Archive of Our Own

Rett shouldn’t have had time to think about how unfair it was, was the thing, but time was funny like that – it had a way of slowing down right as something terrible was about to happen. So when the explosion hit, and he watched it blossom up around him in the air, he was given just enough room to think Gods, it’s the fuckin’ happy ones I never get to keep this long before it roared into him at the speed it should have from the start.

Then, after some amount of time and some amount of pain, it was a matter of picking up the pieces.

He didn't know really what had happened, but Pyke had been next to him at one point, and wasn't anymore, so step one was to find Pyke. That was proving difficult, because the pain was distracting him, and he couldn’t see through it, couldn’t think.

There were checks he was supposed to do. Maybe not on himself, but someone should be, right? Where he was…well, he couldn’t pick it out, or remember what he’d been doing. He knew that he hurt, and if he was down, then there were people worse off he had to get back up to help.

Only when he tried there were hands on him, warm and small and too weak to stop him but trying anyway, and it was then that he registered that someone, above all the noise and static, was talking.

“Stay down,” Pyke said, his voice hitting Rett’s ear from somewhere to the side. “You need to let me-”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off with a blue snap and a choked cry, and the hands went off him and he was alone. He shouldn’t be alone, because it meant someone else didn’t have him, and they needed him. He’d known it from the start, and this only confirmed it. Pyke didn’t panic, didn’t make that sound, unless someone ought to be scared.

“Ko,” he yelled, and it was the only thing that told Rett he was still conscious. “I need you over here.”

She started to say something back, but Pyke cut her off, devolving into some tense argument that he couldn’t follow. He was too busy trying to figure out where the panic was, and how to get up and help. Everything felt like it was moving, around and above and underneath, like he’d cut the gravity off somehow. He reached for his equipment to check, but he felt clumsier than usual, the switches he was looking for not manifesting under his fingers the way they ought to.

All that to say – something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He pulled his eyes open, searched the room for his crew, but he couldn’t see them through the smoke, around the debris. Searched Pyke’s body, then, for the sign, using his glow as a beacon to look for a sheen of sweat or trickle of blood, but there was nothing there. Only the glowing gold of panic in his eyes, refusing to shimmer out into the phoenix wings Rett waited for when Pyke was hurt.

All at once, with a wash of dread, Rett understood that what was wrong was him.

There weren’t a lot of things that he could say, right now. He hadn’t assessed his own condition, didn’t know where anyone else was or why Ko wasn’t coming. It was too much to sift through when interrupted by the blind terror in Pyke’s eyes, as stark and demanding as the light he gave off. But there was one that Pyke always did, even if it didn’t work very well, and it was all he could think of to offer up.

“‘S like you say, Pyke,” he said, following his glow as best he could through the fog. “If we won every time-”

The aura moved closer. “Don’t you dare,” Pyke hissed, but he barely heard.

“-it wouldn’t be fun.”

It was quiet for a moment – well, not quiet, not really, with everything going on, but Pyke wasn’t saying anything, and that was the worrying part.

“No. No, that’s my line,” Pyke said, every word sounding strained. Rett wanted to say more, because it clearly hadn’t helped the way he’d hoped it would, but Pyke went on before he could. “I told you, Rett. You’re not going anywhere. You’re not – Ko, I need you here, I-” He turned, shouting behind his back, and Rett reached out for him, stopping only when Pyke full-body flinched at the contact.

“You…” he started, but his tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. It was becoming so hard to see, even worse than before, and Pyke’s pink glare was growing dimmer and dimmer, harder and harder to track. He hummed, but that odd, sharp feeling lanced down the side of his neck, and it turned into a moan of pain.

“Don’t try to talk, big guy,” Pyke said, from very close to him again, and even as weak and muffled as it was, Rett could tell his voice was wavering. “Just save your strength, alright? Just – Ko,” he gasped, and the aura moved away, a voice he dimly recognized taking its place.

But that glow had been his anchor. He couldn’t see it anymore and could feel himself slipping under, like he had so many times back at the Company. There were hands on him again, but they were too big, too cold. Weren’t right. Weren’t Pyke.

And there was the slowdown again, so much time trickling down to the few eternal seconds where he wondered where Pyke had gone, and then it was him who fell away.

***

There was something hard at his back.

That by itself wouldn’t be so unusual – he’d slept in a lot of odd places with Pyke – but he couldn’t feel his left arm, either, even the heavy near-sense of cybernetic nerves. There was a lot he couldn’t really feel, actually. His face, his legs. It was all behind a thick wall in his head that felt a lot more substantive than the pull of sleep.

It was a struggle to open his eye, and it didn’t help much once he did. Just a familiar ceiling above him, but one he shouldn’t be seeing now, and he couldn’t quite connect together how he’d gotten here or why he felt so strange. There was some sound off to his right, but nothing he could see. Why not? He brought his sluggish right hand up, the only one he could get to move, but the sound beside him got louder, and it never reached the switch that would have turned his eye from sleep mode to the daylight setting.

