Work Text:
Neil’s cold was all but gone, but he had still taken the opportunity to stay home in bed all day. Doc had tended to him dutifully – rather cheerfully, in fact. Neil suspected they appreciated the chance to hang around at home and relax just as much as him. If it weren’t for their new living situation, they would surely tsk their tongue at him for being lazy and staying in, but now that it was their… “job”… to tend to his health, him staying home meant they got to stay home too. Now it was well into the evening. Neil had changed from his old set of pajamas into a new one. Doc hovered around, exuding a vague, casual approval, as he brushed his teeth and washed his face.
It had been weird at first, how they always watched him care for himself. But it had been a few weeks, and he was used to it now.
“Hey Doc,” he mumbled with toothbrush in mouth, a little foam dribbling out. “If you’re always here when I brush my teeth, when do you brush yours?”
Doc looked at him inscrutably. “In my own bathroom, of course. After I tuck you in, and kiss you on your sweet little head.” They smiled.
“Oh,” Neil mumbled back. He scrubbed at his teeth a bit more and then spit the foam in the sink. “Wait – hey.” He directed a pointed look back at them. They laughed silently. “I’m not a baby.”
“Did you forget for a second there?”
“Hey. ..Hey. Stop it. You.”
“Sorry.” They looked away bashfully.
Neil finished up and drifted over to his bed. He flopped down onto the mattress with gusto, as if he hadn’t spent most of the day there. With eyes closed, he burrowed deep into the blankets and pillows, creating a perfect cocoon of comfort.
It was still cold.
He cracked his eyes open to see Doc watching him with a look of masked amusement. They sat down in their armchair beside his bed, facing him, and rested one leg on the other. “Ready?”
Sleepyheaded, Neil nodded. Doc produced a thermometer from their coat and Neil opened his mouth to receive it under his tongue. They both knew he was over his brief sickness, but if they didn’t do this, then they both stayed home for no reason. After a minute, they removed it again and read the measurement. “Normal,” Doc reported with a smile. They replaced the instrument on their person and patted Neil on the head amicably. “All better.”
Neil smiled. “Thanks Doc.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel good. Suh leepy.”
“That’s good.”
“Hey, Doc,” Neil addressed them suddenly. “Tell me a bedtime story?”
Doc grinned at him, curiosity at the silliness in their eyes. “A bedtime story? What story?”
“Mmm, I don’t know. Whatever you want.”
They leaned back for a moment in thought as Neil watched them from his bed. Suddenly, they snapped their fingers and grinned at him. “Have I told you before about the issue we had in the lab while your head was detached?”
Neil pulled a face. “…No.”
Doc’s face lit up with excitement and they launched into the story. “Oh my god, you’ll love this – So we had just finished attaching your hands correctly this time, which was, whew, a whole ‘nother debacle, remind me to tell you a different night, but anyway, it was time to do your voicebox! I was really excited about this part, ‘cause the engineers had been perfecting it for weeks, and so, I finally got to take your head off!” They laughed. “The incision line had been drawn on there weeks ago, I was so looking forward to it! Anyway, I finally get to break out the ol’ amputation saws, and I just really have a go at it you know? Just dig right in. But what happened was, unexpectedly, when I cut in, there was all this goo–”
Neil cringed and stuck his tongue out. “This is not a good story, Doc,” he interjected. His neck had been tingling.
“But I didn’t even get to the good part… it was super dark brown and clotted and like, stringy?”
“Uuggggghhhhhh,” Neil let out a guttural groan of protest.
Doc pouted. “Okay, fine. The punchline was that that was your old vocal cords.”
Neil widened his eyes and looked up at Doc in horror.
“What kind of story do you want to hear, then?”
Neil took a moment to think, trying to push the disgusting rotted imagery from his mind. “Ummm. Can… can you tell me about something we did together, when I was…” His heart panged. “…alive?” he finished in a softer voice.
Doc looked at him with more seriousness, then their eyes flitted around as they thought. “Yes. Yes, of course. Well… there was that time on your birthday, your 23rd. Your parents had gone out of town, and a bunch of your friends were too busy with their summer internships and whatever. I didn’t need one of those, of course. It was just you and me.” They smiled. “We had dinner at your favorite place… and drank quite a bit, I recall. We were so caught up making jokes, it got dark out and the staff had to basically kick us out. Later in the car we left them a bad yelp review. You had some strokes of genius there.”
Neil perked up. “Like what?”
“Hmmm, can I remember…” They stroked their chin thoughtfully. “You made some comment about the carpet that I thought was really funny. And the staff, coming off like soulless automatons… being piloted by tiny aliens?”
“Did I insult the CEO?”
Doc raised their eyebrows and smiled wide. “It was a local place, but yes, you insulted the owner by name.”
Neil smiled warmly in satisfaction. “Classic.”
Doc continued. “After that, we drove out to the street, and you spontaneously decided to drive up into the hills instead of going back. We got up to some vista point… Couldn’t have been anything huge, we only drove for a short time. But it was far enough from the city to be quiet. It was a clear night, and there was a meteor shower going on. We sat on the roof of the car and… well, we tried to stargaze, but we didn’t really have the attention span for it. At some point you took out this little, cheap, battery-powered keyboard toy thing I gave you for your present earlier. You looked at me really seriously, all like, tortured artist and shit, and you said…” Doc adopted a deeper, pouty voice in a playful imitation of Neil. “‘Sometimes, when my muse is upon me, I need to come out here to the wilderness… to get away from all the noise and the civilization… to compose my master works.’ And then you breathed in, very dramatically, and you banged your face into the keyboard.”
Neil giggled in his bed. He was warmed very much by how familiar and in-character it felt.
“It was very funny. You found the pre-programmed beats, and we had a silly rap battle, and neither of us could rap, but you claimed you were winning because you changed the beat on me repeatedly while I was going.”
Neil looked at them slyly. “That sounds like I was winning.”
Doc huffed. “We weren’t even rapping. We were mumbling incoherently and laughing our drunk asses off.”
“You’re an unreliable narrator,” Neil insisted.
“Alright.” They rolled their eyes. “Don’t start quoting TV Tropes at me. That’s all I really remember. At some point we got cold and went back. You dropped me off and went home.”
“Hmm.” Neil mulled over the story. “It sounds really nice.”
Doc smiled faintly. “It’s one of my favorite memories.” Their eyes were far away for a second. Then they looked back at Neil. “Ready to sleep now?”
Neil blinked sleepily and nodded. “Thanks.” He smiled softly.
“Any time,” Doc nodded as they rose from their chair. They patted his head one more time before heading to the door. As they slid it open, they stood in the threshold and looked back at Neil for a moment, an unidentified emotion flowing through them. “Goodnight, Neil.”
“Goodnight…”
“Sweet dreams.” Then they clicked out the lights, and slid the door closed behind them.
As he had done every night for the past several weeks since he had come back home, Neil watched Doc’s indistinct shadow drift away through the translucent Japanese sliding door to his darkened room. He listened to their quiet, muffled footsteps as they ambled toward the kitchen to shut the light off, then in darkness to their own room and closed the door. Finally in darkness and silence, finally familiar enough to be comforted by the routine, he drifted off to sleep.