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It feels insensitive for Gordon to say that he can’t do it, he can’t let Warren enter cryosleep again. He can, he just doesn’t want to. He’s not curious anymore; Grace and Pam and Bryony have answered every question he has just to quiet him down. He’s not scared any more, even though Aubrey told him Warren has been frozen, he’s lost a little more of himself; how every time he sleeps it’s less likely that he’ll wake up. Gordon’s hands were shaking and he hung up before she could explain how.
And Gordon’s not tired, either. If he were tired, he’d be able to understand why Warren would rather be cold and alone than say no for once. Gordon knows it’s not because Bryony scares him, even though she does. He’s still stood up to her before. Sure, it was massively petty and dangerous, but he’s not above talking back.
Maybe, with the urgency of it all, it’s safe to say that Gordon can’t do it. It’s just not his choice.
He’s still going to try, for the first time. It’s not his job to try, it’s his job to take care. But taking care means making sure Warren’s alright, which means he has to say something.
When Warren comes to the farmhouse to play cards, or to sleep as in sleep, or say hello to Waffles, Gordon will tell him not to listen to Bryony’s next comm call, and that he knows it’s hard, but he’ll be safe. He won’t ask, he won’t talk in code, he won’t act more afraid than he is. He won’t lie awake at night for what must be the fiftieth time at least trying to think about the end coming any other way than with the fatality rate of cryonic preservation dropping to zero and having to live without the man he’s known for barely half a year. They’ll figure something out, Gordon will figure something out.
–
“Warren,” Gordon says, in his serious voice, half an octave deeper. They’re sitting cross-legged on the floor of the room like teenagers at a sleepover, and on their third or fourth uneventful round of Uno (neither of them can really shuffle, so the games end before they can start). Warren picks up on his tone immediately, and sits up straighter.
“Yeah?”
And Gordon gets nervous. He never said he wouldn’t. Doing nothing doesn’t terrify him anymore, but speaking up sure does. He sweats enough that he feels like it’s going to freeze and he’s going to stick to the wooden floor. He puts his hand of cards down and runs his actual hands through his hair, and tries to focus. Instead, all his attention turns to how tired Warren looks. Mostly, he looks smaller. His shoulders are tensed and his back is slouched, he’s leaning on his elbows and it seems like the world is crushing him. Maybe being asleep feels so light that everything else has just gotten heavier.
“Are…you okay?” They say at the same time, staring holes through one another. Gordon wonders how he looks to Warren, teeth grinding and body running on black tea and anxiety. He wonders if Warren knows that he wouldn’t be this scared anywhere else, and that he’s afraid for him. He’s been afraid since he drove Warren here in the Golden Bullet, high off a headache.
Gordon answers first and the words move all at once. “I’ve just been thinking, y’know, about how we’re never going to leave, or at least you’re not, you can’t. Bry– Dr. Halbech isn’t going to come get you one day and tell you that you’re done, you can go home now. You’re going to be – be used for as long as Bryony can use you, and-” Waffles waddles up to him and everything closes in, the world almost feels as small as that metal box in the cryosuite. The world is just big enough for himself, Warren, and Waffles, and he can’t move an inch from here. He takes in a shaky breath, at the threshold of a breakdown, and says “I’m not ready for you to go away again.” He’s not ready to feel stuck again, this time with more strangers than solitude.
“Hey,” Warren says, half-crawling across the floor. “Hey, don’t cry. I’m fine.” He’s ‘fine’ and pale and his nose is crusted with dried blood and he has barely laughed in the last month without a coughing fit.
“I’ll be okay, Gordon. I’m here, I’m always here in the farmhouse or in the cryosuite. We’re staying together, beneath the goddamn ballbag.” His voice doesn’t emote. He leans in for a hug, and Gordon can feel how small he is under that oversized Overhead hoodie. “We’re here,” Gordon protests, he wants to be anywhere but here. They came here together, they wouldn’t know each other if it wasn’t for all this, but Warren would be at least more than half alive.
“C’mon, Gordon,” Warren says, forcing emotion into his voice. “We’ll get past it sometime. Bryony is barely funded for her– her thing, and Aubrey’s learning things, we’ve just got to, I dunno, wait it out.” He doesn’t want to argue, doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to leave before he can lose the rest of the little he has. He sounds tired.
Gordon nods, feeling enough because enough is fine, sometime is fine, Warren is fine. “Y’want to take a walk?” Warren mumbles, while Gordon puts Waffles onto his lap, feeling her shell. “It’s cold,” he responds.
“Uno, then?” And that’s the end of that conversation.
–
Gordon has gotten nowhere well enough. They don’t have a plan, and the following morning, when Warren is half-asleep next to him and they’re watching some shit sequel, Grace gives Warren two hours before the mundane ritual that takes away Gordon’s only friend again. They got nine awake days, this time. He was counting. It was two weeks before that, and nothing’s slowing down. They’re not getting past anything.
Gordon still comes to watch. He has to see Warren as much as he can, make up for the thirty-something years where they’d never met and the forty-something that he’ll have to live without him once this bullshit finally fails.
He keeps his spine straight as Bryony puts on that facial expression. It’s the only one that makes her look like she could’ve plausibly been Warren’s wife, the only one that he thinks anyone could ever love. She looks confident, and she’s killing him. Slowly.
She asks Grace and Pam to check all of the functions that keep Warren alive (for now). Gordon pretends to be interested. Warren is already unconscious.
They start turning machines on. The beeping of Warren’s heartbeat slows as Gordon’s own heart quickens. He wants to hug him again.
“Goodnight, Warren Godby,” Bryony says with a smile as she keeps her eye on the devices monitoring him.
Gordon leaves the cryosuite first, everything happening all at once.