Original: "Metaphors." Slash.
Summary: Malachy doesn't want the keys to anyone.
Art collaboration with the most magnificent kyuukumber, who merits every kind of praise and adoration. If nothing else have a look-see at that because it's gut-wrenchingly lovely.
Warnings for language and length and Gaiman-ishness.
“Some of us,” Malachy’s maker had said, “are BMW’s. And some are Exploding Pinto’s.”
The metaphor was wasted on Malachy, who had never seen either. Malachy doubted even his maker had. Everyone he knew looked more or less the same, and transport came in only one model: ugly and durable. Whatever he’d meant, Malachy’s maker left not long afterwards, and the mystery stood.
Malachy’s job was to take care of the wear and tear that machinery suffered over the years. He liked it, not that it mattered if he did. He worked in privacy, tinkering with people’s elbows and hip-joints and vertebræ while their minds stood by, and he didn’t have to talk to anyone about whether he thought today was cooler, or the air cleaner, or if the humans should be allowed back, seeing as it was their bloody mess and they didn’t deserve to make it twice. He liked the quiet, but he was getting on in years, and getting worried. A quarter century was a long time to go without a tune-up, and every once in a while he imagined he could feel something scraping or shaking wrongly in his chest.
That was when Malachy found a key in the grass outside his shop.
_______
For several days he considered having a fatal accident with his handsaw. Eternal responsibility for a stranger’s heartbox was nothing he wanted anything to do with, but their key had already imprinted. If someone came looking for it, he couldn’t just let them die. For three months Malachy’s fans ran hot on restless nights. He hid the key in a safe with his own.
And then one Monday he abruptly forgot about it: on his way out the shop, Malachy found himself on the underside of someone’s bike and decided he didn’t like pain after all.
Luckily the bike stood no chance of breaking the surface. Once an entire garage had come down on his neighbour Kinney, and not a scratch on his finish. The same humans who gave them a nuclear core had made sure of that. But he still sat there whining like a broken radiator as the bike’s owner chucked it off to the side and came running back to him.
“Hell! Are you alright? Do you need a mechanic? I’m so sorry!”
“I’m a mechanic,” he said simply, but as he shambled to his door, the courier trotted persistently behind, making anxious tutting sounds. He stayed even after Malachy collapsed on the workbench and unceremoniously unscrewed the casing to his knee.
“Anything need replacing?” the courier fussed. “Oh, ick. I can repay you for it. Well…eventually I can. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just a bit out of joint,” Malachy sighed. “You can hand me that Mortorq drive.” When the courier simply looked blank, he added, “Red handle.” The gears made a sharp magnetic buzzing as they snapped back into place, and when the courier flinched away, Malachy remembered people were usually in sleep mode for this kind of thing. It wasn’t pretty. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It does that.”
“Sorry why?” The courier grinned crookedly. “You’ve got the bee’s knees.”
Malachy ground out a surprised laugh. It sounded rusty. In fact, he should probably check his trachea. Some time when there weren’t any witnesses to frighten off. “Everything alright with you and your bike, then?” Malachy ran a practised, assessing eye over the courier, but he looked well enough. Very well indeed. Something flickered over the courier’s face, but Malachy wasn’t an expert in reading faces above the subcutaneous level. And the smile notched further sideways, which was a good distraction.
“Nah. That bike’ll outlast me,” and suddenly there was a hand shaking his. “Eann 405. Sorry I ran you over…?”
“Ehm, 26c. Malachy.”
“Fine to met you, 26c Malachy. You’re sure nothing’s wrong?” When Malachy twitched his head to the negative, eyes firmly on the task of sealing his knee back together, Eann-the-courier sighed and shuffled slowly backwards. “Well, if you’re sure I’ve got a delivery to do, you know, but I’ll check back tomorrow, yeah?”
Before Malachy could assure him there was absolutely no reason for that, the garage door had slammed shut behind Eann’s yellow, faintly glowing hair.
____
Malachy didn’t talk much. Hip joinings and thumbscrews didn’t chat with you. Eann didn’t seem to notice; he turned up the next day, gave Malachy’s knee a provoking tap with a booted toe, and when he didn’t flinch, started jauntily off down the street, chattering like he expected Malachy to follow.
Malachy didn’t know what else to do, so he did. When they’d turned a dusty loop around the Was The Duckpond, Eann asked when Malachy took his breaks. And turned up again the next day and the next.
“Blogosphere says one of us got snatched over in Previously Poland,” Eann said, one day weeks later.
“One heart’d power a small spaceship. It’s not that far-fetched.”
