Chapter Text
Drummer Boy knows his own importance at HQ. For all he talks it up or down, Drummer Boy knows exactly where he stands. They all fill niches, each member of HQ. Desdemona is the boss, the face of certainty and command. Carrington is cold, clinical, harsh. Tinker Tom is eccentricity and fun, Glory and Deacon all inferno and smoke.
And Drummer Boy? Drummer Boy is safety. He’s the first face an agent sees upon returning to HQ, and he’ll be the last face the agent sees when leaving. It’s a job that makes Drummer Boy irreplaceable, for he needs to know every name of every person walking through the entrance to HQ, needs to know their personalities and their preferences. Needs to know how to twist and tailor his persona to each of them, so that returning to HQ is catharsis and not a chore.
Winter in the Commonwealth hits hard and fast- one day it’s sunshine and comfortable weather, the next it’s clouds and frost and chill. It makes Drummer Boy’s bones ache every time, the change, makes his side twinge in discomfort and pain. His hip healed, the flesh mending with barely a scar, but Carrington made it clear that there was nothing they could do for the cartilage damage. Drummer Boy would probably never work in the field again. But that was okay. Desdemona had a more important job for him.
Cold air is the first herald of agents coming in from outside, followed by footsteps heavy on old stone. Quick and certain, unbalanced and shuffling- Deacon and Whisper. Drummer Boy puts on his best bullshit smile and leans against the wall, rolling a cigarette between his fingers. They’re probably just coming back from Randolph. Not a pretty situation, that safehouse, but everyone understands the necessity of getting it back online if they can.
“Drummer Boy,” comes Whisper’s familiar rumble. He pulls his mask down as he approaches, revealing smirking scarred lips. “Need a light?”
“That’d be great.” Drummer Boy lets Whisper in close, close enough to light the cigarette between his lips and closer, until Drummer Boy can smell grease and metallic blood and hear the soft hiss of hydraulics in Whisper’s probably-damaged prosthetic arm. Deacon has disappeared somewhere to give them some privacy. A sweet gesture, but ultimately unnecessary- Drummer Boy pulls away after but a moment, smiling coyly and nodding his head towards HQ proper. “Dez is waiting for your report. And Tinker Tom has some new goodies for you, if you want to look over those while you get that arm checked out.”
That’s how it’s always been between the two of them, Whisper and Drummer Boy. Cat and Mouse since day one. Whisper, with his roaming eyes and obliviousness to personal space. Drummer Boy, always just out of reach. It’s a dynamic that confuses the everloving shit out of most other agents and worries Desdemona just as often as it amuses her, but it works. All playful fun, never any hard feelings. Drummer Boy understands how carefully balanced their relationship is, on the edge of a blade, but he also knows that life is far too short to play it safe when there’s room for risk and reward. Whisper wouldn’t be the first agent Drummer Boy would have a falling out over something as simple as unreciprocated attraction- or reciprocated attraction that ultimately went nowhere- and he knows how to keep a relationship professional when that happens.
The trick, though, is that Drummer Boy simultaneously knows exactly where this will go and has no idea how. Every time he thinks that he’s pushed Whisper to the limit of the agent’s patience, every time he thinks that maybe Whisper is finally going to do something , the agent backs off. Gives them both space to cool down. Reset. Comes back later, sure, but from a different angle. And no matter how many times it happens (a total of three, to date), Drummer Boy is thrown off by it every time.
“I think your best bet is to just roll with it,” Glory says, eyeing up Whisper from across the room over the rim of her glass. Drummer Boy makes a little humming noise in the back of his throat and tries not to choke on whatever shit Glory’s poured for him- the bottle says “vodka”, but the taste says “naked in an alley with an aftertaste of regret”. They’ve earned a night of shitfaced celebrations, Drummer Boy supposes, after the kind of mission it took to get H2-22 out of the Commonwealth. Two safehouses, three deaddrops, four route changes, but here they are, successful, toasting to a synth’s new and hopefully peaceful life.