“Hey, hey, woah,” said Pyke, from closer than he expected, and a careful but firm hand led his wrist away. “Don’t mess with that, alright? Leave it alone.”

He wasn’t sure when Pyke had gotten there, but he’d always been quiet. More worrying was that all he could see of him was the glow reflecting off the metal above – reassuringly bright, but not enough, nothing solid in his periphery. Turning his head, though, was a mistake, one that sent an arc of pain down his head and neck and forced his eyes back shut.

No. His eye. That was why he couldn’t see; only the left one was working.

The floor beneath him lurched just a bit, and when the pain died down enough to open it again, Pyke was sitting next to him, his legs dangling over the edge of what Rett now realized was the Bus.

“You awake?” He asked, face eerily blank, and Rett blinked, trying to get his bearings. He didn’t sound right. His voice was even, too even, but it was hoarse, like he hadn’t slept in quite some time.

“Think so,” he replied. There were any number of questions he wanted to put together, but the words weren’t coming to mind. “Pyke, what…”

“We’ll get there,” he said, that same almost empty tone. “Everyone’s alright. Do you know where you are?”

Everyone. Ziggy. Pixel. Ko. They all ought to be here, shouldn’t they? With Pyke. “Everyone. What happened to ‘em?”

“They’re okay. Do you remember what I asked?”

Had Pyke asked him a question? Right, he had. That was one of the things confusing him. “The Bus?”

“Do you remember how you got here?” Pyke was talking a little faster, and it took Rett an extra second to process it, but when he did he didn’t make the mistake of trying to shake his head.

“Only that we left. And we were…we made planetfall, round dusk.” He’d landed the Bus, but it was as if no time had passed between that moment and now. “Nothing after that.”

“Okay,” Pyke said, voice almost cracking, and boy did that trigger an alarm in Rett’s head. “That’s okay. That’s normal. It’s alright.”

It clicked, suddenly, and Rett frowned, trying to pick his head up just a bit and push through the spike it drove into his temple. He abandoned the effort just as fast, but when Pyke leaned in, hands hovering suddenly, it had the same effect. “You’re checking me for a concussion,” he said, and watched the tension drain from Pyke’s shoulders. “You’re s’posed to do that within a couple of minutes, you know.”

“You weren’t in any condition to answer then,” he said, relief so naked in his voice that Rett instinctively went to reach out with his left arm. It didn’t work so well not having one – just sent a twitch down his collarbone to the socket where his shoulder should be. “How do you feel?”

“Think you can answer that one all on your own,” he said, taking a mental inventory. “Head’s the worst of it. And my shoulder – right shoulder. You wanna walk me through-” What happened, he’d meant to say, but his voice caught in his throat, and the resulting cough would have been unpleasant enough without a head injury.

A rustle, and when Pyke offered him the end of a straw, he took it gladly. There was extra effort he wasn’t expecting before the water washed the lingering taste of blood and dust out of his mouth, but he chalked it up to his injury – right up until he got himself together enough to get a good look.

Rett narrowed his eye, but it didn’t change what he saw. “Pyke. Where the hell did you get a swirly straw?”

“Pixel had it,” Pyke replied, bending it back away from him without even the decency to look sheepish. “The normal bendy ones don’t go down far enough when you’re completely flat like this.” He thought for a moment, squinting at it. “They’re actually pretty useful when you can’t sit up.”

“Now I really need to know what happened,” he groaned, letting his head fully relax against the pillow again, and this time the rustle was Pyke leaning in and probing at the sensitive spots of his face.

“There was an explosion,” he said, ghosting tentative fingers around the edges of the metal plate. “Only you and I were close by. Your cybernetic eye took the worst of it, but now it’s out of commission, so we’re on our way to your mechanic. We should be there in another three or four days.” 

“And my arm?” He missed the loss more keenly now, knowing he didn’t have the eyesight to use his good arm properly. Even thinking about being without them – either one of them, but especially both, like now – had him restless, and he didn’t realize he was pulling his arm up to touch his eye, get a feel for it himself, until he felt Pyke’s hand land on his shoulder. Gently, but not overly so, he trailed it toward his elbow, and Rett felt the pit in his stomach loosen its hold on him just that much. The warm line Pyke was tracing down the arm he still had was a reminder he did still have it. Still, something didn’t feel right, something he couldn’t pin down; when Pyke’s palm settled on his, he made sure he could trace his callused fingers with each of his own, and even the knowledge that he could feel all five didn’t settle it.

“That was just a precaution,” he said, and Rett heard the apology in it. “I know you don’t like being without it, but I didn’t want wires getting crossed where they shouldn’t be.”

He sighed, hating that Pyke was right. Biocurrents were tricky, especially when the one malfunctioning was so close to the brain stem, and he’d had several repetitive conversations with his surgeon when he’d first gotten them about how delicate the system could be. “No, you’re right. Only thing worse than messing one of ‘em up is getting the other at the same time.”

