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Lord X’s foot stepped firm and confidently upon the ground that, even though it looked like grass with patterns and designs on it to simulate plant life, felt suspiciously like plastic. With one leg firmly planted, the small skrunkly creature strutted out into the world with assertive steps.
With one stretch of boney fingers flexing, he fixed the few of his quills that had come out of place while he had traveled to his partner’s world. His other hand was strongly gripping a bouquet of flowers that he hoped his angel would like. It was always so hard for X to figure out what Rewrite wanted, he knew the longer EXE covered his world with large sunflowers that honestly resembled himself. Sadly those flowers didn’t grow anywhere outside of Rewrite’s world. Lord X had always had a bit of a chuckle seeing the two next to each other. Both bright with Rewrite smile and sharp halo as they stretched up to the sky, honestly part of X thought it was a little too egotistical for that to be Rewrite’s favorite flower. On the other hand, it suited him so well and seeing the other hide in a big field of them was always an adorable sight for him.
Maybe that’s what they would do on this date today; running through sunflower fields chasing each other, pretending to hunt the other and play tag till they were both rolling around the sunny flowers laughing, X thought to himself with a smile.
He had been so distracted by his thoughts he wasn’t paying too much attention to his surroundings. That was until he realized that he had been walking for much too long. Surely his beloved could feel him enter the space as soon as his foot had hit the ground. Rewrite should already know that he was here, and have come and greeted him. He hadn’t come unexpected, it was their usual date night, and sure maybe Lord X had lost track of time trying to compose something for his tall companion on his piano, hoping to be able to perform for him the next time they went out dancing. Sure, Rewrite would be upset now, but he would understand later and besides, he wasn’t that late.
Lord X grew slightly annoyed as he kept walking around the large empty word, he started to look around and finally called sweetly out to the other. Maybe Rewrite was more upset at him than he had originally thought.
Finally he took in that the world seemed to be different than usual. The sun seemed to be behind clouds and a slight fog obscured everything in the distance. The ground’s usual saturated green had seemed dulled though. The flowers seemed to drop, facing down towards the ground, looking more like the flowers that Lord X had brought from his own world in his haste to make to his partner’s in reasonable time. It had seemed as though the whole world had been drained of color. It was also significantly quieter. It almost reminded him of…home, the void. There was no sound of wind, nor of anything living. X couldn’t even hear the sound of his footsteps as if the whole zone had been put on mute. His voice rang out too loud against his ears as he called out to his lover. Yet the world only seemed to grow more eerie.
X took more cautious steps now seeing as the world seemed to continuously darken. The sky was starting to glow red, it was creeping across the sky.
Sure this was a normal thing for their kind to do, but it wasn’t something Rewrite was known for. He was always smiling, preferring to be a little silly guy, he was not the type to play with others like this. It was concerning but Lord X still held out some hope that things were okay. Maybe he was just redecorating? His world was a part of him after all. Perhaps he was even trying to make Lord X feel more at home? Or hopefully it was just a part of another game?
That’s right!
Rewrite loved to play games. Maybe this was just hide and seek, the sky slowly going dark and turning the color of blood and all the plants seeming to be dying despite their plastic like make-up were just a timer for him to find the other. It was a little odd but X didn’t think it was out of the realm of possibility. There were no other alternatives anyways.
So Lord X jumped up in the air, floating there for a moment, debating what to do with his flowers. They were wilted now and flying around with them at high speeds would most certainly destroy them before he found his sweet giant. With a sigh he placed the flowers down, they weren’t even a good apology gift anymore, then flew off at his highest speed looking for his dearest companion.
The further he flew the more he felt as though he was just in a loop, no new zones were appearing around him, it was just always the rolling hills he was most familiar with. The sky continued to darken, but even at high speeds X could pick up something else was wrong. There was a pit in his stomach that seemed to grow a slight nervousness infiltrating his mind. What if he was wrong and this wasn’t a game? He has already sped around the zone several times and it was completely empty. The way the world blurred around him seemed somehow worse than it should be, as though he was going even faster than he had ever done before.
Coming to a slow halt Lord X finally noticed what was wrong. The sky was spinning rapidly. The clouds rolled across at Sonic speeds as though X had caused up a disturbance on the ground that reached up in the clouds as they zoomed past the sky. No sun, moon, night or day, just grey fog like clouds stretching across crimson.
