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New recruits don't usually change much for Yoru.
Well, that’s not the whole truth—being in the Protocol in general hasn't changed much for Yoru. It’s a new job, but it’s just that. Something to pass through while on the way, something that shifts around him while he stays the same. It’s a setting, a backdrop, no more, no less.
So it shouldn’t matter to Yoru, but the new kid—Reyna’s protege, as far as he knows him—is bisexual. And transgender.
Yoru only realizes as much when Gekko mentions it outright. It’s not addressed to Yoru specifically, of course, because he does not rank among the most loving and touchy-feely agents in the Protocol that people go to for coming out. It’s just a passing conversation Gekko has with Reyna over the comms while they’re stuck in Rabat waiting for something to go down.
“So…” Gekko starts, kicking his feet off the edge of the storage container he’s perched on, punctuating his words with a rhythmic thumping pattern. “How long are we gonna be here?”
Yoru doesn’t idly converse as much as Gekko, but he has to agree. Rabat in the summer is not the kindest. He and Gekko are situated in the leftmost corner of the site, tucking into whatever shadows they can find while Jett, Sova, and Reyna spread across the rest of the area.
Reyna’s voice comes through with slight static, just from distance, because Killjoy would never let him hear the end of it if he even thought her devices were less than the best. “Patience, hermanito. There’s no rush. Unless you have a girl waiting back home?”
He laughs, smacking the plated steel he’s sitting on with an extended arm. “No way! Mom would faint.”
“A boyfriend, then?”
Yoru, who has been trying his best to be disinterested, suddenly feels a lot more invested than he had any right to be.
“As if. Mom is really trying her best, but she still can’t get over me not being her hija. S’all good though, she’s working on it.” Gekko reclines back into a lounge, head pointed to the endlessly blue sky.
Sticking around Reyna will inevitably grant you some minimal knowledge of Spanish, and Yoru is no exception. Suddenly some things make much more sense.
“Those who truly love you will come around,” Sova says, a perfect bastard as always, while Yoru’s just trying his best not to cut in with some repressed comment about his own life. Because how else is he supposed to react to someone being so lax about their identity—with effective strangers, no less? Whether intended to or not, Gekko put a part of himself into all of their scopes and let himself be plainly judged, and to trust people like that has never been Yoru’s forte. If he were different, he might even be impressed by the gall. As is, it just makes some kind of secondhand dread creep up.
Sure, Gekko’s not the first in Protocol to be openly not-straight, but he is new, and that takes up a whole different perspective. Killjoy and Raze have their thing going on, but they’re Killjoy and Raze, and nobody would ever have the heart to think badly of them. They could be the exception to any rule, proven by the redaction of the no fraternization clause. Plus, they’re surprisingly private about it all—or at least as private as Raze can be.
So it’s different. To Yoru, at the very least.
Yoru must have been too quiet for too long, because when he looks up again Gekko is staring at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Hey, earth to Yoru? You good man?”
“Fine.” Yoru tries curt and impassive, but it sounds snippy even for him. He tries again, attempting a false casual. “I’m. Chill.”
Yoru can practically hear the cringe over the comms from the rest of them. Gekko laughs, but it’s a little too quick to be anything but nervous.
Jett drops in to save the situation, but Yoru isn’t sure who she’s rescuing, “Be real, you’ve never been ‘chill’ in your life. You’re almost as bad as Phoenix.”
He shoots a comment back and tries to relax into the ribbing. Nobody is making a fuss about the revelation. It’s just another part of Gekko, something he talks about. So why does Yoru feel so damn unsettled?
The entire Protocol must already know about it by now, with how casual Gekko is about his sexuality. The whole story behind his gender is slightly less referenced, but Yoru attributes that to relevance rather than a desire to keep it under wraps.
The common room has gotten more rowdy since Gekko’s arrival at VPHQ, an additive of five extra bodies rather than one. While four of those bodies are small, they have more presence than most humans. When Gekko hangs around, it becomes more like a petting zoo than an ultra-high-tech compound housing some of the most dangerous people in the world.
