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I'll swim and sail on savage seas
With never a fear of drowning
And gladly ride the waves of life
If you would marry me
[Camphor | My Neighbor Totoro]
Gentle footsteps sunk into yielding sand, silver grains on copper skin.
A sigh, a hum, lost in the sea breeze, a cool wave washing over his body in time with his breath.
Sungold hair shone pale in the moonlight as he knelt down beside the boy in the water.
"Fancy meeting you here." Even with a smile on his lips, his gem shone a deep blue, voice just enough to calm the ocean.
The boy remained still, but the same smile reflected on him just as the moon did on the waters.
"Oh, Love." Zero sighed, and settled on the sand, hugging his knees and digging bare toes into the surf. He looked out over the shimmering sea
"Oh, Love." X echoed. His hair flowed with the tide, coral gem glowing and fading with every wave that washed over him.
Zero smiled, watching as the boy's eyes opened to look up at the stars.
"I used to wonder..." He murmured, grey eyes shining in the night, "If we came from up there."
"Did you?" Zero's smile never left his lips, and he leaned back, his own seaglass eyes shadowed, "I did too."
"As beautiful as this all is...I don't think we belong here." X sighed, "And yet..."
"And yet, you want nothing more than to die here." Zero finished for him.
"Yes."
"Under a camphor, right?"
"Mhm." The boy closed his eyes again. "I think about what it'd feel like to have roots grow around me."
"Kinda morbid, isn't it?" Zero felt a twinge of concern in his heart.
"No. I'd be so happy." The coral flashed bright red as seawater mixed with tears. "We came from the earth, Zero. I want to return to it."
"Not...right now, right?" The older boy's chest tensed, and he rose back up to his knees.
"Mm-mm." X sniffed, and smiled, looking up at his lover. "Not right now. But it will be nice when it happens."
"Damn it, X. I hate when you talk about this death shit like it's just gonna...happen one day." Zero's own eyes welled up with tears, and he recoiled at the thought. "I've been there. I hated it."
"I know." The boy sighed peacefully, "But we'll be ready for this...we'll know when it's time."
"I still don't like it." Fingers dug harshly into the sand. "And I don't understand why you keep thinking about that place. It was a tomb, X." Fear, regret, hatred...all on the sharp edge of Zero's tongue.
"It was a tomb for gods." X whispered, almost reverently. "I wonder what it would have been like if we hadn't been put into stasis."
"And actually met our human counterparts?" Zero turned his head away, scowling. "I don't think that would go well. Humans aren't keen on clones." He laughed bitterly. "Even as we are now, they despise us for looking like them."
X giggled. "Strange, isn't it? Making something in your image out of vanity...then rejecting it because it isn't just like you. But in the ways that it is just like you..."
"You hate it even more. An imposter." Zero hissed.
X closed his eyes again, breathing in time with the tide once more. He was silent for a while.
"I would have wanted to see the children. I have so many memories of them playing in the sun."
Zero swallowed. For some reason, X seemed to have gotten memories from before they were created, whereas he had none. He never could decide if he preferred it to stay that way or not.
"They laughed so much. They had skin...just like yours." The boy smiled warmly. "You're such a tribute to that lifestyle."
"I wouldn't have called them hedonistic." Zero continued to scowl. "They built us to be harbingers, not...hippies."
"Or heralds. Though, in retrospect, it is...ridiculous to think the human race will ever come to a moral conclusion."
"No kidding." Zero voice was hoarse, eyes tired.
"I'd like to go back. I dream about it a lot, y'know." X whispered.
"Dr. Light's too old, you can't." The argument was quick to spring from Zero's lips. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to think of that place. There was blood spilt in those ruins, stains that could never be forgotten.
The boy grew silent.
And Zero took his place beside him, copper skin shivering in the cool waters.
"I want to go home." Both of X's gems glowed at the cosmic pull on his very soul. "I want to go home." He repeated, louder this time.
"I don't know where that is." Zero's weathered hand found purchase in X's delicate one. His own gems flickered under the strain of a cosmic weight.
"Home is far away." X gazed into the infinite, "Very far away. It's where no one else can be but us."
Zero blinked, turning to look at the boy.
"I'm not goin' into fuckin' space, kiddo."
X's face suddenly screwed up, and he laughed. "No, not up there! I think we'll know where the place is when we see it. It'll have a big camphor tree, just for me." He smiled brightly.
"I wish you wouldn't say that." Zero felt the tide tug against him. "I wish you'd just stay in Papa's house." At the childish word, he shuddered weakly.
"Mm-mm." X shook his head, his hand unusually warm in Zero's. "Daddy's human. I don't want to be buried with humans, because I don't belong with them."
He seemed pensive.
"I was never a part of Mama's or Sammy's life. That's his real family, and I shouldn't intrude. He knows I'll outlive most of the human race, and...I don't want to be lost in...their mortality."
Zero stayed silent.
"That's why we have to find our real home."
"We're going to leave them all, aren't we?" The words were dull, as was the pale blue glow of his gem.
"Mhm." Hushed, and the sea swept it away.
"Even Axl?"
"Mhm."
"But, he's like us, he..." Zero feebly tried to argue, knowing that any protest he made would be in vain.