“Sensationalism,” Eann reckoned. “We can’t open our own chests. Only one person can use the key. It’s just a scare tactic so we’ll resist the humans coming back.”
“I liked my maker,” Malachy reflected, quietly. “He was good.”
“Exactly!” Eann skipped a few steps ahead to survey the old bank. They’d made it as far as the Former Firth. “He did well for you. How old are you?”
Malachy crouched among the old stones. “Nearly twenty-six.”
Eann blinked down at him. “Really? He must’ve been good. And no keys exchanged?”
“Well.” Malachy suddenly discovered just how fascinating geology could be. “Sort of. I suppose.”
“Oh. Good on you, then.” Malachy had always found the business with life partners, and chest keys, and putting a nuclear core where a heart belonged, and the whole human business of metaphor ridiculous. And he knew better than anything else that there wasn’t anything to squeeze or stutter in his chest, so it must have been something he’d read that had caused a glitch. “I’ve got a delivery to do now, actually, so best be back. I’m saving up my money! Well, I was anyway. Well. I. Anway. Come on, then.”
“You always work too hard,” Malachy ventured, smiling nervously beside him. He always felt every lumbering inch of his design next to Eann. He had steady hands, but his feet weren’t meant to go far. He didn’t have Eann’s light quickness and fast-burning grace.
“Aw, just takes a bit of elbow grease!” Eann winked. “You have extra I could use back at the shop?”
“Yeah.” In the searing, ozoneless summer sunlight, Eann’s copper hair looked like gold. “For you, sure.”
_____
The second time the bike crashed, Malachy was well to the side of it, halfway out his door and halfway into a smile. Eann didn’t manage to stay on, this time, and the bike spun to a riderless stop near the Tinker’s.
“Eann!” Malachy shouted, and he didn’t think he’d ever shouted before, because the gears turned strangely in his throat. “Shit- Eann!”
Eann lay blinking in the dusty path, untouched and untouchable as ever, although Malachy heard a joint click loosely in his neck as he turned his head to meet Malachy’s eyes. “Oh hey,” he grated. “Sorry.”
“What the-how’d you-are you hurt? Let me have a look.”
Eann smiled and pushed away Malachy’s hands. “Doesn’t matter. I’m a quarter century old. No tune-up since. My core is knackered.” He patted clumsily at his chest. “Fail-safe should kick in.”
“Eann!” Malachy would have very much liked to have shaken Eann’s shoulders, if he hadn’t been worried he would literally shake him to pieces. “How long’s it been broken? Why didn’t you give someone your key?”
“Sorry. Wanted to give it to you,” Eann grinned crookedly. “But I don’t have one. I couldn’t afford another. I’m really sorry.”
“I’d’ve helped you,” Malachy snapped, scooping Eann up off the dirt path and kicking the door to the garage back open.
“I know. But you shouldn’t.” Eann didn’t resist being laid out on the workbench or the removal of his shirt, but he caught Malachy’s wrist before he could leave, hands cold with emergency coolant. “What d’y’think you’re doing?”
“I’m breaking in, you nonce. I have to re-purpose another key. You really believe I was going to let you meltdown on my front walk?”
“You’re brilliant, but you know that’s impossible.” Eann closed his eyes, and it wasn’t clear whether he meant breaking a cyborg chest or Malachy’s apathy. The people who designed them were too careful to allow just anyone to access a valuable heart, and the man who designed Malachy was too kind to give him anything but the best. “You talk a lot when you’re angry. I’d keep it in mind, but-” He grimaced sharply, and felt Malachy rush back to his side, took kit jangling. “Sorry,” he giggled. “Brain freeze. I-”
And then something clicked and all the glowing coggery of Eann’s insides sat open, ticking and turning like dancers. “Eann,” Malachy breathed.
“Christ! Ow! What’d you do, how’d you-” Eann looked up finally and screwed up his face. “Where’d you get that? I lost it ages ago!”
“Found it,” Malachy whispered reverently, already moving to inspect his heart. “Want mine?”
“Wouldn’t want you to break,” Eann gasped, touching the place where his skin ended. “You see what happens. Christ.” Malachy had forgotten that people were usually on standby for this kind of thing, but it just seemed so impossible to imagine Eann at rest. “That is well sick.”
“Poets,” Malachy laughed. “Machinery’s not romantic. It’s just clockwork.”
“That so?” Eann smiled his way to sleep. “Guess I’ll have the time of my life.”
____
You're welcome to laud Ariana here, but she's also at bodies impossible if you'd like to make a habit of it. :)
(V brief Key explanation if you're confused.)
