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There were nights when not even the dark could temper the sweltering desert air, heat closing in around them like the tattered blanket they’d long forgone. But heat didn't feel the same when it was touching down on artificial skin, and the fatigue seeping into Upsilon’s bones just felt like an old forgotten friend coming to welcome him home. Organic memories twisted warmth into something bothersome and smothering; something to be wriggled away from, something that sent you splaying out in all directions as if the heat could not catch the parts that were too far out of reach. But this illusory body had discovered an indefinable beauty in that feeling - discomfort was miraculous, and warmth was respite. To be bothered was to be ardently extant, and to be smothered was to be-
But that was just Upsilon’s inclination toward flowery prose. The point was, he enjoyed nights like this. The inescapable heat, the thin sheet of humidity separating him from the arid desert air, and the quiet acceptance of it all as he intertwined himself with the little bundle of warmth lying beside him. There was no desire between them to escape the heat, though there was also no desire to generate even more of it. There was just comfort in that discomfort, and a pair of smoldering red eyes boring into him like twin embers that would neither burn out nor catch flame.
Upsilon wasn't sure how long they spent laying nigh motionless before Alpha eventually stirred. He pulled his arms closer to his chest, still watching Upsilon with a somewhat tentative twitch of his brow and mysterious intention behind his eyes. Upsilon observed him curiously, his lips twitching upwards into a smirk. He looked nervous. Perhaps there was an inkling of desire burgeoning between them after all? Well, Upsilon wasn’t one to turn down a little fire-starting, even if he was perfectly content as they were.
But just as he was about to ask Alpha what could possibly be on his mind, Upsilon was given his answer.
“I’m having a nice time with you,” Alpha said quietly. His lips did not move, and no sound fell between them. The words nudged gently at the front of Upsilon’s mind, timid but inexorable as the heat pressing in all around them. An utterance between them, and them alone - it was certainly not the first time they had utilized their network for closed communication, but the first time such correspondence was not necessitated by a great physical distance between them.
Upsilon fought the urge to laugh, because Alpha did not always understand that affection could run deep enough to grip you by the chest and shake you for all you were worth. He only knew the kind of laughter that rode on the curtails of mockery, the sound of tittering children and haughty students still - and always - too fresh in his mind to forget. But Upsilon could not help the amused arch of his brow or the complacent smirk as he returned Alpha’s telepathic remark with one of his own.
“I’m right here, you know,” Upsilon teased lightly.
Alpha shrank like a violet, pursing his lips but still keeping them tightly shut. “I know.”
“Well, it doesn't have to be a secret, does it?” Upsilon said with a smile. “There’s not even a reason to whisper.”
“I know…” Alpha looked down at his hands, which he began fretting against each other, thumbing at his nailbed and picking at his fingertips. He could bite his nails down to the bone if you let him, so Upsilon placed a hand over them before they met with his anxious teeth.
“Then why this?” Upsilon asked gently.
Alpha sighed audibly, pulling his hands back and bringing them to his face anyway. Fingers shuttered him in, the slivers of his face that remained looking positively forlorn. “It’s embarrassing.”
Here, Upsilon was chagrined to let an amused snort escape him. It made Alpha winced outwardly, and Upsilon inwardly. But it was just such a silly thought, that sincerity between two persons - or rather, one - in their position might warrant a sense of shame… They currently wore nothing but skin, prone forms laid bare for even the moonlight peeking through the decaying wooden planks ineffectively boxing them in, and their consciousness shared a space in which there was often no lock and key to hide behind. They had already experienced every last inch of themselves, down to their most intimate parts, to the marrow of their false bones and to the fiber of their very being. They knew nothing but intimacy, nothing but themselves. What else was left to expose?
“Why?” Upsilon asked.
A small, close-lipped moan escaped Alpha’s throat. After a moment, he cautiously pulled his hands away from his face to give Upsilon a plaintive look. His fingers curled stiffly like the legs of a dead spider, and he positioned the defeated things in front of his mouth as if to stifle himself. But that was the one drawback to this method of communication; no matter how wispy and forgettable Alpha wanted the words to sound, they rang through Upsilon’s mind clear as a bell.