Yoru stares down the blue creature—Dizzy, he recalls with some effort—while the rest of them coo and aww over the others. She floats a foot off the edge of the couch, drifting through the air effortlessly.
“Yo, Thrash, c’mon! Don’t eat that!” Gekko calls, reaching for her fins and gently prying her teeth from the cushions. Gekko holds up the pillow to inspect it, and when he lowers it there’s a bitemark cutting through the fabric and into the filling. It’s irreparably destroyed, but the look on Gekko’s face could have told anyone that. “Sorry,” he says with a smile that’s a fusion of a wince and a sheepish grin. “She gets nervous in new places.”
Viper, who had been watching silently at the kitchen table, sighs, then continues doing whatever evil scientist thing she’s doing. Which is practically forgiveness if you speak Viper. Yoru isn’t fluent, but he knows a thing or two about bad attitudes.
Killjoy stops her quiet rant about the ‘properties of such creatures’ being ‘so interesting!’ to ask, “Have you ever been unable to control them?”
“They’re just my buddies,” Gekko replies, shrugging off any of Killjoy’s callousness. “I have their back, they have mine.” His eyes flick down to Thrash wriggling in his lap as he rubs at one of the plates on her head. “But… there was this one time…”
Sensing a funny story ahead, the room’s noise level goes down a few notches. Several pairs of eyes watch Gekko stumble nervously through a retelling.
“Oh god, I had this guy over, right? And we were together—like, together together, but Thrash must not’ve liked him ‘cause she jumped on his back and he screamed so loud, the rest of ‘em came out too.” The room bursts into laughter, and Gekko grins along bashfully. “He uh, didn’t come back.”
The story might have elicited a chuckle out of Yoru if he didn’t suddenly tense at the mention of a guy. He glances around, but nobody seems to think anything of it. Or, at the very least, do not consider it as significant as Yoru does.
Dizzy makes a confused titter in front of him, which attracts Gekko’s gaze. He twists his hands in his now Thrash-less lap, handed over to Skye for petting. Yoru tears his eyes back to the creature in front of him, says, “What.” and then stalks off.
So much for chill.
He’s making Gekko uncomfortable. Yoru knows as much. And learns as much, when Jett corners him in the range. She motions to his earmuffs, and he didn’t know someone could mime pulling them off so angrily, but somehow Jett manages it.
“There you are, you piece of shit,” Jett says, yanking the gun out of his hands. Yoru lets her, but just barely. Because while he might be able to manage angry Jett, angry Jett with a gun is a different story completely. To his luck, she only pulls out the magazine and tosses it away.
“Look,” Yoru starts, which is a great way to stall out until he can escape.
“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘I am so sorry for avoiding you, Jett,’ then I want you to think very very hard,” she says, eyes flinty as her knives.
It’s not Yoru’s fault he’s been staying away from Jett ever since she got that ‘We need to have a talk’ look. He knows what she wants to talk about, which is really the problem, due to the fact that Yoru has absolutely zero interest in talking about it. He turns away, setting his jaw like a child getting reprimanded.
“I mean really, dude, three days?” she says, almost incredulous. “You skipped movie night with me and Phoenix. You know how sad Phoenix gets when you miss movie night.”
Yoru glares at her. It’s a dirty move to bring up Phoenix in their little spat.
Jett scoffs, crossing her arms. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.”
Feeling already thoroughly scolded, Yoru moves to leave.
“Wh—Hey! Don’t you dare,” Jett interjects, standing in the doorframe resolutely. “You’re not getting out of this so easy.”
Yoru rolls his eyes and sighs, matching her stance. “Fine then. What do you want?”
“What the hell is up with you and Gekko?” she asks, cutting straight to the point, true as her aim. “No, wait, why are you being so fucking weird?” she rephrases, not to spare his feelings but to attack them head-on. “Like, sure, even if you don’t get it do you have to be such an asshole about who he likes? I thought even you could be better than that.”
