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keishid · 10 years ago

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X should have seen it coming, really, he mused as he stared across the table at his friend. Zero was just so… so… so impressive, in so many ways, and despite–or, probably, because of–all the technological advances that Light had built into him, X was alarmingly typical in his humanoid emotions and behaviour. Whether he liked it or not.

The fact of the matter was this: X had, at some point–or, looking back, probably more like at quite a few points, a little at a time–started developing… impulses–no, that wasn’t the right word, that implied a loss of control, more like… impressions? No…

Admiration. X had started developing an admiration of Zero that deviated from the bounds of friend- and partnership. That was it.

Well, he thinks, at least nothing has to really come of it. Heaven knows that any further complications to their already infinitely-faceted friendship would mess up the easy partnership they have as oft-paired co-Hunters and that would have pretty far-reaching consequences.

So all X has to do is ignore it until it goes away. That’s easy enough, he thinks.

(He’s wrong.)

–

“Zero?”

The berserker instantly turns his head towards the voice, ponytail whipping in a graceful arc to nearly smack him in the face. X cracks a grin before he remembers that he has a fairly unpleasant, or at least difficult, conversation ahead of him, and abruptly sobers.

Zero notices, because of course he does. “Something wrong, X?”

X fidgets. “No,” he replies. “Not exactly–I just need to discuss something with you.” He bites his lip before further blurting, “It’s a sensitive topic and I–wanted you to hear it from me.”

Zero’s face goes horribly guarded. “Shoot,” he says, leaning his shoulder against the wall and watching X closely.

X tries to stay still now that he’s definitely being examined. “I…” No, best not start with the news itself. “I’ve been–distracted lately when we’re in the field,” he begins.

“I’ll say.” Zero snorts, but doesn’t remove his eyes from X, doesn’t dim the intensity of his observation. “I’d think I’d need to retrain you if the other commanders didn’t say you were just fine.”

Retraining? Hours upon hours of just X and Zero in a room pretending to beat the shit out of each other, with Zero’s preference for melee keeping them close together all the time? No. No, that would not be at all helpful.

“I’m wondering about them too,” the berserker continues. “Either they’ve all gone blind or they’re too impressed by you to notice when you’re making bad decisions.”

X winces. He’s managed to quash at least the practical exhibitions of hero worship from the other reploids, but he’s never quite made it go away. Honestly, he was just created first; there was nothing in his career as a Hunter that made him particularly impressive, barring the technical advantages his Light-constructed nature gave him. He still had a perfectly functional ability to be an idiot in the field.

…Speaking of which…

“It isn’t either of those reasons,” X admits. “This time.”

Zero narrows his eyes. “Just tell me, X. I don’t do the verbal runaround; you know that.”

Darn. “My performance,” X says slowly, “has only been suffering in my missions with you.” He can see Zero frowning in confusion, opening his mouth, and X cuts him off as fast as he can. “I’ve developed an… admiration for you that is distracting me badly and I think it would be best if we were no longer assigned to each other as often until I can overcome the attraction.” Straightens his back, keeps talking just to keep Zero from responding, stares intently at the blond’s helmet gem to avoid noticing the raised eyebrows, the look of surprise and confusion and probably a little bit of amusement because X is not going to look, damn it. “So I went to Signas,” he continues, “and he agreed to keep our units separated as often as possible until the–the situation is dealt with.” X drops his gaze, deflating a little now that he’s said everything he needed. “I didn’t tell Signas what the issue was,” he finishes, “and I didn’t want you to hear about the new schedule without–without that context.”

Zero looks a little stunned. Then a little bewildered. Then, horribly enough, he decides to be amused. “Shit, X,” he says. “Never thought I’d see you getting all stupid from a crush.”

X wrinkles his nose, staring at the corner. “You’re the one who keeps telling me I feel too much for people.”

“You know how to deal with it, though.” Zero pauses with a snort. “Usually.”

“Usually,” X agrees. There is a tiny pause. “Are we still…?”

Zero thinks for just a moment before nodding. “We’re good, X.” He grins. “I’m sorry I’m so irresistible,” he adds with a chuckle.

X gives him a look. Zero just laughs louder.