Art collaboration with the most magnificent kyuukumber, who merits every kind of praise and adoration. If nothing else have a look-see at that because it's gut-wrenchingly lovely.
Warnings for language and length and Gaiman-ishness.
“Some of us,” Malachy’s maker had said, “are BMW’s. And some are Exploding Pinto’s.”
The metaphor was wasted on Malachy, who had never seen either. Malachy doubted even his maker had. Everyone he knew looked more or less the same, and transport came in only one model: ugly and durable. Whatever he’d meant, Malachy’s maker left not long afterwards, and the mystery stood.
Malachy’s job was to take care of the wear and tear that machinery suffered over the years. He liked it, not that it mattered if he did. He worked in privacy, tinkering with people’s elbows and hip-joints and vertebræ while their minds stood by, and he didn’t have to talk to anyone about whether he thought today was cooler, or the air cleaner, or if the humans should be allowed back, seeing as it was their bloody mess and they didn’t deserve to make it twice. He liked the quiet, but he was getting on in years, and getting worried. A quarter century was a long time to go without a tune-up, and every once in a while he imagined he could feel something scraping or shaking wrongly in his chest.
That was when Malachy found a key in the grass outside his shop.
_______
For several days he considered having a fatal accident with his handsaw. Eternal responsibility for a stranger’s heartbox was nothing he wanted anything to do with, but their key had already imprinted. If someone came looking for it, he couldn’t just let them die. For three months Malachy’s fans ran hot on restless nights. He hid the key in a safe with his own.
And then one Monday he abruptly forgot about it: on his way out the shop, Malachy found himself on the underside of someone’s bike and decided he didn’t like pain after all.
Luckily the bike stood no chance of breaking the surface. Once an entire garage had come down on his neighbour Kinney, and not a scratch on his finish. The same humans who gave them a nuclear core had made sure of that. But he still sat there whining like a broken radiator as the bike’s owner chucked it off to the side and came running back to him.
“Hell! Are you alright? Do you need a mechanic? I’m so sorry!”
“I’m a mechanic,” he said simply, but as he shambled to his door, the courier trotted persistently behind, making anxious tutting sounds. He stayed even after Malachy collapsed on the workbench and unceremoniously unscrewed the casing to his knee.
“Anything need replacing?” the courier fussed. “Oh, ick. I can repay you for it. Well…eventually I can. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just a bit out of joint,” Malachy sighed. “You can hand me that Mortorq drive.” When the courier simply looked blank, he added, “Red handle.” The gears made a sharp magnetic buzzing as they snapped back into place, and when the courier flinched away, Malachy remembered people were usually in sleep mode for this kind of thing. It wasn’t pretty. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It does that.”
“Sorry why?” The courier grinned crookedly. “You’ve got the bee’s knees.”
Malachy ground out a surprised laugh. It sounded rusty. In fact, he should probably check his trachea. Some time when there weren’t any witnesses to frighten off. “Everything alright with you and your bike, then?” Malachy ran a practised, assessing eye over the courier, but he looked well enough. Very well indeed. Something flickered over the courier’s face, but Malachy wasn’t an expert in reading faces above the subcutaneous level. And the smile notched further sideways, which was a good distraction.
“Nah. That bike’ll outlast me,” and suddenly there was a hand shaking his. “Eann 405. Sorry I ran you over…?”
“Ehm, 26c. Malachy.”
“Fine to met you, 26c Malachy. You’re sure nothing’s wrong?” When Malachy twitched his head to the negative, eyes firmly on the task of sealing his knee back together, Eann-the-courier sighed and shuffled slowly backwards. “Well, if you’re sure I’ve got a delivery to do, you know, but I’ll check back tomorrow, yeah?”
Before Malachy could assure him there was absolutely no reason for that, the garage door had slammed shut behind Eann’s yellow, faintly glowing hair.
____
Malachy didn’t talk much. Hip joinings and thumbscrews didn’t chat with you. Eann didn’t seem to notice; he turned up the next day, gave Malachy’s knee a provoking tap with a booted toe, and when he didn’t flinch, started jauntily off down the street, chattering like he expected Malachy to follow.
Malachy didn’t know what else to do, so he did. When they’d turned a dusty loop around the Was The Duckpond, Eann asked when Malachy took his breaks. And turned up again the next day and the next.
“Blogosphere says one of us got snatched over in Previously Poland,” Eann said, one day weeks later.
“One heart’d power a small spaceship. It’s not that far-fetched.”
