Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jonny feels really fucking pleased for the first thirty seconds after he hangs up the phone, having successfully scheduled his top surgery, which is now officially happening in four months. Then the Toy Soldier ruins it by calling across the apartment, with its usual cheer, "Ah, that's too bad, old chum! You won't be able to attend Danger Days, then!"

"Like hell I won't," Jonny says. "Wait, why?"

"Your surgery appointment is for the eighteenth, yes?" the Toy Soldier asks. Jonny concedes that it is, good eavesdropping skills on TS. "And the concert is on the twenty-first!"

"Yeah," Jonny says, a little uncertainly. "That's after three days."

"I believe it takes longer than three days to recover from major surgery," the Toy Soldier tells him jovially. It's usually much more supportive when Jonny mashes what are possibly objectively bad ideas close to each other, which means that maybe surgery and an energetic music venue three days later is a worse idea than Jonny thought. In his defense, he didn't even remember what day they had tickets to see MCR, so it's less a bad idea than an unfortunate coincidence.

"Eh, it'll be fine," Jonny says. "I'm not gonna reschedule the surgery, their wait list is shit, and I am absolutely not going to resell my ticket. It's three days."

…

"That's a terrible idea," Tim says, when he gets home from his shift at the café. "You do know that, right? If people dance into you, you're going to get really fucked up."

Jonny doesn't say that this sounds kind of metal, because he actually does want his chest to heal well, so maybe Tim and the Toy Soldier have a point. "I have yet to hear a single 'congratulations on getting your surgery scheduled, Jonny'," he says instead.

Tim smiles down at his pasta. "Congratulations on getting your surgery scheduled, Jonny," he says. But for the rest of dinner, he keeps looking at Jonny, in little considering glances, not like he's worried but like he knows that Jonny thinks his surgery-and-concert plan is kind of metal and is lining up his options for talking Jonny out of it.

Jonny figures he can at least attempt to head that off at the pass, so while they're getting ready for bed, he says, "I am being responsible, you know."

"About what?" Tim asks, muffled by his t-shirt before he pulls it off. He shakes his hair out of his face afterwards: it's been at least four years since he cut it, and it's brushing his shoulders now. It makes Jonny want to kiss him, which isn't especially remarkable, because most things about Tim, even the really annoying ones, make Jonny want to kiss him.

He ambles across the bedroom, presses a quick kiss to Tim's mouth just because he can, and says, "About the surgery, obviously. I'm supposed to cut back on smoking because something about blood flow and immune system stuff? Anyway, I'm going to do that. I am doing that. I only smoked once today. I'm being responsible."

"You're going to be insufferable," Tim says, which isn't the supportive response Jonny was looking for.

"Hey, fuck you," Jonny suggests.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Tim says, and "But it really is great you've got your surgery scheduled," and he says it like he understands how monumental and good this is going to be, not like he's saying the words just to say them, so Jonny forgives him.

…

Jonny doesn't actually go down to only one cigarette a day, but he sometimes only has two, and also he's really trying, and also the surgery is still months away so he has time to work on his discipline and stuff. Ashes visits for a long weekend after they're done with their midterms and supportively steals the pack of cigs that Jonny's halfway through and his backup pack, and doesn't answer their phone on Monday when Jonny calls to yell at them, because they're a coward.

The Toy Soldier comes with him when Jonny heads out to the corner store to resupply, and while they walk, it says, "Are you thinking of trying out a new look once you've had your Great Transformation?"

The two of them have been auditioning portentous ways to refer to Jonny's surgery, but this one is new, and he likes how it sits just on the line between shitty epic fantasy and full Lovecraft. It's a good question, too. Jonny's fashion sense, if it even deserves to be called that, mostly lands on "comfortable" -- jeans, baggy t-shirts, hoodies, whatever tops will let him drown the fact of his breasts in as much fabric as possible. He does own a binder, but he kind of hates wearing it, because all it really does is translate his discomfort from psychological to physical, and it doesn't make him the right shape, really, just a different wrong one. With the binder he's been able to audition a couple of shirts, consider whether he wants to be a henley guy or go full button-down like Tim or just wear graphic tees or do something really obnoxious like become someone who wears loud tropical prints. He hasn't decided yet. Henleys, maybe.

