warnings: gemsex, frottage
this is the end of everything we know/is this the end of everything i am
Yuuma kisses him again and Nasch despises himself, even as he trembles, even as his body responds. Armor retracts to reveal a second row of gems on either side of his torso, a line of diamond-shaped ones running from elbow to palm, and his central gem pushes up and out to cover the crest on his chest. His body has denied his loyalties, and how ironic is it, that he has purged himself of human flesh and human lusts and yet,even as a faceless stone thing, he belongs to Yuuma in some way and just by touching him, just by saying his name in that breathless, pleading tone, Yuuma can make him forget –
("It's Nasch, now," he says, and Yuuma's mouth opens, but Nasch drowns out his voice with the sound of Aero Shark's roar, and knocks him down before he can try again. He flies back across the dull, dusty earth and bounces twice before he lands heavily.
"But…"
"Ryoga Kamishiro is dead." Ryoga Kamishiro had always been dead.
He sets two cards. Yuuma is still getting up, slowly; he's still in shock. Nasch tells himself that Yuuma's unwillingness to fight him means an easy victory, and it almost drowns out the guilt.)
"Yuuma," Nasch gasps. His voice doesn't sound like his own. "What are you doing?"
Yuuma's arms wind around his neck, heedless of the armor there, his forearm pressing down onto the gem on the back of his neck. His thoughts are muddled and confused and threaded with a deep affection, and they pass from his skin into Nasch's body, flowing through him and making him glow and Yuuma must feel it too, because he collapses against him, right against the exposed gems on his chest, and Nasch thanks whatever gods he knows that Yuuma is dressed.
If just one point of contact can do this to him, then…
("Don't you remember our duels?" Yuuma asks. He is down on his knees, his hand and his deck and his duel disk all discarded. His eyes are wide and red and filled with tears; somehow, Nasch has come close enough to see them.
"I remember," he says, and he advances on Yuuma. His free hand clenches into a fist. "I just don't care.")
"I can't just choose," Yuuma whispers. "You're important to me."
And he is important, Nasch knows, from the rush of memories coming into him, from the glimpses of himself idealized in Yuuma's eyes. He knows because when Yuuma gazes upon his body, it's with wonder and desire and fascination and that it is purple and naked and inhuman does not matter.
"Aren't you betraying Astral?" The words are cruel, and Nasch flinches as Yuuma's pain becomes his pain. But he'll take it, if that's the price for the lives of his kingdom, his Lords, Iris… "Aren't you betraying your father?"
Yuuma's legs open, and he scoots forward and wraps them around his hips, so that he is in Nasch's lap and the gems on his hips are warmed by his body and the stimulation, even with so little real contact, is too much.
He hates Yuuma for a moment, for opening him up and making him weak.
"My dad…my dad wouldn't…" Yuuma gasps in between words; whatever he feels from Nasch is so intense he can't focus. "If it were my mom, he wouldn't fight…"
He sees Yuuma's impossible wish for the future: they are side by side somewhere, holding hands as they walk home from school, tag dueling in partners' tournaments,driving around on his bike, leaning on each other as they watch the stars. It is a beautiful illusion, straight from the depths of Yuuma's heart to his, and Ryoga Kamishiro would have gladly made it his reality.
Ryoga Kamishiro is dead, though.
"Yuuma, I can't —" He gives in and lets himself hold Yuuma, lets himself slide a hand under his shirt and grab him roughly by the hair. It is masochistic in the extreme, not throwing Yuuma off him and forcing him to duel that second, but Nasch cannot help himself. Even becoming another person cannot save him from being in love with Yuuma Tsukumo, and this is the last and only time this will ever happen, can ever happen, because no matter what Yuuma is naively imagining the aftermath will be, Nasch knows: after this is over he's going to break Yuuma's heart.
"No, don't," Yuuma says, and he pulls away and the flow of sensation and emotion between gets cut off, but not before Nasch catches Yuuma's hurt. He feels betrayed, and Nasch is sorry and bitter at the same time; there's no pleasure in making him unhappy, but he still wants to shake Yuuma and ask him, don't you understand that I have to do this?
"You don't have to."
"You don't understand," Nasch says. Yuuma reaches for him again, fingers brushing across the gem on his shoulder, and his understanding is too soft and too kind. He doesn't want Yuuma to see his past in all its bloody glory; he is afraid that Yuuma will judge him, or worse, that he won't judge him, and it will be that much harder to crush him in the end —
Nasch tears open the back of Yuuma's vest in frustration, even as Yuuma's hands settle, one on his shoulder, one on the oversensitive central gem in the center of his chest; he has to let go of Yuuma, then, because the intensity of Yuuma's touch there is too much, the energy flooding his entire body with light and heat, and his fingers dig into the dirt as his pain becomes Yuuma's pain, as his pleasure becomes Yuuma's pleasure.
