Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
Vincent stirs, the bedsheets rustling around his legs. They cover the scars on his calves. He remembers the first night he slept with these legs and had stared at his feet, which now reached end of the bed, feeling something was just off. Jerome's-Eugene's. Oh, who is he kidding? At night Vincent can shed Jerome Morrow and return him to his rightful owner.-tanner, thicker legs lie beside his own. The same size right down to a millimeter.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
The bright red numbers on the digital clock beside the bed read 2:30. Vincent's mind is hazy and sleep-filled. Jerome's chest is warm beneath his head. His breaths are even, but they're heavy enough to constitute snores. If Vincent squints he can make out slits of light purple dusk between the blinds.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump
It's like a drum. A metronome. A ticking clock. But it isn't any of those things. It's Jerome. Not the golden boy Jerome Morrow the space station knows, but a crippled man whose heart did not become crippled with the rest of him.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
Vincent can feel his own heartbeat in his ears; a broken, irregular thing without the recording the exercise machines know so well to replace it.
You gave me your heart, Eugene, he thinks, a strange two in the morning smile making its way onto his features, and drifts back to sleep.