That ever-present feeling of dread sneaks up tenfold, like venturing into the deep end and feeling the bottom drop out from under you. “It’s not that,” Yoru grinds out through gritted teeth.
“Really?” Jett says, sarcasm so thick and syrupy on the word she must have taken it straight from Viper’s playbook. “I’m pretty sure everyone with eyes says otherwise.”
Yoru huffs, fists closing tighter at his sides until the leather of his gloves creaks. He breathes deeply through his nose—
“I mean, seriously, just what is your fucking problem?"
—and exhales.
“I’m gay, Jett,” Yoru snaps.
Oh. Shit.
“Oh shit,” she echoes. The anger drains as rapidly as it was potent. Her eyes go soft, concerned. “That’s—I mean, that’s, um, fine? Have you told anyone else?”
“Not anyone that matters.”
Jett’s face twists in morbid disbelief. “Fuck, I didn’t mean in your entire life. Yoru, how long have you known?”
When was it? When his father said his name with such disdain or when his friend punched him for looking at him wrong or when Yoru was just Ryo and a rowdy kid? Or was that when he realized he could never know?
Yoru licks his bottom lip, feeling for a split. “A while,” he says, not meeting Jett’s gaze. The gunmetal grey of the range is suddenly very interesting.
Yoru only realizes Jett has moved when he feels her hand rest on his shoulder. “You’re good, okay? I get it. You can relax a little.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Yoru says, meaning for it to be threatening but ending up with the menace of an adolescent boy.
“Not mine to tell,” Jett replies, “But I’m sure if you did, nobody would care. Hell, they’d probably beat the shit out of anyone who gave you crap for it.”
Yoru’s too tired to smile, but he looks at Jett and says “Yeah. Maybe,” like he means it.
Gekko doesn’t seek out Yoru’s company as he does with the rest of the younger agents nor does he relax when they’re alone together, which wouldn’t be a big deal if not for the fact that it’s completely unintentional on Yoru’s part. It would be less frustrating if he actually meant to scare the kid.
Jett, at least, has backed off for the most part, aside from the occasional worried glance between the two. Yoru figures she’s giving him time, which is much more gracious than he expected and not really a Jett move. Still, he’s as close to thankful as someone like Yoru can get.
Gekko’s reluctance to be in the same room with him is what makes it so strange when he sprints through the corridor, catches the doorframe, and pulls himself through. Weirder still is what he says next.
“Hey! Have you seen Viper?” Gekko is slightly out of breath, eyes flicking this way and that before they lock onto Yoru and he realizes who’s inhabiting the common room. For a moment, Gekko’s expression goes uncertain before forming something more resolute. Yoru pretends he doesn’t see it.
“No, why?” Because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t learn why the newest agent is looking for Viper of all people. The woman is an undeclared queen of terrifying new (and old) recruits.
“Well, I was supposed to meet her like twenty minutes ago but I kind of got sidetracked and she’s just, like, really really scary but I need my shot and—”
“Relax,” Yoru says, just to stop the endless train of chatter before Gekko dies of asphyxiation, “She’s probably in her lab.” Yoru backtracks, considering what Gekko just said. He raises an eyebrow. “You need a shot? I wouldn’t trust Viper with that.”
Gekko laughs, relaxing just the slightest. If nothing else, Yoru knows shit-talking brings people together. “Yeah, but she said she’d deal with all my T stuff when I’m on base. Y’know since there aren’t any pharmacies around here.”
Yoru almost bodily flinches. “Viper does your testosterone?”
Gekko’s hand, which has been resting on the doorway, drops to curl at his side. “Uh, yeah? Since I’m trans and all. Should I legit be worried?”
