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“Urgh.”
“Hm?”
“I’m all – ew – sticky!” Jonny fingers at a lock of hair, crusted with dried blood. Ashes only gave him a cursory clean-up, and there’s still blood around his nose and ears, and in the crease beneath his chin.
“Oh. Right. Feeling better?”
“Yeah.” Jonny nudges Brian’s hand out of the way, poking at it until it’s splayed over his belly instead of resting protectively over his heart. He traces the exposed metal plate; it’s the same as before, but the edges where the metal meets skin are uneven in different places now. Brian’s thumb rubs tiny circles on his hipbone, and his gaze is so heavy that Jonny turns his face to the wall instead.
“I – I’m not sure how much you remember, or what Ashes told you, but… but we’re going to need to do this again.”
“No.” Jonny wriggles out of Brian’s grip to curl defensively around his heart, facing the wall. Like that’d help… The bed rocks beneath him; maybe whatever Raph gave him at the end hasn’t entirely left his system after all. Brian’s hand hovers an inch above his arm, and Jonny can’t make up his mind whether he wants Brian to touch him of fuck off.
“Yes. Raphaella found the faulty valve, it had more or less melted, it was –”
“– fucking gross, yeah –”
“– yeah, you’re right, but more than that, the replacement she gave you won’t hold. Maybe not more than a couple of weeks.”
“Fuck.” Jonny pokes at the metal plate, the ticking inside of it vibrating through his fingers. “Like – like that time –” He swallows. The one time he’d seen Carmilla frightened. He shoves the memory away and rolls over to slam his face too hard into Brian’s chest. It clangs and his nose throbs, but Brian is unfazed.
“Like that time, yes. So Raph is going to make you a new one and put it in as soon as possible.” He places two gentle fingers under Jonny’s chin and tilts his head up, wiping away a new trickle of blood under his nose. “Not today, though.” He leans in, telegraphing his movements to give Jonny a chance to turn away, but he doesn’t want to. Instead he sighs and leans up, and Brian drops a light kiss on the tip of his nose. Jonny whines in disappointment, and Brian chuckles before indulging him with a light peck on the lips. “Do you want to take a bath? You’re right, you are horribly sticky, and I doubt you could stay on your feet for long enough to shower.” He picks at a speck of dried blood on Jonny’s throat, and Jonny tries to bite his finger.
“Who the fuck flipped your switch to disgustingly honest? … fine, I would.”
“I’ll run it for you. Which bath?”
“Yours, I think. I don’t want to stay in here any longer, and my room is also gross at the moment.”
“Fair enough. Come on.” Brian hoists him up into his arms like he weighs nothing at all. Usually the knowledge of how easily the Drumbot can toss him around when he’s in the mood for it sends a thrill through his very core, but at the moment he just puts on a show of grumbling about how he doesn’t actually need to be carried. He contemplates telling Brian to put him down, which he probably would right now, but it would only end with Jonny in a heap on the floor.
Brian deposits him on the bed and disappears into the bathroom, leaving Jonny alone with his heart. Its ticking is regular again, and it doesn’t hurt like it did before, but the edges of the plate chafe against his skin, and something inside still feels… wrong. It’s like an ache that’s just short of painful, making his breath catch whenever he moves, especially since Raphaella’s drugs are beginning to wear off. But at least he doesn’t seem to be dying randomly all over the place like before, so it’s definitely an improvement, although…
His memories of the surgery are fuzzy; he remembers excruciating pain and dying, over and over again, choking on blood and panic; Raphaella relentlessly digging in his heart; and Brian holding him, stray words filtering through the roaring in his ears…
“It’s ready. Can you walk there?”
“Fuck’s sake, Drumbot, of c- … maybe?” Jonny sighs. He’s tired and woozy, and he’s starting to shiver from being shirtless without Ashes or Brian to warm him. Taking a deep breath, he sits up and starts to push himself off of the bed. The room tilts and his stomach churns like it wants to turn inside out, but Brian catches him before he actually hits the floor.
“That’s a no then”, he says, and the bastard has the fucking audacity to smile as he picks Jonny up like he isn’t bigger than an octokitten. He carries him to the bathroom and holds Jonny up while he wriggles out of his only slightly blood spattered trousers. Then he sinks down in the steaming water, slightly too hot for comfort, just the way he likes it. Brian sits down by the edge of the tub and reaches for a washcloth.
“What, you’re not just going to dunk me under until I drown?”
