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“Gigi,” Cecilia brushed a thumb over their cheek. The skin, she presumed, would be soft. It was warm, and gave a little bit when she pressed down lightly. “What do you want to do today?”
“I’m thinking,” Gigi hummed, rolling over and draping their arm over Ceci. They always slept like that, claiming that otherwise Cecilia would freeze to death in the middle of the night, like ‘a poor Victorian orphan left out in the cold’. “Sleep.”
Cecilia complained, “You did that last night. You snore.”
“A little more sleep never hurt anybody.” Gigi frowned. “And you snore.”
“I physically can’t, Gigi.”
“Mentally you can.” Closing their eyes, Gigi nodded and nestled in closer to Cecilia’s shoulder. Dimly, Cecilia’s sensors noted rising core body temperature as she leached heat from them. It was the only way she was ever a temperature above almost fully melted ice cream. “You’re beaming it into my brain. I get bad dreams because of you.”
“Do bad dreams make you snore?” Cecilia raised an eyebrow. “You’re like a- a-”
“Beep! Beep!” Gigi imitated an alarm, fang peeking out from behind their smile, “comeback window has closed, please try again next time.”
“You’re like if a chainsaw was asthmatic and also a freaking child.” There was a bit of blue behind Gigi’s ear, Cecilia noticed, like they’d smeared paint on herself at some point. “Wait, have you been having bad dreams?”
“I told you Cecilia,” Gigi’s eyes were droopy, sleep taming their amusement, “comeback window closed.”
“You are dodging the question.”
“I’m dodging nothing, I should be dodging your pointy ass shoulders, I think I have a dent in my neck-”
“Then move?!” Ceci (lightly, with affection, but she wouldn’t admit that ever) shoved Gigi off of her, sitting up with her back against the headboard. The internal parts of her clicked and adjusted as her shoulders bent forward slightly. Her worry plied the soft of her mouth into a thin line. “You don’t take anything seriously.”
“I take many things seriously.” Gigi flopped onto their back, but not before tugging the pillow they had been sharing entirely to their side so they could hog it all. “The government, taxes, the laundry-”
“You are bringing lies into our bed.” Ceci rolled her wrists, inspecting the gaps in between the plating for any lint. “And paint, bringing lies and paint into our bed, have you no shame?”
When Gigi hadn’t given a retort within three seconds, a record, Cecilia focused back on them. They were staring at the ceiling, pale, breathing fast and shallow.
“Is it non-toxic paint?” Cecilia wasn’t sure if she was asking a real question or just trying to lighten the air, trying to knock Gigi out of this state that was making every processor in her body whir in alarm. “Gigi, did you eat it?”
“I’m going to go do the laundry.” They tried for a smile as they stood up, fingers knotting together. The calluses on their knuckles, from fighting and the wear of their gauntlets, were purple like they were fresh. Like bruises blooming beneath their skin. “See? I take things seriously. Laundry, laundry, laundry, going to do that nnnnnow.”
Cecilia watched them bolt, tail whipping out behind them like a little wave. Unease was a sparking current at the base of her spine. The heat drained out of her, till her side of the bed was cold again. Like it usually was, when it was just her.
-
-
With a jolt, Cecilia started. In a very literal sense; notifications popped up about a seventy-three percent charge from winding, or, a couple hours of non-strenuous movement. Her systems ran their safety checks before they finally let gears and motors start working, and she was able to sit up from where she had been laying down on the couch.
“How long have you been there?” Gigi’s smile was timid. It did not suit them at all. “You good?”
“I’m alright,” Ceci smoothed her hair, unruffled her skirt. A notification complained about a locked joint somewhere, which was made obvious when she could no longer bend her elbow all the way. “Never mind.”
“Do you need- do you want help?” Gigi knelt in front of the couch, tail sliding over their knees and rasping over the carpet. “I can help. I want to.”
Cecilia couldn’t help her smile, reaching out with her working arm to cup Gigi’s cheek. They leaned into it with a purr-like hum. “How noble.”
“I know right?” Gigi grinned. “You’re soooo lucky.”
“Did you even do the laundry?”
