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When Flux thinks of that night before the summit meeting, he thinks of the moon.
Full, gleaming like a camera lens trained down to capture the minutiae of Pandora's clamouring in its attempts to regain footing - imposing, watching, sharpening Flux's instinct to the point of nausea. When he thinks of that night, there was something undoubtedly ominous in the umbral flickers the moon cast over Saparata's face the day before Flux had betrayed him, localized and strange.
Yes, Flux was sure of it. Only he was never sure if Saparata, too, felt it the same or he had pretended not to.
By the time twilight has spun its first flickering stars, Flux is beyond exhausted as he sits on the stairs leading to Saparata's newly finished summer home.
Smooth sandstone pillars carved with intricate looping patterns, vaulted ceilings, a central meeting hall. Greco-Roman and awe-inspiring, just like the mythos and legends Turkey had read to Cynnika and him from old parchments and books. The title of architect is something that comes naturally, really.
And there's the roof. Of course, the roof.
His muscles run warm and acidic, an uncomfortable prickling sensation under his skin right below where his dirty nails can reach. The jungle drones and hums with cicadas and bugs, Flux having to swat away swarms of them as the sun, red like a marble, dips below the horizon.
Worse yet, his communicator lighting with a single message from Thomas: sera's back.
He pictures the straight line of her shoulders, her blade stained with blood right down to the hilt, how she'd left the bunker yesterday morning with a hardness to her face Flux had never seen before. Hours later, a death message on his communicator explaining it all in shocking clarity. It wasn't to plan, but it was opportune in accelerating a situation that required all of Pandora's leaders to congregate. The least Flux could do is make sure the coffin befits the occasion, too.
Footsteps behind him. Flux stills.
"Ish?" Flux calls out, apprehension creeping into his voice.
A familiar figure eclipses the archway, fuzzy against a flood of amber light. Angel. Preternaturally handsome. Not god, but someone protected by him. Something like that. His face is sun weary and burnt pink, pants rolled up to his knees in a that relays juvenile optimism instead of beloved Pandora mediator.
"Sorry to disappoint, but it's just me." Saparata gives a crooked smile. He fishes a pocketknife and apple from his pockets as he drops himself on the stairs next to Flux. "Thanks again for helping."
Flux gives a curt nod. Saparata continues, "It's beautiful, seriously. Better than anything I could've come up with. You and Thomas should visit."
"Well, you have another pointless, recursive palaver to moderate here tomorrow," Flux murmurs, unable to stop the bitterness leaching into his tone. "Wouldn't want Pandora to think I'd shirk my responsibility of this because of spite."
Saparata gives a long, tired sigh. "I just want it all to be worth it, Flux."
"Shared sentiment," Flux smiles cordially. If Saparata is so happy to posit himself sacrificial lamb, Flux is more than happy to indulge.
He's more Flux at this present moment, not Fluixon Aculon, nor demoted Luminaran vice-president. Flux has temporarily discarded the gold threaded overcoat he's so attached to once the midday Pandora heat had him on the verge of passing out, and he'd spent the better half of the day working through the swollen soreness where his shoulder met the port of his mechanical arm. Stripped to the barest of his personhood. They're both tired, the mounting tensions in Pandora and behind their eyelids offering very little respite.
Stranger yet, this is the calmest Flux has felt all day. It makes a sweet pride bloom in his gut - that yes, leading and sacrifice were things he could do without buckling. The flesh may want, but duty supersedes, and Flux has a firm grip on that incorrigible truth. Flux glances surreptitiously to study the plane of Saparata's face out of the corner of his eye, mapping the straight, strong lines of his nose and slackness of his jaw. The openness feels painfully shared.
Flux suppresses a bitter smile. They never were different where it mattered the most.
Tomorrow, he will strangle Saparata with the red string tying them both, drive his sword into the squirming, pink thing they call camaraderie and trust and friendship. Now, they are best friends. Now, it's a soft summer night, and things have only just begun going wrong.
"I'm sorry you got demoted," Saparata says. He says it like he's responsible.
