Chapter 1 - "Nightmares"

Astral clutches his new knees to his chest. But he found that uncomfortable and stretched them out again, only to crinkle his nose in annoyance as one of Yuma's itchy clothes on the floor tickles his toes. A thousand tiresome questions where buzzing around his usually quiet, and controlled mind. Why was he so cold? Did the dull ache in his backside mean that he was going to die? Why did his brain nearly explode when Yuma touched his... "gems?"

Damn body, Astral thought to himself sadly.

His stomach grumbled, and he nearly cried as the sudden sound startled him. He had heard the low rumble-like sound emitted from Yuma's torso many times before, but to feels the slight twist in his middle as he experienced hunger for the first time was so frightening, he felt reminded of that time that Yuma lost his two number cards to Flip. His heart was beating so fast, and a thin sheen on clear liquid - sweat? - was covering his forehead and palms.

"Yuma..." Astral whispered as he heard footsteps outside of the room.

Yuma pushed open his door with a yawn and wandered over to his hammock-bed before collapsing in it, looking to Astral like he was already asleep. Astral wanted to touch Yuma again. He could still feel the lines that Yuma had traced over his body and this both intrigued and annoyed him. It made his skin feel weird - Hot, like Yuma's fingers had drawn lines in a pleasant, liquid fire, of sorts. Astral hated it.

No, he didn't. Astral loved it.

Astral stood from his, now crouched position and walked towards Yuma's lightly snoring form. Actually, scratch that. Yuma's form was one of the loudly, snoring kind. Astral knelt beside Yuma and pressed his fingers into the human's fleshy arm. He prodded it and pinched it, and tested how far it would stretch. That was a funny one. That test made Yuma bat him away and turn over, after which, Astral started over on the opposite arm. Yuma didn't seem to move when Astral stretched the skin on this arm. Hmmm...

Astral moved to Yuma's head, and started patting and prodding his peculiar hair. He twisted the natural pink and burgundy fringe, and rubbed a lock of the gloosy black half of Yuma's fringe against his cheek. It smelled like spaghetti and cream and soap. Astral smiled at the smell. It seemed so familiar, like he had smelt it once before, in a forgotten moment. But it was so new to Astral that he couldn't help doing it again. But he stood as he did, and took Yuma's hair with him, momentarily forgetting that it was attached to Yuma.

Yuma screeched out and scared Astral into letting go, only for Yuma to try and get up, but hook his foot in a knot in the hammock's base and half fall out of it, hitting his head and shoulder on the wooden floor beneath him. Astral blinked and decided to help Yuma up, if he could. Yuma ended up becoming even more tangled and sent Astral to pick up the scattered pillows while he (Yuma) righted himself and climbed out from under the hammock.

"Are you awake now, Yuma?" Astral asked him after they had settled down, each on a pillow beneath Yuma's hammock. "What gave you that idea, Sherlock?" Yuma answered groggily.

"You mentioned that human once before. He was a great detector, an I correct?" Astral tried to remember the conversation. "Detector" didn't sound like the right word...

"He was the world's best and greatest detective, if that's what you mean." Yuma said, rubbing his eyes. "What are you doing still up, anyway? Can't you sleep?"

"I do not sleep."

"Ast-raaaaal!" Yuma said, dragging the name out in a sigh. "You've got a body now. You of all people or aliens or spirits or whatever you are should know that bodies need sleep! For instance - Me!" He pointed to himself and fell over side ways and started snoring again.

"Yuma!" Astral shouted and Yuma jumped up with a start. "What?! What is it?! What's wrong?!" Yuma ranked as he scanned the room for intruders of either crazy-cat-fangirl or the more dangerous kind. Link Shark or a giant blowfly or something.

"I do not know how to perform sleep. The instructions on how to do so are not in my observations." Astral said, tilting his head slightly to the left, a tactic often used by Yuma himself, when he did not understand something he had heard about multiple times.

Yuma sighed. "I don't really know how to show you how to sleep, Astral. It's not really something that you CAN teach someone." Yuma rubbed his chin, then scratched his head, then repeated that small process several times before Astral asked him if he was asleep again. "Of course I'm not, you no-longer-floating-floating-blue-guy! I'm trying to think."

"That must be hard." Astral couldn't help but smile at the look on Yuma's face. But when Yuma stopped sneering, and started grinning in awe and blushing, Astral frowned. "What is the matter? Are you hallucinating about purple elephants again?"

