Chapter Text
Somehow these conversations always start when they're sleeplessly watching TV, alone on the rec room couch.
"I was thinking," Josh begins.
"That's a new one," Julian says with the automatic ease of an insult walked into, not taking his eyes from the screen.
Josh ignores him. "I figured if you got more comfortable with me, like, my hands, me touching you," he says, gesturing with one of said hands, "then you'd be more okay with me healing you."
"All right," Julian says warily, still digesting the cue to stop looking at the TV.
"So I was thinking maybe we could practice me touching you. Not in a sexy way," Josh adds. "Necessarily."
"Practice? What do you mean 'practice', how the hell do you practice touching someone?" Julian asks critically. "We're not little kids practice kissing for when we get girlfriends."
"Okay, bad phrasing. We just get used to me touching you by doing it a lot. Is that better?"
"You just want to do that because you've got a touch kink going on," Julian says, demonstratively bopping his head against Josh's arm around him.
"No! I mean--no. That's not it. As in, that's not why I want to do it, and also I don't have one, whatever you're implying."
Julian turns and squints at him skeptically. "So what, I just give you the O.K. to start feeling me up at random?"
Josh rolls his eyes to the heavens, or more specifically, Kitty's old room. "Why do you have to make everything weird and perverted? I'm just saying we hang out in my room for an hour and, y'know, just get used to each other physically. No big deal."
"Yeah, you rubbing down my body with your hands isnt weird and perverted at all, my mistake." Julian ducks under Josh's arm so he pulls it back from around Julian, and then Hellion crosses his own arms. "And why your room?"
"If we kick Cess out of her room for a while she's gonna tell Santo, and do you want to try to come up with an explanation to him? Do you think you can come up with one that he'll accept and not tell everyone we're probably fucking like rabbits?" Julian scoffs. "We can actually tell David and he'll understand. It won't be weird."
"What? No, Alleyne in on this will be very weird!" Julian says in alarm, "Very very weird, Josh. I swear he better not be there, or walk in, or--"
"He knows almost as much about the human body as I do, maybe even more of the theoretical stuff," Josh says. Julian senses they are on entirely different trains of thought. "He could actually help--"
"No. No no no. I am not a study cadaver or, like, fucking Frankenstein's monster. You're proposing to get me comfortable with you, us together, okay? Not--not do something freaky with Alleyne using me as a prop. Got it?"
"Sure, sure. Maybe some other time," Josh says absently, then holds his hands up when Julian practically growls at him. "Or not at all. ...Or with someone else or something."
"Not at all sounds good," Julian agrees pointedly, settling back into place.
"Still though," Josh insists. "What do you think? Think we can give it a try?"
"Maybe it's an idea for a rainy day," Julian says.
"Yeah? Like when?"
"Like someday." Julian doesn't abide any more talk about it, but he does pull Josh's arm back around himself and lean back into him.
---
A rainy day turns out to be more of a shitstorm. Julian should probably learn to keep his stupid mouth shut.
The irony is lost on him though--he doesn't remember their previous conversation by the time he's being carted onto the Blackbird after a mission, aborted halfway through after he got half slashed to shit. He struggles to breathe against both injury and panic.
Julian fights being dragged on the Blackbird even wheezing and bleeding profusely. “Do you want to go home, son, or do you want to die here?” Hank asks, apparently under the impression that it will help. It does not. He resorts to taking a now-incoherent-with-terror Julian in his furry arms and holding him still with vice-like strength as he carries him.
Getting him aboard is one thing; it takes several minutes on top of that and a group effort to keep him down while they get IVs in him. Cessily has to grab and hold his other hand while the morphine is kicking in and Hank’s still fumbling with the straps, because he tries to rip the IV out. There are no power collars in the Blackbird, and maybe there should be because Julian knocks the IV stand over telekinetically and the morphine bag spills all over the floor.
Everyone is shouting at him to stop, but Julian can barely hear past the pounding in his ears. He tries to undo the straps holding him down but he's too far gone to control his telekinesis that much. The Blackbird keeps flying--Beast and whoever's flying it keep shouting back and forth as they try to control the situation. The passengers not directly tending to Hellion duck out toward the front of the plane to escape being hit--everything not strapped down has started flying around their heads in a green maelstrom.
The landing is not the smoothest the Blackbird has ever had, partially because Hank isn't flying, but no one bothers to complain. Everyone sprints out as fast as they can except Cessily and a few determined adults. Then Josh is pushing them all aside, shouting for Julian--apparently having caught the news ahead of their arrival--and coming to his side. He looks worried as fuck, black spots dancing across his face like static from stress, but still he strokes Julian's hair and tells him he'll be fine, he's here now, you're safe.
Julian hardly hears. He struggles against the straps around his arms and legs and begs Josh, fucking begs him not to touch him. "Don't, no, don't touch me, Josh, fuck, please, please!"
Josh reaches for his injuries anyway and Julian's telekinesis holds him fast. "Julian, stop!" Josh yells, struggling against the glow. "Stop! You need to let me fix you! Julian!"
"Josh--" is all Julian manages to say before he passes out from blood loss, and the delayed response to the morphine.
When Julian wakes up seventeen hours later, perfectly healthy and whole in a med lab bed, Josh hardly has to be nudged at all before waking up in the chair beside him. He looks like hell gilded over. Still, he smiles when he sees who woke him, and squeezes Julian's hand.
When Cessily on the other side punches Julian's shoulder for worrying everyone, Julian looks at Josh and tells her they might tentatively have a solution worked out. Josh's eyes light up, and it is decided that Tuesday at four sounds like a good time for 'someday'.