–

Zero forgot how… boring it was on missions without X.

He can’t say they’re lonely, because he has his unit with him, but it’s… different, and not even different in a subtle kind of way that he can just push to the back of his mind and not deal with. It’s there, and it’s wrong, and he doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t know why X is making such a big deal about this. Yeah, he was making stupid decisions that didn’t even have anything to do with his desperate need to try and help everyone whether they wanted him to or not (whether they could be helped at all or not), but he could have just said that it wasn’t just Zero being paranoid, and then Zero could have helped keep an eye out for him. Let X know when he was being stupid, get him to stop. Like partners did.

Of course, considering X… He wouldn’t have asked for the rescheduling at all if it wasn’t… bad, right? As much as Zero still thinks it’s a terrible idea, X has always made sure he knows that he’s X’s favourite person. And he’s genuine about it, too–X can lie, Zero knows, but not about his allegiances. Not about his friendships. And, apparently, not about his loves.

(Or love–singular–as far as Zero knows.)

The guy’s like a mother hen with everyone, but he’s with Zero most of all, because he (for some reason) enjoys Zero’s company. He wouldn’t just decide to limit that company for a crush.

Not that Zero really knows what X is like with crushes, or if he’s even capable of them or if he just skips straight from attraction to devotion with no in-between. He’s never seen X take more than a fleeting romantic interest in anyone, really, what with all of their peers so much younger than they are and all of humankind so terribly mortal.

Zero can’t deny a tiny flash of smugness at the idea that he is the only creature X has ever really fallen for. Even if in a lot of ways he’s pretty much the entire population of X’s dating pool in the first place.

That’s… not normal.

Hmm.

He hadn’t even wanted to bring it up in case it upset X, sure as hell didn’t want to end up accidentally encouraging it if that would delay getting his friend back, but here’s a third option that only just occurred to him, and…

X is his best friend. His partner, in and out of the field, the only person Zero trusts with his life–including himself. Hell, X is already… already everything to him; it’s not like adding another layer on top is going to mess anything up beyond X’s ability to repair and Zero’s to ignore until it goes away.

–

“Hey,” Zero says, leaning against X’s (open, as usual) door. “Got a second?”

X invariably sheds his armour as quickly as possible when he isn’t on Hunter duty. He looks a lot smaller in his civvies, short and lanky, sporting the worst helmet hair ever. (Cute, Zero thinks experimentally, and he doesn’t even have to focus to get the word to fit. Huh.) He needs to recharge, badly–reploids don’t tire as easily or as hard as humans, of course, but X’s eyes are slightly shadowed, his movements just a millisecond too slow. Zero almost feels bad for coming, but X clearly wasn’t planning on going to bed soon anyway, and he still smiles at the berserker and it still looks like a damn sunrise, so.

“More than,” X says. “Come in?”

Zero does, giving X’s living quarters a cursory glance. They’re fastidiously neat, as always, despite X’s habit of lending out his extra storage space to whoever happens to need it. There’s a little bit of office space in the corner near the door, a cheap metal desk and a cheap metal chair, a miniature computer with its monitor still displaying a half-finished report. (Lab stuff, it looks like. X never lost touch with his science buddies, even when he ended up a full-time Hunter.) A couch sits against the wall opposite the office; every other available bit of wall-space is covered in shelves, on which rest… well… pretty much everything that could possibly fit on a shelf, really. There is a single door on the far wall, leaning open; behind it, Zero knows, there is both a charging capsule (the same one X was found in) and a human-style bed.

X can actually sleep. Zero can’t, he thinks; to be honest, he’s never tried very hard to, not when capsules are faster–and provide less time for his hibernating mind to show him things he doesn’t remember doing.

“So,” says X, interrupting Zero’s tiny moment of introspection before it has the chance to upset him–damn, can he sense it? Is the damned mystery of an android telepathic as well as everything else? “What do you need, Zero?”

Ah. That. Unaccountably, a little knot of nerves starts to coil below his belly; it would really be so much easier if X could–hmm.

“Can you read my mind?” Zero blurts.