“Maybe next week.” Brian smiles and wets the cloth, brushing Jonny’s hair out of his face. The silicone pads of his fingers slide differently over his skin than when dry. “Right now I’m going to take care of you, and you are going to let me.”
Jonny tries to work up the energy to bristle at that, but finds that he can’t. The heat of the water is seeping into his limbs, and Brian has started to clean the blood from the creases in his skin with soft, careful movements. He’s vaguely aware that Brian is talking, but the words blur together in a comforting murmur; he figures Brian isn’t saying anything important right now anyway, or even expects Jonny to listen. Then the movements suddenly stop, and the cloth slips out of Brian’s hand to slowly float down to land on Jonny’s submerged shoulders. A few words break through, and Jonny realises with a cold, sinking start that Brian’s voice has gone tinny and hollow.
“– dare to fucking do that to me ever again, do you understand?”
“What? It’s not like I can decide when this piece of shit clockwork is going to go fuckways next time.”
“I didn’t mean that. When are you going to stop hiding from us, Jonny?”
Jonny’s first impulse is to slip beneath the surface and stay there until he drowns. Although he doubts Brian would let him, and it would just prove his point. More strangely, Jonny realises that he actually finds the thought of dying unappealing. It’s rarely a pleasant experience, but one he often craves nonetheless, and it’s been long since he recoiled from the notion like this. The remnants of Raphs’s sedatives are still sloshing around his insides, making him feels soft and fuzzy around the edges, so he reaches up to take Brian’s hand instead. It must be the drugs, because it can hardly be anything else that would compel him to tell Brian the truth.
“I don’t know.” He presses a kiss to Brian’s palm, and Brian curls his fingers around Jonny’s cheek and leans down to rest his forehead against Jonny’s.
“I love you, you know that, right? We all do.”
Jonny squirms at the softness in Brian’s voice, and fumbles for a suitably flippant response to deflect the swooping feeling in his belly when Brian gently brushes his lips over his brow. He opens his mouth to tell him to stop being such a fucking sap, even as tiny shivers of pleasure runs through him at the cool silicone touch of Brian’s mouth, but what actually comes out is something else entirely.
“Not Nastya”, he mumbles, and wonders for a moment if his heart is going to stop again. His eyes are burning at the corners, and he can’t breathe, he has to – He tries to slither away from Brian and down below the surface, anything to not feel, but Brian catches him, submerging both his arms to wrap them around Jonny. He’ll get water in his joints, Jonny thinks and grips Brian’s wrists so tight his fingers go numb, holding his breath while he wills the tightness in his chest to go away.
“Oh Jonny”, Brian whispers, “you didn’t hear her, fuck, of course you didn’t. She – she does love you. But you need to talk to her about that, not me.”
“Not fucking likely”, Jonny chokes out. Brian shakes his head and sighs.
“I know. I don’t know why I bother.” He pulls back, twisting his wrists free from Jonny’s grip. “Want me to wash your hair?”
“Sure.” Jonny’s eyes fall shut when Brian starts to work shampoo into his hair. It must be one of Raphaella’s compounds by the way the smell makes sparks go off inside his eyelids, but one of the good ones, the ones she usually keeps to herself. Why Brian has it is a question that… that Jonny really doesn’t have the energy to get into right now; the answer is probably something as boring as that Raphaella likes to spend the night with Brian too, sometimes, although Jonny’s never run into her here…
“I stole it”, Brian says with a smile in his voice, “in case you were wondering.” Jonny hums vaguely, caught up in the way Brian massages his scalp. “I save it for special occasions.”
Jonny feels boneless and heavy by the time Brian is done rinsing his hair. The strange feeling in his heart is still there, but it’s a problem for later, he thinks as Brian wraps him in a soft, heated towel and dries him off before he picks him up again to carry him back to bed. Jonny mutters something, barely aware of what. When Brian climbs into bed with him and shuffles close, pulling the covers over them both, Jonny crawls into his arms willingly. If he’s still this weak and tired by tomorrow he’ll start to be annoyed by it, he thinks vaguely. For now though… Brian’s cooling fans whirr reassuringly, and his heartbeat is slow and steady when Jonny presses his palm flat over it. Brian pulls him tight against his chest, burying his nose in Jonny’s still wet hair.
“You’re okay”, he mumbles, and Jonny only wriggles a little bit, not really trying to escape for real. “You’re okay, I was so worried. I love you.” He kisses Jonny on the top of his head, and Jonny buries his face firmly in the crook of his shoulder.
“… me too, Drumbot. Me too.”