade had stopped counting the days that he'd been gone.
The others had hypothesized that Klaus had met an untimely end, perhaps by running into one of those cazadors that he was deathly allergic to that he couldn't shoot fast enough. He understood why they felt that way, but Arcade refused to believe it. Maybe it was the denial stage of grief, or his unwillingness to let go of the one man who saw him as a human being, who had seen their relationship as something more than a fling.
He sat up, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the inertia and insomnia making for a bad combination when one's mind is still muddled. A quiet, concerned beep alerted him to the doorframe, where ED-E was floating in his nightly round of laps when no one was awake to pay attention to him. Arcade narrowed his eyes at him in distrust, but the eyebot floated in anyway, getting uncomfortably close.
"Can you just leave me alone?" Arcade said, but ED-E persisted, and gently nudged his metallic body against Arcade's shoulder, making him flinch. "What do you want? Is one of your circuit boards malfunctioning again?"
ED-E emitted a negative, shock noise, and shook in the air.
"Then go bother someone else," Arcade growled. He really didn't feel like talking, especially not to an Enclave eyebot that only brought back bad memories. With all his other repressed emotions right now, he really didn't need the negative nostalgia to pile on top. But ED-E didn't respond to his command. Instead, he opened the small storage compartment below his grill and tilted himself forward, dropping a small, metal key into Arcade's lap.
Curiosity got the better of him, and he picked it up, turning it over in his hand. There was a small, ripped label on it that read Guns in Klaus's nearly unreadable chicken scratch. "Okay, what?" Arcade looked back up to ED-E with a new willingness to cooperate. He wasn't sure how to feel about the key, and he had half a mind to strip ED-E for scrap for bringing up Klaus, but he wanted to know where this was going.
ED-E whizzed over to the locked storage locker on the floor of the bedroom, beeping like mad in a tone of urgency. Arcade stood up, walked over to the locker, and kneeled in front of it. "This won't exactly be new to me, considering that I know what all his guns are. Unless we find a conveniently-placed note detailing exactly where he is, I'm not sure what you're hoping to find in here."
"BZZT!" ED-E replied in annoyance. Ugh, if only Klaus were here, he could understand what the bot was sayin-
Stop it. He firmly berated himself, cutting off all wistful thinking of his missing partner that would only lead to depression. Reluctantly, he decided to listen, if only to satisfy whatever glitch-induced impulse that flying lightning ball was currently having. Arcade stuck the key in the padlock, pulled it off, and opened the trunk, greeted with the same unorganized mess he always saw while Klaus geared up.
There were three guns that Klaus regularly used: a .45 rifle, a 12.7 rifle, and a 10mm submachine gun. All were modified by him, crafted by an expert hand to deal death to any unlucky adversary who crossed his path. The .45 and 12.7s were secondary to the most versatile of the bunch, which Klaus took with him everywhere. Arcade brushed off the dust from the wood of the .45, exhaling hard when he saw that name carved into the slide, a mark of ownership. He set that to the side, and did the same to the 12.7. That should have be it. If Klaus was gone, he would have that 10mm.
Arcade shot a dirty look up at ED-E, who, despite lacking facial features, seemed to be giving him a cue to go on. "Look, I appreciate that you've got him on your mind too, but I really don't need this right now."
"BZZT!" ED-E repeated, with even more urgency than before. It seemed like he was gesturing to something, the way he was arching his body in a downward motion. Reluctantly, Arcade shifted his focus to the trunk again, which was full of boxes of spare bullets haphazardly tossed on top of each other. However, between two boxes of 12.7 rounds, a metallic glint caught the low light in the room. Arcade furrowed his brow, and pushed the ammo aside, reaching in and fishing out an eerily familiar firearm: a 10mm submachine gun with a near-illegible name carved into the slide.
"What the f-?" Arcade's words trailed off when a cold realization dawned on him, his blood running cold. He peered up at ED-E again, this time without his usual malice. "Klaus wouldn't have left this behind, not if he left of his own volition. This…" He shook his head, trying to process what this clue was telling him. "This was foul play."
No sooner had the words left his mouth that Arcade's mind reached a firm decision. He stood, pocketed the gun, whistled at Rex to wake up and follow him, and grabbed his Followers coat off of the desk on his way out.
"Foul play? What, like a murder?" Veronica asked, her arms crossed and her hair mussed from the sleep she had just been shaken from.
"Please, don't even consider that possibility," Arcade shoved that thought away the second Veronica had brought it up. "Besides, it wouldn't be wise to murder someone with so many connections. That leaves too many ways to tie it back to the perpetrator. No, I think this was a kidnapping."
At his side, Rex growled, showing his distaste for anyone who would dare bring harm to his master.
Veronica sighed. "Arcade-"
"It's not impossible. Klaus has political enemies on all sides. The NCR doesn't like him because he advocates for Vegas's independence, Mr. House supporters don't like him because he cut off House's resources, and the Legion loathes him because of all their invasion plans he's foiled from right under their noses-"
"Arcade!" Veronica silenced him with a firm tone and a quick wave of her hand, a sympathetic look on her face that almost crossed the line into pity. She pinched the bridge of her nose, and took a deep breath, trying to decide how best to approach a man in denial. "The NCR doesn't resort to kidnapping their minor political threats when they have the Legion breathing down their necks, Mr. House supporters are mostly limited to the Strip, where Klaus is very well-respected, and this is too far across the Colorado for Legion to be skulking about. I'm sorry, Arcade, but you're going to have to accept the evidence that he's not coming back." Her own grief was starting to leak into her voice, making her sound more threatening, which was an odd match for her bubbly personality. "I know it's hard to lose someone close to you, but that's life. Klaus either abandoned us, which makes him a way bigger asshat than any of those thugs in Red Rock Canyon, or he's dead in a ditch somewhere with nightstalkers ripping up his corpse. It's how life works here."
Rex whimpered, and lowered his head at those harsh words. Arcade locked his jaw before he retaliated out of defense and said something he would later come to regret. Instead of using words, he just reached into his coat pocket and pulled out that gun, showing it to Veronica, who seemed to take a new turn upon the sight of it.
"Why would he…?" Veronica started as she looked over the name on the slide, the weathered metal that no longer shone as brightly as a new firearm.
"My thoughts exactly."