“Hmm.” Pyke ran his fingers across Rett’s again, before, with his free hand, applying a bit of pressure just above Rett’s cheekbone. He couldn’t stop the way he sucked his breath past his teeth. “This hurt?”

“Not enough that it worries me.” When Pyke pulled his hand away, the pain went with, so he expected it was superficial. More importantly it had pulled him out of the ghost memories of the hospital, always threatening to creep in in situations like this, and back to what mattered in the present. “I know they’re alright, but how are the others, actually?”

“Tired,” Pyke said, continuing his inspection. “Ziggy got you back to the Bus, that thing he used for Ko after the bar that time, but that was about all he had left. I told them to go eat, get some sleep. They earned it.”

“So you’ve been keeping an eye on me the whole time,” Rett replied, picking up what he was sure Pyke left out on purpose, and Pyke shrugged, pulling back.

“You’d do the same for me.”

Rett would, but it was a sneaky way of dodging the fact that it meant Pyke himself hadn’t eaten or slept, and he was distracted from pointing it out only by Pyke putting more of his weight on Rett’s remaining hand. “I’m going to take the tape off,” he said, and his internal monologue stuttered.

“There’s tape on what, exactly?”

“Your eye. We didn’t know how much light it was taking in. Tell me if this hurts, alright?” There was a moment of pressure, and it lingered long enough that Rett realized Pyke was waiting for his okay. He almost nodded, but thought better of it at just the last second.

“Keep goin.’”

Quick as lightning, Pyke ripped away a small piece of black electrical tape. Fortunately, or un-, for all Rett knew, there was no change. No vision, no light. He was no worse off. No better, either, but he’d learned to count his blessings a long time ago.

But there was something else. Pyke had let his hand float in front of Rett’s face, as if waiting for him to buck, and seeing it so close had made him realize what was wrong. It was Rett’s left, so Pyke’s right hand, and it was bare. The cool metal of the gauntlet was, instead, pushing into the palm of Rett’s feeling hand, and where it should have been on Pyke’s skin were deep purple lightning scars, running up his elbow to his bicep. Before he could see where they ended, Pyke was pulling away.

“Alright,” Pyke said, relief evident in his voice. “I think Ko got it turned all the way off.”

Another something unexpected. Another thing to add to his triage. “Ko?” He asked, brow furrowing enough to hurt, and Pyke pulled both hands away. Rett flexed his arm, already missing the invisible chain of his body heat.

“She was best equipped in the moment,” he said, and then disappeared off to his right side, emerging again a few seconds with the medkit. Rett opened his mouth to ask – well, first, how Ko knew how to handle cybernetics, but that really was secondary to why she’d been the one doing it at all – but Pyke went on before he could.

“The yellow label, right? And remind me your dose.”

“Give it here.” Rett put out his hand, almost on autopilot, but Pyke gently batted it away, giving him a small, affectionate smile.

“You have one arm,” he reminded him, and Rett felt his face color a bit, “and no depth perception.”

Rett huffed, refusing to meet Pyke’s eyes and busying himself instead with the rest of the medkit. “The blue label,” he said, after spotting it, and Pyke frowned.

“That’s burn cream.”

“That’s for you.” Pyke’s head snapped to him, and the way he hid his right hand told Rett he was right on the money.

His jaw tensed for a moment, but he only looked away, rooting through the medkit again. “I’m fine, Rett,” he said eventually, but Rett’s mental image had finally come together, and this was an area where he would always beat Pyke to the pass.

“You’ve got the gauntlet on your left hand.” He made a tentative effort to reach out for the jar himself, already expecting the speed with which Pyke snatched it away to prevent him from leaning. “If you felt safe, you’d’ve just taken it off completely, but you want it on. So it’s because it hurts. And you haven’t eaten or slept, either, or you’d have recovered some. You sent the other three out of here so they couldn’t convince you to take a minute, and you called my mechanic, hunted down my medkit, and started doing our inventory and our audit and a bunch of other stuff that could have waited but that you rationalized by saying you didn’t want me to have to do it when I woke up.”

“I don’t want you to worry about that,” Pyke began, but Rett had anticipated that too, and was ready to change tactics.

“I don’t want your hand shaking when you stick me with a needle. And I can’t make you go to sleep. So.” He gave the jar a pointed look, and with the way Pyke deflated he knew he’d won. With a sigh he probably thought Rett couldn’t hear, Pyke began to unscrew it, and the way he favored his fingertips told Rett it had been the right call.

Now was the hard part. It was like how Pyke had felt around the cybernetic before making a move. He’d have to linger for a moment, make sure he wasn’t pressing too hard. When Pyke held up his arm, slightly paler where the burns were already fading, and gave Rett a tired raise of his eyebrow, Rett only nodded and let him draw from the yellow vial. This needed the extra care, besides: Pyke wasn’t quite comfortable drawing up such a high dose on his own, and Rett had to guide him to the right vein. 