“Sensationalism,” Eann reckoned. “We can’t open our own chests. Only one person can use the key. It’s just a scare tactic so we’ll resist the humans coming back.”
“I liked my maker,” Malachy reflected, quietly. “He was good.”
“Exactly!” Eann skipped a few steps ahead to survey the old bank. They’d made it as far as the Former Firth. “He did well for you. How old are you?”
Malachy crouched among the old stones. “Nearly twenty-six.”
Eann blinked down at him. “Really? He must’ve been good. And no keys exchanged?”
“Well.” Malachy suddenly discovered just how fascinating geology could be. “Sort of. I suppose.”
“Oh. Good on you, then.” Malachy had always found the business with life partners, and chest keys, and putting a nuclear core where a heart belonged, and the whole human business of metaphor ridiculous. And he knew better than anything else that there wasn’t anything to squeeze or stutter in his chest, so it must have been something he’d read that had caused a glitch. “I’ve got a delivery to do now, actually, so best be back. I’m saving up my money! Well, I was anyway. Well. I. Anway. Come on, then.”
“You always work too hard,” Malachy ventured, smiling nervously beside him. He always felt every lumbering inch of his design next to Eann. He had steady hands, but his feet weren’t meant to go far. He didn’t have Eann’s light quickness and fast-burning grace.
“Aw, just takes a bit of elbow grease!” Eann winked. “You have extra I could use back at the shop?”
“Yeah.” In the searing, ozoneless summer sunlight, Eann’s copper hair looked like gold. “For you, sure.”
_____
The second time the bike crashed, Malachy was well to the side of it, halfway out his door and halfway into a smile. Eann didn’t manage to stay on, this time, and the bike spun to a riderless stop near the Tinker’s.
“Eann!” Malachy shouted, and he didn’t think he’d ever shouted before, because the gears turned strangely in his throat. “Shit- Eann!”
Eann lay blinking in the dusty path, untouched and untouchable as ever, although Malachy heard a joint click loosely in his neck as he turned his head to meet Malachy’s eyes. “Oh hey,” he grated. “Sorry.”
“What the-how’d you-are you hurt? Let me have a look.”
Eann smiled and pushed away Malachy’s hands. “Doesn’t matter. I’m a quarter century old. No tune-up since. My core is knackered.” He patted clumsily at his chest. “Fail-safe should kick in.”
“Eann!” Malachy would have very much liked to have shaken Eann’s shoulders, if he hadn’t been worried he would literally shake him to pieces. “How long’s it been broken? Why didn’t you give someone your key?”
“Sorry. Wanted to give it to you,” Eann grinned crookedly. “But I don’t have one. I couldn’t afford another. I’m really sorry.”
“I’d’ve helped you,” Malachy snapped, scooping Eann up off the dirt path and kicking the door to the garage back open.
“I know. But you shouldn’t.” Eann didn’t resist being laid out on the workbench or the removal of his shirt, but he caught Malachy’s wrist before he could leave, hands cold with emergency coolant. “What d’y’think you’re doing?”
“I’m breaking in, you nonce. I have to re-purpose another key. You really believe I was going to let you meltdown on my front walk?”
“You’re brilliant, but you know that’s impossible.” Eann closed his eyes, and it wasn’t clear whether he meant breaking a cyborg chest or Malachy’s apathy. The people who designed them were too careful to allow just anyone to access a valuable heart, and the man who designed Malachy was too kind to give him anything but the best. “You talk a lot when you’re angry. I’d keep it in mind, but-” He grimaced sharply, and felt Malachy rush back to his side, took kit jangling. “Sorry,” he giggled. “Brain freeze. I-”
And then something clicked and all the glowing coggery of Eann’s insides sat open, ticking and turning like dancers. “Eann,” Malachy breathed.
“Christ! Ow! What’d you do, how’d you-” Eann looked up finally and screwed up his face. “Where’d you get that? I lost it ages ago!”
“Found it,” Malachy whispered reverently, already moving to inspect his heart. “Want mine?”
“Wouldn’t want you to break,” Eann gasped, touching the place where his skin ended. “You see what happens. Christ.” Malachy had forgotten that people were usually on standby for this kind of thing, but it just seemed so impossible to imagine Eann at rest. “That is well sick.”
“Poets,” Malachy laughed. “Machinery’s not romantic. It’s just clockwork.”
“That so?” Eann smiled his way to sleep. “Guess I’ll have the time of my life.”
____
You're welcome to laud Ariana here, but she's also at bodies impossible if you'd like to make a habit of it. :)
(V brief Key explanation if you're confused.)