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Johnny worries.
Worrying, of course, is a given to him—over the years he’s worried so deeply and so aggressively that it’s made a permanent home in his clenching fists, his tense jaw. His thoughts rumble constantly, a slow but unrelenting slew of reminders like no one actually likes you anymore, they probably never did, no one ever will again. They’re quiet thoughts, and Johnny’s just about grown used to them—it doesn’t seem quite fair, but there’s a lot about the past few years of his life that he wouldn’t call fair.
As accustomed as he generally is with feeling like shit, he still gets restless with it, an entire body’s worth of nervous energy growing and coiling in him from only the waist up. So he worries, and he fidgets, fingers tapping angrily against the wheels of his chair. God, he hates the wheelchair. He hates it and he hates the way Gyro’s eyes pass over it like he’s not even seeing it, or making a point not to. Like he can’t even look directly at him sitting in it like that without having to ask how he got there, and of course he doesn’t want to ask. Like one day, he’s going to decide he’s just a burden and leave him behind—not that Johnny could really be left if he didn’t feel like being left, but at this point, he doesn’t know long he’ll have the strength to keep resisting.
People leave him. That’s how it goes. And isn’t it better to just let them leave, than to just hang around unwanted?
Gyro stands by the fire, poking it curiously but not really seeming to contribute much to it’s growth. For someone who makes himself out to be a worldly and experienced man, he’s extremely shit at building fires and camping in general; if Johnny was lucky, they would both freeze to death before Gyro even had the chance to realize how much better he’d be off on his own.
“You have to put the small sticks on the inside,” Johnny says after a good five minutes of watching him pretend like he knows what he’s doing. “Like, get some leaves and shit.”
Instead of responding to him directly, Gyro just hums and steps delicately around the sputtering fire with long, slightly bowed legs. He nudges a log with the toe of his boot, and the pile shifts a bit but other than that, nothing happens. Johnny frowns. Listening to him, apparently, is not on Gyro’s agenda for the day.
In his head, he gets up and stomps off to the forests edge, snatching some twigs and dried leaves off the ground. In reality, his fingers slide over the wheels of his chair, and he looks doubtfully at the uneven terrain. He’d probably get five feet before Gyro stopped him. He was strong, Johnny, but mostly in his arms, and Gyro was bigger and stronger and could also use his legs, so if he wanted to stop Johnny from wheeling pathetically off into the distance to grab some twigs, he could. Would, most likely. He’d chuckle at him, with that weird laugh, looking at him with that sickening combination of pity and judgement.
Johnny’s fingers tap more aggressively, and he forces himself to stop his train of thought. He’s getting worked up, and none of this is actually happening–all Gyro is doing was trying to make a fire, so they can stay warm.
“You’re making great headway,” Johnny says sarcastically, in an attempt to goad Gyro into taking his advice. “Question, are you trying to make actual fire? Or just a slightly warm pile of logs?”
Gyro sticks a finger up at him. “Eat my ass, Johnny,” he says.
Johnny snorts. It sounds particularly funny in Gyro’s accent, thick and rich and unlike anything Johnny’s heard in his life. Gyro’s eyes slide to meet his and he laughs softly, his low, weird chuckle.
“No thank you,” Johnny mutters, his mouth twisting into a wry smile in spite of everything. “God. When was the last time you even bathed?”
“Me?” Gyro presses a hand to his chest, eyebrows raised like he’s mildly offended. “Come on, we have races to win. Dinosaurs to fight. Dead body parts to find. You know, all that. We’re very busy people.”
“Right, right,” Johnny mutters, still tapping. “Fires to build.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Leaves and shit in the middle!”
Gyro, again, doesn’t respond, but very pointedly picks up a handful of small little branches and drops it in the middle of his crooked log structure—instantly, of course, the fire flares and grows hot. Johnny points.
“See? Look. Just stick some bigger ones around it. It’ll be fine.”
It seems to pain him slightly, but Gyro relents and does what Johnny says, eventually building a stable and successful fire with his help. Even with the building warmth, Johnny shivers—they’re slowly approaching colder and colder territory, and that makes him nervous. He can only feel cold in half of his body, but according to Gyro that’s just all the more dangerous, because his body doesn’t recognize when it’s too cold before it’s too late, or something like that. Johnny kind of doubts it, but Gyro also keeps insisting that he’s a doctor, kind of (which Johnny also doubts a little, because hell if he looks like any doctor Johnny had ever seen), but Johnny also figures that he probably wouldn’t mess with him as far as his health was concerned. Probably.