Carefully, or he’d press too hard. He waited until Pyke had set the alcohol wipe aside and was lining up the needle before broaching the topic again. “You didn’t get that from an explosion.”

Pyke paused for a moment, silent, and then the sharp prick followed by a cool sensation of pain dulling everywhere, dulling in places he hadn’t even thought there’d been pain.

It was the relief it always had been, and for a moment he was torn between being grateful this was so rare and wishing it happened every day. If Pyke hadn’t taken that moment to speak, it was a rabbit he could have chased down all day.

“I told you I got burned,” he said, in a carefully offhand tone of voice. “Just happened to be a little too close. The metal caught more heat than my hand could handle.”

The euphoria of relief had loosened his lips, maybe, or Pyke had gotten the dose a little high after all. Either way it was hard to remember why he’d been so careful with mentioning it a moment ago. “I wish I could say you’re a rotten fuckin’ liar, but I don’t think you are. I think that was just a piss-poor fuckin’ lie.”

“It’s not a lie.”

“But it ain’t the whole truth, either.” Rett closed his eye against the lights, hoping to escape the odd dizziness of drugs and a partially-functioning cybernetic and only kind of succeeding. “‘S alright. I know well enough by now. You get by just fine without tellin’ me things, don’t you?”

He expected Pyke to keep the conversation going, maybe with some sardonic comment, but nothing came. When he opened his eye again, Pyke wasn’t looking at him, and he wore an uncomfortably guilty expression that Rett knew only he was ever the cause of.

The twist in his own chest mirrored it. He had a feeling that had come out much harsher than he’d intended. “I didn’t mean it that way. I know you, Pyke, I-”

“Rett, stop thinking of me for ten goddamn seconds,” Pyke snapped, turning back to him, and Rett closed his mouth. The tension between them hung for a few long seconds, and finally Pyke sighed. “Look. I will tell you, alright? Just…later. When you don’t have so many other things to worry about.”

“You’re always going to be one of those things,” Rett said, before he could stop himself, and Pyke laid his hand back over the one he had left.

“I know, big guy.” Rett could tell the smile was forced, but he was hazier now than he had been, even with aether medicine dulling the worst of his distractions. Instead of replying, he curled his fingers around Pyke’s, and Pyke squeezed gently before pulling one of his legs up into the ship so he could face Rett better. “Would it make you feel better if I told you Ko’s been in and out of here about every five minutes? She’s been doing everything you’d do and then some. Hunter’s honor.”

Smiling would hurt, but Rett could come close. “It would, actually. It’s good there’s someone just as stubborn as you around for you to lock horns with. Well, theoretical horns, for you, I guess. You don’t do anything without a little overbear.”

“You haven’t seen overbearing until Ko is worried about you. Trust me. Speaking of.” He leaned out, looking off somewhere in the direction of the hangar bay clock. “You want me to get you out of here before she comes back?”

The reminder of his own bed, dark and soft, was as strong as siren song. But anywhere that wasn’t a hard floor in the brightly-lit hangar bay would be better. “Please.”

Ironically, this was when Ko really would have come in handy. Rett trusted Pyke completely when he’d said it hadn’t been possible to move him somewhere else without Ziggy – even with Pyke’s help, sitting up took most of his energy, and probably a good chunk of Pyke’s from the way he was breathing after. Then Pyke pulled away, stepping back down to the main floor and leaving Rett to adjust to the change of position, and started tapping at an oddly-shaped screen.

For a moment he couldn’t process what he was seeing in front of him. Then Pyke hit another button, and it gelled together in his head. “You’re using my arm as a comm?”

Pyke adjusted the elbow a bit, and Rett felt a pang just short of a phantom sensation where it should have been. “It’s the only one with a direct line to Hank. I needed him on the bridge.”

That was true enough, given how often Rett had deputized him for the same purpose, but – there was just something strange about seeing someone else handle his prosthetic, even Pyke. Only the Architect knew how many times Pyke had hauled it up by the wrist when it was attached to his body, but in those times he wasn’t even really used to thinking of it as a prosthetic, just his own arm that worked a little bit differently. The idea that Pyke could work it without Rett even being attached was completely new.

But just as quickly as he’d noticed it, Pyke finished and slipped away, returning from around the corner with the transport hoverchair Rett kept stashed in the corner for situations just like this one.

It was just as much of a process to help him into it, made easier only by the fact that the Bus was suspended in an EM tether and he could fall in a bit instead of pulling himself fully up. By the time Pyke fell into rhythm behind him, the moving room around him was fueling an unpleasant sick feeling that he knew he had no choice but to bear until he could lie back down.

“Your room?” Pyke asked as the door opened in front of them, and Rett shook his head, only remembering he shouldn’t when he had to suppress another wave of nausea. Pyke said nothing, waiting for him to speak, and eventually he got a good breath in.

“The lounge,” he said, not really knowing he was going to say it until he did, and could tell by the way Pyke’s steps halted for a moment that he was going to argue.

“I don’t think the light-” he began, but Rett wasn’t having any of it.