“No, it’s just,” Yoru trails off. There hadn’t been a world where he expected Viper of all people to be supportive. Before Gekko joined, he hardly expected anyone in the protocol to be supportive—and even after, how could he be sure they weren’t just okay with it? He’s not upset that he was wrong, but the idea leaves with a bitter aftertaste.
Realizing he never elaborated, Yoru simply says, “Her lab is near the west wing entrance. You can’t miss it.”
“Oh, right. See ya?” Gekko says, farewell hesitant. And it’s obviously not because he wants to stick around.
Yoru hums in response, too caught up in his own thoughts to form a more coherent goodbye.
After a couple of days of avoiding Yoru, Gekko turns the tables and finds him. A knock on Yoru’s door puts a pause on his reading, and if he were just the slightest bit more relaxed he would have jumped at the noise. A knock is unexpected—those who knock never visit and the rest just barge in, regardless of Yoru’s complaints. So he’s tense when he slides it open, revealing none other than Gekko. Yoru stares for a moment, just to make sure he hasn’t somehow fallen into a dream.
“Hi?” Yoru says, with a questioning lilt.
“Yo,” Gekko responds. Two of his creatures are out, flitting nervously around him. The yellow and green one-of-two—Mosh—bumps the side of his head and chitters. “Okay, okay. I’ll get on it.”
Gekko takes a breath, clutching the strap of his bag—and, shit, he looks young. Yoru’s not that much older, but when he looks at Gekko like this, he can’t see any of the wear or jadedness present in himself. A pang of crushing guilt winds its way into Yoru’s lungs, stealing any comment. The just-barely adult in front of him is bright-eyed and nervous and shouldn’t be dealing with Yoru’s internal problems. Those are for him to chew on and stew over.
“Look, I get it. I should have realized not everyone would be down with my whole deal. But I really want this to work out and I don’t want trouble with anyone, so could we please just try to… I dunno, be friends?”
Yoru shuts his eyes and sighs, and when he opens them Gekko flinches under his gaze. Shit. Now he feels extra bad. “It’s… my fault,” Yoru says, wrestling the words out. “I didn’t mean to be an ass. I’m fine with it.”
Gekko still doesn’t relax at the admission, but he doesn’t brush it off, which is more than Yoru can say for himself sometimes. “Are you sure? Jett’s not forcing you to do this or anything, right, because that would just make me feel worse and I swear I only asked her about it like, once…” he trails off, uncertain.
“No, I mean it. But Jett would have my head if I didn’t,” Yoru says wryly.
Gekko chuckles softly, relieved. “That’s cool, that's cool, ‘cause I spent like 20 minutes hyping myself up for this.” One of his creatures tugs at his pant cuff, making a vaguely irritated noise. “Oh, Wingman too! He’s a great hypeman.” He looks down affectionately, letting Wingman hug his leg.
Gekko looks back at Yoru, a tentative smile and hope written on his face. “So, we good?” he asks, hand out. Yoru claps it with his own and bumps Gekko’s fist after he lets go.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Once things are resolved with Gekko, all that’s left for Yoru is to simmer in his own thoughts. He, by nature, doesn’t overthink. Sure, he calculates and observes, but when he makes a decision it’s the only decision. He’s an in-the-moment type, sue him. Which is what makes it so strange that he’s caught up in a problem.
‘Problem’ is putting it nicely. Yoru has a crush.
“No fucking way!” Raze screams, too close to Yoru’s ear for his liking.
And the whole damn Protocol knows. Courtesy of Jett, who saw him sitting on the couch watching a solid black screen on the common room TV in a faux casual after talking to said crush.
Maybe Jett recognized the flighty look on his face, but regardless of how she came to the conclusion, she said, “You look sick—but not like coughing-sick, like dopey-sick. Wait,” her eyes narrow, critical, “Do you have a crush?”
And Yoru, so out of his depth he may as well have been in Lisbon’s geodome, flustered from his previous interaction, smartly said, “Uh.”
Hence, Yoru’s current situation.
