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Everything still feels a little unreal.
The world is quiet. For once. It’s nice, peaceful. For the time being, Zenyatta can set aside his worries. It’s late at night and everything is fine. Their shared bed is comfortable, warm, succeeding most deliciously at combating the errant chill that seems to follow him most days, and to his left slumbers his favourite person in the whole world. It’s always a treat to witness Ramattra sleeping. He carries so much on his shoulders –some self-imposed, some given to him by force– that it’s nice to see him completely relaxed every once in a while.
It’s easier to focus on him, to listen to his breathing and light snores, to feel the dip in the bed from his weight and the warmth of his skin and circuits alike. It brings him peace. It almost makes him forget his own troubles– almost.
Zenyatta can set aside the majority of his various concerns for the night. After all, not much can be done from his spot in bed at three in the morning. But, that doesn’t mean his thoughts are quiet.
In fact, they’re churning.
His conversation with Ramattra from earlier still replays in his head on loop. Emotion swirls with it: fear, anticipation, disbelief, relief, anger –and, shamefully, a little bit of dread, loathe as he is to admit that, even to himself.
Ramattra wants to build a future with him. Not just for their people as a whole, not just for a better world in general for everyone– that’s already the plan. That’s always been the plan. But now he knows that he has other, more intimate plans as well. That both of them do: a life together, comfortable and calm, full of love and laughter and children of their own, to hold and to cherish and to raise as a unit.
It tugs at his heart in a way that feels so strong, so incredibly intense, that he almost could mistake it for anger, so much familiar and easier to understand. Anger is simple. This is not. It still hasn’t sunk in that this errant thought of his, his off hand ‘wouldn’t that be nice’ ideas actually could have some basis in reality. Ramattra, his wonderful, perfect Ramattra, wants this too. He’s thought about it a lot. Probably (definitely) more than Zenyatta himself, even, if their hurried, passionate confessions from earlier had told him anything.
The thoughts keep churning like this, on and on. As the minutes pass, he finds himself so lost in them that he doesn’t even notice the snores to his left quieting, slowing, stopping altogether.
“Starlight?” comes the groggy, but still surprisingly loud question as Ramattra rolls over. Augments… His volume never ceases to amaze, but it doesn’t bother him.
“Ah,” Zenyatta says plainly. He blinks once, twice –he feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. It’s a silly notion.
“Are you alright?” Ramattra asks, his brows knitting with concern. In a short moment, he’s propped up on his side, one arm under his pillow and head, the other moving to gently caress Zenyatta’s cheek.
He leans into it, lets his eyes fall shut. For a moment, he considers lying. It comes naturally to him. But in this… there is no need. Vulnerability comes easily when it is given to Ramattra. And, it is nice to be truly seen. “No,” he says finally. “I… have been unable to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about earlier.” For a moment, Ramattra’s face nearly falls, and Zenyatta scrambles to add, “Nothing so terrible! I promise. I’m… not going back on what I said. Not at all. Never. I’m just thinking about it.”
A second to process, then Ramattra gives him a small smile, just barely visible in the dark of the room, only illuminated through a half-shuttered window. “Lend me your thoughts, then. I’ll share them with you. What’s troubling you about it?”
“It’s just…” Zenyatta pauses, sighs, looks back up at his lover. For all his time spent ruminating, somehow it’s still hard to put into words properly. “It doesn’t quite feel real. I almost can’t believe that this dream is shared.”
“Of what?” Ramattra says, taking to rubbing Zenyatta’s cheek. “Of… having kids someday?”
Wordlessly, Zenyatta nods against his pillow.
“Admittedly, it almost doesn’t feel real to me either. I was honestly expecting you to disagree with me, or maybe even say it wouldn’t be feasible,” Ramattra murmurs.
Zenyatta softens. “You know I wouldn’t say that.”
“I know that now.” A sigh. “I just– You know how I worry.”
“I do. And that one, at least, was unfounded.”
Another smile from him, a bigger smile, and Zenyatta can’t resist the urge to shuffle closer under their blankets, wiggling and shoving into his personal space until he’s squished right up against Ramattra’s chest. Quietly, he presses his lips to the remaining skin of his chest, thankful that he often sleeps shirtless. A treat is what it is. He’s so warm. Zenyatta’s arm snakes around Ramattra’s middle, and the other’s much larger arm does the same in return.
There in the comfort of the embrace, Zenyatta resumes his little speech, murmuring into soft flesh, “Of course I want a future with you. I– just can’t believe it could be real some day. I was hoping that one day, it might come without any input, or that things would naturally fall into place. A ‘what if’ that had the possibility of becoming real. Just something I thought of idly at night when I couldn’t sleep.” A pause, then he laughs quietly to himself. “Sort of like tonight. But now, knowing that you want this too, I–” he stops, choking up for a second.
Ramattra hums but doesn’t interrupt, instead pressing a kiss of his own onto the crown of Zenyatta’s head. He waits patiently while Zenyatta finds his words.
“Now I will fight for it,” Zenyatta says, a flash of righteous anger rushing through his veins before he can stop it. “I don’t care what happens, what I must do, how long it takes, who I have to fight with my bare hands, I will see this through. I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted anything as badly as I want the mental image I saw in my head when you told me about your plans. It came to me so suddenly, and so clearly, and I want it. For me and for you, and for our future children, a future that can facilitate all that we aspire for.” He stops, takes a shaky breath, recalls all he’s learned on calming quickly. Getting riled up this late at night certainly wouldn’t help the insomnia. Then, as if only just realising what he’d said, he hurries to add, “Children. Or– Or child. I… However many you’d like. I imagined at least two, but–”
This time, Ramattra does cut off his increasingly anxious rambling. “Shh, Starlight, my Zenyatta. Of course I want children. Plural. With you.” His tone is as endearing as it is awkward, and it is the single most beautiful thing Zenyatta has heard in his entire life.
Finally, Zenyatta smiles, squeezing his lover as tightly as he can in their comfortable position, and looks up. They lock eyes, and all at once, all fears and doubts about the future melt away, just for now. Gazing into Ramattra’s eyes, locked in their own personal bubble– Zenyatta feels so safe and comforted. Ramattra must feel it too, if the mildly watery eyes tell him anything.
It takes a bit of shifting, reluctant as Zenyatta is to relinquish his hold on the larger man, but it’s worth it to kiss away the single, happy tear that threatens to wet Ramattra’s pillow case. Then, from his cheek to his nose and down to his mouth. He kisses him slowly and deeply, leaning up into him as much as he can, putting as much feeling and love and care into it as he can. When he finally pulls away, after a couple of sweet, chaste pecks from Ramattra, he’s not sure how much time has passed, but he does know that fatigue is blessedly settling in. Maybe he’ll even get some sleep tonight before it’s up early again for another busy day.
His eyes shut and for a while, they’re both still. Just as he’s about to drift off, a thought strikes him, lazy but curious. Softly, he airs it into the room, unsure if Ramattra’s even still awake. “Do you think we’ll make good parents?”
Ramattra is still awake, it seems, because he chuckles against his head and presses yet another kiss to his forehead. “No,” he says. “We will make the best parents.”