Chapter Text
“This is all gumgums fault.”
Kyborg places the palms of his hands on the rickety wooden frame of the window, using his elbows to grate it up into its encasing and let a humid breeze come into Infinight HQ.
He sighs, audibly and to no one soul in particular and turns back to the couch. The couch in the first floor of base - here - is Kyborg's favourite. It's a large long common L shape that goes against the wall with the end coming out like a snaggle tooth and a slightly lowered sectional piece in the middle that can be pushed in to make it sort of a bed. It's blue with that mildly suede sort of feeling so when you rub the fibers they change in hue just the littlest ittiest bit.
It would be a lot better of a couch to look at if Brink Tussler's stupid ugly butt wasn't sitting on it.
The warlock tips his head back, blue hair tousling and sniffs in making a nasally grating noise with his nose. “I didn't know that dumb orc had a cold when I let him hug me.”
“Hey. You didn't let him. He let you keep your ribs. Feel grateful."
“I would if I could breathe.”
Kyborg rolls his eyes faintly. “You're fine, you big baby. It's just a little cold.”
“Yeah well you tell that to my body. Im chillin an aching all over.” Brink gnashes his teeth just slightly, brows making a firm 11 shape between each other in discomfort. Kyborg would laugh again but the cold seep of discomfort and pain is apparent in how he speaks, that slight lilt to his tone and the fissures of his overdry lips a dead giveaway that he's not doing well.
Kyborg sighs, a hand against the nape of his neck, rubbing the tiny ghosts of hairs there. “Do you want a compress or somethin? I can make tea.”
“Soup.” HIs tone is pathetic, like that of a petulant overbearing child.
“Seriously?”
“Yeess.”
It's an annoying, arduous , no fun task, making soup for the whiny baby that is a brink tussler. Infact, on the list of things that Kyborg would like to do it's probably anywhere from the very last to like the top 15 last. But if it’ll get the poorly obnoxious elf off of his back-
“Sure. I’ll make you stupid soup. But only on my terms.”
“Deal, Rust bucket.”
“Fine. Lemme look in the kitchen, see if I can't scrounge anything together.”
Kyborg exits the rest room out the left most wooden door and walks down the long winding hallways of HQ until he comes across the split open width of the rooms all channeling into each other like a river. He moves down one way, through to the kitchen. All tall walls and creaky but well used drawers and cupboards. He hums, and starts to root through the last supply run for foragables. THose sorts of things are the only kind he knows how to cook with.
Distantly in the other room he hears the faint appealing melody of twinkling thinking of a lute's taught strings. Kyborg leans his head over his shoulder.
“Hey, Bart!”
“Yeah Ky?” the melody abruptly ends.
“Do we have any black bark?”
He hums. “We should. Check the upper cabinets.”
“Sure!” He knows deep down he should probably say thank you, but he forgoes it. Without getting onto his tiptoes even a little bit Kyborg firmly secures a tightened cork topped bottle of bark. He turns to the next bit of counter space and rustles around until he finds a pot and fills it up with water.
“Yeah,” he mumbles as the water fills. “This shouldn't take too long.”
~~~
Brink can't think of many things more miserable than being sick.
Besides kicking puppies, being kyborg, popcorn in the teeth for more than one day, and being kyborg again.
So. Yeah. Not a lot of worse things.
He whined. And honestly Brink isn't exactly sure why. He’d only been waiting there to stay out of an on again off again never ending rain storm. The same one that GumGum the dumbdumb probably got himself sick trouncing around in. But he’d complained and rather strangely, Kyborg had answered to him.
And now he stands in front of him, wearing girly oven mitts with orange blue swirl designs holding a big copper toned pot.
He should really be listening to what he's saying, huh?
“So its a soup that is primarily-”
“Wuhh;.. Holdup kydork. I'm gonna need you to rewind a little. I was tuned O-U-T out.”
Kyborg's face, previously a pin point picture between his confident smirk and his dumb gummy grin, falters, falling at the edges like a poorly made sand castle.
“Ah. Uh- nevermind.” He sits down by the couch, against one of its strong supported sides. His eyes are sharp- their sunken way narrowed. He's unhappy. Ugh. Brink really should’ve been listening.
“No, no. You- I shoulda been listening. That's on me. What were you saying?”
Kyborg's back stiffens, the knoll between each blade of his shoulders tightening away.
“Guhh it's. Uhm. “ he starts to ladle the soup into bowls (Why he didn't bother to do this in the kitchen like a normal person is beyond brink, honestly) , flesh fingers working in an anxious sort of way. Cute.
“Elvish. Like- my village specific. I don't know if it's a high elf thing but wood elves have a lot of blackbark soup. Uhm- It's usually served cold but my village was cold all the time so we drank it hot. Its - nice. Really even and warm.”
Brink absorbs that for a moment. He reaches his hands down for a bowl. His fingers are flickering from the deep shivers built up and coiling out in his bones. They steady as they reach hot ceramic. He fumbles after the sliding handle of his spoon and grasps it. He takes a sip.
