(A/N: hullo, readers…first chapter herein two months. Hope it measures up. Please enjoy…)

Elisir
by The Great Red Dragon

Chapter 25

The glass window of the box-shaped washing machine, number twenty-five, displayed a swirling concoction of colors, from simple grays to near-extravagant shades of the rainbow, as Niki's new wardrobe, enforced by discolor-retardant fabric softener, underwent a pre-adorning wash.
The laundromat was fairly occupied, and once more, Nikita and Gomora comprised one of the smaller couples that tried to keep from being stepped on by the larger species that moseyed around, waiting with baskets in-hand for their loads to be done.
Nikita leaned with his back against a cement pillar in the room while Gomora leaned sideways against a vibrating dryer, his arm crossed as he threw glances from Niki to the washer to various characters around the room, occasionally raising his chin to acknowledge somebody he seemed to know. Neither of them spoke. Nikita, looking down, with his hands in his pockets, appeared resolved at keeping low in the large room (washers lined a sixty-foot wall, facing an army of clothes-drying machines), while Gomora tapped his finger and occasionally shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"Shoulda brought a book…", he muttered.

Niki made no reply (though it was possible that the other noises in the room had covered Gomora's muttered words, and he hadn't heard him) and continued to look down.
The silence between them retained until two police officers, reptilian, garbed in uniforms, entered the laundromat. The walked single-mindedly across the wide room, passing by the Experiment duo. Neither Gomora nor Niki had noticed either of them approach, and had only quite realized that they were policemen until they had passed them, heading down to the manager's office.
Niki and Gomora looked on, tensely, as the manager, a frail-looking, sallow character in an apron, stepped out of his office and briefly exchanged words with the officers before the two of them turned around and exited the laundromat, passing by the Experiments for a second time while the manager, shaking his wispy head, retreated back into his office.

"Kinda nice, isn't it?", Gomora remarked, turning to Niki, once both of them had untensed.
"I mean, not having to run from the cops, even though we're wanted practically all over the universe? - this here's a piece-of-shit planet, but ain't it nice for a change to be somewhere where no one gives a damn about who you are?"

Niki received this; though it didn't show upon his face, Gomora's injection swirled through his mind in an electric evauation.

"…Not necessarily", he answered softly.

"Hmm? Whatcha' mean?", the red Experiment asked, cocking his head inquisitively.

Nikita looked about, from the moving mass of nameless laundromat-frequenters to Gomora, in his "I Can Read Your Mind" tank top and dark pants.
Gomora noted, with some curiosity, that even though Niki still looked far from not being unhappy, he was at least holding eye-contact with his host.

"…Well, don't you ever get lonely?", he asked, placing his hands into his pockets.
"Everybody here sees you, but they don't know you."

"Eh, I know a fair few in this neighborhood", Gomora replied, shrugging.
"I've been around."

"So've I…but nobody knows me."

"…Well, no reputation is better than a bad reputation, right?...or a wanted notice."

Niki's eyes fell to the floor for a moment; Gomora was relieved that they found their way back to his.

"Not knowing you is one thing…not giving a damn about you is another."

"…Explain that to me?"

"Who's to say those police officers didn't know we were wanted, but they just didn't care enough, for one reason or another, to deal with us?"

"Serves us, doesn't it? We're still standing here."

"…I guess so…but it's an awful thing, if you ask me."

"What is, Niki?"

"…Apathy…not giving a damn about someone right in front of your eyes."

The messages were encoded, Gomora figured, but at least he was being allowed to receive them. He wasn't naïve enough to expect an unobstructed precision from Niki on what made him less than content or happy…but gently entering into the mantle of what seemed to be the body of unspoken sadness that was Niki was a start, at least, he figured. It was one step closer to trying to get that frown off of Niki's face.

"…I guess that's a point", he concurred, glancing back at the washing machine, which was nearing completion.
"Point made: we'd be better off if folks loved more freely, and if the Alliance would drop the damn search for us."

"…Suppose so…"

"But it won't be that easy, huh?"

"No."

