Okay hi everyone

So reading over the first seven chapters of this fic I wrote, I realized it kind of reads off like a first draft because, honestly, it is. I find it's kind of clunky and not to my satisfaction so I'm starting over and rewriting it. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with what I've written so far, I may delete the chapters and republish them as a separate with a disclaimer that it's an unfinished beta version that I'm not going to be updating, I may just delete them and have them relegated to my personal Google Docs where I wrote them (so they won't just be obliterated). As for now, I'm probably going to leave them where they are for a little while, but here is the START of the NEW VERSION. I'm taking a little more time writing this than I was with the previous version because I had been rushing to bang out chapters and that's part of why the quality isn't to my liking.

Hope you guys enjoy
-Lance

It's night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on an oil rig no one even knows exists. Finn McMissile, a veteran CHROME agent, dressed in the standard black turtleneck and tactical pants, peers down at a loading dock, hiding above it behind some boxes.

He raced over to these coordinates as fast as he could. His partner's in danger. His partner in both senses of the word. Leland Turbo. Finn got a flash transmission asking for backup, saying his cover had been compromised, and it was evident they were already after him.

He just hopes he got here in time.

"Leland Turbo, this is Finn McMissile. I'm at the rally point, over." No response. Finn's heart starts beating faster. He had a bad feeling when Leland went on this mission. That feeling is only getting stronger and stronger with every passing turn of events.

"Leland, it's Finn. Please respond. Over." Only static comes through. Something's wrong. Very wrong.

Finn continues to observe the scene below, which gets especially interesting when Otto Zundapp, a wanted weapons designer, arrives on scene and has one of the workers show him a TV camera before they load it, which Zundapp describes as "extremely dangerous". Finn shoots a wire across to the other side of the derrick, attaching himself to it with a harness and sliding out until he's in the middle of the scene for a better look. He snaps more pictures. Still no sign of Leland anywhere. Then-

"Hey, Professor Z!" A crate is lowered onto the dock. "This is one of these British spies we told you about!"

"Yeah, this one we caught sticking his nose where it didn't belong!" Finn readies his gun, preparing to shoot his and Leland's way out of here. He tries to ignore the pounding of his heart.

"Agent Leland Turbo." The crate is lifted, revealing a redheaded man in his boxers lying motionless, blood and bruises all over, legs at just slightly unnatural angles. Finn gasps, and at the worst possible moment, there's a gas flare behind them, and everyone looks up-

Finn jolts awake. He's in a semi-private room in a London hospital. But he's not the patient.

Leland is. Finn looks over at him and sighs. The list of injuries is not good. Burns, knife wounds, two orbital fractures, broken nose, broken jaw, three amputated fingers on the left hand, missing teeth -unknown if they were knocked or pulled out- each leg broken in two different places…

Oh, and they did a tracheostomy on him. He's on life support, intubated, still unconscious. Finn sighs.

His face was nearly unrecognizable when Finn rescued him. It has at least gotten better since then. Finn and Leland look like opposites -Finn is 6'2 and bony, almost delicately featured, with slicked back gray hair. Leland is 5'9 and stocky, with vivid red waves, and a thicker mustache than the pencil one Finn has. And earrings.

Finn misses him terribly. He's missed him since he left for the oil rigs. And now everything's over, and he still doesn't have him back. He doesn't have the love of his life. He's all alone in the world, it feels.

He'll wake up, Finn tells himself. He has to. He's one of the strongest people Finn knows, and Finn doesn't throw that around lightly. It's just a matter of when.

But waiting for that "when" feels like an eternity. Being unable to be by his side during the mission was hell. He was having to get updates from Jetta, Leland's sister. Who doesn't even know how it happened because she has no security clearance. And Finn hasn't been able to tell her, which has been causing issues between the two. She's also mad that Finn's been "out of the country for work" with him in hospital. She told him it feels like he's putting his job before caring for his boyfriend.

If only she knew the whole story. That he was trying to catch who was responsible, that he's made sure they're locked up, that they'll pay, that-

Jetta doesn't know Leland was a spy, and CHROME doesn't know that Finn and Leland are together. There's only one person besides Finn who's been privy to both sides of their lives and he's not with Finn, even as they share this room with each other. Oh, and the guy on the other side of the curtain who keeps arguing with the nurses and playing the TV too loud.