“Don’t you remember when things were harder to say out loud?” Alpha asked meekly.
Upsilon stopped. He considered that question, his smile melting into a thoughtful line as he found himself posed with a challenge of sorts. Because remembering, he suddenly realized, was a challenge in and of itself; to not merely dip into that shared space of consciousness, to call upon a perspective that didn't feel like his own and distantly identify it as a thing “he” once was, but to find it buried deep within himself. To really remember it. It was easy to catch glimpses of it at a distance, as all of the younger Segments often grew flustered over trivial matters, and it was easier still to brush these things off as the product of immaturity. But was this something that Upsilon could truly remember for himself? How it began, or how it ended? How it felt?
As for how it began, a vague image lent itself to him; it was not any particular time or place, but he could see himself getting gangly and gawky, his midriff and ankles beginning to peek out from under his shrinking clothes. With his mother’s health and subsequent ability to care for herself worsening by the day, she would often appear unkempt and sickly during gatherings with their tribe. The other children in their tribe did not have the gall to mock an elder to her face, so they would reserve their juvenile scorn for Zandik. They would jeer at the mats in her hair and the unpleasant odor that would reach them on the arid breeze, suggesting that he might be just as unclean. Dirty. Impure. Mottled. He could recall the sting of his cheeks as they burned with shame, always ushering his mother home as quickly as he could manage. And though a part of him always wanted to, there was not once he could bring himself to defend his own honor, let alone his mother’s. He always thought the effort would only make matters worse.
As for how it ended… That was far more difficult to pinpoint, and there was likely no amount of introspection that could rectify that. The madness had taken much from him, but even Eta wasn't immune to that sting of sheepishness when he was lucid enough to perceive his own sincerity. There were many things he left unsaid - unthought, unrecognized, unfelt. But the shame that crawled up and down his back like a line of termites could be experienced in the network even long after he himself grew numb to it, leaving nothing but a vague itch and an absence at his side where Stigma had once been standing.
As for how it felt… That, Upsilon feared he couldn't quite grasp. There was nothing but a stark line of cause and effect, a cold recognition that the heat of his cheeks often correlated to words he wanted to say, but did not speak. And looking back on it now, it all just seemed strange. He’d never been a boy who feared the perception of others, valuing fact and reason above all else. He did not stifle himself during his Akademiya lectures, nor could he hold his tongue well enough to avoid his fair share of wrist slaps from Mother Ebla during his days as a young boy. And yet he could remember growing rigid upon hearing the stifled laughs in the halls that usually followed aforementioned lectures, and wincing when he heard whispers of heresy on the elder tribesmen’s lips when they thought he wasn’t around to hear it. He could remember yearning to speak his mind, and for some reason, stopping just short of it.
It seemed like there was always something teeming below the surface that he just couldn’t expose. Something too raw, too tender to subject to such artless mockery and slander. Some kind of feeling that he held onto so tightly that his knuckles would blanch around nothing, and instead of letting it free, he would simply drive his teeth into his bottom lip until he drew iron. It was better that way, he remembered thinking.
But Upsilon could not remember how that truly felt.
Though Upsilon supposed that wasn't the answer Alpha was looking for. Perhaps he hadn't even meant for Upsilon to consider the question so earnestly, and perhaps it was the detachment he felt from the feeling that urged Upsilon to reply at all.
“I suppose I do," he said finally.
For a moment, even their minds were silent. If Alpha hadn’t realized the weight of his question before, he did now. He curled in on himself, gaze flickering down to his limp hands as his expression fell somber.
“It’s so easy for you,” Alpha said. His envy was like a sigh without breath. Upsilon shook his head gently.
“No,” he clarified. “It’s not that it gets any easier to say what you mean. It’s-” he paused as if his throat had gone dry, despite the fact that he was not speaking, “-because everything you say starts meaning less.”