"Yeah, nothing ever is…"

Out of the corner of his eye, Gomora watched Nikita as they turned away from eachother - the smaller Experiment in his unanswering silence; how very much he longed to peer into his mind to determine the enigmatic mechanics that determined his actions and openings, so very alien to even a rounded individual such as himself. Gomora figured that he could dream up theories in his head until every sun in the galaxy blew up, and would still be left guessing as to what exactly was in Niki's mind and memory to mute him so…so was the never-revealing face of Niki.

"…Still, we try, don't we?", he ventured, after a moment.
"…By the way, is the load almost done?"

Deciding upon the unaffirmative approach (for the moment, at least), Gomora advanced to remove the soggy bundle from the machine's circular covace, and proceedingly went to deposit the dripping heap into one of the dryers, the panel of which Niki opened for him ("Thanks, Niki.").
Once the machine had been set and started whirring, the pair of them stood back and observed the frilless scene for a moment. Gomora looked up at the clock which hung above the door of the manager's office.

"It'll be over an hour before this is done", he remarked.
"Wanna do something until then?"

"…Like what?", Niki asked.

"…Well, ya wanna take a walk?...it'd be better than sitting around here until the dryer's done, don't you think?"

"Where would we walk to?"

"…Don't you want to take a walk?"

"I just want to know where we're walking to – I've never been in this area."

"Welll…that must mean you've never been to the park, huh?"

"No, I haven't…"

"Well!", said Gomora, his face brightening as he turned towards the exit in response, Niki following slowly.
"In that case, you'll see something you've probably never seen before on this planet. You just wait and see."

Niki gave a small nod in reply, walking beside Gomora as they navigated a path through the wood of shuffling legs. The larger Experiment had started to speak about something concerning this park, but a commotion ahead of them had caught Niki's attention: two commuters had gotten into a verbal argument, and were not being discreet about it. Something about money, it seemed. It became enough to eventually catch Gomora's attention, as well. He shook his head.

"Some folks care less about privacy than the cops do about us, eh?", he remarked.

Something about this comment irked Niki – something which seemed to challenge his feelings, which he had voiced just a few moments before. He considered remarking something in return, but he never got to it – before he could open his mouth, he trod into a puddle of slippery, purple detergent which had just been spilled onto the floor by an unknowing Sxythuxian. In a moment, his balance was stolen, and he gave a breath-stealing cry as his feet flew up before him.
In the split-second that followed, Niki considered the injuries that might be caused by - he thought this whilst falling - his head cracking against the floor at whiplash velocity: concussion, possible vertebral fractures at an obscure level, cerebral hemorrhage, intracranial bleeding. He remembered something that Jumba had told him – something along the lines of "incomplete and unstable formation and socialization of calcium agents" – and considered that he might break his hips, or shatter his spine from neck to tailbone ("Porcelain faggot", a voice he couldn't connect resurged in his mind). He remembered a segment from a movie that was reminiscent of his own. He braced himself for the pain which would insolently come forth only after the jarring shock had passed from the back of his head through his face. He made a fleeting note to himself that at times like these, the pain was unavoidable and had to be accepted.

Niki blinked, felt no pain after a few seconds, and realized that Gomora was holding him, and that he was not on the floor.
The few individuals who had witnessed the scene directly would've claimed that the larger Experiment could only have noticed the smaller one slip out of the corner of his eye, but that he had, in mid-step, reversed his direction and leaned back in a balance-defying motion and had caught his comrade with a single outstretched arm, as though the two of them were finishing an extravagant dance.
Niki blinked again, and turned to look at Gomora's face. The larger Experiment's eyes were wide, and his expression of fearful concern muddled by fading adrenaline. He could smell his breath, and he knew that Gomora could smell his.

"Are you alright?", he asked, in a voice that was calmer and more restrained that his face might disclaim.

"…Yes…", Niki answered, very quietly.

With a few more people watching, Gomora helped Niki back to both of his feet. The Sxythuxian looked 'round with his feathery head at the scene.

"Hey, man…what'you doing with my purple stuff?", he asked, sounding very, very dazed.