“Don’t ask if you don’t like the answer,” he interrupted, twisting around to look him in the eye. He pursed his lips, worry in his eyes, and Rett relented, a little less force in it when he went on. “I know you said they’re alright, and I trust you, I just…I want to get eyes on ‘em.”

Pyke leaned forward until his head was on Rett’s good side, and his elbows must have been resting on the push handles, with the way his hands had fallen across Rett’s shoulders. “At least let me wash the blood out of your hair?”

He thought for a moment. The Rhapsody was quiet, too quiet, and it didn’t instill any confidence in him about how the rest of his crew was doing. But them seeing him like this – well, if Pyke was any indication, it wasn’t pretty. “Alright.”

Pyke let out a breath, one that Rett could only tell was shaky because of how close it was to his ear, before starting down the hallway with a renewed pace in the opposite direction of where Rett had hoped to be going. But he’d agreed to it, so he didn’t let himself linger on the thought; he’d be out there soon enough if he could make himself wait a little bit.

And the beautiful thing about the hoverchair was that he wouldn’t have to get up again for the whole process. He didn’t have to expend an ounce of effort to get to his own room, just as incredibly, perfectly dark and quiet as it had sounded from the floor of the Bus, or even into his shower. Pyke could lower him down still in it and set the altitude lock, and then there he was, leaned back with his head resting on Pyke’s bare knee, getting his hair washed like he was a kid again.

“Don’t make it so hot,” he reminded him, and Pyke huffed.

“I know,” he said, but Rett caught motion behind him near the temperature control, and he said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d caught him in time. Pyke tested it on his good ear, and then there was just comforting heat, flowing down his scalp, and he let Pyke’s glow blur to a soft pink halo above him. 

Rett was efficient, but he wouldn’t say particularly gentle – this had always been the part he wasn’t good at, the part meant for someone with more nimble hands. They’d cleaned some up, or he’d have been soaked in it still, but there was still some blood crusted to his scalp, and Pyke teased it out of his hair and let his fingers linger on his hairline even after the water dripped away. It was slow-going, with the level of care it required to keep it away from his cybernetic, but the most Pyke ever did was shift a bit, angle Rett’s head slightly differently, brush a stray lock off his forehead and rest his hand above Rett’s eyebrow to stop it from trailing down into his eye.

He hissed at a sudden sharp pain, and Pyke’s hands paused for a moment before carefully feeling at the area he’d been working on.

“Hand me the stuff for cuts,” he said. “I think I missed one.” 

Rett searched for a moment before realizing the medkit had been hooked onto the side of the chair, fishing for the right tube and passing it up. It was longer than he expected before he felt another touch, and when it met his scalp he realized Pyke had waited intentionally to warm up the ointment in his hands. Then the pain faded again, and it was back to it.

It was nice. Rett didn’t have other words for it. Even with the how and why, it was nice to have Pyke’s hands in his hair, nice to feel the steam, nice for the trickle of water to drown out the ever-present hum of the Rhapsody engine. No – just adjacent to that sound, something else. It was hard to hear, with how quiet Pyke got when ‘quiet’ really was what he meant. But Rett would know this sound anywhere, spent half his time listening for it despite or maybe because of how rare it was.

Pyke was humming softly, somewhere above him, as he reached for the gauze scissors to snip at something that tugged. It was a song Rett had never heard, but he doubted even Pyke had heard it more than once or twice. He never needed more than that to pick something up.

Every so often the fingers brushing against his skin would twitch, a slight tug at a lock of hair, but the song never faltered. Rett let it drown out everything. No fear, no pain, just Pyke, just that voice he’d gotten so used to hearing in the past ten years, right where it belonged. Just Pyke singing, washing across him like the warmth of the water.

It wasn’t until a calloused hand was patting at his cheek that he realized he’d been at the edge – maybe further – of falling asleep.

“I knew I wasn’t very good,” he could hear the smile in Pyke’s voice, “but I didn’t know I was that boring.”

“Y’re not,” he said, trying to pull his eye open and only kind of succeeding. “Don’t stop.”

“You only have so much hair.” A finger tapped the crown of his head. “Less around here lately.”

“Kick me while I’m down, why dont’cha,” he grumbled, and earned a chuckle that echoed around the bathroom.

It felt too soon, that the water cut off and Pyke started squeezing out his hair, taking his towel to the wet spots around his neck and shoulder before slowly raising him back upright in the chair.

“Alright,” he said, leaving the towel around Rett’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed, big guy.”

Which. Hold on. Wasn’t right, or what they’d agreed on. He frowned. “To the lounge,” he said, and Pyke only gave Rett the look that said Rett was supposed to have read his mind by now. To tell the truth, Rett had, but it was easier to pretend he hadn’t.

“Rett,” Pyke said, when Rett didn’t give in. It was more hesitant than Pyke should be by half: he had the kid gloves on. “You’re not up to that right now.”

He didn’t entertain the thought. “I want to see them.”

“You will.”