Finn is alone, even when he's with other people. It's always been like that. Leland was the one exception. Now he has no one to turn to. So he's been spending all his time here. Waiting. And ignoring messages from Holley, his new field partner, asking where he had gone. He didn't tell her what had happened. He hardly talked about Leland to her. "Friendships are dangerous in our line of work", that's the one thing he said about it. And then disappeared on her after the short mission they had right after the World Grand Prix, which only took a few days. After that, he went on leave. And started ignoring her messages -and he has been getting messages, he can see multiple unread notifications from WhatsApp whenever he goes on his phone to pass the time just sitting here, playing some game on his phone.

"Friendships are dangerous in our line of work." That was more about him holding Holley and Siddeley at arm's length. A way to handwave it as him being like that with everyone. But admittedly, he feels a little guilty ignoring her. Like she's his charge, and he's neglecting her -after all, he roped her into field work. Now he's left her adrift. So out of guilt, he finally opens up WhatsApp.

"finn, is everything alright? they say it's not like you to not show up to work."

"finn, are you okay?"

"finn, can you just let me know if you're alright? no one at the office has heard from you and no one knows where you went." He sighs. It's only eight at night. She'd probably see anything he sent her immediately. So if he responds, it will be an actual conversation. He thinks it over, getting up from his chair and walking over to the window, looking out on the street below.

Maybe he could use the company, honestly. He's barely on speaking terms with Jetta at this point in time, and Siddeley has only been able to visit once the past few days with his schedule as a pilot -not that Sidd and Finn were ever friends outside of work, at least according to Finn himself. He takes out his phone and goes to WhatsApp again.

"Hi, yes, I'm alright. Friend of mine is in hospital." Immediately, Holley begins typing.

"oh no! i'm so sorry to hear that." He wonders if there's been talk at CHROME about it, how much she knows and just isn't letting on. On the off chance she hasn't heard anything, maybe it would be best if she heard it from him first.

"He was my field partner before you. We've known each other since the academy."

"is it agent turbo?"

"So they have been talking at work about it, huh? Yes, it's Agent Turbo."

"i've only heard a little here and there. but someone mentioned him being in hospital."

"...And that my mysterious disappearance coincides with that?"

"yes." WhatsApp displays that she's typing a second message.

"how is he? no one knows the specifics but people have been saying it's not good." Finn isn't sure what to tell her. It's not good. It's actually the worst Finn has ever seen Leland get hurt. There's a certain savage, animalistic brutality to what must have happened on the oil rig that scares even Finn.

He's trying not to think about how you could tell from where the blood wasn't that Leland had been crying. The streaks down his face where it had been cleaned off.

"He was beaten pretty badly. He's still unconscious."

"i'm sorry. i can't imagine how you feel right now."

If only you knew the whole story, Finn thinks to himself. He can't even begin to describe to Holley just how awful he feels, the guilt, the worry, the only getting a few hours of sleep every night, how boring it is just sitting here waiting, and how it all pales in comparison to what his beloved is experiencing…

"Don't worry about me. I'll pull through." There's a cry for help underneath this facade. Maybe not one he's aware of, but it's in there. He's drowning. This is his "personal emergency". The ultimate one. But the world moves on, even as he pleads inside for it to stop, to give him some time…

He'll eventually run out of vacation days. Yes, this is his vacation, in technical terms. At least he was never the type to go on yearly holiday.

"do you want to maybe get a coffee or something tomorrow?" He knows what she's getting at. She wants to see him. She's worried about him. He knew that already. And telling her not to isn't going to work.

"Sure." He puts the phone away, sighing, and turns back to face Leland. On the other side of the curtain the television is turned up obnoxiously loud. His phone vibrates in the pocket of his fleece jacket. He doesn't go for it right away, instead sitting back down in the chair and looking over at Leland like before. Finn puts a hand on the bed rail, tapping his fingers anxiously.

"I told you about Holley, right? She's my new field partner. Smart girl, young too. And she has her heart in the right place. I'm sure I've spoken about her, I just… everything's been blurring together for me. I haven't been thinking straight since you got hurt, Leland, honestly. Which is probably what happened with the American on that mission… not my proudest moment." He chuckles here. "She tried telling me there was no way, this couldn't be the American agent, but I insisted that no, this was him, it had to be. She was right in the end. But he did it, he was the one who figured everything out, so, it did work out…" His voice trails off here.

"She's concerned about me. It was her I was talking to just now on WhatsApp. I'm worried about you, and she's worried about me. I guess someone has to be, and at this point, it's not going to be your sister, is it?" He pauses as if this conversation isn't one-sided. "No, I don't think he's listening in on us because I can barely hear myself over the sound of the telly. It's probably watching so much news that landed him in hospital. That's what gave him heart problems. The stress of it. Oh, and how bloody fat he is. See? He can't hear us at all." Another pause.

"...I hope you can hear me."