biocomposer | IC inbox

"You've seen me with worse."

Elijah strokes his hair back carefully.

"How are you feeling?"

"Honestly? Not as bad as I usually do while I'm death tolling. No body aches, no nausea--"

He lifts his hand to touch Elijah's wrist lightly, stroking his thumb over the back of his hand.

"I just feel like I could sleep for a week."

"That's for the best. You know you're welcome to stay with me while you're recovering."

Even that kind of exhaustion is hard to weather alone.

"I'd really like that." Rhys answers, "I was going to wait until later in the week and ask you to help put my arm back on."

But he'd be more than happy to spend any intervening days half asleep in the other man's presence.

"That, you can take as read. And..."

He hesitates, but only for a moment.

"I'm glad I found out about this now, instead of in a few days."

Rhys is quiet for a moment. He feels like Elijah knows him well enough to understand why he kept it from him, but at the same time...

"Yeah. If you did this and didn't tell me-- I guess I wouldn't exactly be delighted."

Worried if he was feeling generous, potentially-- kind of hurt, if Elijah was trying to hide something like this from him.

"...I understand why you did it. And I understand why you asked him to help. After he recovered from the cold water I threw at him, we actually had a...somewhat productive conversation."

"Oh, you threw water on him?"

Sorry Elijah, Rhys's whole face is crumpling in sympathy at that. Elijah might not have known how Betelgeuse reacts to water, but Rhys definitely does.

"And you managed to have a conversation with him afterwards?"

"He had a panic attack. I talked him through it."

Because he definitely knows how that looks and feels, these days.

"Thank you."

This is emphatic, even though this knows Elijah will have done it because it was the right thing to do, and not specifically for him,

"Yeah, he is-- pretty much the most emotionally volatile person I've ever met. He's just-- no one could see him or hear him for thousands of years, and I'm pretty sure he's just been getting sadder and angrier and more lonely, with no like-- touchstone for what a normal way to express that is, or how to deal with it, or where to direct it."

"Our talk...touched on that, actually," he says. "He was more forthcoming than expected. I won't say anything more about the exact details."

"So... does this mean you two are getting along now?" Rhys asks, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Sorry, I know that's the most selfish possible takeaway from this, but I think-- sometimes he's kind of jealous of you. It'd be really nice if you two felt okay with each other."

This is an absent sort of thought. Something he wouldn't bring up if he wasn't death tolling and they weren't talking about it, because it feels so crass to talk about how nice it would be for you if your boyfriends got along.

But it's still true. It would be nice.

"Jealous?" This isn't a surprise in the larger sense - he knows he's an extremely impressive human, thank you - but from Betelgeuse? Yes, a little. "Why?"

"Pretty sure he thinks of you as my real boyfriend." Rhys answers, "Which, just to be clear - you definitely are. But not as a binary opposite to him. He's not an asshole about it, it's just-- a vibe I get."

"Ah."

Elijah has entertained some momentary insecurities along the same basic lines - that Betelgeuse is the real boyfriend and he's the leftovers that Rhys can't bring himself to break up with - but that's not something to say right now. Or ever.

"He's a very different person when he's away from an audience. I think we're...getting along."

"Yeah. I didn't see it coming either."

The kind of person Betelgeuse is. Rhys was prepared for low stakes comedy sex with his horny murderer, not for forging a deep emotional bond with someone who hasn't had one of those in thousands of years.

"I'm glad. All his other friends are... " He doesn't want to say idiots, because Hange and Bill aren't idiots, but they are all sort of on the same terrible impulsive spectrum that Rhys is on, "...He'd just be lucky to know you. And-- I like that you get to know this guy who's in my life so much."

"I feel the same," he agrees. "Maybe the three of us should have dinner sometime? So we can....form a more mutual understanding."

That isn't a euphemism for anything, though he realises that Betelgeuse might take it as one if that's how he's told.

"I'd like that." Rhys confirms, "Just-- be prepared to try out every single way of telling someone that you don't want a threesome beforehand."

Pause. Then, because hope springs eternal:

"Unless you really got along with him."

Elijah just coughs out a laugh and indulges him because he's death tolling.

"It wasn't that long a conversation."

"Time isn't everything. All you had to do to get me to follow you around like a puppy was sing a fifty second song."

About wanting to sleep with Robots. Rhys has preferences.

"About fucking robots, on my first day here, only to be verbally attacked by Bill Cipher by having not been here long enough to earn the opportunity."

Yes, he remembers.

"You were a handsome man with stage presence, who I shared a common interest with."

Rhys also wanted Kamski to fuck a robot.

Or a cyborg, but close enough.

"It worked out well for us," he concedes, with a small thin smile. "I don't think I would have been quite that explicit about my level of comfort with your prosthetics, otherwise."

"I don't know, all those long steamy days in the cybernetic maintenance lab, I'm sure we would have gotten there eventually."

Rhys tries to shoot Elijah a lazy smile, but ends up having to stifle a yawn instead. It's hard to be sexy when his whole body just wants to pass out.

Elijah shakes his head.

"You're going to throw out your back if you sleep here. Do you think you can stand so I can help you back to my cabin?"

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