“A guy like him? You’d be dumb to throw away that kind of prize,” Glory says, musing, like she’s definitely thought about it. A spark of jealousy rises in in Drummer Boy’s chest, fast and bright as flash-powder before he can stamp it out again. Whisper belongs to nothing and no one, and Drummer Boy has no right to jealousy.
Glory notes the change in Drummer Boy’s mood and, wisely, says nothing more.
With the first snows come new dangers. Most synths are unaccustomed to the cold, and thus moving them without them succumbing to disease or hypothermia is a challenge in and of itself. Ice forms quickly on the pavement, often clear or covered by snow or otherwise undetectable until you step right on it. And then there’s the Brotherhood of Steel overhead and the increased vertibird presence in the sky and power-armored presence on the ground, making night runs even more necessary and dangerous. With runners moving by day and agents and packages moving by night, Drummer Boy doesn’t get much sleep.
Drummer Boy doesn’t even realize how bad the pain has gotten until he reaches for the bottle of pills stashed in his desk and finds it empty. He allows himself a moment of indulgence, rubbing at the sore joint for a moment as he weighs his options. Carrington doesn’t approve of Drummer Boy’s painkiller intake and likely won’t give him another bottle. Tinker Tom’s stashes are plentiful, but it’s often hard to know what exactly you’re getting from the man. Or, he could just suck it up, go without until the month ends and Carrington is obligated to fork over another month’s supply. It wouldn’t be a long wait, either. Maybe a week, though Drummer Boy’s lost track of the day again. A week and a half at most, and that might be pushing Drummer Boy’s tolerance for pain, but he’s fairly certain he can do it. Fairly certain.
Two more packages out of Randolf, one out of Ticonderoga. High Rise wants to vouch for a tourist, make them into an agent if he gets the okay from HQ. Drummer Boy sighs and makes a note of it in the margins. He’ll have to get out to Ticonderoga the next time there’s an idle agent to escort him. Not that Drummer Boy can’t handle himself perfectly well even with his busted hip, but he’s far too valuable to the Railroad for them to risk it. There are only two other people who know the faces and names of all agents and the locations of all safehouses, after all. A slip up from any of them could bring the whole operation down around their heads. It happened at Switchboard, and they lost three safehouses and countless agents and tourists because of it. It cannot happen again.
“Take Whisper with you,” Desdemona says when Drummer Boy approaches her with the file. “If High Rise vouches for this tourist, I’m inclined to trust them. Still, we can never be too cautious. Confirm it, put the tourist through the wringer, then report back. And Drummer Boy?” She reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a bottle of pills. “They’re not candy, you know. Be careful.”
Vertibirds thrum overhead when Drummer Boy and Whisper exit HQ. They wait until they’re a few streets over and off their target before they feel safe enough to stop sneaking- better safe than burning out the Church. With the Brotherhood patrols in the ruins, there are a lot less raiders and supermutants roaming the streets and infesting the buildings. There is, however, a new tension drawing tight in the air, a tripwire holding a bouquet of grenades. Drummer Boy can feel it all around him, creeping into his bones like the cold, wrapping tight around his chest and stabbing at all the places that make him hurt.
Ticonderoga is, by far, the largest and most obvious of the Railroad’s safehouses. It also, thankfully, the most well defended- it takes a series of passwords to get the front doors open, the backdoor opens into the subways beneath the tower, and it’s packed with agents and heavies all hours of the day. Drummer Boy gets the feeling that the only reason the Institute hasn’t sank the place yet is because they can’t get close to it before High Rise shuts the place up like a Vault against a drugged-up raider. The only way a synth gets in is as a package. Or if they’re an agent, but synth agents are few and far between. Drummer Boy can count their numbers on one hand.
Tiraide. Multiply. Perception .