Johnny taps some more. He can’t imagine how many things Gyro would rather be doing than playing caretaker to some asshole in a wheelchair.
He doesn’t see you that way, he attempts to tell the stronger, more bitter side of himself. You’re equals, you’re equals, you’re equals.
The thing is, he’s pretty awful at listening to himself and he always has been, so he shoves those hopeful thoughts back down into the messy swirl of doubt he’s much more used to before they can tempt him into thinking that something good might actually be going on.
It takes a few more minutes of Gyro adjusting the fire before he seems to get satisfied, at which point he steps back and brushes his hands off, examining Johnny carefully, eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his hat. Johnny pretends like he doesn’t notice this. It’s the look he always gets on his face when he’s getting medical in his head—doctor vision, Johnny calls it. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair as well as he can; his back is stiff and he’s cold and irritated and he doesn’t want to be someone’s patient right now.
What he does want is to just be warm and comfortable, so when Gyro eases over to him he casts him a side glance, shivering a little. For show.
“You’re kinda far away from the fire there, Johnny.”
“I guess,” he says, sounding indifferent. He gives Gyro a more fixed stare, chancing the doctor vision. “I could be closer.”
There’s a pause, like Gyro is considering something—what, he doesn’t know—but after that long moment, Gyro just shrugs and kind of relaxes, and steps forward, walking easily over the uneven ground with his long strides.
Johnny barely has time to protest before Gyro’s hands are under his armpits and he’s hefting him upwards, pulling him up and out of the chair and over his shoulder. He chokes in surprise, not expecting to have been suddenly removed from his spot—he hits Gyro’s back with a fist a few times, and would have kicked him for good measure, if he could have. Gyro just hums, entirely unaffected.
“Asshole, don’t just pick me up! I can move myself, I’m perfectly—“
“I know, I know.” Gyro continues to hum, and kicks a blanket over the ground. “But this seemed faster.”
“Eat my ass.”
“Maybe later.”
Johnny turns red, and doesn’t say anything.
Gyro keeps holding him over his shoulder like he’s nothing more than a large cat while he attempts to arrange the blanket on the ground with one foot, keeping balance with the other. In Johnny’s own opinion (not that Gyro ever asked for it, or listened when it was presented), it had been an extremely stupid idea to pick him up and then go about setting up some place for them to both sit, especially while balancing precariously one one leg next to what was becoming a fairly large fire—Johnny just hung to his shoulders and hoped for the best. He had to admit, that if nothing else, Gyro’s strength…impressed him.
It was moments like this brought back that hope that maybe, maybe Gyro didn’t want to just leave him behind.
“Are you about finished?” Johnny mumbles into his neck, long hair tickling his nose. He tries to enjoy the brief feeling of being held by someone else, as situationally embarrassing it is. Gyro grunts and shifts him a little, a hand planted firmly on his back. It’s big, and it’s warm, and god. Johnny doesn’t need this right now.
Luckily, he doesn’t need to deal with it much longer because Gyro puts him back down on the ground (embarrassing, it’s embarrassing is what it is, he could have gotten himself over here just fine and Gyro knows it), and sits down next to him while Johnny arranges himself, huffing. He’s got a second blanket now, wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. A second cape.
“Thanks, I guess,” Johnny mutters, drawing his arms around himself. It’s a cold night, but being close to the fire helps. “Thanks for building the fire.”
He doesn’t have to look directly to know that Gyro is grinning at him, there’s a flash of gold in the corner of his eye and it makes his stomach twist in a way that isn’t all that unpleasant. “That’s what I’m here for,” Gyro tells him, which isn’t true. He’s not here to build fires, or to pick Johnny up and make sure he’s comfortable, he’s not. He’s here to win a race. Not get all tangled up in Johnny’s bullshit.
So the guilt and the doubt come back, and Johnny dips his head, looking away from Gyro and that brilliant flash of gold.
Clicking his tongue, there’s a shuffle as Gyro crosses his legs and leans into his space. “Aww, come on.” A weight settles on his shoulders, and Johnny realizes that Gyro’s draped the blanket over him. “What’s that face? We made great time today.”
People leave. That’s how it goes. Better to just let them leave than sit here and hope. Fingers curl so hard that his nails bite into the palms of his hands. There’s heat under the blanket that they’re sharing, he now realizes, and as he shakes, frustrated, Gyro moves closer. Closer. Their shoulders touch.
“If you don’t want me around, then just ditch me already,” Johnny says, unable to stop his thought processes from snowballing. “You didn’t want me tagging along since day one, so what are you doing taking the time to make sure I’m…warm, that I’m okay, you know you don’t…you don’t want to be doing this.”