“And they should see me. See me up, and walking, and not – not sprawled out on the floor of some cargo ship, and-”

“Do you remember the default volume of Ko’s voice?” Pyke asked, dry, and Rett couldn’t stop himself from wincing. “I already commed them and let them know you’re alright. You gotta have a little faith in ‘em.”

He wasn’t wrong, exactly, but Rett could still feel the prickle of irritation. “You just want me all to yourself,” he huffed, and Pyke had the audacity to smirk.

“Would that be so bad?”

“It’s selfish,” he replied, even as he leaned forward so Pyke could get the towel behind him.“And easy for you to say, seeing them alright and then seeing me.”

Pyke ran a hand through his bangs to slick them back, carefully patting at a few stray drops of water trickling towards his cybernetic from his hairline. “If taking care of you is selfish, then I’ll be the worst man alive.”

The easy acceptance was something Rett couldn’t fight. When Pyke got this way, nothing would put him off of it, and it was the only way Pyke could get that Rett was never really sure how to handle. 

Captain had just never been a role Pyke had been comfortable filling, he thought. Probably because it was so rare that something happened and Rett had to take the backseat. When he was left in charge, all the priorities changed. It was the same actions – Rett had no doubt he’d called the guild, checked the maintenance, seen the other three safely to their own quarters – but something entirely different behind it.

Pyke was doing it mostly so that Rett could relax knowing it had been done. Everything was about Rett. Ziggy and Ko and Pixel too, now, he was sure, but this was new, to have them on board and relying on Pyke to tell them the next steps. That chafed. Rett knew it did, but Rett hadn’t left him with much choice, so Pyke handled the decisions the way he always did when Rett made him make them: if he was in a position to have to decide, he was going to decide. There was no arguing with him or convincing him to take it back. If Rett was going to put his life in Pyke’s hands, for better or for worse he’d better damn well leave it there.

He knew that. He knew Pyke. He would have been expecting it, if he was thinking clearly. Still. Times like now, when it wasn’t really Pyke’s decision to have made now that he was awake and aware again, it stung, and the time for him to respond came and went without Rett thinking up anything to say.

But it was Pyke’s turn to read Rett’s mind, and eventually, as he pushed him into the dimmer lights in his room, he sighed.

“Pixel asked, y’know,” he said quietly, folding back the covers on the bed. “If the chaos would do more harm than good. I said yes. I don’t regret it.”

“‘Course you don’t,” Rett couldn’t stop himself from saying, and Pyke paused.

“We were worried about brain damage.” It took a moment to sink in, and only the realization that it should have occurred to him well before now convinced him the worry was legitimate. “I know what you want. You want to be back out there, working at your desk like nothing’s happened. Talking to Hank like nothing’s happened. Acting like nothing’s happened. You think I don’t want that too?”

There it was again, that fraying around the edges that he didn’t have the words to stitch back up. That worrying about would only make worse, and yet he couldn’t stop worrying. It was the part of this he’d always hated, even way back when it was Cass trying to convince him to take one more sick day. He couldn’t stand knowing he couldn’t fix it.

“So just-” Pyke turned to him, pressing his mouth a thin line, before he closed his eyes for a moment, let out a long exhale that Rett saw in the way his shoulders relaxed. “I need you to trust me right now. If you’re still awake in half an hour, I’ll tell them to come by, okay? One at a time. Quietly. But until then…you’re not alright, Rett.”

A throb of pain, and worse a memory. It wasn’t anything coherent – just a snap and an arc of blue light – but it was too soon already for him to process, and brought with it a sick feeling that took a hair too long to chase away. That drive was still there, to make sure it had been just him on the receiving end of that snap and not any of the people he couldn’t get a hand on now, but it was Pyke who’d told him they were okay. If he couldn’t trust Pyke, of all people, there really wasn’t anything left to save.

Rett reached out with the hand he had left, Pyke took it, and that was enough. He felt it pass in the air between them, nothing else needing to be said, and Pyke helped him shift from the chair to the bed, the relief of lying down again so potent he was sure it showed on his face. There was the pull and push of a dresser drawer, no doubt Pyke purloining a dry shirt and shorts, and a delay just long enough for him to towel off before he climbed in behind him.

Nothing about the past hour or so had been normal, but it really wasn’t often that they did this, the two of them. Not in Rett’s room, or with him being the hurt one. It was usually the other way around. But with the cybernetic off, the lights dim enough that his right eye was only a hair more useful than his left, that feeling from the Bus was back, the way-back memory of waking up cold and blind in a Company hospital and realizing no one had been spared to follow him home.

And Pyke knew it was, from the way he brought up a leg for Rett’s head to rest on, the glow of his eyes and hair casting around above him in a way that Pyke hadn’t let lapse since the second he woke up. He’d probably known it’d show up from the moment he’d taken Rett’s arm off, while he was still unconscous. Rett’d told him, just about five years in, how many nights he spent sleeping with the lights on, the glow behind his eyelid a distracting but comforting reminder that he could still see at all, and since then Pyke had been his nightlight instead. This position, using his thigh as Rett’s pillow, was the only position where Rett didn’t trap him underneath him, and it meant he could stretch the other leg out at Rett’s side in one warm line that ran down almost his entire body.