“Rewrite, what the fuck is going on?” X sighed with slight annoyance starting to make its way through him. He was not a patient guy. Sure he had done his best for his current lover, but there were limits to even what he would let Rewrite mess with him, “I swear to the void, if this is some sort of way to get back at me…” he muttered.
The small EXE then blasted himself up into the sky. Maybe up there he could get an idea of what was going on. He raised up, but felt as though he wasn’t even moving after he made it above the height of a loop-de-loop. He felt trapped in the air, the fog seeming crawling towards him, instead of him zooming towards it. Just as he was about to see if he had actually covered any ground he ran into the edge of the sky with a loud thunk.
“What the actual fuck.” X’s anger was starting to rise as he placed his hands up against the sky, it was solid. The fog was actually very dense but rather thin in depth as it continued to swirl against the red dome that covered the world. What kind of game was this? What did Rewrite trap him in this time?
“REWRITE!” He yelled out. All earlier thoughts of their cute date and day out together seem to have faded from his mind as instead he just wanted to grab the other and shake him till his arms fell off and he could punt that giggling face. That’s right, his partner was probably laughing it up at X being trapped in whatever little hell he had made for X to step into.
As he continued to scream he also began to punch at the sky. He knew it was a false one, the real world of the other most likely behind it. He continued to hit it with all his might, his small scrawny arms packing a punch that would instantly flatten a mortal constantly smashing against the sky. The whole zone shook. Everything started flickering with each heavy hit leveled at it. The illusion slowly but surely begins to fade, straining with the pressure.
A loud groan bellowed through the zone, doing its best to maintain its shape but ultimately failing as cracks appeared and the sharp creaking noises washed over him. Still Lord X pounded more and more against the sky. His anger at being trapped for what was probably some sort of joke drove him into a blind rage to free himself. Rewrite would have some explaining to do if he thought he could put him back into some sort of empty lonely hell like the void.
He pulled back his fist and channeled all of his power into it for one last hit right at the center of the cracks that began to look like diamonds falling from the sky as pieces chipped off. With a growl his fist finally pushed past the barrier. A second later the whole sky suddenly shattered in a rain of red glass towards the world below that seemingly phased out of existence now the prison was destroyed.
Lord X took a deep breath. All his energy had been put behind that punch and he was feeling a little better about it. He was in no place to fight Rewrite but he wasn’t fully cooled off yet. Time to find his Boyfriend.
As the rage slowly ebbed out of his body he took in the fact that this world wasn’t that much better off from the one he had come from, it was also dark with red swirling through the clouds. However one massive difference was that the whole world seemed to glitch. Black boxes and bits of static interrupting objects in the world, distorting reality before in the blink of an eye going back to normal. There was no rhythm to it either, it was random. And it was….concerning. The glitches seemed to almost be lashing out appearing and disappearing like the were following crazed eyes that couldn’t focus on one thing and every time they stopped for even a second a burst of glitches would appear for just that moment before frantically moving across to another part of the world.
Lord X's anger seemed to dry up as he watched the glistches. The harshness of his voice was instead full of concern. “Rewrite?”
“X.” came the distorted reply. It honestly surprised the smaller EXE. The voice had no direction or tone. Simply said in acknowledgement. It didn’t give him a clue of what was wrong, but now it was clear that something was indeed wrong.
“Where are you baby, I can’t see you with all this noise?” X said, softening his voice as he tried to see past the ever growing glitches, looking for that familiar blue.
“You won’t see it.” the voice replied bitterly. It was a tone that X had never heard Rewrite use. As he continued to talk his voice started to sound like it was breaking. “I’m not…am I?”
“You're not what, sweetheart? You can be whatever you want. Just let me see you.” X tried to cox his partner now worried for more than the world. He strained his ears, trying to figure out just where Rewrite was. X felt a surge to protect, to help, it was nearly foreign to him but he supposed lots of things that Rewrite made him feel were like that. The glitches and the zone around him were directly connected to Rewrite, they were a part of him and therefore also changed with the EXE himself. It was obvious that Rewrite was not in the right headspace, the world practically falling apart around them. X couldn’t even care that Rewrite had tried to trap him somewhere. It was obvious now that he was trying to hide…this.
