Work Text:
It is a significant time later that Tygan leaves his makeshift operating theatre, pulling bloody gloves from his hands. No sooner has he noticed the door open than central is on his feet, turning on and hounding the man.
"Doctor," he growls, more than says.
"The surgery was successful," he replies, dropping the gloves into a nearby bin before slipping off the gored coat, and dropping it into a waiting laundry basket. "It will be a while before the anesthesia wears off. Once it does, I will make a proper assessment."
Bradford does not quite like the sound of that, but forces himself to settle, "you're leaving?"
"He's quite safe," the doctor seems a little too dismissive. "You may wait with him if you wish, Central, but he will not be exciting company."
Bradford does not care how exciting or not the company is; he had his Commander back, and with him has returned hope.
With no thanks or further acknowledgement for Tygan, Bradford storms into the makeshift hospital.
As soon as he crosses the threshold his pace slows, and he forces tension from himself with a breath. /Get your shit together, John/ he thinks to himself /what would the Commander think, seeing you like this/?
They are thoughts he has had many times over the years.
Only in the last few weeks has answering the question for sure become a tantalizing possibility once more.
Of being loved once more, of being touched once more, of relinquishing command and being ordered once more. So long, so long since anyone has held him, since anyone has seen beyond the trauma and the gruffness and the stubborn refusal to loose?
There is no chair beside the lab table hastily converted into a hospital bed, but Bradford does not care. He stands at his Commander's side, takes his hand, collapses to his knees. With both hands he clings, the warmth of impossible life now so apparent, the steady beeping of a heart monitor, the gentle breathing. Still Bradford's fingers shift, finding his Commander's pulse in his wrist, feeling it, counting it, clinging to it like a drowning man.
... Will his Commander even still love him, the man he has become? In all these years, in all these griefs, no longer the dutiful Bradford, but the burnt out and grim-tidingsed shell the invasion has made of him?
It is for that hesitation alone that he refuses to touch more than his hands, refuses even to kiss his wrists.
"I'm sorry it took so long to find you," Bradford still tells the man, drugs ensuring the words will not be heard, and yet him needing to anyway - in these quiet moments of privacy before they once again errupt, and overturn the world in hellfire and brimstorms. "But, we're here now. There's... There's a lot to explain, and a lot has changed, but I will not be taken from you again."
A pause.
"I will not let you be taken from me again."
Bradford's Commander does not hear him, but it is a promise all the same.