"No, I-I was just..." Yuma looked at his feet, and hooked one of his toes around the next, using his fingers. "Do you want to share the hammock with me?"

Astral blinked. He wondered if he had heard Yuma correctly, and wanted to ask him to repeat it, when Yuma spoke again. "I mean, I just thought that it would be more comfortable than the floor and that's why... This has nothing to do with that kiss earlier... Wait, now you think that I'm being weird don't you? It's okay if you don't want to sleep with me now... Wait, that's now what I meant! Not sleep with me, sleep with me, just ya-know... sleep with me...?"

"I do not know what you just said, but I would be pleased to share your magical room with you." Astral smiled at Yuma, who laughed. "Come, on." He said, grabbing Astral's hand and climbing onto the hammock, before moving over and holding down the side for Astral to join him.

The two laid down and Yuma pulled his hair out of the way, folding it under his head so that Astral had room for his extra height. Yuma was stiff and tense at first, but after a while, Astral felt the human boy meld into his side.

Yuma began to breath slower, and Astral could feel his heart's beat begin to regulate and soften as Yuma snuggled into Astral's form, his small head buried in the crook of Astral's neck. Yuma's hands curled into loose little fists and after shifting his weight so that Yuma was half lying on top of him, Astral hooked his fingers between the thin ones curled up on his chest, next to Yuma's peaceful face, the stress and excitement of consciousness long gone.

Astral moved his head and nested it lightly on top of Yuma's, and let his free arm hook around Yuma's back, and closed his eyes. A sweet nostalgia crept over his mind as he did so, and with a start, his mouth opened to form a very in-graceful, humane yawn. Astral wondered to himself if he would like it in Yuma's magical room, and with an almost irrelevant start, wondered if he would turn into a rodent if he were to wake in the morning.

Suddenly, Astral did not seem to care. Yuma moved, and bent his knees, leaving one of his feet dangling off of the edge of the hammock. Astral smiled at it, remembering another time that it happened...

Yuma had been sleeping, and Astral was standing in the middle of his room when all of a sudden, Yuma was taken away be a flying creature. Another creature grabbed Astral, and they flew apart, Yuma screamed and reached out for Astral, and Astral called out for Yuma and did the same. They fought and kicked and screamed at their flying captors, and all the way, tried to reach each other, but always being just out of reach.

Finally, their flying captors flew closer together, and Yuma grabbed a hold of Astral, and as soon as they touched, a flash of black light separated them. Astral was left alone on a crumbling path, and before him was a giant black door, with around thirty rustic chains locking it together. Suddenly, the chains broke, and it opened to reveal Yuma.

Astral ran forward, but stopped a few yards from the threshold, and from Yuma. But it wasn't Yuma. No, this was a dark thing. A disturbed thing trying to look like Yuma. "Come with ussss..." It cooed at Astral, smiling sweetly, looking so much like Yuma that Astral want to. He wanted to follow the dark Yuma. He wanted to know what was being held on the other side of that door...

The dark Yuma grabbed Astral's wrist as soon as he was close enough, and it burned. Astral cried out and screamed and kicked and fought, but the dark Yuma only grinned and laughed and smiled more with every decibel record that Astral's cries broke.

Astral screamed out one final word before he collapsed..."YUMA!"

"Astral?! Astral, wake up!" The dark Yuma shook him and then laughed. But, no it wasn't the dark Yuma. It was Yuma. It was HIS Yuma. "Astral?! Oh my God, I thought that you were in pain or dying or..." Yuma started crying and hugged Astral, who felt that there were tears on his own face. He clutched Yuma's shaking body to him, and let the younger boy hold him.

"I am alright, Yuma." Astral separated them, and looked at Yuma's smudged and red face. "I am glad that you are safe from the flying creatures, and that you are no longer a devil from beyond the black door." Astral smiled.

"Y-You dummy!" Yuma cried, slamming himself into, or rather, onto Astral again. "You had a nightmare." He laughed, and pulled back before wiping his eyes. "And one about me, of all things."

"What is a nightma-" Astral began, only to have Yuma slam his lips against Astral's. Astral held on to Yuma's neck and held the small human there, his mind and mouth buzzing with over-stimulation, with an over-load of sensations on his senses.