The two Experiments were able to leave the laundromat quickly; either the forest of legs had become slower or less dense, or weaving through it had gotten easier.

There was a twinging in his head, the feeling of which would've been rather expected in his calf or bicep. Still, it wasn't a physical twinge, as one would further expect, but rather an odd manifestation of a short-circuit, flickering queerly and annoyingly like an optical migraine. Niki supposed it had come of the slip, whether from a lingering potion of adrenaline which refused to dissipate (although he didn't feel lucky at all) or from a perversion of the flowing of blood in his brain. He considered an emboli, but he didn't feel ill, and therefore, Niki tried to dismiss the feeling, and tried to focus on other things.
Although the task evaded him, there certainly was an abundance of things to observe – the lower district of the grey metropolis was wide awake in the early afternoon, with full sidewalks and vehicles about every level above their heads. Gomora led the way through the stream of creatures, thankfully finding an exit onto a smaller, less-crowded by-street.

"Don't get lost", he warned, even though the cautionary remark would've been better received on the former street.

They walked for some time, over the hard concrete pavement that composed so much of the planet's surface, past lines of clustered buildings that never seemed to get smaller, and formed a continuous, industrial canopy that threw shadows over the already-darkened streetways.
Gomora had barely spoken since they had left the laundromat. He walked about half-a-pace before Niki, his head directed forward, unturning, untalkative. Niki had hardly figured on his host assuming this disposition; quite the opposite, he had assumed otherwise, how Gomora would behave after the accident which had transpired. Likewise, the "walk" which they were taking felt more like a trek: Gomora seemed to know where he was going, but was hardly occupying himself with how Niki felt about it. Niki hadn't hoped for anything at all, and considered that this wasn't any worse than sitting around somewhere, but it bothered him, for whatever reason, that he didn't know what was going on.

He was contemplating second-thoughts when Gomora disappeared around the corner of a building. Niki stepped after him, and found himself facing a truly peculiar building.
It stood, by itself, on the corner of a spacious boulevard, in front of a much larger, hotel-looking occupation, although nothing in the otherwise-drab and desolate-feeling surrounding could've called attention to itself as this construct achieved. Standing about a hundred feet high, and appearing to be made of polished steel and concrete, the structure was shaped somewhat like a giant igloo, with a large, radial dome comprising its dominant shape. Indeed, it looked so curiously out-of-place that Niki might've thought that a perfect sphere had fallen from space and that it was now halfway buried in the planet's surface. It appeared to shine, despite the lack of sunlight to cause such an effect. He had never seen or heard of such a thing to exist.

"…What is it?", he asked Gomora, hoping that he was looking at whatever Gomora, who had stopped walking, had intended for him to see.

"The best secrets…", began Gomora, eyeing Niki's gaze at the structure.
"…hardly need to be hidden."

He raised an arm to point at the structure, as though it needed further highlumination.

"This is the last part of the natural planet – a meadow that's been conserved for centuries", he explained.
"You won't find anything like it anywhere else on the planet."

"…I don't see it, Gomora", said Niki, peering at the dome.

"Well, that's what conservation is all about – it needs to be covered", answered Gomora.
"So the smog and crap can't get at the plants."

"They have plants in there?"

"Did you know that before humeverters, plants made air?"

"…I think I remember reading that…"

"Well, before the grass and plants and trees were gone, that was the only way to get air. Now, our state-of-the-art, piece-of-crap atmosphere makes it. Gives ya lung infections, if ya breathe too much. But in there…natural photosynthesis."

Gomora lead the way across the street, to what seemed to be the entrance. The door was large and dark, and opened on hinges. Gomora managed to pull it open and lead Niki inside, who had noticed a small plaque-like sign before the door, reading "The Meadow: 10,600 BGE Undvel settlement, site of Kikuchian market city, site of GE contact".

"Do a lot of people come here?", he asked, as they stepped into a small, dark corridor.

"Nope", answered Gomora.

"Why not?", asked Niki.

"Hmmm…I guess they find it odd; too different. You can't really go from steel and stone and drab weather to greenery at once, at least not if you've spent your life living in the former. Messes with your senses. I hope that you like it, though."