"I'm sorry about Jophiel," Flux says. He says it like he isn't. "How sweet of you. You're just being nice for Ish and his crew, aren't you, Saps?" Light, and airy in tone - saying it like a joke when it really isn't one.
"Ish isn't here! Trust me, I'd know." Saparata runs his thumb over the apple's waxy surface, starts peeling off the red skin with deft knife work. "He only shows up when something interesting is happening."
Saparata looks down, suddenly solemn. He picks at the apple's mealy flesh, flicking a long ribbon of red skin to the side, and murmurs, "Friends close and enemies closer." Despite the flash of heat behind his eyes, a rational part of Flux supplies this was meant to be about Jophiel and Seraphim. He wills his heartbeat slower. Flux's scalp prickles. He stays quiet, suppresses the urge to pick at his nails. Nervous about what he might or can't say. Anxious habits have no room here.
As if he smells the sudden unease in Flux's demeanor, Saparata suddenly takes a deep breath and turns to Flux. Flux braces himself. With a glint of determination in his eyes, Saparata says, "Humour me, will you? We'll take the scenic route down the beach. Take it easy before tomorrow, y'know?"
His eyes are pleading, nervous. It's not like him. Neither of them are anything like the versions they present to the world, humanitarian in their own right. Tomorrow, it will be quick, and precise, and painless. It will be the kindness form of euthanasia he can offer Saparata. Flux feels a shiver run down his back, feels Pandora shiver in kind, and resolves that this will be for them, too.
Flux feels his chest tighten. Maybe, he owes Saparata this much. Leave him with something that'll remind him of Flux kindly. His confidence wanes, but still, he nods.
Full moon rising, night sky a deep, swallowing blue. The two of them make the short walk back to Luminara. Saparata is several paces ahead. The ocean water stings Flux's lungs and the overwhelming heat of Pandora, of being so close to Saparata, leaves him unable to take a deep enough breath. He staggers, weak, and fragile like he's always hated to be.
Saparata notices. And he decides he wants to sit by the ocean shore just to save Flux the humiliation of asking for a break. Of course he does.
So they sit on the sand - Flux with his knees pulled up to his chest, Saparata with his long limbs stretched out under the stars. Eventually he sits up to rest his head on Flux's shoulder, intertwines himself with the coldness of Flux's metal arm like its a lifeline, and it's a hair more than Flux can stomach.
Flux lightly shoves him off, and Saparata makes a whiny, bereft noise as he mimes throwing himself across the sand.
"You're impossible." Flux keeps his eyes trained into the ocean. "Stop making this harder than it needs to be."
The thrumming under Flux's skin grows stronger. The want clouds his judgement, and oh, does Flux want. He wants and wants and wants and it pierces him from the inside and bleeds to his face.
Impulsive decisions introduce too many variables. It's getting late. He feels his communicator beep in his coat, no doubt Thomas and a slew of messages about tomorrow. He's almost relieved he won't have to explain where he's been to Thomas.
Oblivious to it all, Saparata laughs. "Sorry. I'm probably a furnace. I've been told I run hot."
"'s fine." A beat. "It's not like I can feel temperature on that side, anyways."
Saparata blinks, unsure.
"Metal arm," Flux clarifies. "Temperature, touch… All things that a metal arm is not conducive to feeling."
"… Fuck. Right, sorry." Saparata scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. "I forget sometimes. With the coat and gloves you always wear."
Smoothly, Flux replies, "That's the point."
Dark waves lap at their feet, heels digging into the sand, like he'll crumble and erode away if he's not careful. If Flux closes his eyes, he can almost pretend this is Aculon, and he's on those snowy beaches with glacial water soaking his fur-lined boots. Pandora's ocean carries a warm brininess he's still getting acclimated to, the air thick with it.
Saparata's voice cuts through the rumination. "You don't feel this?"
Electricity skates down Flux's spine.
He doesn't even recognize what he'd meant until he follows Saparata's eyeline down, down, to find his pinky looping with the smooth metal of Flux's. He wouldn't even be able to register Saparata's touch if he wasn't eye-to-eye with it. And yet, his overwrought brain still supplies the free sparks with each phantom touch. The flesh wants and wants and wants.
(Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there, Flux reminds himself.)