If he did have to be hurt, this was where he wanted to be, right until the end. He wasn’t interested in some lonely bed where they’d keep his heart beating without caring what it was beating for. All he wanted was his bed, his family around him or safe nearby. To lie in it and know he didn’t need to move, close his eye and know he didn’t need to worry about seeing. And despite the lingering frustration, he couldn’t deny that the quiet helped, let him stop trying to triage and talk and figure things out, trust that Pyke had seen to everything that needed attention. He’d laid a hand on Rett’s cheek at some point, trailing up to his hairline and sometimes back down, and could feel himself starting to relax, an odd kind of contentment mingling in with the exhaustion that always came with being so bad off. 

Only one thing left, then, if everyone and everything else had been cared for, that string unravelling that he just couldn’t stop picking at. If he couldn’t see the other three, there was one thing he knew he was damn well within his rights to ask for.

“Am I allowed to worry about you yet?” He asked, and heard a quiet sigh.

“No,” Pyke replied, “but I get the feeling you’re about to do it anyway.”

There were any number of things Rett could have said – you’re still injured, you’re still awake, something happened and you won’t tell me what – but he settled on the only one indirect enough that Pyke would respond. “You’re tense.”

He didn’t speak right away, dedicating his hands to picking the towel up from the side table and running it across Rett’s hair, in slow and repetitive movements that didn’t seem to be drying much of anything. Rett only kept his eyes closed, just waited him out. Let Pyke make the decision to approach.

“My hand,” he said eventually, and Rett shifted his head just a bit so his forehead pressed against the same. “It wasn’t the explosion. It was your cybernetic. It lit up the gauntlet when I tried to help you. I had to walk Ko through blocking the biocurrents.”

A surge of guilt rushed through him, even as he knew he couldn’t have prevented it. His cybernetics weren’t – well, he knew some people hated having them at all, and people who didn’t need them were usually scared of the idea. But they were freedom for him, and interesting freedom that he could customize and optimize in a way he couldn’t with skin and bone. It was only times like now that he felt just how different they were, how unpredictable in the wrong hands, and wished for a day 20 years ago that would never come again.

“Don’t,” Pyke said, as he opened his mouth to address it, and he shut it again. “It’s not your fault. I’m not going to let you apologize for this. I just…” he swallowed. “I don’t know what I’d have done.” It was so quiet Rett knew it was a whisper even to Pyke’s sensitive ears. “If it had been just the two of us, and I couldn’t move you, and I couldn’t help you. I don’t know what I could have done.”

Rett opened his eye, squinting into the pink haze that filled his room. “That’s why it’s not just the two of us,” he reminded him. “It’s not an accident. I mean, sure, picking them up was an accident, but they stay here by design. We’re all better off.”

“It was, though.” Pyke’s grip tightened on him. “For years. And then it was just you.”

“...Yeah. Then it was just me.” The room went quiet again, and Rett tucked his face into Pyke’s palm again, his reminder to both of them that neither was alone.

If you asked him later, Rett wouldn’t know what possessed him to say it. Maybe it was that lingering dread of waking up again without his eye or arm. Maybe it was the potential concussion, or the damaged cybernetic, or the painkillers, or the words lingering on his lips that Pyke wouldn’t let him say. Maybe he was just tired, lately, of watching Pyke use himself as a weapon. Whatever it was, if they were clearing the air, now was the time to get it off his chest. “...That’s how it’s been for me, you know.”

Pyke sucked in a sharp breath, but Rett didn’t give him the chance to interrupt. “You’d think I’d feel less…helpless. I can get you somewhere safe, I know how to heal you. But fuck, Pyke, every time I see you drop, I…you just can’t ever shake the feeling that this will be the time you don’t get there in time. This is the time that the phoenix stuff doesn’t kick in. And then it’s just me again.”

Pyke pulled his hand away, and when he opened his eye, Pyke had covered his face, hiding in a way he always did when something hit too close to home.

“I know,” he whispered. And Rett heard it, underneath in every heartbeat, the me too, me too, me too. And then a sharp breath and the moment was gone, and when Pyke pulled his hands away he didn’t acknowledge the tears sitting in the bags beneath his eyes. “But if it’s you or me, Rett…”

“I know,” Rett echoed, and wished he could say more. The problem wasn’t this attitude. He’d known Pyke’s thoughts on the whole thing for the better part of a decade, and he didn’t waste his time resenting men for not being who they weren’t. The problem was that it had been him or Pyke, too many times to count, and he couldn’t spirit the two of them away to some safe, happy, gilded little cage in the middle of nowhere where none of this would chase them. He could have, plenty of times, with the money they’d made over the years. But he wasn’t the kind who’d be happy there. And it had been on purpose, the way he’d found himself a like mind.