"Sure," Jonny says, "but I don't know what the look is." Also, the Toy Soldier has a different look every week, so he's not sure it's going to be decisively helpful. Today it's wearing sparkly purple tights, combat boots, and a massively oversized sweater belted at the waist like a dress, which Jonny thinks is a fully TS look rather than something it's trying out for one of its characters, though he can't be entirely sure. "I should have a concert outfit, though. I can't just roll up to Danger Days looking like pre-Transformation Jonny."

For a second, he thinks it's going to argue with him over whether he's going -- most people have tried to argue with him about that -- but the Toy Soldier must have gotten that out of the way in their initial conversation, because it says, "We should find you one, while we're out on the town!"

So after the corner store, and a quick smoke break (during which Jonny only has half a cigarette and puts the rest away for later, because he is being responsible) they head to TS's favorite thrift shop. It immediately gets distracted by a clearly-broken VCR for some reason, so Jonny slouches off to the men's tops section by himself, feeling as always like some guy is going to notice him and ask what he's doing in the wrong place, already squaring up for a fight that's never happened. He paws through the shirts, finding a couple of soft, dark button-downs that Tim would probably like and which definitely wouldn't fit Jonny properly even post-surgery. He finds two t-shirts next to each other, one with the Red Sox logo and another with the Yankees', which feels like a story about a tragic gay baseball-related breakup. He finds a waistcoat that might fit him in a few months, and he seriously considers it, but eventually he decides that Ashes has the scene kid market cornered and he should try something else.

"Found anything good, old sport?" the Toy Soldier asks, appearing at his elbow. It's holding three mismatched teacups.

"Eh, not yet," Jonny says. "All the stuff here is ordinary, and if I'm looking for something for Danger Days, it should be some sort of postapocalyptic cyberpunk cowboy outfit."

The Toy Soldier lights up. "Say no more!" it says. "I'm sure I can find something that will fit the bill!"

It begins rifling excitedly through the rack, all three teacups still dangling precariously from its crooked pointer finger, so Jonny leaves it to its project and wanders in the direction of accessories. He's not really a tie person, but his one belt is beginning to wear out, so maybe he can find one to replace it while TS goes costume-hunting.

Or.

Or, Jonny thinks, eyeing the hanging belt display speculatively, this could be what he leans into. He could just get one replacement belt, but he's spotted at least four that he likes, of varying colors and widths, one with a very cool and piratical buckle. A postapocalyptic cyberpunk cowboy should probably have four belts, minimum.

By the time they're done in the thrift shop, Jonny has fully five new belts, plus a soft off-white henley and an open tan vest the Toy Soldier found, both of which are maybe more Firefly than Danger Days but still within the general range of what Jonny was looking for. The Toy Soldier, of course, also gets the tea cups.

…

With a month and a half to go, Jonny texts his boss to let him know he needs the time off to recover. A month and a half feels like the sweet spot, when there's still enough time that getting two weeks' coverage for Jonny's bar shifts shouldn't be a nightmare, but not so much time that there's a lot of opportunity for Jack to punish Jonny by not giving him enough hours.

Jonny does have the idea that maybe this isn't the sort of calculation he should have to be making, but bar backing at One Eyed Jacks is still miles better than the graveyard shift at his first shitty convenience store job, so he'll take it.

Be back no later than the 5th, Jack texts back in reply to Jonny's leave request, and This isn't coming out of your sick days, no policy for comping cosmetic surgery.

Jonny literally gets sparkle-edged, red-tinged tunnel vision, which he hadn't known was an actual thing, and which is pretty cool, actually, or it would be if he wasn't so fucking angry that it's hard to breathe for a minute. It's not about being denied pay while he's out, given that his pay stubs might have a few accumulated hours of sick time but bar policy only comps them for missed shifts that have already been scheduled, which means that Jonny has always suspected those slowly-ticking-upwards pay stub numbers are all show and no substance. He wasn't expecting to be paid. He's been saving up for this for ages. No, it's the other bit, cosmetic hanging there in the text, the only word Jonny needs to know that Jack has never believed anything Jonny says about himself, only indulged him until the moment it became inconvenient.

He texts Jack a brief acknowledgment, and then he texts everyone he knows in the industry to see if anyone knows of an opening for a bar back or, better yet, a full bartender. He doesn't even need to explain why. One Eyed Jacks isn't known for its incredible employee retention rate.