Gigi made an odd sort of noise, taking Cecilia’s arm and fully extending it. “I did in fact.”
“This is incredible,” Cecilia closed one eye, making a note of the date internally. “This has never happened before, how responsible of you-”
“I only did mine.” Gigi laughed at Ceci’s groan. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, put me back on the pedestal-”
They pressed in with their thumbs on the inside of Cecilia’s forearm till they could remove the plating. They unplugged the fibers from their sockets, unraveling them from around the bone-like structure that worked as Ceci’s skeleton. Gigi moved with careful precision, memory guiding her fingers to do the same for the bicep plating before finally undoing all the muscles that connected into the elbow joint. They took extra care with the silver wires, the ones that transmitted data from the sensors within the covers themselves.
“It looks like spaghetti,” Gigi commented. “Some sauce and meatballs,” she made an Italian gesture with her hand that made Cecilia roll her eyes, “I’d eat that.”
“So that’s my arm,” Cecilia said conversationally. “Please don’t eat my arm.”
“Whatever the lady says.” Finding the issue, Gigi unlocked the joint that let Ceci’s arm bend and untucked the wiring from between the pinch point. For a moment, they pretended their own finger had gotten caught. “Arrrgh, ahhh, my finger, ahhh-”
Cecilia threatened lightheartedly, “I’ll make it happen for real,” while Gigi put everything back into place.
“It’s like you hate me,” Gigi kissed the inside of Ceci’s wrist when they clicked the final panel closed. “My heart is broken, it’s in literal pieces right now-”
“I am in love with a clown,” Cecilia told the ceiling.
“Honk honk.” Something wet and orange dripped out of Gigi’s nose while they grinned. Cecilia reached out to wipe it clean with her thumb. They flinched and pulled away, hand coming up to cover their face.
“Your nose is… bleeding?” Cecilia looked closer, tried to peel their fingers away before they took a step back. “Gigi, what’s going on?”
“It’s fine! I’m fine!” They let out a nervous laugh. “My nose is doing nose things. It ‘nose’ what it’s doing, and I am going to go to the bathroom.”
But Cecilia followed them as they bolted. She stopped them from closing the door on her and they didn’t complain when she closed it behind her as Gigi sat down on the toilet lid. Their hand was still firmly pressed to their face, but the liquid didn’t stop, it was smeared over their chin.
“You need to tell me what’s happening.” There was no heart to beat fast, no breath to come quick. But Ceci felt her worry all the same. “Gigi please.”
“Have you ever said please to me before?”
“Gigi!” Cecilia buried her face in her hands. Her hip pressed against the sink counter, she thought she could feel her shoulder against the other wall. She was in a too small space and it was suffocating. “Are you dying?”
“No!” Gigi had pinched their nose shut, their voice coming out nasally and congested. “I mean, not really.”
“Not really?” A glitch in a servo, maybe, a delay in her sensory systems to explain how she didn’t know when she’d fallen to her knees. “You can’t- why- why didn’t you tell me? Warn me? Did you know?” Cecilia struggled, the emotion replicator center of her processing unit trying very hard to work with conflicting input. “Why don’t you ever take things seriously?”
“I do take things seriously!” Guilt was noxious, cloying, a thick film that made Gigi’s voice throaty and unstable as they reached out to Cecilia. Both hands were smeared in the orange substance they were leaking, and by this point Cecilia’s sensors identified it as paint. “I take you, us, we seriously.
“But not grammar.” Cecilia couldn’t help it. Everything was going wrong so fast. There were cracks, now, spider webbing across Gigi’s face. They leaked orange, and now that she noticed, there were fractures in their arms, wrists, neck.
Gigi said, “I am ignoring your haterisms in favor of this very emotionally charged moment.” They smiled when Cecilia snorted, an unwilling noise as distress buried itself in her. Distorted her face to an expression that made Gigi’s heart ache even as it split apart. “Now, put me in the bathtub.”
It was more of an aborted roll, and Cecilia didn’t seem to be able to stop herself from touching Gigi. There was always a hand on their shoulder, chin, stomach, knee. She cataloged the bumps and bruises they earned from reckless play and from their hunts, the lines that formed when they smiled.
