Chapter Text
Bonnie turned her face into her pillow as the early morning sun filtered through gaps in curtains she had obviously forgotten to close properly. The air smelled fresh and tasted like ocean, clearly she’d forgotten to close the window last night too. Her pillow and sheets were soft and inviting, definitely not time to get out of bed yet. She tried to turn onto her right side to check the time and a jolt of pain shot through her.
Right.
Broken collar bone.
It hadn’t been long since she and Amy had their unscheduled trip underground in the Angeles National Forest, only three days, but in the haze of the early morning hours, still sleep fuzzy, she forgot about her injuries until her body so crudely reminded her. She groaned and screwed her eyes shut in an attempt to drift back into unawares unconsciousness.
Her bedroom door creaked open and she instinctively pulled the covers up over her head.
“Five more minutes…” She whined like she had when she was a child.
“I’m not here to get you up, I just wanted to see how you were.”
Bonnie sat up instantly, letting the covers drop right off of her.
“John!”
John smiled at her and managed to cross the room in five strides of his long legs.
Bonnie patted the unoccupied expanse of lavender coloured sheets next to her in invitation.
“I’d say sit and take a load off, but I imagine that its quite a rarity for your feet to have a load on, these days.”
John chuckled. “Not true. I have the gravity turned on in mostly everywhere except the comm sphere.” He sat down in the space indicated for him and helped her shuffle back to lean against the headboard. “How are you feeling?”
“Sick of that question I’ll tell you. Come on, relax properly, put your feet up.”
John rolled his eyes but kicked off his shoes anyway and joined her leaning back against the headboard.
“I mean it though Bug, how are you?”
“In pain, but otherwise good.” She shrugged her good shoulder.
“Pain is to be expected I suppose, you did break your collarbone into three pieces.”
“And then have surgery to screw those pieces back together so they could heal properly. Not to mention the nasty bang to the head, the bruised ribs, and as it turned out broken fingers too.” She hadn’t even realised she’d done anything to her fingers until the nurse at the hospital pointed it out, Virgil reasoned that he pain from her collarbone break had probably masked it but she knew he was kicking himself for not spotting it to begin with.
“Yeah, all of that too.”
“I’m also probably overdue on my pain meds.”
“A little,” John admitted. “That’s why Virgil told me not to wake you, but I know what you’d have said if I’d told you that.”
“He’s not the boss of you.”
“That’s the one.”
“Come on then big brother, you’re good at this game.” She shuffled closer to him to rest her head on his shoulder. “Ask me something I haven’t heard at least a hundred times a day since I got here.”
“Okay, let’s see…” He paused as though he was thinking but Bonnie could see a question already on his mind. “I’m not going to ask how long you’ll be here for, because Virgil has already told me that it depends on a number of things and is currently undeterminable.”
“Jury’s out on that one. Who knows, maybe I’ll stay here forever now.”
“I knows.”
She knew John would understand that side of the coin. They both loved their family but knew what it was like to live independent of them for an extended period of time and make their own home elsewhere.
“True. But come on. Ask your question. I’m waiting.”
“Albeit impatiently.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Child.” He scolded with a smirk.
“No longer, legally.”
“So, since you’re here for the foreseeable future, are you going to redecorate?” He gestured to her bedroom with a wide sweep of his arm.
He wasn’t being unreasonable she thought. She hadn’t lived in this room since she was thirteen and while a lot of it was still to her taste, a few aspects definitely were not.
The walls painted in varying shades of soft blues and purples she did still like, but the feature wall… The feature wall directly opposite her bed was nothing she would choose now. The wallpaper was shimmery and satiny, it reflected the light in such an odd way it gave itself an off-putting shine, but that wasn’t even the worst part. The absolute worst part in Bonnie’s personal opinion had to be the glaringly fake, garishly bright and just plain incorrect, huge butterflies that dominated the wall.
“That wall has to go. It needs to. What on earth was I thinking?”
John smirked. “Gordon still has his seascape.”
“Yeah, but that was nice, those butterflies have no business looking like that.”
“What will you replace it with?”
“Who knows? But I’m definitely enlisting Virgil’s help.”
“I happen to know her has some mandated downtime coming up.”
“Excellent.”