It takes a few days, but eventually he hears from some of the guys in Fenrir's old crew that the Ratatosk is looking for some fresh blood. The commute to that bar will be a bit further -- One Eyed Jacks is twenty minutes walking or five minutes by Aurora, and the Ratatosk is downtown where there's no parking, which will involve a whole bus transfer and a thirty-minute commute on a good day -- but it's a position that might get Jonny to bartender, if he gets the gig.

Either way, Jonny figures he'll stay nominally employed at One Eyed Jacks until insurance pays out the pittance they'll cover for his surgery, because switching jobs right before a large medical procedure isn't a great idea. The second it's paid, though, Jonny will be gone. Fuck Jack anyway.

…

Nastya is Jonny's designated driver to and from the hospital. When she pulls up at the apartment at a truly terrible hour of the morning, Jonny shuffles his half-asleep self out to meet her, Tim trailing him. Nastya dismounts her bike and says, "Morning, boys," not sounding at all surprised to see both of them, even though there was no point at which anyone decided Tim was coming along too. He could still be curled up warm under their pile of blankets, stealing all of Jonny's body heat after Jonny was forced to get up, and instead he's next to Jonny, shivering in a puffy jacket while Jonny hands Nastya the key to Aurora.

It all feels symbolic, though Jonny couldn't say of what, exactly. Something about Nastya giving him her car at a big moment of change in her life, and Jonny returning temporary custody for a big moment of change in his. Something else about Tim being here, without question, for that same moment, though that feels less like a call-and-response and more like the start of something.

When Jonny slides into Aurora's backseat, Tim climbs in after him, and the second their seatbelts click into place, he's reaching across the space between them and hooking a pinky around Jonny's. It's weird, that impulsive contact, like he's trying to hold onto Jonny for as long as possible before something scary happens. It's just a surgery that's fast and noninvasive, as surgeries go, though that sounds kind of weird to say aloud, so Jonny doesn't. He curls his finger around Tim's in turn and thinks It's going to be okay, dumbass, even though there's no way Tim can know he's thinking of it.

The little bit of contact is comforting, too, even though Jonny isn't worried.

They get to the hospital, and check in, and spend some time in the waiting room with Jonny dozing on Tim's shoulder. Tim stays in the waiting room when Jonny gets called in, though Nastya comes with him, and says, "I'll be waiting right here for you when you get out," while a nurse gets Jonny lying down and hooked up to the good drugs, like that was ever in doubt. Jonny gives her a thumbs-up, and the nurse says "Hold still, please," not particularly admonishingly.

Jonny doesn't actually remember much of the day, between the earliness of the hour and the weird blank spaces on either end of the procedure. He has a few snapshots: he's kind of lightheaded but not queasy, and he's pretty sure that the surgery is over because his chest feels distantly achy and has a compression binder over it to remind his rearranged body to stay in place. He's upright and halfway dressed, fumblingly buttoning the oversized shirt he brought along, and he catches his reflection in the mirror of his room. He looks -- right, he looks right, carefully turning to examine himself from a bunch of different angles, all of them good, and Jonny feels such a huge upwelling of joy and relief that he could probably be in ten times more pain and still feel amazing. Then he's sitting with Tim, and saying, sort of slurrily, "Where's Nastya?" and Tim says, "She's bringing the car around." Tim's holding his hand, which Jonny likes. Then they're in Aurora, and Jonny fades in and out for a while like a bad radio signal, and finally returns around dinnertime, when he's probably already been back at the apartment for a while, because Nastya's propping him upright in a chair and the Toy Soldier is serving everyone pasta.

"Did you know," Jonny says, "the drugs they give you for surgery are wild."

Tim makes a noise of agreeable acknowledgment. "You talked a lot," he says. "You said a lot of weird stuff."

"Like what?" Jonny asks, but Tim just shakes his head, smiling like a smug asshole, and won't say anything to elaborate no matter how much Jonny prods him for more. Jonny is ninety percent sure that if he said anything it was incoherent nonsense, and Tim is just winding him up by being cryptic about it, but it's still infuriating that Tim knows something about him that Jonny himself doesn't know.

"You feeling okay?" Nastya asks, when Jonny's taken his painkillers and anti-nausea meds and very carefully lowered himself into bed. She actually fusses with the covers for a moment, like she's going to tuck him in, which is not a thing she's ever done before.