"Don't we have to pay?"

"Naw – it's a public park, so no. You're just not allowed to dig holes, kick up the dirt, pick more than two flowers, or carve anything into the trees. They got a patrol for that. Here we are…"

They had gotten to the end of the corridor, at which stood another door. Niki was reminded of the entrance to the disco. However, when Gomora pulled open the final door, Niki, even though he searched his memory with hurried, erratic fixation, couldn't think of anything to compare to the sight which shone before him; at the most, an illustration from Jumba's geography class, but nothing which he had seen before, with his own eyes. The colors alone were alien to him.
Before him stretched a rolling pasture of green. The green was grass. Real grass. Grass, for countless meters, upon a ground which was not concrete or metal. The ground had texture, and body, which rose into small hills. One of these had perched atop it a small enclosure of trees, stretching back in a miniature forest. The wood of the trees had to be real. Niki could smell it. Likewise, the soil beneath the grass was so very pungent to him that he didn't know what to make of it; he was in awe. He had to squint, as to accustom his eyes to what appeared to be, but couldn't possibly be, a bright display of sunshine from overhead.
From his side, Gomora gave his skinny arm a small push.

"C'mon…the grass doesn't bite…"

Apprehensively, but directed by Gomora, Niki extended his leg carefully over the grass, where it hovered for a moment or two before he leaned forward and brought it down.
The feeling of the grass beneath his bare feet was sensational: though calloused by two years of walking on nothing but lifeless plastic, metal, and concrete, the little green blades, in their gentle coolness, seemed able to reach right up into his sensory nerves and tickle and thrill him, so he very nearly felt it throughout his entire body. He shivered, but didn't hesitate to bring down his other foot. Gomora followed him.

"It was absolutely crazy for me, the first time I came here", he confessed, shading his eyes with his forearm.
"You can see just about everything, one way or another, but something like this here…you gotta feel grass to believe it."

"…It's…amazing", said Niki, the need to do so having forced its way from his mouth.

"Yeah – that, and ya don't bust your knees open if ya fall on it", replied Gomora, playfully, giving Niki a small shake by his shoulder.
"…but ya know what's also pretty nice?"

"…What?"

"Running on it."

With that, Gomora skipped out before Niki, nimbler than Niki had ever experienced him – an odd contrast of black and red against the green of the grass, his earring glinting in the sunlight.

"C'mon, Niki-dude…frolic!", he urged.

Niki felt too overwhelmed to do anything close to frolicking, for being overwhelmed, but he took an apprehensive step forward, and another, and another, following the frolicking Gomora, who looked very silly in his display.

"Breathe, Niki! Breathe!"

He hardly needed Gomora's orders; never before had Niki's nostrils flared as they did now, for the aroma…one could hardly call it an aroma, he thought to himself, but never before had there been so much to smell when there wasn't anything there – no smog, no exhaust fumes, no garbage, no sewage. What he smelled, though it took him a moment to realize it, was everything and nothing. At first, he considered that he had a function that had gone unnoticed until now, because how ever could this be 'natural'? The grass was a sweet, icy perfume upon the soil's hearty pungeance. He could practically smell the trees from afar, and although he didn't recognize the smell of pine, it quickly became one of his favorites.
The planet had as good as no change in elevations in the city when it came to level ground, so despite that he had merely walked as he followed Gomora up the small hill, by the time he got to the top, he was panting slightly, noticing the very physical difference between the air which had filled his lungs outside of the dome and which he enthusiastically swallowed now.
From the top of the rolling elevation, he could peer down into the basin of the valley, and was surprised to find a party other than himself and Gomora: though he couldn't tell for sure, they seemed to be a bunch of mixed species, some taller than the others, and were positioned in some apparently-ordered stance, from which they seemed to be engaging in some form of exercise, comprising of slow, wide motions of arms and body, stepping slowly, as though caught in some kind of debilitating dance.

"They're doing tai chi!", came Gomora's voice from behind Niki, as the former Experiment bounded up to his companion.

He stopped behind Gomora, and eyed the group from their perch with his hands at his hips.

