Chapter Text
The first time it happens is back when Tim doesn’t even like him. A gross understatement, really. Tim fucking hates him then.
He got mechanised just three months and twelve days ago (not that Jonny is counting or anything) and spends most of his time in the shooting range, obliterating anything and everything he sets his sight on; including visitors.
This hadn’t deterred Jonny the first few times until Tim had punched him in the face personally, mechanised eyes clicking furiously, and had told Jonny he wished he could shut him up for good before shooting him thrice – once in each leg, and once in the stomach – and let him bleed out in the hallway. Ivy had walked past a minute later, a book from Tim’s planet earth in front of her nose which she only put down to avoid stepping into the blood pooling around Jonny and to comment “There is an 85.4 percent chance that he will resent you for this at least another… sixteen years.”
…
Jonny hadn’t tried to seek out Tim after that. Not on purpose, at least. It wasn’t his fault that Tim had decided to start using his room all of a sudden.
Jonny was close to blackout drunk at this point, stumbling through Aurora’s hallways with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a gun in the other.
He’d just come out of the Doc’s lab a few hours earlier where she had been experimenting on him.
You see, it hadn’t been Dr. Carmilla’s idea to mechanise Tim. Hell, she hadn't even considered mechanising him. She would have been happy to let him die like an idiot mortal until Jonny had asked her to save him. It had taken a lot of convincing (and pleading) on Jonny’s part to change her mind.
However, the doctor was not the type of woman who gave you things for free which meant that Jonny now owed her. Which – fine by him! She didn’t even ask for anything new exactly except that he found himself strapped to her operation table more often than before. That was fine, too, because he was used to that already and really, he did owe her. The process of mechanisation wasn’t cheap or easy and she had to get her time back somehow!
It didn’t matter that Dr. Carmilla didn’t always have sedatives to dull his pain because immortality meant that any teeth and bones he broke while writhing in agony would grow back in no time at all.
It didn’t matter that Jonny wouldn’t feel comfortable in his own body for at least a week after the fact.
It didn’t matter that his skin would prickle and he felt like digging his fingers into his flesh to tear himself apart and see what she had changed – if she had changed anything at all or if it was just his own paranoia clamouring to find out why he felt so wrong.
Half a day after such a procedure, after he inevitably got drunk enough to admit that he was hurting, Jonny would let himself cry about it. He would wander Aurora’s halls, nursing a drink as he cried, trusting Aurora to strategically lock her doors so he didn’t come across any of the others.
…
Today is one such day. Jonny is stumbling through the corridors, wiping snot and tears from his face with the back of his sleeve when he comes across Tim’s room. Now, the thing is, Tim didn’t actually use his room. Sure, he put his few belongings inside of it but apart from taking a quick glance at it when the room was assigned to him, he hasn’t actually been inside it much. Thus, Jonny expects it to be empty apart from a bed, a set of dog tags, and maybe a few other war memorabilia. What Jonny doesn’t expect, is to find Tim in his bed, sleeping with his back to the wall.
Jonny falters in his steps. Behind him, he hears a soft hiss indicating that Aurora had closed the door behind him and Jonny chokes on a fresh set of tears, only belatedly setting down his gun to stifle the noise he makes. Tim continues on sleeping, a deep frown set into his face which doesn’t quite reach the metal plating around his eyes.
There is nothing Jonny can do except stare. Drunk like he is, he has hard time coming to terms with sudden plan changes. His plan had been to sit in Tim’s room (on the floor or on the bed, he wasn’t all that picky) and cry his little ticking heart out like a spoiled brat because the universe wasn’t being kind to him this one time (had the universe ever been kind to him?)
Jonny looks at Tim. He takes another swig of his whiskey and sets the bottle down to determinedly start pulling off his boots and goggles.
Then, very carefully, he lifts the blanket and slides into Tim’s arms. Tim shifts at the sudden weight redistribution and Jonny freezes up next to him. This is such a bad idea. If Tim wakes up, Jonny is going to get shot. Or possibly thrown out of the airlock.
Tim doesn’t wake up. Instead, he pulls Jonny closer, his arm wrapping around Jonny’s waist, holding him tight. Jonny allows himself to relax and buries his face into Tim’s chest. Tim’s shirt is stained with tears shortly after.
…
Jonny doesn’t remember falling asleep. He does, however, remember waking up.
He remembers feeling warm and content. Lightheaded in a way that he can tell he’d been crying in his sleep.
He can still feel the alcohol flowing in his veins and he doesn’t have a headache yet which means he didn’t sleep for long.
There is a chin digging into the crown of his head and a voice, grief-stricken, calling out a name that isn’t his and – Jonny finds himself on the floor all of a sudden, thanking the stars in every way he knows that Tim didn’t wake up with the way Jonny had torn himself from his embrace.
He doesn’t feel like sticking around and testing his luck so he grabs his boots, nearly forgetting his booze and gun, and bolts through the door off to the far end of the ship.
…
Jonny puts a gun to his head no less than sixteen times over that encounter.
He counted.