"Yeah," Jonny says. "Kind of sore, and like I lost most of a day, but I'm really good." The painkiller is definitely kicking in, because the ambient throbbing across his chest is receding and he's feeling a bit floaty again. "Holy shit, Nastya, I don't have tits."

"More for me," Nastya says dryly, which makes Jonny laugh, which is definitely a mistake. When he's done wincing through that, she tucks the covers more firmly around him and says, "That's good, then. Sleep well."

…

Healing from even relatively noninvasive surgery is exhausting. Jonny spends a lot of time sleeping and watching the best Doctor Who episodes from the Toy Soldier's mid-quality torrent collection. It has work -- or technically Jonny thinks Samuel Nutcracker has work -- and it was easier for Nastya to ask a week off than for Tim to do the same, so while Samuel is ushering and Tim's at the café, Nastya hangs out with Jonny on the couch, and makes sure that the octokittens don't accidentally climb on Jonny's torso, and keeps track of when he needs to take his meds.

She refuses to touch his drains, though, so when Tim gets home, he and Jonny squeeze into the bathroom so Tim can estimate fluid levels for a little chart the hospital gave them, then help Jonny dump them out in the toilet. Jonny feels neutral-okay about most of what his body's doing, the exhaustion and the pain that slowly rises and then ebbs again when Nastya allows him to take a painkiller and the way he's having to use all his core muscles because he can't really lift his arms right now; all of that's fine, it's in the service of recovering from something that he wanted very badly. He loves the drains, though. It's cool to see little clumps of blood and globules of fat that look like they belong in chicken broth, just floating there in the toilet bowl, and know that those are bits of his insides.

When he explains this over dinner, Nastya says, "Oh gross, Jonny, I'm going to leave early."

"That isn't as bad as some of the stuff Carmilla would say," Jonny protests. "You've gotten weak in your old age."

"There's a reason I moved out," Nastya says, and then she seems to hear her own words, because she adds, very quickly, "And there's a reason I won't get dinner alone with Brian or Raphaella either, which is that all of you are disgusting."

"Very weak in your old age," Jonny insists, but Nastya still looks a bit uncomfortable, and Jonny figures he can use her guilt, so he corners her after dinner and says, "Hey, can you find out where Tim put my cigarettes?"

"No," Nastya says.

"Nastyaaaa," Jonny says, but it was a long shot, and anyway an hour later Nastya lets him take another lovely opioid, so it's not all bad.

…

"You're sure?" Tim asks. His face is very serious. "You're really feeling up for it?"

Because Tim never asks that kind of thing, because it's Tim asking, Jonny actually makes a serious assessment. He hurts, in the achy ambient way he's been hurting for the past few days, which means physical exhaustion and, every time he has to carefully navigate his body through something he can usually do without thinking about it, Jonny feels this weird jolt of pure fierce delight. There's no way he wants to lay around at home tonight in a lonely tug-of-war between tiredness and joy when he could be out with his friends, going to a concert he's been looking forward to for months.

"I'm really feeling up to it," Jonny says. "For real, Tim."

Tim scrutinizes him for a second longer, then nods decisively. "Okay," he says. He leans forward to kiss Jonny, light and lingering. After a moment he pulls away enough to add, "You look good," which is an objectively untrue thing to say to someone who's still forbidden from showering for another four days. Jonny thinks maybe Tim means something else.

"I'll look better when I'm a postapocalyptic cyberpunk cowboy," Jonny says.

The henley is a bit tricky to wriggle into, but Jonny manages it with the Toy Soldier's help. He's mostly dressed, except for the belts, by the time the others begin to arrive. "Oh, fuck, look at you," is Ashes' greeting. They immediately have opinions about which of the belts Jonny should wear, which are interrupted by Raphaella and Marius, and also Marius's equally strong but opposite belt opinions. By the time Brian and Ivy arrive, Jonny is wearing all five belts and refusing to remove any of them, because they have absolutely invented A Look and he's sticking with it.

They all pile into Aurora, Nastya at the wheel, and for a funny moment Jonny feels knocked backwards in time. All their IDs are real now, and the octokittens are safely in their apartment instead of crawling around the backseat terrorizing Marius, and Jonny is dressed like a cyberpunk cowboy instead of hiding inside an XL tee, so it's all of them, exactly as they always are, but better.

Ivy distributes their tickets. As Aurora passes under a streetlight, Jonny has enough light to read his, and says, in rising indignation, "Balcony?"