"They meet here often to practice and meditate. I still don't know if they're an organized group or if they just show up together."

"Have you ever spoken to them?", asked Niki, who was as new to the concept of tai chi as he was to nature.

Gomora shook his head and answered;
"Not really – neither tai chi nor meditation really requires a lot of chit-chat. I've practiced with them a few times, but more often than not, I just watch them."

"You know tai chi?"

"Hey, wouldn't ya have guessed?", replied Gomora, striking a pose with an arm extended from his body, the other stroking across it.

"…Do you come here often?"

"Every now and then. It's relaxing, tai chi is. Heh, though you should've seen them when in all that enlightenedness, I just kinda let myself go…"

As he spoke, Gomora released from his lower torso a second set of arms, which protruded tentacle-like from beneath the hem of his tank-top before taking form to mirror his original set, and began to duplicate their motions quite accurately.
Niki had never seen Gomora do this before, and he couldn't deny that seeing it happen was slightly unnerving. He knew that some Experiments had the ability, but had never seen it operated first-hand. It made him feel odd – squeamish, awed, and slightly outdone, for some reason.
Gomora, opening his eyes (which had fallen shut in his demonstration), noticed Niki's expression and quickly fell out of pose, likewise retracting his arms as fast as he had released them.

"I'm sorry", he said, somewhat hurriedly, his brow furrowing in the recognizable concern.
"I didn't mean to…"

"It's alright", said Niki, trying to sound earnest.
"It's…it's nothing, really…well, I suppose it is, for you to have…to be able to do that…I mean, I can't."

"It's a bit of an empty feature", replied Gomora, after a moment, as he tugged at his shirt's hem.
"I mean, you'd think I'd be using 'em all the time, but I really don't find myself missing them when I don't use 'em; they make getting a job done a bit convoluted."

"Really?"

"Most jobs are designed for two hands."

Niki nodded, and blinked in the sunlight, its presence being very unfamiliar to him. Gomora shielded his own eyes and turned his head towards the sky.

"You'd think it was real, eh? – the sunlight?", he commented.
"Still, it's fake. Condensed ultraviolet lights overhead, focused to feel like an actual sun. Look up…you can't even find where it's coming from, and if ya look really carefully, you can make out the separate panels. The blue sky and the fluffy clouds are fake, too."

The younger Experiment's gaze followed his comrade's. The experience was an odd one: the source of the light always seemed to be shining just outside of the corner of his eyes, but search as he might, he couldn't find a sun anywhere among the placid-looking clouds and ocean-blue sky (the expression mentioned in his mind existed solely from having heard the description; he had never seen an ocean, and the planet didn't possess one).
He found this to be slightly disappointing – everything seemed to be real and legitimate, yet the sun which shone overhead wasn't a sun at all, and the limitless sky was apparently just another ceiling.

"…How do the plants grow?", he asked tentatively, unsure of whether or not he wanted to hear the answer.

"Well, the light pretty much has the same effect as the real deal, and there's a few supplements in the soil, supposedly", answered Gomora, lowering his gaze.
"Just a bit of gardening."

As his own gaze lowered, Niki found that if he focused, he could make out the walls surrounding their enclosure to some degree – a bit of a task, as they had been so expertly constructed to be unnoticeable and even non-existent, to some extent; indeed, one might've taken to walking towards the horizon without suspecting that there'd eventually come up an unnatural hindrance.
As Niki's face displayed apparent disappointment, Gomora anxiously tapped his elbow.

"Hey, c'mon…it's not that bad", he told his comrade, trying hard to retain what had appeared to be a positive mood in Niki's experience.
"I mean…the grass is still real, the air is real, the trees are – the trees! Have you ever been in the shade of a tree, Niki?"

Niki felt himself being taken by the wrist and coerced fiercely towards the small, ovalian wood that lay just a few hundred meters away from where they stood, by a very ecstatic Gomora, who seemed to have gotten ahold of a notion that couldn't be ignored by any means.

"C'mon! C'mon! You'll love this!"