Drummer Boy steps away from the terminal as the gates roll open to reveal the doors to the safehouse. Not the normal way he gets in, but he’s cold and sore and more than a little bit irritated and really doesn’t feel like going the long way around. High Rise is just inside the doors, talking to one of the agents assigned to moving the Randolph package. Rose Gold, a pretty-faced boy from Diamond City with a smile of filed teeth. It’s been a long while since Drummer Boy and Rose Gold have met face-to-face, and once Rose Gold reports back to Randolph it will probably be long while before they see each other again.
“Hey! If it isn’t my favorite informant!” High Rise greets, pulling Drummer Boy into a messy hug. Drummer Boy winces when the action throws his weight onto his bad leg. It’s nice, though. High Rise and Drummer Boy had been good friends before the former had been permanently assigned to Ticonderoga and the latter to HQ. He can let his weight fall a little on High Rise, let the man lead him towards the main room and a couch to sit on. They have a lot to talk about, catching up on small talk the last of their priorities.
The new potential agent is a tall, proud looking woman with hair more brown than red. High Rise pulls her from the kitchen, a can of cram still in her hand. Whisper stiffens, the leather of the couch squeaking as his fingers clench and slide.
“ Haylen ?” Whisper demands, pulling down his mask. “What the-?”
“ Max ?” Haylen hisses, brows beetling in confusion and, slightly, anger. “You’re… Oh my God.” Drummer Boy has to lean back from Haylen and a little away from Whisper- Haylen’s anger is a potent thing, all hissing and bared fangs. “You’re Railroad ? For how-? Since the beginning. Since the beginning, right? That’s why you-”
“Saved Danse?” Whisper offers. Drummer Boy can hear the smirk in the man’s voice. “Back-talked Maxson so often? Punched Quinlan in the face? Take your pick.” There’s a pause. Haylen’s face is conflicted, pained. “You’re here too, Haylen. The Brotherhood is the problem, not the solution.”
“Then why did you help them in the first place?” Haylen asks. The room goes quiet. Everyone- even Haylen, probably- knows why Whisper helped the Brotherhood. He’s the only agent capable of undercover work in both the Brotherhood and the Institute. His sole purpose there is to collect information and mislead their leaders- no doubt one of the most dangerous and precarious missions ever given to a Railroad heavy. Drummer Boy hopes that it hasn’t set a precedent for what kind of missions new agents will be receiving. Whisper is a bit of an outlier, having gone from tourist to agent to heavy in the span of a few months.
Haylen storms off. Only once they can hear the rumble of the elevator does anyone relax. Whisper sighs, leaning heavily against the back of the couch.
“You know her, then?” Drummer Boy wonders, idly making notes on the file he’s made for the potential agent. Ex-Brotherhood is a mark against her, but her relation to Danse (Unit M7-97, a classic Institute horror story from the sound of it) and Whisper might work in her favor. Might. If they can play it right.
“And I can vouch for her,” Whisper grumbles, dropping his head and bumping it against Drummer Boy’s. Tired. Probably exhausted, really. Drummer Boy dares to reach up and card his hand through the heavy’s thick black hair. It’s sweaty, grimy, but terribly soft. Drummer Boy wonders what it’ll feel like after a nice visit to Ticonderoga’s hot showers. “Haylen is incredibly intelligent, has an excellent memory and knowledge of field medicine. She’s a good enough aim with a laser pistol, but I wouldn’t call her heavy material. Not without more training. And she probably won’t be going back to the Brotherhood anytime soon. They’ve got a standing KOS out on any deserters.” He tips his head into Drummer Boy’s hand, practically purring.
It strikes Drummer Boy that they’re in the middle of Ticonderoga’s main room where anyone and everyone could be watching. He wonders if anyone really cares. “KOS?”
“Kill on sight. Standard for times of martial law.” Whisper sighs heavily. “The only thing that might bring her back is Knight Rhys, and they, well… That’s between those two.”
