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They toast, and then they’re silent.
The wine goes down quickly, and Johnny makes an idle comment about finding somewhere to stay for the night. He’s stopped crying by now, but he’s still washed out and snuffling every now and again, so Gyro takes the lead. Johnny isn’t exactly a crybaby, but he cries a lot more often than any guy Gyro’s ever known, and probably more than most of the girls he’s met besides.
It’s part to do with him being so young, and part with his upbringing, but Gyro has the sense to know that it’s mostly just the way Johnny is. Whatever Gyro or anyone else feels, Johnny feels it more acutely. How else would he have the determination he does? To Gyro, at least, it makes sense that the rest of Johnny’s emotions would have to be equally intense to balance everything out.
At some point between finishing the wine and Gyro masterfully bargaining for a room, Johnny stops snuffling. They’re both bone-tired by now, although Gyro isn’t ready to put it down as pure exhaustion just yet.
“One bed again,” Gyro says as they enter the room. “Saying we lost everything wasn’t much of an exaggeration.”
Johnny doesn’t respond, not that Gyro was expecting him to.
The bed is small, but it’s better than sleeping outside for now. Johnny pulls off his boots and gets into bed without much preamble, plastering himself to the wall for Gyro’s sake. They’ll be touching just about everywhere as soon as he gets in anyway, but this many cold nights into the race, arranging themselves is more of a matter of familiarity than experiment.
When Gyro thinks about it, it’s a little bit funny. They’re both something of naturals for skinship, and they both wouldn’t have known it if not for this race throwing them together.
Gyro pulls off his own boots and undresses. When he settles into bed, Johnny rolls around so he can fix himself a spot in Gyro’s arm, breath ghosting his neck.
“I was thinking baths in the morning, then head on out,” Gyro says. “I’m tired of this town already.”
Johnny huffs into his shoulder. “Is that your way of saying I smell?”
“We both do,” Gyro says. “No denying that.” Gyro runs his hand over the jut of Johnny’s hip, mindful enough to keep away from his back.
They lay in silence once again. Johnny is complicated, there’s no denying that either. Gyro knows he’s going to talk--good or bad, Johnny can’t bear to leave anything up in the air. It’s not Gyro’s way; he’s content to leave well enough alone, unspoken, as long as it won’t interfere with things too much. Johnny, sensitive and brash, seems to get louder every day Gyro spends with him. It sometimes makes things inconvenient, sure, but Gyro doesn’t know what he would do with a quiet Johnny for company.
“Why aren’t you yellin’ at me right now,” Johnny asks, voice quiet and emotionless.
Gyro hums, train of thought broken. “Why would I be?”
“‘Cause I was selfish,” Johnny says. “Because I tried to sell you down the river for the corpse parts. Hell, because I did sell you down the river for the corpse parts.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Gyro says. “You changed your mind.”
“That’s not the point!” Johnny stutters out. His voice flits up, and Gyro knows that if he could see Johnny’s face, it would be flushed. “I let you turn into the tree! I didn’t even know if--I had no way of knowing that you’d turn back if I got rid of the corpse parts afterward. I could’ve killed you.” Johnny’s voice quiets again, but he can’t hide the emotion in it now. “I did. I let you go, just like that.
“And after--after everything we’ve been through in this god-forsaken race. I’d be nowhere without you, probably dead by now, and still I—” Johnny chokes--“Still I let you go. You should be mad.”
Gyro chooses his words carefully. Johnny needs a little pushing, sometimes, to get him to understand, but now isn’t one of those times. There’s no use in pushing Johnny to shake completely apart in his arms when he’s already halfway there in the first place.
“It’s not that I’m not mad,” Gyro says, “or that I wasn’t shocked in the moment that you still made the choice you did.” Gyro feels Johnny’s tears on his collarbone. “But Johnny, you’ve changed.
“When we started this race, you would’ve betrayed me for just a chance at one of the corpse parts, assuming you knew their power. In your position, that much is even understandable. But today, when your hand was forced, you gave them up for me. Maybe you didn’t get there immediately, but you chose me.”
“I thought I lost you!” Johnny sobs. “I thought I lost you for some--some stupid fucking corpse!”
“I’m here,” Gyro says. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“But I did! And I can’t—” Johnny pauses.
“Walking has been all I wanted for so long,” he says. “I had nothing before this race, nothing and no one. I thought, if I can just figure out how to walk again, I can get back everything I had before I got shot. The girls, the races, even my family, everything would just fall back into place.
“And it wasn’t--it wasn’t until I met you that I realized the truth. Even before I got shot, I had nothing. I was empty, and everything I did was an attempt to keep the emptiness away for a while. Trying to get back what I had, trying to walk--it gave me a reason to keep living. I don’t know how to live if I’m not living for the past. I don’t remember how. I don’t know if I ever have before.”
Gyro aches for him.
“We have time,” he whispers. “We have the rest of the race, and after. You can learn.”
“What if I can’t,” Johnny sobs. “I don’t know how.”
“You can,” Gyro says. “I know you can, because you saved me today. You’ve changed.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and it sounds more like a prayer than it has any right to.
Gyro presses a kiss to Johnny’s temple that goes unnoticed. “I know.”
“I’m going to fuck up again,” Johnny says.
“I know.”
“You’re going to hate me,” Johnny says. “You’re going to see how awful I am, how empty. You’ll leave.”
“I won’t hate you,” Gyro says, “and I won’t leave.”
The minutes slip by in relative silence once again. A wounded noise still breaks through now and then, but Johnny is truly coming down from it now. Gyro closes his eyes, but doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t have the luxury of staying up all night to think like he did back in Naples, but he’ll be awake long after Johnny finally passes out, at the least.
“Were you serious,” Johnny eventually says, “about after the race.”
“‘Course,” Gyro says. “You could come back home with me, if you wanted. Valkyrie and Slow Dancer will deserve a nice, long rest after this, but we could see all the pretty sights in Europe one day.”
Johnny sniffs. “I don’t care about the sights.”
Gyro smiles. “Well, we can figure all of that out later. We have time.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says. “We do.”
Gyro feels Johnny’s breath even out as he drifts off. It shouldn’t be as easy as it is to imagine a future where he and Johnny can just disappear after all of this--where he can work as a doctor, and nothing more, and Johnny can train horses or whatever else he wants to do. Where they can go on rides in the countryside for no other reason than leisure, and Gyro can finally take the time to fully appreciate the way the wind blows Johnny’s hair as they ride, or how pretty his face looks all flushed from the air.
It seems far off, but Gyro can picture it so easily. A future where they’re happy, together.
He pulls Johnny in a little bit closer and falls asleep, smiling into Johnny’s hair despite himself.