“Not without a hardline,” X says–apparently before really thinking about it, since a little, puzzled look flits across his rounded face a second later. (Cute, Zero thinks again, spontaneously this time. Hell yeah, he can totally do this.) “Wait, why? Is something wrong?”

Zero shrugs. “Nah,” he says. “It’d just be easier.”

His partner looks sceptical, then worried, then both. Zero knows, consciously, that their hardware is on the same level in most ways, but he can’t help but marvel a little at the range of emotion that that face is capable of portraying.

“It’s not the same without you,” he finds himself saying. Did… that come out wrong? X’s face flushes a little pinkish around the nose–does that mean it was the wrong thing to say, or…?

“I’m sorry,” X says. “I still haven’t, ahh–” He uncharacteristically falters.

Zero decides to have some mercy before he breaks something trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying nope, still being a complete idiot over my huge crush on you, sorry. “I figured as much.” He snorts a little. “You would have transferred back otherwise.”

X drops his eyes to Zero’s feet, a tiny snicker on his (gorgeous–wait, what?) lips. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I miss you too, Zeez.”

Okay, he can’t not. “You just miss getting to check out my ass every morning,” Zero accuses, grinning.

He has never, ever seen anyone blush that fast. “Zero–” X yelps–actually yelps, and Asimov help him, X’s voice cracks and the first syllable comes out as a fucking squeak. Not that Zero can really make fun of his partner for looking silly, since he’s pretty sure that his own reaction is just undignified enough to qualify as “giggling”. X coves his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Zero,” he repeats, calmer now, “you aren’t helping.”

Zero licks his lips, shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, actually considers his words before he speaks them. “What if I don’t want to help?”

X stops rubbing his face to peer through his fingers at his friend. “…Meaning?”

Speaking of not helping, Zero can’t read that expression for shit. He swallows. Okay, he had a speech. And yeah, he can’t remember most of it now that he’s actually here and X is in front of him and listening, but it started out something like…

“I’ve been thinking.”

The silence stretches on for a few dizzying seconds. “Thinking?” X prompts, finally. He still doesn’t move his hand; Zero just catches himself before he tries to reach out and pull it away himself. This would be hard enough even with X’s expression readily visible, damn it.

“So,” Zero hedges. “About that hardline.”

He hopes to make X laugh, and it works. The Lightbot drops his hand back to his side and Zero tries not to visibly relax.

“Buy me a drink first,” X snipes back–cheerful force of habit, a joke that both of them have made a hundred times before, but…

“Actually, I think I’d like to.” And there it is, the words hanging there, heavy in the air between them.

X blinks at him. “As in,” he says, very slowly, “a date.”

Zero rolls his eyes. “I know what a date is, X. Yes.” He bites his lip. “Before you say anything, I–I guess you should know that I don’t… know if your feelings are totally mutual. It’s not exactly my area of expertise, you know? Since most dates don’t end, you know. Violently.” X is just… looking at him, measuring him. These are probably the most words in a row Zero has ever said unprompted, ever. “But I know you’re the most important person to me, and I’m pretty sure I could…” He takes a slow breath. “Love you, like that, if I tried. And I’d like to find out. If you, uh, want me to.”

X regards him for a long, quiet moment, and really it’s only the fact that the Lightbot looks so content that keeps Zero from bolting. (Really, what is wrong with him?) “You’re the most important person to me too,” X says, softly, a secret smile unfurling at the corners of his mouth. “If we do this, and it doesn’t work out, that won’t change.”

Zero’s ribcage feels like it’s loosening, like he couldn’t breathe until X spoke and now he can again. “It won’t for me either,” he promises.

“Before I say anything,” X echoes, grinning a little at the roll of Zero’s eyes, “is this just about you missing me?” A nervous chuckle. “I guess I have kind of been avoiding you even outside of work, but I can stop that, if that’s all you want.”

“No!” Zero interjects, offended. “Shit, X, I wouldn’t have said it like that if I didn’t want it.”

X’s little smile gains strength. “It won’t help my distraction.”

Zero shrugs. “At least you’ll be in good company.”

“I’ll want to kiss you,” X warns.

“Why’s that a problem?”

X laughs. “You aren’t the most tactile person, Zeez.”