Drummer Boy hums and makes a note of that as well. For now, Haylen is sitting even; her former allegiance to the Brotherhood of Steel and relationship with Knight Rhys count against her for the moment, but both High Rise and Whisper are vouching for her. At this point, it’s down to how she performs, and even if her performance is stellar Drummer Boy has his hesitations. A relationship is a dangerous weakness to have. If they’ve had a falling out, then Drummer Boy doesn’t see the problem, but if there’s still affection then there is still a possible and very dangerous breach of security. He wonders if it still counts as fraternization with the enemy if the relationship is pre-existing. Probably. Most likely. He jots it down to ask Desdemona later.
Ticonderoga is regularly busy, but Drummer Boy has never seen it quite this busy. He supposes it’s to be expected- with the Brotherhood of Steel hovering overhead, HQ has put out instructions that agents are to limit traffic in and out of safehouses, with means that people going in are going to stay longer and that people going out are going to have to prepare for longer excursions. Only heavies and Alphas are exempt from the mandate, which means that while Drummer Boy has free passage in and out, his runners do not. He sighs heavily, fishing out another piece of paper to start brainstorming places to use as meetups. The next few months will involve a lot of trips out into the Commonwealth, Drummer Boy supposes. He wonders if he might be able to get a heavy permanently assigned to his entourage, then banishes the thought. They’re too spread out at the moment to waste one of their best operatives on bodyguard duty.
“Alright,” Whisper says suddenly, startling Drummer Boy, which causes his hand to jerk and his pencil to draw a scraggly line across his paper. Thankfully not across his work, but the mere concept is enough to make Drummer Boy huff in irritation.
“‘Alright’ what?” he demands, begrudgingly letting himself be bustled to his feet. His hip twinges from being held in an uncomfortable position for far too long; Drummer Boy’s posture has always been shit, and a comfortable, squishy couch with a low table really doesn’t do anything to help.
“Shower time,” Whisper says like it’s a bygone conclusion, something Drummer Boy should have already known. “I let you keep working because it looked like there was a lot of people going in and out, but now that everyone’s either eating or sleeping we might actually have the showers to ourselves. Not a lot of hot water left, probably, but hey, we can’t have everything, right?” When Drummer Boy just blinks in confusion, Whisper flashes that bright smile that almost earned him the codename “Charmer” (actually, Deacon’s suggestion was initially “Sunshine”, but Charmer was a quick second).
“It’ll help with the ache, the hot water,” Whisper says, soft and low, like he’s concerned someone else will hear. Not likely- all the rooms are upstairs, and the noise from the kitchens guarantees that any eavesdroppers will have to work for it. Still, it’s the thought that counts, and it’s a sweet gesture. “If you’re anything like me, the cold’s been hurting you pretty bad. Painkillers are nice and all, but a hot shower? Let me tell you, there’s nothing better in the world.”
So maybe Whisper wasn’t exaggerating too much; Drummer Boy can think of a few things better in the world than the feeling of a hot shower, but it still feels pretty damn good. Helps work out the knots of tension in Drummer Boy’s muscles that he didn’t even realize were there until they start unwinding. He gets a short five minutes of hot water before the tank begins to run out and the stream turns lukewarm, but it’s five minutes of bliss. Drummer Boy sighs when he finally turns off the shower, wrapping his towel tightly around himself to keep the heat in.
Whisper, for all his strength, is really rather bird-built, surprisingly delicate and thin beneath all his armor and thick clothing. Broad shoulders and a gracefully tapered waist, but still thin-boned and just on this side of skinny. Drummer Boy gets to enjoy the play of light off tight muscle and wet skin for a moment before his eyes catch on the metal that shows on the surface of Whisper’s skin. It takes all of his self control not to reach out and run his fingers down the curve of stainless steel that is Whisper’s left shoulder. Took a grenade to the side during the siege on Anchorage, or so Whisper claims. The damage is consistent- ruined ribs and knee, completely missing arm. The doctors had to entirely replace one of his lungs. He’d been lucky to get away without any damage to his heart or digestive tract, because that might have killed him then and there.