His gems light up, and both he and Yuuma cry out wordlessly; Yuuma clings to him, pressed up against him, so that his hard-on is against Nasch's stomach, between the two rows of gems on either side. Yuuma squirms.
He wonders dimly what it is about Nasch that Yuuma finds attractive, what is it about this version of his friend with all the edges sharpened and all the humanity pared away that still evokes desire.
"Nasch," Yuuma says, voice choked, "I still lo—"
He grabs Yuuma's hips and encourages him forward so that Yuuma thrusts up against him, because it makes Yuuma moan, because he can't bear to hear the end of that sentence.
"Nasch," Yuuma says urgently, and then he collapses, trembling against him. "I…"
He goes silent. Nasch waits for him to finish, dreading curling up inside him as his armor reforms over the extra gems and the crest on his chest reemerges. Yuuma's forehead is resting on his shoulder, his arms loosely around him.
He lets out a soft snore, and Nasch is so relieved that he laughs out loud. He moves Yuuma off his lap carefully, and sets him on the ground on his back, and then, impulsively, takes off his cape and covers him up with it.
And he reforms his duel disk, and rearranges his deck, and waits.
Yuuma is still fast asleep, a stupid smile on his face, when Astral flies over the horizon in a blur of blue and white light.
"Yuuma," Astral says. "…Nasch."
"You're here." Nasch gets up, and starts to walk away. He glances over his shoulder and sees that Astral isn't following, that he's staring at Yuuma, who has his tattered vest under his head as a pillow. He doesn't say anything, though; let Astral connect the dots, if he wants.
He keeps walking until he's far enough away. Astral joins him, but his eyes keep flicking over to where Yuuma is asleep.
"To obtain the Numeron Code, one of us has to absorb the other, right?"
"Yes."
The duel anchor hidden under Nasch's duel disk is faster than Astral can move, and it snags him around the wrist, before he has time to react. Lifepoint meters appear on either side of them, and Astral's disk sets itself even as he tugs futilely at the anchor.
"It's my turn," Nasch says, and he draws his first card.
If Nasch hurries, he might even kill Astral before Yuuma wakes up.
Nasch's cape is wrapped around him when he wakes up, and Yuuma clutches it as he looks around. He's alone, and it's quiet. His vest, what's left of it, is folded neatly on the ground under his head.
Yuuma stands up, and hugs the cape to himself as he starts walking. It is dark now, in this wasteland between worlds, and there are only a few stars dotted in the sky to light his way.
He thinks the white spot on the horizon might be a rising moon, and then he comes closer and see that it is Astral, lying on the ground and flickering in and out of existence, and that there are scorch marks and craters on the ground around him, and lying a little ways away is a dark figure with glowing pink gems —
"Astral!" Yuuma breaks into a run, one hand fumbling for the Key around his neck. "Nasch!"
Neither of them move, and when Yuuma kneels down at Astral's side, he sees that his eyes are closed and his duel disk is cracked. He's still there, though, and so that must mean that he has won. Which means that Nasch has lost, and…
Yuuma walks slowly to Nasch's side, and when he lays a hand on the shining pink gem on Nasch's forehead, and feels something within his lifeless body, he is so relieved that he starts to cry. Neither of them are dead, somehow, even though they dueled so fiercely while he was sleeping.
There are cards lying all over the wrecked field, and Yuuma picks them up, crawling around on the ground on his hands and knees. The starlight isn't bright enough to read by well, and so he squints at each card he finds, looking for a shark or a familiar word so he can put back in the right deck.
He frowns at a particularly difficult card, one that doesn't look like anything he's ever seen. He holds it up to the sky, trying in vain to read the weird text that doesn't even look like real Japanese, and puzzling over the picture — it looks like some kind of weird, broken card…
"Numeron…Code…?"
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE WORLD THAT YOU DESIRE TO CHANGE
The words come from everywhere, even inside his own head, and it sounds like a thousand people are saying it all at once. Yuuma fruitlessly claps his hands over his ears to drown it out.
And then the world opens up, so that he can see everything — through his own eyelids, into things, around them, in every dimension, forwards and backwards in time — and it is too much knowledge for him to understand, or even see clearly. He thinks desperately about Astral, whose world is dying without Chaos, and Nasch, whose world is populated by souls whose Chaos is all that was left.