He swallows thickly. Saparata's eyes find Flux's, furrowed, and pleading and willing, always so willing to play the part. Flux thinks about what they might look like tomorrow, when Flux isn't there to see the world he loves turn on him.
With a steadiness that makes his mouth dry, Flux stares in a hypnotized stupor as Saparata uncurls the loose fist Flux's metal hand is balled in, splays his fingers open to rest against Saparata's sternum, right over his beating heart. It's so, so cruel.
"You don't feel this?"
Flux doesn't, but fuck, he does. He feels cotton down his throat, his breath arpeggiate, his heart beating wildly, the ocean roar in his ears, and he wants and wants and wants -
It barely registers in his own ears when he speaks. "Make me feel it."
When Saparata presses his lips onto Flux's, its hardly soft or sweet. Saparata kisses like this is all they have, and the bruising force of it sends Flux stumbling backwards, a mess of spit and pearly teeth and tongue slipping past, and all Flux tastes is salt and that one day this will hurt like hell. Instinctively, his hands clamp onto Saparata's shoulders, trying to reclaim some semblance of steadiness from the swooping vertigo in his stomach.
He's going to die like this. The thought cuts through the honey dripping from his chest into his stomach, pooling with a dreadfully searing heat. Saparata is going to kill him.
He's going to die like this. He's going to die like this. He's going to -
Electric sting as Saparata bites down on Flux's bottom lip, and he's burning through the stratosphere. Restraint shines like the flashing beam on a lighthouse and Flux finds himself in the fog. He grabs a fistful of Saparata's pale hair and yanks back.
Saparata yelps, reflexively biting down harder, dynamite between teeth, before their bodies peel apart. For several long seconds they remain there, Saparata braced on his forearms, Flux scrambling to his feet with a jolt of adrenaline. A flash of pink tongue across Saparata's bottom lips, eyes widening at the rusty taste.
"Fuck, Flux, you're bleeding!"
Oh, so he is. Iron, and rust on his tongue as Flux feels it trickle from his bottom lip down to his chin like cherry juice, staining the rumpled cream of his shirt. Flux watches with a sliding sense of nausea in his gut at how it smudges across Saparata's face in a manic smear, how it stains and blooms outwards on fabric. Saparata regains his urgency, steps forward. Flux swats his hand away when it reaches for Flux's face.
"Fuck." Flux wipes his forearm across his face, leaving scarlet in its wake. "You're-"
"Just let me help -"
"No." His voice sounds tinny and far away. "I said - I said stop making this harder than it needs to be."
His vision refracts around the edges, film reels unfurling - from Saparata's mouth with a stained with Flux's own blood, and the swallowing shadow of his summer house, and a roof lined with dripstone, and redstone schematics, and Seraphim with her dirtied sword, and the moon glinting like a camera lens and -
"- Look, don't - we don't have to worry about it now, alright? We're tired and things are all kinds of messy -" Saparata has been rambling this entire time, Flux realizes. He peels his gaze up from the sand.
Saparata steps back, a nervous undercurrent in his voice, says something about how they can meet up once the Pandora leaders come to some sort of conclusion, and they'll figure it out, he'll send Flux coordinates tomorrow.
Somehow, Flux bites back the urge to curl his lip and feels himself nod. Saparata responds with one in kind, before turning on his heels and bounding back to acropolis over the hill. Flux watches the entire time with new waves of frustration and resentment washing over him at how the acropolis glimmers hopefully over the hill, imagines the ocean eating away at the foundations and eroding it all away until they both drown.
The moon gleams like a camera lens. Ish isn't here, but Flux feels himself being watched nonetheless. He straightens his back, fixes his expression back to a cold neutrality. Concedes that this will not - no, cannot - stop what's coming for them both.
Impulsive decisions introduce too many variables. He'll have to work with this all the same. This is karma for straying from what he knows.
His fingers brush against his lips and they come away red. Blood on his teeth, on his hands. This is something he'll have to get used to. It'll hurt tomorrow, for the both of them. It's meant to hurt.
Flux watches droplets of his own blood soak into the sand. He leaves a trail of it as he stumbles his way back to the bunker.