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"—not the kimchi!" Jonah flung his hands up, smacking himself in the face and waking himself up out of the ninth consecutive night terror. He pressed a hand to his eyes and gasped to catch his breath, dismayed to find himself in another puddle of sweat. He'd been stuck doing laundry every day, which he'd had plenty of time for since he kept waking up at four in the morning.
"That was hilarious."
Jonah froze, slowly put his hand down, and turned his head to blink myopically into the room. "Crow? Were you... were you watching me sleep?" The gold bot was in the shadows, but the nightlight Jonah had installed under his bed caught single details to pick out: a fragment of net, the curve beside his eye, just the tip of his beak. Jonah halfway sat up and groaned at the way his soaked t-shirt stuck to his skin.
"Oh, yeah, you're totally weird when you're asleep. What was this dream? Kimchi?"
"Yeah, it was— Kinga came up with flavored eye drops, and she wanted to test them on me. And it was—"
"Kimchi. Brutal."
"I don't like you watching me when I'm asleep," Jonah said.
Crow shrugged. "I wasn't like, watching you. I heard you yelling. But you woke yourself up." He scanned Jonah with his eyes and then started to turn. "I hear you yelling a lot lately. But you're fine."
"I'm— I'm actually not fine," Jonah said. "I'm really not fine."
Crow paused and looked back over his shoulder. "Do you... want to talk about it or something?"
"Yeah, kinda." Jonah sat all the way up and plucked at his t-shirt. "Can I change first?"
"Yeah, I won't look." Crow faced forward. "Uh... Humans aren't supposed to do that, are they?"
"What?"
"Get all wet when they're asleep. That seems like a really bad design flaw."
"No. I'm not supposed to do that." Getting changed took a few seconds, and there wasn't a whole lot Jonah could do about his damp hair. He stripped the sheets off his bunk and pitched them into his laundry basket, then sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. "That's a symptom of me losing my entire mind. Come over here?"
Crow sat next to Jonah and mirrored his body language, long legs stretched out in front of them and arms crossed. "So... you know that's the point, right? You losing your mind?"
"Yeah, Crow, I know what the experiment is about."
"If you're going crazy... then what happens?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, man. What, Joel and Mike never had nightmares?"
"Oh, no, they both had a ton of them. Joel didn't want us to know about them. I mean, neither did Mike, what he wanted mattered less though."
"And how much does what I want matter?" Jonah asked quietly.
Crow turned and looked up at him. "It... matters." He closed his beak for a moment, and then added, "But it's too late to hide that now."
"I wasn't trying to hide it," Jonah says. "Not from you, anyways. From Kinga and Max, definitely; if they knew this was happening to me they'd come up with some even worse way to torment me."
"Oh, yeah, we absolutely can't let them know."
"I just... I'm so tired. I'm so tired. Every time I sleep I wake up screaming. I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in over a week. I can't even nap." Jonah sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, barely suppressing a yawn. "It's not bad enough that they torture me when I'm awake, they have to literally follow me into my dreams so I have no escape anywhere."
"That's rough," Crow said, actually sounding sympathetic. He leaned his shoulder into Jonah's and added, "I used to have nightmares when I was on the SOL alone for all those centuries."
"Really? What do robots have nightmares about?"
"That's personal."
"Well, you asked me about mine."
Crow clicked his beak and looked down at both their feet stretched out in front of them. "I used to think I'd be alone forever. Just me, here, alone, without anyone to talk to, without even any bad movies to make fun of, just walking around until I broke down and died for good, and no one would ever know or care or try to repair me."
"Aw, man, Crow, I'm sorry. And you were here for so long."
"It all worked out," Crow said, and he reached up to tap his beak. "Everyone came back. And by then I'd changed my pin... just out of boredom, really."
"Hey, I never asked you... after I upgraded you, when I got here..." Jonah paused, and Crow turned to look up at him.
"Yeah?"
"Do you like your new voice?"
"Yeah, it's all right. Took a little getting used to, but... you did an okay job."
"Thanks," Jonah said, putting an arm around Crow's shoulders. Crow pushed at his arm with one claw, but Jonah pulled him in for a hug, and the bot sighed and rested his pin on Jonah's shoulder, not fighting the affection any more.
"What are you going to do now?" Crow asked quietly, when Jonah still hadn't let go of him a long moment later. Jonah sniffed, and Crow hesitantly patted his back. "Are you crying?"
"Men can cry too," Jonah said, voice thick with tears. "I'm just... sorry, I'm a little... overwrought at the moment."
"Aww... let it all out, ya big lug," Crow said. "I'm mostly molybdenum, I won't rust. It's okay."
The sniffles became full-blown sobs a moment later, and even though Crow wanted to pull back and see if Jonah was an ugly crier, he also didn't want to dislodge himself from Jonah's arms. Tears hit Crow's shoulder and rolled off to dampen Jonah's t-shirt, and Crow made a couple of soft sounds and rubbed Jonah's back with one claw.
"S-s-sorry," Jonah said a few minutes later, after he'd cried himself out. He let go of Crow and sat back to run both hands over his face. "Oh, man. Sorry. But that needed to happen."
"Humans are weird," Crow said. "But it's fine. Are you going to be okay now?"
"I hope so," Jonah said. He looked down at the bare mattress between them and his lips pulled to one side. "I guess it's laundry time, and I should probably go make something in the fab lab instead of sulking around in the laundry room, huh?"
"Whatever floats your boat," Crow said. "I'm going back to bed. Unless... you need me for anything."
"Only the pleasure of your company," Jonah said, and Crow clicked his beak in surprise.
"You find my company pleasant?"
"Well... yeah. We're friends. I'm... I'm grateful you came in to check on me tonight. Thank you."
"Don't worry about it," Crow said. "But don't complain when I start actually watching you sleep, either."
"That's weird."
"I mean, if you want to keep waking up screaming, go for it. I definitely don't have to go out of my way to try to wake you up before the nightmares do." Jonah hugged Crow again, and this time Crow pushed at his arms until Jonah released him. "But if it's too weird to have your friends help you out..."
"No... that's... that'd be okay. I guess. I just don't like the thought of being so vulnerable and helpless in front of anyone."
"Even a friend?" Crow asked quietly. Jonah looked down at him for a moment, then leaned down to tap his forehead against Crow's.
"It's okay if it's a friend. It's okay if it's you."