He promised Astral he would restore the Astral World, and yet Nasch's wishes are still there, in his heart from before: the souls of his army are trapped there, unable to regain solid forms or grow beyond the moment of their death, only able to speak when Nasch supplies them with the power. Nasch wants the Barians freed — and yet he swore to Astral that he would return the missing Chaos to his fellows.
"How can I make both their wishes come true?"
WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO YOU WISH FOR
"I don't know," Yuuma protests. "How do I change anything?"
SHOW ME YOUR IDEAL WORLD
The voice burrows into his mind, exposing all his thoughts and memories and fantasies, and Yuuma has to push things away, to keep telling the voice of Code 'no, not that' because no matter how much he wants some things, he can't just make them reality. He can't make Nasch become Ryoga Kamishiro again if he doesn't want to. He can't make Astral stay with him forever no matter how much he doesn't want him to leave.
"I want both Nasch and Astral's wishes to come true!"
IS THAT YOUR IDEAL WORLD
Yuuma hesitates, just for a moment. There is a finality in the Code's voice. He knows, instinctively, that there will be no second chances, no other moments in his life when he can alter reality.
But if he does this, he can be on both Nasch's and Astral's sides. He can make both their wishes come true. If there are things they want to protect, more than anything, then Yuuma will carry their hopes onward. He'll protect those things with all his strength.
Kattobingu!
"Yes!"
THEN IT IS DONE
Ryoga wakes up at home in bed.
For a moment he is still Nasch, and he has just failed to defeat Astral, and the guilt and shame are so great that he cannot move — and then he sees the light in the window.
He throws off the covers and slams open the window and leans outside. There, in sky over the harbor, there are bright pink stars falling. He can sense the presence of his soldiers, of Iris, of fallen citizens; they are fading into peace.
"They're all free," he whispers. He looks up at his constellation, and all the stars in it seem brighter tonight; he swears in that moment he is hyper aware of Merag, and of Durbe, and of all the Barian Lords he'd left waiting. They are all watching along with him, hearts light, perfectly safe and he slumps down onto the floor of his room in relief.
The cold light of Astral World is warming again, and everywhere Astral looks there is life. Plants are sprouting up again out of the sand. People are calling out each other's names everywhere, jubilant, as their wounds heal and their souls recover. Animals are coming back to life in every corner, and there is birdsong in the air.
Yuuma is waiting for him in the throne room. He is glowing faintly with power, and Astral knows then that the time has come.
"You saved us." Astral takes Yuuma's hands. How strange it is that he has become so close to Yuuma, so changed by him, in such a short amount of time. "Thank you."
"Astral…"
"I'm entrusting Hope to you, Yuuma."
Yuuma wipes at his eyes, but the tears continue to fall. "I guess this is goodbye, huh?"
"Someday, you will become Duel Champion." Astral replies. "Someday after that, you will reach a very old age and cease to live. And then, your soul will rank up, and you will be able to join me here."
"Yeah." Yuuma nods. He squeezes Astral's hands. "Someday, I will definitely come back here."
"Kattobingu, Yuuma."
"You too, Astral," Yuuma grins at him, as bright as the sun, and then he fades away and Astral's hands are left holding nothing. He stays there in the throne room for a long time.
Then he goes to the window, and looks down. The celebrations are beginning, as people realize that they are all restored. If Yuuma were here, he would want to enjoy them; and since he isn't, Astral decides, he'll have to enjoy them in Yuuma's place.
The last of the lost souls of Barian World are vanishing into the moon's reflection on the water when the knock comes at the door. Ryoga watches the last soul go, and then he walks out of the bedroom and down the hall and to the front door. Everything feels like a dream, after the breakneck pace of the past few days, or weeks, or even months; time has been speeding by as he destroyed himself in service of his duty, and now it feels like time is standing still.
He opens the door, and Yuuma is standing in the hallway. He's wearing Nasch's cape draped around his shoulders.
"Did it work?" Yuuma asks. He moves to grab onto Ryoga, and then stops, mid-motion. "Did your wish…did your wish come true?"
Ryoga reaches out and wraps his fingers around Yuuma's outstretched arm. He pulls him gently forward, until Yuuma closes the distance between them.
"Yuuma," he says.
"Shark…" Yuuma embraces him, and buries his face in his shoulder, and clings to the back of his jacket; and Ryoga holds him for a long time, and doesn't think of anything, really, except that Yuuma is warm, and he would like to stay with him for a long time.