Okay, point. But. “You’re different,” Zero objects. “I’ll want you to.”

He doesn’t miss the delighted little shiver that runs down X’s spine. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

X chuckles, shaking his head. “Okay, we can try.”

Zero saves the precise mix of emotions he has at that into his long-term memory for later examination.

(He also saves the tiny, happy sparkle to X’s eyes, for entirely different reasons.)

–

It’s a small, dark little place that X leads him to in the end. To be honest, Zero didn’t even realise that it was a place at all until X opened the door; there’s a sign above the door, but it’s too battered to be mistaken for new, and the bar itself is situated in the middle of a block that Zero knows has been blown up at least twice.

“It was,” X affirms when Zero questions it. “They just keep rebuilding.” A sudden, startling grin, directed at the ceiling like the room itself is an old friend, and Zero finds himself starting to understand why X likes it here.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s rebuilt well or seamlessly. Some of the mismatched tables might have been beautiful once, but they all have their scars–rough rivets and deep, sparkling gouges on the metal ones, stains and scorch-marks and screwed-together splits on the synthwood. The one that X sits them at is one of the latter, but it looks like it’s been pieces together from two or three different pieces of furniture. There is patchwork on the surface, paler material in shocking contrast to the dark-stained stuff that makes up the majority of the table, but when Zero runs a hand across it he can’t feel any splinters.

The bar itself seems to be just one visible room, though there is a doorway (sans a door) behind the counter, and it is lit in its entirety by two table lamps and three bare bulbs on the ceiling. Zero counts six, but the other half are dark, only one of them feebly trying to flicker every now and again. It’s not a large space by any means, maybe half a dozen tables and another seven makeshift seats in the front, but it’s surprisingly populated. Humans and reploids both, Zero notes with some surprise; with the former’s numbers dwindling and the latter becoming universally paranoid, the two species don’t interact as often as they used to. Zero hadn’t expected X to actually frequent anything bar-like, but this… yeah, this one makes a lot of sense.

When the reploid behind the counter spots Zero, she grins and raises her eyebrows very pointedly at X. And X flushes, just a little, shoots her a pleading look. And something in the back of Zero’s head echoes: Cute.

He does wonder how often X talks about him, though, and what he’s said.

“What do you want?” X asks him, the bright spots of colour already fading from his cheeks. (Zero misses them.)

Zero raises an eyebrow, trying not to let himself get distracted by what he may or may not think about his best friend. “I thought I was buying.”

X shrugs. “I could get yours,” he offers. “It seems a little unfair to pick the place and make you pay.”

“Is it?”

The brunet breathes out a laugh, looking down at the table. “I don’t know,” he says. “I never dated much.”

Zero hadn’t been aware that X dated at all, ever. The thought makes him uncomfortable. Not out of any wayward sense of possession, he quickly checks and is relieved to discover (his Irregular days may be far behind him, but some of his emotions still follow pretty bad paths), just out of the realisation that there are things about X he doesn’t know.

Of course, the secondary realisation that he wants to know everything about X in the first place isn’t much easier to figure out.

“Me neither,” Zero says. Because, well, he hasn’t. It was just Iris, really. Not that he couldn’t have, but, well… before her, romance hadn’t really occurred to him, and after her, he didn’t trust himself with anyone else. Not knowing that there was a situation where he would kill them without a second thought, even if they weren’t infected.

(He doesn’t trust himself with X, either. He never has, truth be told, not since he learned how they found him. But X does, and Zero trusts X. So here he is.)

“Surprise me,” Zero says. “But don’t expect any funny vids out of this.” Reploid alcohol was essentially just corrupted nanites suspended in liquid–little, harmless viruses that glitched one’s system in entertaining ways and then deleted themselves. Basic antiviruses acknowledged them as toothless and ignored them, X had full control of all of his systems, but Zero’s defences were thorough and merciless.

Not that he told people that when they challenged him to drinking contests.

“Not from you, I know.” X grins at him, and there’s a mischievous edge to it that gets more than a few of Zero’s components whirring a little faster, intrigued. “I can do it for the both of us, if you want.”

Oh, hell yes.