“Anything I want?..... And nothing at all. Maybe it would-” Rewrite’s hollow voice continued to ring out, distorting where it was coming from but towards the end his voice seemed smaller in all but one direction and X darted to the large wall of static where he heard the slightly louder noise.
He tore into the static wall and ripped it apart like it was a door made of jello. The shreds of it flickering before it disappeared and he was face to face with his beloved sitting on a rock. Rewrite had his head in his hands and stared up at X with wide eyes and with a gravelly voice X stared down into Rewrite’s eyes, eyes that instantly threw him off as he finished saying: “Don’t even think about it.”
Rewrite then immediately grabbed X pulling him in towards him. At first the small demonic creature was ready for a fight and braced himself for an attack, it took him a moment to realize that the taller was not going into a berserker fighting mode but was hugging.
X simply stayed completely still, trying to take in everything he could. He could feel the glitches coming off of the other bump against him, his body obviously just as affected as the world around them. Lord X turned his head trying to see the other who was holding him in a near death grip against his chest like he was a prized stuffed animal. He wasn’t able to make out much besides the fact the other’s fur seemed to have turned completely gray. The color drained out of him just like the world.
The grip was suffocating and he seemed to twitch with the force of his emotions. Lord X finally remembered what could qualify as comfort and wrapped his arms around the other gently patting and rubbing down his back. Trying his best to hold the other who had his arms pinned against his sides in the death grip.
Eventually X just decided to do the only thing he really could and nuzzled his face against the other’s, trying for a soothing motion as best as he could. Rewrite was violently shaking, the glitches quaking across his body. The instability of his partner was honestly scaring X to see but he didn’t want Rewrite to feel any of his fear for the other. Instead he focused on comfort and expressing his support and concern. Touching him slowly and in soothing circles. Brush against small parts of his fur and bring Rewrite back to him. He whispered small words of comfort, sweet little words of nonsense into Rewrite’s ears trying to calm him down.
It seemed to help some, but Rewrite was still glitching, his voice now distorted with emotion to the point where Lord X had no hope to figure out what he was saying. So as the other seemingly babbled, X started to hum a song. One that he had sung to Rewrite on their first date, well if you could classify him asking out Rewrite by creating a small musical production on a date.
It took a few hums but it wasn’t too long before the sounds reached Rewrite’s mind as his ears twitched listening to it and his body instantly stilled. The longer the song went on the more Rewrite seemed to relax. His grip started to loosen around the other and he even began to hum along with Lord X. the glitches were more like hiccups now.
“See, there, you’re alright, love.” X cooed out to the other grabbing his face in his hands and forcing eye contact. Looking deep into eyes he had never seen before. Instead of the adorable long black ovals he was looking at something that looked more like what was on the other side of the screen. As though he had seen them himself. But that couldn’t be right, Rewrite had never been able to explain the ‘players’ to him, not in the way he knew of them.
Rewrite must have been made uncomfortable by the staring at his strange eyes because they began to roll around and he made a sound in his throat that almost sounded like a whine. “X, I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“This has happened before?” X asked slightly confused. Rewrite just let out a little nod. “Are you okay to be like this? It’s not gonna hurt you is it?”
Rewrite gave him a calculating look, at least that’s how X chose to interpret it. “No.” The voice sounded too loud from the world and too quiet from his own mouth all at once, like Rewrite could no longer control how he sounded.
“Okay, so what do you need for me to do?” X asked, sitting down in Rewrite’s lap and never stopping to pet slowly along his sides, hoping it provided something grounding and calming for the other.
“You don’t have to do anything. I can deal with it on my own. That’s why I tried to keep you away…” came a strained reply as the lanky demon looked away.
“Nonsense. Whatever this is, surely I can help. You seem to be in some sort of funk, are you okay?” X once again used one of his hands to guide Rewrite to look him in the eyes, he didn’t want the other to run away from this. This seemed to be more than he could bare on his own after all.
“I keep… I know what’s beyond the screen. I finally am understanding all those things you said to me. That I’m not what I thought I was.” Rewrite’s form started to glitch slightly again like he was on the verge of another melt down.