That was it, wasn’t it? That feeling he couldn’t quite feel anymore. It represented rawness in its purest form, but Upsilon was overdone. A thick callus had formed over those exposed nerves, and there wasn't much reason to keep them covered. Pain didn’t feel quite the same, nor did betrayal, nor did poignance - just like the heat. These things were just old friends who would come every so often to welcome him home. There was comfort in that discomfort, and that was precisely why it was so easy to lay it all out on the line.
It was a good thing.
Alpha fell silent for a while before his expression darkened and fell from Upsilon’s eyes. “So all the things you say to me don’t really mean anything, then.”
It was not a question, but a tepid, accusatory statement. Vague in delivery, though it was immediately clear what sort of “things” he was referencing. It made Upsilon’s breath hitch, as if either of them needed breath in the first place.
It was a terrible thing.
To be raw was to be living. There was a great, inherent weakness in that state of being, but there was also a very particular kind of strength that could not be compared to a beast butchered beyond all comprehension. The fact that this rawness was what led Alpha to make such a selfish association and strike out at him like a wounded viper was proof of that - because at least he was striking. Upsilon was a duplicitous serpent that no longer struck as fast as he used to, and never with teeth. No, his venom evidently came softly, hollow words that tickled the flesh in whispers. You’re perfect, you’re amazing, you're gorgeous, you’re okay - you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay. Was it fair to say that these things were never meant to carry weight? Probably not, and if nothing else, it definitely was not the truth.
“That’s not what I meant,” Upsilon said quickly.
“Then what did you mean?” Alpha asked.
Upsilon rolled into his back, letting his eyes go out of focus towards the ceiling.
“I think…” Upsilon trailed off. Maybe there was meaning to that. Maybe there wasn't. He finally sighed audibly. “I think I miss being you sometimes.”
Maybe sincerity really was just a beast that could not regrow flesh, something that could only be whittled down chunk by chunk until the vultures had their fill and left nothing but an emaciated, festering carcass in its place. Maybe there was only so deep Upsilon’s sincerity could run, and maybe that wasn't fair to someone like the raw child he’d once been. But even if the channels were almost too shallow to carry water, Upsilon meant those words for everything they were worth - how little they were worth.
Never did he miss that sting of rawness more than he did in moments like this.
But even if Upsilon could not comprehend anything greater, the boy deserved the full extent of someone’s affection, didn't he? And not just the listless kind of affection Upsilon had to offer him. Something sharper, something brighter, something satisfying. Something that could actually hold meaning; not something that merely wished it did.
Upsilon continued to watch the wood grain of the ceiling boards until the waves and vortices made him seasick.
But then, a little voice in the front of his mind called him back to shore.
“You still are.”
Upsilon turned his head. The young reflection he saw had shifted, now looking soft and rueful and oh-so idyllic. Upsilon fought the urge to laugh, immediately thinking it impossible that he might still embody a sight so dear. But then again, what if he did? A pool of water did not cease to be under winter’s breath; it merely froze to ice. And with all this heat around them, closing them in, choking them, sweating them out - maybe Upsilon was finally beginning to thaw.
He really did enjoy nights like this. To be bothered was to be ardently extant. And to be smothered was to be-
To be smothered was to be loved.
So instead of laughing, Upsilon simply smiled. He grasped for Alpha’s hand, still dangerously drifting towards overwrought teeth, and he brought it to his lips.
“There’s no one else I’d rather be,” Upsilon said, pressing a kiss against his knuckles. “And nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Alpha tucked his chin against his collarbone shyly, his free hand still hovering over his mouth. Perhaps he thought Upsilon had not caught the smile twitching at his lips.
“Say it out loud,” Alpha said.
Upsilon considered doing just that, for what else would he consider? But something stopped him before he could open his mouth. And this time, he really did laugh.
“I don't think I can,” Upsilon admitted sheepishly.
Alpha’s entire body curled - his fingers around Upsilon’s hand, his spine as he coquettishly retreated even further into himself, and the smile on his face that he was no longer trying to hide.
“Good.”