“Tastes kind of… like Miso.” It's good. A homey quality. He's sure if somebody else made it - it would be better. But this isn't half bad.
“Theres ginger and onion in it, yeah.”
A beat of pause sits open in the air.
“‘S good. I like it.”
“You- you do?”
He nods. “Yeah. So… snow village? What's that like?”
“Cold.”
Brink snorts. He can't really help it. “Couldn’tve guessed it.”
“Impossible.”
Kyborg taps his fingers against his mechanised wrist.
“Creative, I guess. My village had to get thrifty with what we ate and where we went. Not a lot of variety in our vegetation. My mom was the family hunter, my dad was our forager. He’d set me and my sister out to look for anything we could eat. Berries and stuff.”
“I didn't know you had a sister.”
“Yeah.” he says like there's nothing else to say.
“Does she have a name?”
“She did.”
The soup in Brinks mouth swallows down hard like lead. He knows about this, vaguely, from the mutterings of somebody with an illness deep in their mind. About a slaughtered village. It just didn't come to the forefront of his stupid idiotic mind.
“Ah. Im- sorry.”
“So am I. Her name was Kariana.”
He swallows. “S a good name.”
“She was a good person.”
“So are you.”
He doesn't know what in Fazea's name possesses his tongue enough to say it, but he does. Kyborg's dark amber eyes widen, filling up more of its dull white surrounding. He looks at the brink like he's everything wrapped up in a snowglobe. And , yeah, he feels shaken.
“.... thanks, Man.”
Brink huffs, out in a hot gasp between his lips.
“Somebody needed to tell ya.”
Kyborg presses his hand flush to Brink's head.
“still have a fever.”
“I coulda told you that.”
Kyborg shakes his head. The sweet sugared moment almost seems gone, but it isn't.
“Body aches still?”
“Like you-” He almost says something quippy. Something dumb. “Like you wouldnt believe.” but yeah surely kyborg the amputee would know body pain. He bites it back. It tastes like copper and an oaky sort of soup.
“I have exercises that can help.”
Brink throws a hand over his face and laughs. “I ain't lifting weights with you.”
And then suddenly hands are on the meat of his bicep- one warm and the other ice cold. Settling and placating on the tense eroding sort of pain lingering under his skin. And then without warning , they work. Taught in a clockwise motion, spreading fingers against the muscle in his body.
His lips part, almost a hiss.
“That feels nice.”
“Yeah?” He hates Kyborg’s voice. The way it preens under his confirmation , like he expects it. Wants it. Maybe he does. Maybe Brink should give it to him.
Maybe it can wait. Just a few more minutes of soothing.
Kyborg works up, slowly to the blade of his shoulder. It feels good, but Brink feels guilty, just a little bit. His palm finds kyborgs chest, he pushes back.
“Stap it.”
“What?” Kyborg blinks. “Does it not feel-”
He grabs kyborgs shirt and draws it in close,feels the heat of the other elves' breath and the invisible kisses of his golden hair fluttering around like freakin’ pixie dust.
“Don't play with me, Blondie.”
“Im- What?”
Brink huffs, headache pulsing in his head as he sits up slightly.
“You know I like you. Bart knows it, Mudd knows it, even freakin GumGum gets it. So here's this- if you aren't gonna kiss me, don't let this happen.”
Kyborg pauses. Every bit of Cyborg about him from his nickname leaks out his arm and into his brain. His cheeks burn an impossible shade of green, darkened by blood flush.
“Who said I don't?”
Brink chokes a dry laugh. It scratches his throat.
“Between your attitude and the whole planet that covers it. Everybody.”
He blinks. Once and then another time just for good measure. Those annoying frilly blond lashes. He’ll flame them right off the minute his body isn't so heavy.
“...I never thought about it.”
“You never think, period.”
“I mean about liking you.”
“Yeah well no Duh. You don't like me.”
Kyborg scoffs. “Yeah, because you're a total butthead. And you call me nasty shit.”
“Rust bucket is true enough.”
“You annoy me. On purpose!” he stresses each letter.
“For somebody who's so avoidant of his own emotions you sure don't recognize when other people do it.”
“So you mean to me because you like me?”
Brink feels his fever swell. Or something equally as stupid.
“You make me sound like a toddler.”
“Maybe you're acting like one.”
“Very funny, wise guy.”
Kyborg swallows. HIs voice drops reverent, a whisper just above the sweet taste of his breath. God , Brink is even thinking corny now.
“Do you think I'd make soup for somebody I don't like?”
“No.”
“Figure that out then, Tussler.”
Kyborg rises to his feet, rubbing his head, a flush still present on his face.
“Get some rest. You need to get better.”
Brink sniffs. “Why’re you in such a rush?”
“Well I can't exactly kiss somebody who's sick, huh?”
With that Kyborg descends down the hallway he came in, disappearing off into the light.
It's all gumgums fault.
If Brink hadn’t caught this stupid cold, he’d be better and he’d be kissing kyborgs stupid lips right now.
“Dr Ahem! Where are the health potions at!?”