"He was made to be a child. To grow up and learn like a child. We became children only because the humans hurt us enough...that we didn't know what else to do."
"I fucking hate it when you're right." Zero grit his teeth, tears in his eyes saltier than the sea's.
"It's okay." X murmured, almost to himself. He gave his lover's hand a squeeze. "We'll have each other. We've always had each other. It's just the way it has to be."
"Fuck you, X." Zero turned away, digging his nails into X's soft palm. "I don't want that. I don't want to leave. They need me." He swallowed thickly, sniffling, "They all need me."
The tears turned hot.
"Dr. Light said himself that we need others! You've seen how we get without each other, how bad that shit hurts, you see what it did to Armor...I don't want that!"
Zero wanted to push X away as the boy carefully made his way into his strong arms. How could he betray him like this? How could he just give everything up, because of some...cosmic destiny?
Destiny was something you fought, not accepted!
"We don't have to say goodbye forever." X purred, kissing at Zero's sturdy jaw. "We just...need to go far away."
Zero shifted uncomfortably, his gem growing hotter in frustration.
"Where's far away?" He huffed, not even the waves cooling him.
"Where the camphor is!" X laughed, "With lots of green, and pretty little streams to play in, and tadpoles to catch! Bamboo forests we can play hide and seek in!"
Zero's eyes grew wide.
"...But I thought..." He mumbled weakly, brows furrowed.
X smiled, pulling himself up to lay on top of Zero, "Just because I want to die there, doesn't mean I don't want to live there, too!"
[For The Dancing And The Dreaming | Erutan]
Burning copper skin yielded to the soothing surf, finally washing away the fire in his bones.
"I want to live there, and I want to love there, too." The boy's smile grew into a impish grin, silver eyes shining like the moon.
Zero, caught off guard by the sudden change in X's demeanor, laughed away his anxiety.
"You really had me worried." He sighed with relief, reaching up to play with his lover's full, boyish cheeks. "I don't care how existential you feel, don't start talking about dying when we've got another nine and a half centuries to go."
X giggled, dipping down to rub his nose against Zero's.
"I won't try to make you sad again, I promise."
Ruby red met ocean blue, the light shared between them a striking white violet.
X's breath was in his lungs, and the tide was in his heart, and he shook, shook at their mercy. The rush of love that coursed through him by their union was more than he could bear. No softer lips would he kiss, no gentler a touch against him.
"X..." Zero lay back his head, feeling languid kisses trail down his neck to his collarbone.
"X..." He whispered again, eyes closed, body sighing under the tender weight of his lover.
"I think..." X giggled to himself, "I think we have to go away because we're just too gay for the humans to understand. We're too powerful."
Zero chest shook with booming laughter, nose scrunching.
"That makes way more sense then nature-driven nihilism." Seaglass eyes, sugar bright in the salty water. "I figured you weren't laying on the beach naked for your health."
"And I figured you didn't come down to skinny-dip." X teased back, splashing his feet childishly.
"When we do go away," Zero began, still grinning as X resumed tenderly worshipping his lover's body, "We can do this every day, right?"
"Every day." X purred, nose to his navel. "And no one to 'accidentally' walk in on us."
"Oh, but I liked that part." Zero faked a whine. It soon was taken as his breath caught in his throat as the kisses trailed lower.
"Nine and a half centuries of this," X hummed to himself, dipping his head down between Zero's rugged thighs.
"I could absolutely get used to nine and a half goddamn centuries of this." Zero laughed heartily, propping himself up on his elbows, looking down at a smiling little X.
"It's not something to dread, dear." X nuzzled his nose affectionately against the plush heat, "It's something to look forward to."
Zero shivered at the touch of his lover's tongue, eyes rolling back with a husky sigh.
[For The Dancing and The Dreaming | HTTYD 2]
"Please don't swallow seawater, babe." He managed, grinning.
X giggled, making bubbles in the water.
"Remember when you said...we had to be married to do this?" Zero lifted his knees and sat up, running weary fingers through X's thick locks, brushing the hair from his eyes and tucking it behind his ears.
The boy smiled, but said nothing for a moment, relishing in how it took every last ounce of Zero's strength to keep his composure under the devoted worship.
"We still need to."
"Need to?"
"Get married."
"Right now?"
"No, before we have a baby, we should get married."
Zero's hair, though sopping wet, bushed up.
"Baby?!" He gasped, the soft tongue working into him, hot on cold seawater.
"Nine and a half centuries is a long time. We may get the notion..." X lapped at him like the tide.
"You are cruel, with talk of babies when you're doing this to me. Marriage, too." Zero huffed, fingers tangled in the boy's messy hair.
"Something to look forward to." X murmured, looking up with silver eyes glowing bright, naive as the day they met. Zero gave him a shaky smile, and he felt tears prick his eyes.
"Y-yeah, babe...we'll...we'll look forward to it...together..."
A muffled moan became the rush of the ocean breeze, happily lost and skimming over the whitecaps of a brewing storm.
Even nature knew these boys needed a better curfew, and as the tide came in, they scrambled to their feet, laughing wildly as the day met the night.
And love was made best with the stars shining above them, toes curling in the silver sands.
The camphor, the pretty little streams with tadpoles to catch, even the bamboo forests to play hide and seek in...they could all wait.
They could all wait.