Raze’s screaming attracts more people to the room, to Yoru’s luck. To make it worse, she tells everyone who walks in. Through Jett and Yoru’s combined efforts, though, they manage to get her to calm down. Which ends up mostly being Jett diverting her attention.
Unfortunately, said diversion is figuring out who it is.
“It has to be someone in the Protocol,” Killjoy says, and Yoru can practically see the conspiracy board in her mind coming together.
“You’re really going to do this shit with me in the room?” Yoru says, but he’s shushed aggressively. He’s so baffled he ends up being quiet anyway.
“Yes, yes, Loverboy,” Killjoy responds, rolling her eyes. “Two hundred creds on Skye.”
“You’re betting?” Yoru says, incredulous, but the ledger is already being marked down.
Gekko claps a hand on his shoulder, staring down at the paper with a grin. “Ayyy let’s go! Sorry, cuate, forty for Viper.”
“Viper?” Yoru spits, almost involuntarily.
A scoff comes from the corner. “You’re not much of a catch yourself, Loverboy.” And shit, Yoru really is screwed if even Viper is getting a kick out of it.
“Oooh, risky! Very well,” Killjoy says, writing Gekko’s name with a messy 40 next to it. Killjoy looks up and scans the room expectantly. “And you, Jett?”
“I think… I’ll stay out of this one.” Jett rubs her arm in a nervous tic, and if she wasn’t so genuine about it Yoru might have been irritated at her for being so obvious.
The whole room turns to stare at her. “Really?” Neon asks, shocked. “You always bet. Oh and uh, three hundred on Reyna for me.”
The scratching of a pencil punctuates Jett’s silence. “Uh, yeah, just feels a little wrong.”
“We kill people for a living,” Viper comments, and leave it to her to contribute the most to a conversation.
Jett glances over uncertainly, locking eyes with Yoru, and he can read a jitter in her body. It’s an apology enough for bringing it up.
“You guys are never going to figure it out at this rate. Way off,” Yoru says, trying his damnedest to be unbothered. He nods to Jett and tells her, “Just go bet.”
Jett’s face lights up, first in recognition, then as she beams at Yoru. She slams her palm against the table, body tense with determination. “Seven hundred on Sova.”
The atmosphere goes unsure, and Yoru feels that familiar flighty-nervous sense that usually sends him teleporting away.
“Wait… guys are on the table?” Neon asks.
“The only ones on the table,” Yoru confirms. He suppresses anything that’s not nonchalance, all the way down to his thoughts. At the very least, he can make Killjoy lose some creds. It wouldn’t kill to humble her a bit.
Raze lets out a loud cheer. “So glad I didn’t bet yet!”
Gekko, who was previously silent next to him, grins and says, “Good for you, man! Also, can I get my creds back?”
“Sorry, a bet’s a bet,” Killjoy says. She sighs deeply, muttering, “Unfortunately.”
“Hey, do you think we can get Chamber in on this?”
Half the base ends up on the ledger, totaling an absurd amount. Yoru stopped keeping track of who bet on who after it hit two thousand creds, but when all is said and done, there are just a few people in the room to sneak away from.
It’s Thursday night, which means it’s movie night, but Phoenix is on a mission and anyone else on base they might invite (see: Killjoy and Raze) are indisposed (see: making out in their rooms) so Yoru and Jett are each other’s only company.
Yoru doesn’t know how it gets brought up—something about picking something to watch and Jett suggesting a romcom—but she asks him about the bet.
“No,” Yoru says, clicking through the catalog on Jett’s laptop (provided in exchange for using Yoru’s room, because Jett’s always looks like a hurricane has run through it).
“I’ve already bet! It’s not cheating or anything—wait, go back, I want to see that one,” Jett says, tapping the screen where a macabre-looking preview is playing.
Yoru plays it without hesitance. “Be quiet. Watch the movie.”
She grumbles but settles back into the couch cushions after the lights are off.
