Work Text:
He looks at me with eyes that not a single soul has seen besides me.
Because not a single other soul in this universe is his polar opposite.
There is always a veil of slight madness in front of his eyes; anyone who knows him well can tell that it is nothing but a distraction, a persistent light meant to make you look away. But I'm the only one he lets see behind that.
And I can see so much now.
His sadness.
His insatiation.
That deep, inconsolable yearning of a soul cut and sewn to form something that might be wonderful and exhilarating and abundant, but never whole.
Living for centuries in a body that –by any natural law your mortal life taught you– shouldn't be able to still exist, will make you wonder about what the fuck it is you are now. What it is that you are made by the fragment of machinery inside you –not quite a fragment in my case, of course. It is an existential dysphoria that all of us feel, but Jonny never talks about. With me he talks in a different way.
His eyes drop to the metal plate on my chest and his hand reaches out hesitant– no matter how many times he has done this, he will always be shy. His fingertips touch the brass and I know he cannot feel the beat underneath, not with so little contact, but he still shivers as if he does.
I, on the other hand, can hear his heartbeat. Well, not quite a beat, more of a rhythmic thumping followed by the ticking and whirring of the same type of cogs and circuits that can be found along almost every inch of my own body– except underneath where his hand is touching.
I keep my hands down.
He takes half a step forward.
I take the other half.
He waits. He waits for me to touch his wrist and lower his hand, to make way.
And, for the hundredth time, I do.
His next step –ever so slow– is to the right and forward. He takes it with closed eyes, is what I see before mine shut too.
A thump. A whir. A tick. Coming closer.
A thump. A whir. A tick. A slow inhale, drawn in real lungs that I don't have.
A thump, a whir, a tick, immediately faster, pressing against the metal plate that covers what I have and he is missing. What he misses.
I am the one who is conductive and yet he is so warm. When I wrap my arms around him, even in this off-centre embrace, I feel the metal heating up and I imagine it becoming red hot, glowing with fire about to errupt– I remember that drowning in Avalon's hellfire started in a similar way.
Unlike that time, of course, now I do not melt.
If anything, he does. Because now, heart to metal heart, he can feel the beat of mine. His arms are around my shoulders, even though he has to tiptoe to reach, and one of his hands is clutching at the copper wires that mimic what once would have been my hair. I don't know if he can even tell he is doing it, all he's trying is to come closer, to align us just right, to wait, until–
This.
If I could, I would draw the same sharp intake of breath that he does when it happens.
There are no two heartbeats anymore. There is one. We never found out why the synchronization happens, but it does; the now steady, combined beat pulses against my chest just as much as it does against his.
A thump and a stronger beat. A whir, a weaker beat. A tick.
A thump and a stronger beat. A whir, a weaker beat. A tick.
A thump and a stronger beat. A whir, a weaker beat. A tick.
And now I am not sure which part of it is mine anymore.
He isn't either.
Jonny longs to remember what it felt like being a whole of a human being, so he closes his eyes and hears a human heart beating against his chest and though it isn't his, right now it may as well be. His body is almost human.
I couldn't even come close to remembering being that.
My heart is the last piece of the original Ship of Theseus that was my humanity.
Without this fragment of flesh I am a paradox, not quite a robot but definitely not human– I don't know what is left to be. But if this mere organ, beating metal-bound against all odds after hundreds of years, is the only thing keeping me from the paradox, then am I almost human now? It doesn't feel so.
His body is almost human.
Mine is almost machine.
He can round up to human, I cannot.
Instead I round up to what I can. I round up to a whole of something I am closer to, something foreign and cold but complete.
There would be a comfort in being one hundred percent of something. The consolation of acceptance, of feeling that you aren't clinging to something you are not –and have not been for a while– but rather embracing the entirety of what you have become. Of letting go of the anchor that kept you as a fragment.
So it's alright. It feels alright to rest my chin on his shoulder and focus on the sounds of artificial whirs and cogs clicking tirelessly in his ribcage. Because that is so close to what I am, it is so close to what I could be, and missing it is so much easier.
I let myself be that.
And I let him be the young man from New Texas who, albeit already a multiple-time murderer still cried, hand tight around the gun, when his father hit the floor with a bullet lodged in his back. The boy who was still a boy enough to be scared of what he did.
He is human now, and I am me, and it's alright. This metal shell has been my home for longer than my mortal body was.
I let my hand slide up his back, to the left side of his ribcage, and I feel the vibrating beat– my beat– under my fingers.
Sometimes, when we...meet like this, if I concentrate enough I can stop listening to his heartbeat and instead focus on all of him besides that. Against me is a body full of flesh and blood that, though unnaturally immortal, is still painfully and undoubtedly human. It is supple and it caves under my hold, soft and fragile and tearable, it pulses, shivers, groans and creaks and it is beautiful. If I push the mechanical copy of my brain enough, I can absorb all the mayhem of sensation that is his alive body against mine and I can try to remember; I can try to picture it all as mine, as it was so long ago. I can try to imagine that my skin only looks gold because of the light but that it is actually more of the olive undertone tan that I think it used to be. That my arms are lined with copper hair and pores and bumbs and scars that the flesh can't hide completely, and that the curls of that same copper reaching my shoulders are silky soft, enough to run a comb through. That my body is not rigid where there are no joints, that it can be bent and squished and held in handfuls, that it pulses with life instead of the humming of machinery.
Maybe he knows when I manage to picture it, because those are the times when I'm the one holding onto him tighter.
When I achieve to imagine being the original ship.
But I am not almost that. I am merely a narrow convex angle of humanity where he is the wide reflex one, the exact degrees I'm missing, and yet...it may not be mathematically so, but the convex completes the reflex, not so much the other way around.
So right now, as most of the times, I hear the whirs and ticks and artificial thumps and I complete the other circle, the one that is easier.
At these times, when he holds on to me and I to him and there is no other sound in the universe but two poor misplaced hearts singing, at these times he is a simple human and I am a simple machine and there is peace.
Soon he will let go.
He will nod to me, but his eyes will not rise from the floor. He doesn't want to be seen hanging the veil back on. He will turn and walk away, and will not speak a word of this again, to me or anyone else. Even on the next time he finds me alone and asks if I have a second, his voice small in a way he reserves only for this very specific request, he still won't speak of this.
He trusts I understand and will continue to, and he is right.
I both understand him more and less than anyone else ever will. I am everything but him and yet somehow there is no one I am closer to.
It is not eros, as they would have called it in The City. I'm not in love with him because of it, I don't love him more or less than I do the rest of my partners, companions, compatriots, whatever they may be called.
But there is something in me that is inseparable from him, something that wouldn't cease being with him even if he were in the farthest corner of space away from me. In a way, he always is.
Soon he will let go but for now we are here.
I hold him tighter and we sway to the beat of our heart.