He finishes, and bites at his lips. God, coming out of his mouth it sounds so stupid. Pathetic. Pathetic and not at all what he wants, because the thought of Gyro turning his back on him and actually truly leaving him is enough to wrench his stomach to pieces—he tells him to leave, because he doesn’t know to ask him to stay.
There’s a bit of a silence while Johnny waits, covered in cold sweat and stomach twisting, for Gyro’s response—Gyro looks at him for just a moment before his eyebrows lift and his mouth stretches and he laughs, actually laughs, tipping his head back, guffawing up into the sky. Johnny scowls, offended that his rant hasn’t gotten the reaction he wanted. Laughing? Why the fuck is he laughing?
“Hey,” he elbows him, the threatening sting of tears at the back of his eyes. “Gyro, this is serious!”
“Ditch you?” Gyro wipes away a tear with a long finger, still wheezing. “Mio dio, Johnny, I couldn’t fucking ditch you even if I did want to! You’re tenacious as shit.”
Unconvinced, Johnny continues to scowl. Gyro just shakes his head slowly back and forth, still looking up at the sky as if he’s telling it, can you believe this kid? This idiot? This dumbass?
Johnny sucks in a deep breath, thoroughly annoyed at this point—a fun feeling to couple with his existing state of anxiety. “Fine. I’m a good racer. But you don’t need me tagging along at every step of the way, that’s what I’m saying.”
Finally, Gyro’s laughter wheezes to a finish and he turns to him, expression slightly serious—or at least, as serious as he can manage at the moment. He holds his hands out, gesturing.
“Okay, Johnny, listen to me,” he says. “First of all, let me put this out on the table for consideration—I do not, nor have I ever wanted, to ditch you. This is unlikely to change in the future. Secondly, allow me to further point out our situation—we’re basically in the middle of nowhere, as far as I’m concerned, camping and fighting for our lives every two damn days—I wouldn’t want to do that alone, would you want to do that alone? We’d both be dead, probably. Thirdly—“ and he held up two fingers, which seemed weird, ”we already agreed. I’m finishing this race in first, and you’re coming in second. Right behind me. How can we do that if I ditch you like an asshole, and we both starve to death and die in the wilderness?”
Johnny scrunches his nose, finding himself unable to actually argue in light of all of Gyro’s admittedly sound logic. It eases the tightness in his chest a little, but brings a tightness of a different kind, a warmer one, one that brings him back to that dangerous hope. “Okay,” he allows him, not looking him directly in the eye. “Okay.”
“Besides,” Gyro jabs him in the chest with a finger, “you’re the one who decided to pair up. Don’t go changing your mind on me, I’ll have to find a new friend. I think it’s too late to bond with Dio, so you’re all I’ve got.”
“Alright,” Johnny snorts quietly. “Yeah. Don’t do anything drastic. Unless you’re prepared to grovel at his damn feet.”
“I most certainly am not willing to do that.”
There’s a pause. Johnny feels better. Warmer. He braces his hands on the ground and moves himself closer to his friend, as smoothly as a person using only their arms to shift their position can. Gyro chuckles softly.
“Don’t forget how determined you were to follow me in the first place,” he tells him, putting a hand to his shoulder. “Don’t forget that.”
Johnny curls a little. “Yeah,” he says.
The hand on his shoulder moves to his back and pauses in the middle, just for a second, before Gyro puts his arm all the way around him and tucks him into his side, breathing slowly. The scruff of his cheek rubs against Johnny’s forehead, and he feels his jaw clench, unclench.
“Fourthly,” Gyro says, much quieter now, a soft afterthought, one he must have been holding onto for some time. “I like having you around. For real, Johnny.”
It sinks into Johnny slowly, like ink seeping into water, billowing and curling until the warmth of it reaches his very fingertips. The fire crackles, and Johnny tries to adjust. Tries to wrap his head around the fact that Gyro—that Gyro won’t leave. That he doesn’t want to.
“It’s cold,” Johnny mutters, a statement that doesn’t hold much meaning save for the excuse to bury his nose into Gyro’s neck, to lean against him and huddle in for all the warmth he’s willing to give. Gyro’s thumb moves against his arm, back and forth, back and forth.
“You still cold?” there’s concern in his voice, genuine actual fucking concern and Johnny hasn’t felt relief like this since he doesn’t even know when—its similar to his fantasies where he wakes up one day, able to walk again.
“No,” Johnny says quietly, and his fingers curl into the fabric of Gyro’s shirt. “Not anymore.”