The atmosphere of the movie is chilling, but the contents get so boring after a while that they just talk over it. Yoru retains around twenty percent of what he saw by the end.
“You are never picking again,” Yoru says, turning to look at Jett in the faint wash of laptop-screen illumination.
“Oh, shut up. It’s not like you said anything against it.”
“You wouldn’t shut up about the stupid crush you think I have.”
“Nice try, rift boy. You already admitted you had one.”
“It’s not like I wanted to crush on some guy,” Yoru grumbles, and regrets it the moment it’s out of his mouth.
Jett’s expression softens, “Come on, dude, it’s fine! I mean, he might even like you back.”
Yoru stays quiet at that, letting the words shift around his head. Before Jett has the chance to break the silence, he speaks up. "Phoenix," he says, lacing his fingers so tightly together they go white.
"What about him?"
"It's Phoenix."
It clicks. "You're serious?"
"Unfortunately."
“Wow. Really, Phoenix? I mean—”
"Yeah. Fuck—I like him. Jett, I didn't even know I could." Really, it's never been like him to care so much about what other people think, but it's different when it's not just him, when it directly involves others. It's new territory, this him-and-others thing.
Maybe it's only new because he actually cares for once.
It isn't an impostor to fight or a threat to shoot, but Jett looks like she's about to pull out her knives. Any unsureness about the fiercely protective look gets wiped away the moment Yoru crumbles. He slouches on the couch like he’s given up the fight, which is strange because he didn’t even know he was fighting it. His fingers rest across his temples, palm over his eyes. He does not cry.
It’s so much. Too much, he thinks, only because he refuses to say it. The gravelly feeling of fear he’s been ignoring has finally chased him down and pinned him. It scrapes and irritates like a nasty fall off his bike, raw skin and scuffed metal.
Jett’s hand rests against his back, a warm beacon that brings him back. “You wanna go shoot things?”
Yoru inhales so sharply it almost whistles. “Yeah.”
“Go!” Jett whisper-shouts, once Phoenix has left for his room. Yoru glances at the doorway to make sure he’s well and truly gone.
“Wh—Now?” he whisper-shouts back, and immediately feels stupid for doing something so juvenile.
“Why not? Live it up!” Jett replies, normal volume and cheery. “Are you scared or something?”
Yoru may be many things, but a coward is not one of them. He knows it’s just to piss him off into actually doing it, but knowing doesn’t make it work any worse.
“Fine,” Yoru snarls. Maybe being so snappy is unwarranted, but somehow it still feels like he’s being made fun of. Whatever. He’ll get over it eventually and Jett will forgive him for being an asshole like she always does. He stalks out of the common room.
Yoru bumps into Cypher, unexpectedly, in the hall, once he’s simmered down. “Yoru,” he calls, softly, almost devoid of the usual mischief.
They all have their limits—a threshold representing how far they’ll compromise. Yoru’s line is pride. Cypher’s, he thinks, is sincerity. But sometimes, they try to reach that boundary. Maybe it means more than actually crossing it.
“Good luck,” Cypher says. He tips his hat in acknowledgment, coat fluttering as he walks past.
Yoru doesn’t question how Cypher knows his intentions—it’s practically a rite of passage to make peace with Cypher knowing what happens on base.
“Thanks,” Yoru says, because what’s one more line to push?
Cypher is gone as fast as he appears, leaving Yoru standing alone in the hall. His pulse drums steady in his chest.
He runs.
When he stops, Phoenix’s door is a monolith in front of him, a steady and unshakable barrier. Yet so fragile a sound could move it.
Does he even knock? His heartbeat might make it through before that.
Phoenix, his heart pounds, Phoenix, Phoenix, Phoenix. An adrenaline storm sweeping Yoru up so often he can’t help but think of it as his, like no other.
Yoru raises his fist.
When Yoru joined the Protocol, he only expected it to be a break. Another place that sweeps up his presence then sends him on his way, following the inevitable stop-start of life.
Somehow, it ends up different.