In the confines of their bathtub, Gigi melted. The cracks widened, paint smeared itself on the walls of the tub. It was no longer just orange, more sunset hues and twilight. Cecilia scrambled for the stopper before the paint could reach the drain.
“Thanks.” Breathing seemed to become harder and harder for Gigi. “I’d rather not explore our plumbing.”
“Don’t act like you wouldn’t enjoy it.” Cecilia was a puppet to routine, the familiar banter that they would engage in now haunted by her looming terror.
“My love hates me-”
“I don’t.” Her hands couldn’t hold onto them anymore. It was dipping her hands into a bucket of sun warmed paint, except instead of a bucket it was Gigi’s guts and viscera. “I don’t, I love you, you know this-”
“You didn’t let me finish the joke,” Gigi laughed wetly. Their hair was matted with oranges turning blues turning the precise shade of green that was in Cecilia’s hair. Red bloomed in their chest as they stared at Ceci with a loving gaze. “I know you love me.”
“So say it back,” Cecilia whispered. They lost all definition in front of her, face sinking beneath a mess of red and orange paint. “Say it back.”
She was trapped in a feedback loop, her systems told her. She called for Gigi as her hand quested through the solid foot of paint that swirled around their bathtub, searching for any remnants of Gigi and finding only the smooth bottom of the tub. She called for Gigi to say it back. She waited for Gigi to say it back.
“I’ll do the laundry,” she whispered to the swirls of paint. “I’ll wash the dishes.” I love you. “Wait, no, you can-, no I’ll do that, never mind.” I love you. “I like it when you snore, I’m a liar when I say I don’t, can you come back to me now?” Say it back.
All around her arm, the paint began swirling green. Mint and bright rust, it coated Cecilia’s forearm and made alarms ring at the unavoidable damage it was causing to the interior linkages that made her fingers and wrists work. She could already feel them stiffening, losing cohesion as she tried to make them flex and search, tried to trace the already searched bottom of the tub.
Like a creeping film, tendrils like the suggestion of fingers wound up Ceci’s bicep. They slipped under the shoulder of her dress, tickled up her neck, and pooled on her cheek with the weight of a palm.
“Whatever the lady says,” Gigi murmured, rising slowly out of the mire they’d been in. “And you’d better do the laundry.”
“I hate you,” Cecilia whispered, and meant none of it, and Gigi knew this when she kissed them.
-
-
“So sometimes, you turn into paint?”
They were curled up on the couch together, the both of them in clean clothes.
Gigi shrugged. “Rebirth thing. No biggie.”
“I think,” Cecilia said slowly, “your version of ‘no biggie’ is vastly different from mine.”
“Little biggie.” Gigi squinted then made a wavy gesture with their hand. “Maybe just a biggie.”
“You look tired.” And it was true. Cecilia could see the pronounced bags under their eyes, the lack of flush in their cheeks. Their hair was dull too. “You should sleep.”
“Ah, so now you ack-we-esce to my whims.” Gigi settled further into the couch and Cecilia’s shoulder, and that’s when she knew they were not going to be moving for the next couple of hours. “Can’t wait to hear me snore again?”
“Pass out,” Cecilia said with no bite. Gigi’s chuckle was warm air against her neck. She held on very tightly to them when they started to go limp from sleep, and they didn’t complain.
“I take us seriously.” Gigi said this when Ceci was sure they’d fallen asleep. “You know that, right?”
Cecilia nuzzled into their hair, where it was soft and sweet smelling. She was sure her sensors weren’t doing it justice, but at the very least she could memorize their touch down to the smallest degree.
“I do.” She said. “Thank you.”
“Have you ever said ‘thank you’ to me before?” Gigi asked sleepily.
They didn’t wait for an answer before conking out. Ceci could feel their heart beat slow, their breath come out evenly, and they memorized this too. All the little things, all the little and big loves, ingrained themselves into her circuits. She was sparks and adoration, bolts and affection. This, she would never tell Gigi.
This, Gigi already knew.