"Ivy and Raph swapped out for you and Tim," Nastya says. "You'll be up with me."

"But you hate the main floor!" Jonny says to Ivy, betrayed.

"I hate you in a mosh pit with an open chest wound more than I hate me in a mosh pit," Ivy says.

"It's not a mosh-- You traitor."

"It's not technically an open chest wound, either," Raphaella says. "Marius and TS promise that the main floor is a wonderful experience."

"It is a wonderful experience!" Jonny says. "It is, in fact, the experience I was planning on experiencing."

"There's no point in fighting," Tim points out. "We could all win in one hit right now."

Jonny is more than a little tempted to launch himself at Tim just to call his bluff on whether or not Tim would actually be willing to punch him in the chest or something, but he doesn't actually want to pull his stitches, and Nastya would probably turn the car right around and drop him off at home if he did something that reckless. "You're all traitors," he settles for.

All the same, when they arrive at the venue, it takes a lot of energy and concentration just to make sure no one bumps into him while Nastya leads them up the stairs to their section of the balcony. And the view's good from up here: the excitedly milling crowd below, the blue lights on the empty stage, the building buzz of anticipation as the performance time draws nearer.

Both Tim and Nastya stay with Jonny for the whole opening act, neither of them slipping away to get a drink, which maybe means they just think he needs to be constantly watched so he doesn’t do anything reckless, but which Jonny chooses to read as an act of solidarity. He's still the one getting through this the least sober, having taken some painkillers right before they left. He leans on Tim, and Tim rests a hand against his lower back, warm and nice.

Then My Chemical Romance comes on, and Jonny forgets to be even a little annoyed about being exiled to the balcony, forgets everything but the music.

Everyone scream-sings along to Na Na Na -- the audience shouts along with every song they know, but that opener is the one everyone knows -- and Jonny is swept up in the feeling of being part of something vast and joyful and caught in the singular aim of experiencing this together. He doesn't even notice that everyone around him is dancing, if with less enthusiastic abandon than the people on the main floor, until the set gets to Planetary (GO)! and suddenly the balcony is shaking with the force of everyone jumping up and down in time with the beat.

Jonny isn't fully jumping, his body won't let him, but he can feel the bass thump of the song inside his chest, under his ribs and along his healing incisions, like the music is sinking into his body, like all the lyrics are going to inscribe themselves along the lines of his scars. It'd be funny, Jonny thinks giddily, if the line that got itself into his skin was you ruin everything, but it's if my velocity starts to make you sweat then just don't let go, just pure adrenaline running through Jonny and making this moment permanent in his memory.

In one of the slower songs, Jonny turns to Tim, panting, to see that Tim's just as flushed and alive, his eyes sparkling, and if his sister wasn't right on his other side, Jonny would probably just grab Tim and make out with him for the rest of the length of the set. Instead he grins at Tim, and Tim grins back, all teeth, looking for the first time in days like he's not afraid that Jonny might be just a bit fragile.

Jonny reaches across the space between them and hooks his pinky around Tim's. Tim blinks, his look softening, and Jonny turns his attention back to the stage, still grinning, hyperaware of the point of contact.

…

By the end of the show, Jonny's nearly asleep on his feet. Nastya keeps a hand on his elbow as they descend to street level and spill out into the freezing night. Tim texts the others, and in a few minutes the whole gang is there, their general momentum carrying them down the sidewalk to the end of the block to Marius and TS's favorite all-night diner.

They crowd into a big round booth, Tim on one side of Jonny, Ashes on the other. He dozes on Ashes' shoulder while the rest of them debate how many orders of fries they need, then revives slightly when a cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake are shoved in front of him. Jonny eats, letting the chatter from around the table drift over him, feeling like he's going to have to take some more meds the second he gets home but like that's a problem for future Jonny, who will also be full and happy as well as a bit in pain.

"So?" Ashes says, gently kicking their foot against Jonny's ankle. "Rating of one to ten. How bad an idea was this?"

"Having major surgery and then going to a concert?" Jonny pretends to think about it. "I had a great time, I feel fine, and I'm now way cooler than any of you will ever be, so ten out of ten experience, and two out of ten on the bad idea scale."

"I'd give it at least a six on the bad idea scale," Tim says, but none of them even bother to dispute the fact that Jonny is now cooler than any of them will ever be, so Jonny wins this one.