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“Waste of words.” Johnny rolled his eyes, cigarette drag taken as he leant his head back against the damp stained wall, huffing as he exhaled. “Least take a nap so we don’t have to argue.”
Biting her lip, the urge to keep digging, twisting the knife in the wound, was strong, but pointless. She knew how this would go. She’d cave and get riled up, and he’d get that stupid smirk on his face when he knew he’d won no matter what, because he’d got under her skin like a parasite, digging where it hurt. But isn’t that what she did first? Chicken or the egg, or was it just the merging of their personalities? So much of Johnny’s dissolving into her own that she can’t tell who riled who up first anymore, or if it even matters.
“Whatever, goin’ to bed. Go…fizzle out or whatever it is you do when I sleep, just ghost off and give me some peace.” V didn’t turn back to see his nose crinkle in frustration, those metal digits flexing with unreleased tension and nowhere to put it. But she was beat, adrenaline gone leaving her body dragging along like a dead weight. Could go punch a wall for all she cared, for all the good it would do.
Trudging to the bedroom, she peeled off the suit, grimacing at the sound, like bare thighs off hot leather in the summer heat. Dropping to the floor with a thud, she kicked it aside before pulling back the old worn comforter and sliding underneath. Not cold enough to really need it, but she didn’t like going without, so she compromised by draping it up to her waist.
With Judy asleep, the apartment was almost silent, even the noises of the city were so distant here, she could barely hear the ghost of a car horn, a whisper of gunfire, over the spinning fan above her. Round and round, the cool steady breeze was nice against her skin, still damp from the suit.
Whether minutes or hours she was unsure, but it didn’t matter how long it was, sleep drew no closer. The events of the night still spinning round in her brain like the blades of the fan above her, dust falling down from them as they spun like memories scattered around her brain. Her own or his she couldn’t always tell anymore, but they built up in her brain, scrambling over each other to be heard until the sound was louder than anything else.
The sound of glitching interrupted her thoughts, ripping her from whatever depths of self pity and loathing she had swum down to and bringing her back to the present, with the mattress dipping beneath the weight of another body. Knew it couldn’t really move, that there was no real weight, but clearly her brain felt differently, the creak of springs as vivid as the rough bed sheets beneath her skin.
Sparing a glimpse out of the corner of her eye, her lips twitched into a smile when she saw that his attire matched hers. Chest bare, blanket draped up to his hips, metal dog tags rising and falling with each breath as he lay there, eyes fixated on that same fan that had captivated her just moments before. Both drawn to the repetitive motion, the same stories told again and again, both know the ending better than they know themselves, but something pulls them back each time. The possibility of a different ending.
Neither said anything, let the silence do that for them, the spinning of the blades from the rickety fan, Judy’s soft snores, the almost absent sounds of the city still finding them, even out here, an ever present stain on a tarnished mattress.
What drew her to reach first she couldn’t say, or more wouldn’t say. Couldn’t look too hard into those feelings, not when there were so many of them and so little time left to voice them, no point in starting now when one of them would be left speaking them into the empty void their absence left behind. But she still reached, tentative hand moving across the bed until it found it, closer to her than she had expected, as if he had the same idea but aborted just before reaching her.
Didn’t matter who had moved first, interlocking her smaller fingers with his, feeling his hand wrapping around hers, squeezing. They both got there in the end, no matter who was the first to cave. All paths led them back here, actions without the words to define them, best left like that.
“Sorry for going down there, Johnny.” She started again before he could interrupt her. “ Not , because you’re an ass who thinks takin’ some time to help a friend is a waste. But..” brushing her thumb over the back of his hand, she was always skirting around the edge, carefully choosing the words which wouldn’t make him build back those walls she’d so carefully dismantled. “Knowin’ how you feel about all’a that, shouldn’t’ve made you go down there, wasn’t right.”
Metal hand scratching the stubble across his chin, Johnny sighed, finger coming to tap on the metal plate of his dog tags. “Ain’t my body, V. Long as you’re still you, that’s your call. Still think you’re a fuckin’ gonk-“ V smacked him in the chest, smiling as he caught the hand with his own again, briefly bringing it to his lips before he lay them back down between them on the sheets. “But if you wanna spend your final fuckin’ breaths runnin’ round like a headless chicken for your chooms til you drop, still your choice to make, gonk or not.”
Quiet fell between them again, but the tension was gone. Both lay on their backs, but neither was focused on the fan blades anymore. Whether the story ends differently or not, for tonight they could ignore that, pretend nothing else existed but tonight, just the two of them and that old stained bed.
It was slow, but she began to shuffle, closer and closer, Johnny’s arm reaching out to bring her to him once she was within an arm’s length. Wrapping around her, he brought her to his chest, and V went willingly as she curled up against him. Chest hair tickling her cheek as she rested against him, she knew it was all in her head, but his heartbeat was the most real thing in that room to her, the most vivid.
Metal arm wrapping around her, he held her close against his chest, cool metal a nice contrast to the increasing heat of their tangled bodies. His organic hand came to rest on her head, running his fingers through her hair as they lay there. “Oh, V…”. Chin resting on the top of her head, he sighed. “Too good for me, know that, darlin’? Dunno what I did to deserve this but…shit, V.”
The deep breath he took said more than he could with words, the end to their story left unspoken, a fate already written that neither could put to page just yet. Reaching up to take his organic hand in hers, she squeezed gently, returning the favour from earlier and pressing a kiss to the back of his hand, before resting them over his heart, beside her head. “Don’t gotta do anythin’, Johnny. Just stay.”
Feeling the brush off his lips against the top of her head, she melted into him, his soft voice only just audible above the hum of the fan. “Not goin’ anywhere, princess. Get some rest.”
Closing her eyes, she let the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear drown out the sounds of the fan, the snoring, the city. Just the two of them in the world for one night, arguments dying on their lips and whispered words of longing growing from their ashes, wrapped up and intertwined together til it didn’t matter where one ended and the other begun, only that they ended together.