“Shhh, baby, it’ll be alright. So you got a taste of what others might call ‘reality’ that doesn’t change who you are! You are still the same ‘you’.” X stood up on the rock putting his face right into Rewrite own, giving him a small kiss on his forehead and he dragged his claws through the other’s quills.
Rewrite however was not having that right now and shocked out his quills before saying somewhat angrily, “X you don’t understand. I’m not…I’m not him. I’m not,” there was a long pregnant pause as Rewrite seemed to struggle with the words, “Sonic.”
Lord X just snorted, looking at his love like he was saying the dumbest thing he ever heard. “Babe, what are you talking about? Yes you are, you are Sonic.”
Rewrite made a frustrated noise and X pulled him into a loose hug, peppering little kisses down his shoulders. Whispering how his baby was ‘Sonic’ and that would never change. But it wasn’t long before his partner had another complaint. “Then why do people call me Rewrite, even you? I’m not him, I’m some sort of amalgamation. There are people out there you know? Those Souls that’s a whole nother world.”
“Does that scare you?” Lord X had gently taken Rewrite’s hand into his own, rubbing his rough hands across the smooth ones below, doing his best to keep his claws from catching on Rewrite’s gloves.
Rewrite looked shocked at X asking that question. And maybe slightly annoyed that his other parts of the question had gone ignored, standing up and unintentionally knocking the smaller off of him, or at least that’s what the slight cringe on his face would suggest. “X, get serious. This isn’t something I can pretend just isn’t real!”
“Why not?” X asked casually, dusting himself off and standing back up, reaching his hands to the other gently, still wanting to give the other comfort but not wanting to force it. “We can just ignore reality. Ignore it all. This is your world, and here we can be whatever you want. We can be anything we want anywhere, and who is to tell us we’re wrong?”
“What? X bu-” however X had different plans. Nothing Rewrite would change his mind that at least for now who could care less about those souls, just the thought of them had disturbed his date with his beloved this much already. So seeing that Rewrite was going to let him touch his hands he pulls the other towards him and floats up so that he can hold him properly. One hand on the hip, the other gripping his hand and dragging the other away from the rock in one swift movement, cutting off any more words.
The taller one was confused for a moment but X continued gently pulling and pushing the other around and soon enough Rewrite caught on as they started to dance like a spark of hope in the dark foggy world. “Babe, it’ll be alright. I mean, look at me, am I not the same? Yet all I want to do is dance with my beloved.”
Rewrite’s eyes were soft and round, his pupils resembling more like circles than their usual long visage. He let out a small giggle as X spun his around in the air. “I guess you got a point. I guess I got better things to be worried about right now huh?”
X just winked at him continuing the chaotic dance. It wasn't anything specific. There were no planned steps, it was an unpredictable dance with random steps, just like life and reality was. But even in the chaos the two were able to understand each other and keep up step for step across the hard ground as though they had rehearsed it all their lives. There was no music playing, neither of them humming a tune and yet they danced to a beat only they could interpret, the song created by the spark between them.
Finally after a little dip, X spoke again while looking at Rewrite like he was the only god he would ever need. “You can be Sonic, and I will be your most loyal admirer. Why is there any reason to change anything even if you can see reality clearer?”
“You want me to be delusional?” Rewrite replied with rolled eyes, blushing slightly as X laughed at that response.
There was genuine warmth in his voice, it was not mocking or said with a snicker, but said softly and filled with honesty, “Everyone's a little delusional babe. I just want you to be happy.”
X continued the dance as it got faster and faster, the world growing brighter as the tempo they created increased. The worries melt with each step. X stared at the other’s eyes and the dance got harder and harder to follow, they would have to forget everything else and focus on just this dance on just the two of them.
With each and every spin came more giggles from the taller who was enjoying it, forgetting about the worries of the world for now. With every spin his fur brightened, slowly, quill by quill turning back to the vibrant color that X was so very obsessed with. By the end of their impromptu dance with one final dip Rewrit’s big smile was genuine and his fur was fully back to blue.
With a little blush Rewrite pulled X close to his face, still being held in a dip. “Thank you, X.”
X just chuckled leaning down. “Anything for you, my beloved Sonic.” and with that he pressed a gentle kiss to Rewrite’s mouth.