Instead, he survived. Persevered, even after his body had been torn apart and almost carelessly cobbled back together again. Most of Whisper’s left side is metal and scar tissue. Only some of the reconstruction was visible, mostly in well-protected places to allow for maintenance access- the ribs, the shoulder, the back of the knee. Beneath the eyepatch, his left eye is fogged glass, drooping slightly where the damage didn’t quite heal right and pocketed in places from stitches that were probably torn and replaced multiple times. Drummer Boy doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his fingers are dancing along the tight, plastic-like flesh. He marvels at the texture, at the movement of muscles beneath as Whisper’s eyes flutter closed.
Whisper. Max . Drummer Boy feels like a thief, holding something precious that most certainly belongs to someone else. Once you become an agent, your name becomes the most valuable thing you own. It becomes the only thing you own, really. Because it’s the one thing that no one can take from you. Because it’s the first and last thing the Institute can use against you. Max . Drummer Boy lets it fall off his lips like a half-reverent prayer and wonders at the shiver that passes down Whisper’s spine. Lets the fingers of his other hand curl against Whisper’s shoulder, fingers pressing into and against the grooves and ridges of scars where a deathclaw got a bit too close for comfort. Lets Whisper get close, so close, until he can smell the clean soap and soft musk of Whisper’s skin.
The first press of lips is gentle, hesitant, testing the waters. A bit uncoordinated- their noses bump, and Drummer Boy’s hip complains a bit when he lifts himself onto his toes to get the right angle. The second kiss is better, harder. Whisper leans down a bit, bears down on Drummer Boy, bites on the third and licks on the fourth and it’s so much better . Gun-calloused hands push the towel off Drummer Boy’s shoulder, slide down the planes of his back- not nearly as sculpted as Whisper’s, since it’s been a long time since Drummer Boy has been in the field. He’s gotten soft. From the press of Whisper’s fingers, the hum in the agent’s throat, Whisper doesn’t mind in the slightest.
Voices from down the hallway. Whisper leaves Drummer Boy with one last, cautious nip against his lower lip before drawing away, collecting clothes and acting as though nothing has happened. It’s a long moment more before Drummer Boy can do the same. Something has changed, though, even if neither of them are going to acknowledge it in the moment. Their careful balance has been tipped on one direction, and this time there’s not going to be any stepping back into safety. All that’s left is a leap of faith into uncertainty, however long that takes.
Drummer Boy goes back to work, tries to get as much done as he can before exhaustion inevitably overtakes him. The smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen is tempting, but he refrains; better that he sleep at some point, if they’re going to take Haylen out in the morning. He has a few locations of already-collected DIA’s that they could use as trial runs- “they” being Haylen and Whisper, of course. Maybe run them along a route with a deaddrop, see if she can keep to a route and pick out the Railroad signs. Drummer Boy sighs, dropping his head in his hands. As much as he appreciates being trusted enough to oversee the initiation of new agents, he hates this part.
It’s what has to be done, though. Drummer Boy traces out the route on a blank map of Boston, noting only major points like Ticonderoga and the skyscraper and some of the Brotherhood hotspots. The route runs them pretty close to the hotspot that he doesn’t mark, and that’ll be a challenge in and of itself. Drummer Boy is expecting deviation there- an agent has to know when a part of a route is compromised and how to improvise a new route that reaches the same destination with mitigated risk. Drummer Boy knows that he’s stacking the cards against Haylen, but he also realizes that the entire point of this is to test her readiness for… well, maybe not the worst to go wrong on a run, because that’s Coursers, but for something to go bad on a run. At least he put the deaddrop somewhere before the hotzone so they won’t have to meet up again with the plotted route.
The clock reads three in the morning before Drummer Boy is finally done. He drops against the back of the couch with a huff, only barely remembering to set the alarm on his wristwatch to five before falling asleep. Not the best position he’s ever slept in, but certainly not the worst, and at this point he’s just too damn tired to care.