Yuma pulled back and made sure that Astral came with him. Yuma grabbed Astral's thin waist and held the larger creature on top of him as their mouths battled for dominance over each other. Neither of them knew what they were doing. They only knew that they never wanted it to end. Astral remembered something that he'd seen on Akari's late-night television, and moved his mouth down to kiss and slightly nibble at Yuma's neck.

Yuma bit his lip hard. He gripped Astral's back, and without meaning to, his fingers skimmed around the edge of the small gem there. Astral hissed in a breath, and accidentally bit down on Yuma's skin. Hard. Yuma cried out, and Astral drew back, and held Yuma by his shoulders. "Yuma? Yuma?! Are you hurt? What is wrong?"

Yuma started to laugh, and brought Astral's lips to his own again. It was a sweet, little kiss, promising more later. "I'm fine, Astral." Astral's expression softened, and he smiled at how beautiful his name sounded in Yuma's voice, the slight drop after the second syllable, even the tiny hitch after the first 'A'. Astral closed his eyes and laid Yuma down beside him in the hammock.

"I am glad." Astral looked down. "I found that... pleasurable."

Yuma chuckled, and smiled as he pulled Astral's torso closer to him. "I am glad," He mimicked Astral's cool tone. "That you liked it. I have to say... That, the feeling of your lips... it is-it was like being the flow - I wasn't feeling it, I was loving it, moving with it. I was becoming one with the flow when we were kissing." Yuma glanced at Astral sheepishly, his face as red as a plump tomato.

Astral smiled. "You need to go to sleep, Yuma. I will also do so. I do not think that I will have any nightmares now, whatever they are." Yuma chuckled again at Astral's brief knowledge of human phrases. "I certainly won't..." Yuma said with a yawn. Within seconds the smaller boy was asleep again, but hiss face was not simply peaceful, but a sweet, smiling face. Astral kissed Yuma's forehead, another action that he had noted from Akari's television shows, and snuggled in beside him.

After sleep captured him again, Astral did not dream of devilish Yumas and flying creatures, but of Astral World. He was in a memory, the memory held within that Number Card - The one that had given him a body. Astral realized with a start that he had not yet examined this memory. He allowed himself to be swallowed by the light blue light and found himself in the classroom.

Cool, almost transparent floors and blue walls lined with darker gems and green and blue and purple marks and runes surrounded him. Twenty blue children sat on the stiff benches made out of what looked like solid silver and light blue liquid, all off them intent on the Instructor at the front.

"Today's lesson - The Courting Of Spouses and Procreational Partners." He spoke in a hushed voice, closing his yellow-gold eyes. "It is know throughout the adult population that the process of procreation is a delicate and difficult one. Although each of us is created by the Core, a partnership of two courting guardians..." He paused, and took his time to find the correct term.

"Parents... as it is commonly called, is required to begin the education and moralization the offspring allocated to them. It is a role that requires a deep, unspoken bond between two, and only two, though families are often created through the bonds of friendship between multiple courtship pairings." The Instructor stopped once more, and drank from a tall, clear glass on his desk, and did not resume his lecture until all of the creamy, silvery-white liquid had passed through his lips.

"Courting is also a complex operation. The most frequent signs are the inter-locking of mouthular organs, or lips; the holding on each others fingers and palms, and the caress-meant of each others facial regions and waists. Often the two partners will be seen lying together after star-down, and often seen together during the light beside each other, often either talking or touch each other." The instructor smiled at the blank looks on his students, and said in a monotone voice. "Turn to chapter 4073 of your fourth registration text-books, and begin the questions on page five..."

Astral fell out of the dream-like state of the memory and and looked down at Yuma. He thought over what the Instructor had said. He mentally did a tally of all the things that were said to create a strong courtship. He and Yuma always were either talking to or trying to hit - that's touching, right? - each other, and they were always together during the day - light?

He mentally checked off laying together after sun - star-down is the term on Astral World - down, as they were in each others arms in that very moment. They had kissed, they had held hands and... Astral closed his eyes, deciding to worry about it in the morning.

But as he laid there, no more dreams came. But one thought did. What happens when a human courts with someone from another world? Would Yuma even be anatomically or even morally able to love Astral? But what was really troubling Astral was this... Was he able to love Yuma the way that Yuma needed him to?

Astral did not know.

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