–

Drunk X is pretty much the same as normal X, just slightly worse at moving and slightly better at laughing about really stupid shit. X leans on Zero’s shoulder as they leave the bar, even though Zero knows perfectly well he can walk just fine on his own. Absently, he wonders if X knows this too, or if he just wants to be there, or even if this is just drunk X trying to be smooth.

He kind of hopes it’s that last one because damn, that would be cute. (And there’s that word again.)

They don’t talk about it, but they come to some form of nonverbal agreement not to go home yet. Instead, they just sort of… wander. Half a block down the sidewalk, X gives up on using Zero as a walking aid; Zero’s shoulder feels terribly cold without his friend leaning on it, and before Zero really thinks about it he’s reaching out to take his partner’s hand.

It’s nothing. He’s taken X’s hand before. Multiple times, in all kinds of situations.

But.

It feels somehow so natural: splaying his fingers, X taking the opportunity to slip his in between them, both of them squeezing quickly in unison before letting their palms just rest together. And, and there’s that little spinning sensation underneath his ribs–the one that starts when X turns to look up at Zero and the corners of his lips curve, the far edges of his eyelids crinkle–and he doesn’t altogether remember that from before, but it feels too… instinctual to be new. But then, he has always been fascinated with X--just not, necessarily, his smile.

Zero grins quickly and looks away. He remembers: there’s a park–or what used to be a park, maybe three apocalypses ago, that no one bothered to build anything else on.

…okay, when he thinks about it like that, it doesn’t sound romantic at all. But the last time he saw it, there was grass, and a scattering of wildflowers, and a couple of scraggly but very real trees. Green, living things, the ground soft and covered with flora almost exactly the colour of X’s eyes.

Zero isn’t exactly sure how to put any of that into words, though, so he just starts steering X towards it, awkward as that feels to just… suddenly… do. Is that awkward? He doesn’t know, and that doesn’t really help the feeling that he maybe should have given some sort of warning.

He’s not used to being unsure. At least, not like this.

Luckily, X must notice some sort of purpose entering Zero’s steps, because he breaks the silence. “Are we going somewhere?” His voice is even softer than usual, somehow, but the words are clear. It kind of makes Zero want to huddle close and just listen to him talk for… forever, maybe. There’s something very peaceful in it.

“Sort of,” Zero says. “I mean, yes.” He clears his throat. “If you wanted.”

X nods as if anything Zero just said made any sort of coherent sense.

The silence lasts until they reach the park, until X lets go of Zero’s hand to sit on the grass and Zero folds himself down to lie beside him. X leans back on his elbows, face tilted up towards the sky; he inhales, slowly, and he speaks.

No one has seen the stars for years, the sky too choked with debris and pollutants and airborne Virus, but X knows all of them. He points, his fingers sketching out shapes that only he can see, and he starts naming constellations–every name, every shape the old humans ascribed to them, every story that survived long enough to be downloaded into X’s mind. There are legends, gods and demons and ordinary people, animals and plants and objects. And as X talks, as X remembers, Zero thinks that maybe he can imagine them–murals formed from galaxies, chasing each other behind the clouds.

But he doesn’t look at the sky. He looks at X. X is… intent, and peaceful, his face barely visible in the silvery half-light of the city and the shrouded moon. Zero’s never gotten the chance to see him so focussed and so content at the same time. Hell, for a long time, he’s barely seen him so content at all.

X is in his third version of Orion alone and Zero can’t look away. Fuck the stars, he thinks. This is what beauty is.

This is what gravity is.

Zero moves. With one hand, he pushes himself up; with the other, he cups X’s jaw. X trails off midsentence, looking at him. His eyes are wide and distracted, his lips still parted from his rambling lesson. The light’s too dim to see much colour, but Zero could count the freckles on X’s skin, if he wanted to. Could ascribe constellations to those, too, make up his own stories for each spindly shape he traces with his eyes. If he wanted to.

He will, he’s sure, but later. Now… Now Zero leans close, threads his fingers through X’s hair, and kisses him.

#mmx #xzero #zerox #ekksu #for when you get back #Theta writes fanfiction #ch: found him #ch: because he's worth it #otp: f(x)=0

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