Like minds.

“Not just you or me, now,” he said. “You or me or Ko or Ziggy or Pixel. Hell, even Ophelia, sometimes.” 

“At least we don’t need to pretend that’s not terrifying,” Pyke said, and Rett gave him his best attempt at a wry smile.

“No. I don’t think we do. They certainly don’t.” 

“Hah.” The laugh had no humor in it, but it was a start. “No. They don’t.”

“Come here.” Rett brought his hand up, but Pyke didn’t take it.

“Rett, someone has to-”

“No. ‘S my turn to interrupt. You got everything just the way I wanted it, Pyke. It’s all done, everyone’s alright. The only thing left that ain’t where it ought to be is you.” He could see the way Pyke was already struggling to keep his eyes open in the darkness of Rett’s room, and hoped beyond hope he’d let the exhaustion win. “The others can handle things for a little while. Gotta have a little faith in ‘em, right?”

“...You’re repeating me too often lately,” Pyke said after a moment, sounding oddly stricken, and Rett wasn’t sure where he’d went wrong. Another hint of a memory he couldn’t chase, Pyke’s desperate voice saying that’s my line, and he knew it’d be a fruitless endeavor to try and follow it down. And he didn’t want to, either, just wanted Pyke closer, and tugged at his wrist until he surrendered and pulled his leg from under Rett’s head to rearrange.

It took some doing, but eventually he settled on the edge of the bed between Rett and the door, and Rett thought of how many times he’d done that himself for Cass. How many times it had been Pyke where he was now, pressing himself into the tight space between Rett and the wall. He always found a comfort in it, knowing that if the world wanted to come for his family it’d have to go through him first. This was still a comfort, but different now, one he almost never let himself indulge in: the fact that all of it was out there, and someone else was making sure that ‘out there’ was where it stayed. Just for a little while, it could be Pyke’s job to handle the rest. Rett’s job could just be Pyke.

He was already half gone when the door opened, light spilling into the room in a painful flash until it swished shut again, but Pyke only shifted out of his grip a bit to lean over the side of the bed. It wasn’t until he heard the tap of paws on metal that he realized why.

“Twenty years,” Pyke said, voice sleepy and a bit strained at the angle he had to lean to lift Hank up, “and you haven’t gotten him dog stairs.”

Rett’s smile pulled at the burn around his eye, but he didn’t care. “He doesn’t need dog stairs. He’s got you to pick him up.” Pyke shot him a look, but he settled Hank down square on Rett’s other side, and a silicon tongue pressed against his cheek with a tinny whine.

“Good boy,” he said, quiet enough that Pyke’s ears twitched, and Hank’s nose was unusually warm when he pressed it against Rett’s cheekbone. “Navigation eatin’ up all your processing power, huh? How’s that battery?”

“Right as I laid back down,” Pyke sighed, sitting back up and going for his magnet charger, and Rett only pulled him closer and watched as he settled it around Hank’s ear. Instead of turning back, Pyke propped his chin on Rett’s empty shoulder, pointing at Hank until he went a little cross-eyed following Pyke’s finger. “Anything else, before I go to sleep? You’re not going to start begging for WD-40 as soon as I turn around?”

“He’s a dog, Pyke,” Rett said, trying to hold back the laughter in his voice and not really succeeding, and Pyke turned his gaze back to him, letting his hand go limp on Hank’s face.

“He’s a menace,” he huffed. “And he knows that.”

Not unlike someone else in my bed, Rett thought, Pyke lying back down by his chest as Hank flopped down against his back, and for the first time in – he should ask Pyke how many days, exactly – all of it just felt right.

Darkness, catharsis, and exhaustion worked fast. Rett’s body had gotten back to what Hank’s arrival had interrupted, and Pyke’s glow was already beginning to shimmer in time with his breath, though it was inconsistent enough that Rett could tell he was still fighting it. Rett didn’t feel the need, and got an arm under and around Pyke before settling into the warmth. He couldn’t sleep on Pyke’s chest, but this was the counter – Pyke could lie on his arm and he’d never be too heavy. He could pull him as close as he wanted, and he’d fit, beginning just right there where Rett ended.

Not quite as close as he wanted, because Pyke had pulled away. Rett only had time for a grunt of confusion before he realized why: carefully, with his still-healing right hand, Pyke was undoing the straps of the gauntlet, and Rett silently brought his own hand up to help. Pyke let him hold the finicky parts of the buckle while he pulled, and when it fell away it was into Rett’s waiting grasp.

“Your metal hand and mine,” he said, and Pyke twisted to give him a look.

“What?” He almost laughed, slightly incredulous, and plucked it out of Rett’s fingers to set on the nightstand.

He pulled Pyke back in, giving him a moment to adjust and settling into his warmth. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “Just stay here.”

Pyke was speaking, when he shifted to face him and tucked his hands around Rett’s jaw to cradle his face, but Rett didn’t hear what he said. Everything was finally how it was supposed to be. That was all it took to get him to sleep.