Faraday watches Vasquez stomp and huff around – and reasonably, Faraday is in more or less the same mood. He hardly has room to comment. But when the other man pauses in the door, looks so damnably lost, something twists in Faraday’s gut.

He closes the distance again, and though he hesitates, he rests his hand against the back of Vasquez’s neck – all the warning he offers before he yanks Vasquez in close for a bruising, desperate kiss.

There’s no argument from Faraday that Vasquez surely had the short end of the stick, here, but Faraday had spent the whole evening terrified in an ugly, visceral way – a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he was a skinny snot of a thing, too green for the hard life out west. He didn’t feel this way even on the eve of Rose Creek or the morning before the battle, not even after getting shot or blowing himself up to kingdom come, and not even when he had blearily blinked up at a too-blue sky and Vasquez’s blurry form slipped into view before unconsciousness took him.

No, it took those bastards hauling Vasquez away to who the hell knows where to make Faraday feel real, genuine fear for the first time in ages.

When Faraday pulls back, a second or two later, his thumb brushes over the line of Vasquez’s jaw.

“We’ll get it sorted,” he promises quietly. “But first thing we gotta do is get the hell outta here.”