The smaller Experiment figured that, had they not been closer to their destination than they were, Gomora would've lifted him up bodily to hurry the rush towards the highly-anticipated group of pines.
They sprinted awkwardly across the hills, completely unbeknownst to the devotees in the valley, until finally reaching the wooded perimeter, which was marked by a great shadow cast by the trees – a species of which Niki had never even read about: they were a rather short genus of pine, barely forty-feet tall, with stout, thick-barked trunks, needles which were blunt and stumpy, and thick, grey roots which arched out of the ground frequently, like many colonies of ground-dwellings serpents which had been petrified.
The aroma of these unswaying, silent occupants hit Niki strongly before they approached, appealing to his nose by way of fascination and adoration: he loved their unceremonial scent, and believed that he would've liked to have gone up to one and sniffed it, had Gomora not been directing him, most zealously.
The larger Experiment's promise about the transition from direct sunlight to the shade cast by a tree was not without merit: as Gomora pushed Niki from the brightened pasture into a broad smudge of shadow, Niki shivered instantaneously with the immediate coolness which befell him in this new realm.

"Cool, ain't it?", remarked Gomora happily, stepping up next to Niki, as the two of them surveyed the sunlight from the cover of their shadowy cloak.

Niki couldn't help but nod, and as he did, he looked up into the thick bundles of dark needles which grew voluptuously from the tree's many branches. He wondered whether they or the body of the tree made the smell which he loved so much.

"See these?", asked Gomora, striding up to one of the trees; he hopped atop one of its snaking roots and patted its trunk, as though it had personally won him a prize.
"Kikuchian pine. Very ancient…for this planet, at least. These trees are at least two-thousand years old. Can you believe that? Unpetrified! Only middle-aged, supposedly!"

Nikita observed this information with some interest, while carefully climbing atop one of the roots himself, and placed both of his hand on the trunk. Five or six Experiments might've managed to have formed a ring around its sturdy stem.

"Nice, ain't they?", surveyed Gomora.

"They sure are…", replied Niki.

Some time later, after a slow, weaving stroll amongst the individual inhabitants of the hill, Gomora and Nikita sat on the edge of the shadow, their heads out of the sun, and watched the tai chi practitioners. The two of them sat a few feet apart from eachother, separated by a small patch of thistly flowers.
More than once, Niki was sure that he had felt a breeze of wind across his fur, but reminded himself that such 'natural' generation was probably beyond the Meadow's capabilities. Gomora said nothing, while the group in the valley simply went through their motion ceaselessly, occasionally transitioning to where they began to engage in an alternate display, alternating who lead them from time to time by way of a harmonious shifting of reins. Niki thought it truly remarkable how well they existed in their practice.
He sat forward to shower his face in faux-sunshine, turning his head to watch Gomora pick up and discard an insect which had begun climbing on his pants.

"Curious lil' crawlies", he remarked, sitting back, supported by his arms.

Niki nodded, and turned his head face back into the sun which wasn't there. Though he tried to dismiss it as he always did, a small voice in his head told him to begin a count-down. He didn't comply so it did it for him; from ten to one. He was telling himself how crazy he was when, from his side, he heard;
"Niki?"

He turned his head in the ascenting direction.

"Yes, Gomora?"

The larger Experiment's demeanour had changed: gone was his excitement, his smile, his mood to please Niki. What had returned was a sudden uneasiness about him which Nikita failed to explain to himself ("What have I done, now?"). How this swing in mood had come about was unapparent, and so surprising was it that Niki felt himself receiving this new Gomora less lightly than he might've any other variant.
Gomora was looking at his feet, with his legs stretched before him in a leisurely fashion which made his current manner all the more contradictory and out-of-place…at least for this sudden occasion; he looked about himself and twisted a blade of grass around his finger before looking up.

"…How do you feel?", he asked, quietly.

"…Fine", answered Niki, his confusion apparent in his voice.

"Good", said Gomora in return, tearing off the blade of grass and further twiddling it.
"I was just…well, just wanted to know how…just thought you might…hope you felt…"

He went on for a moment, saying little bits of self-interrupted thoughts while not looking at Niki but at either sides of ground beside him.
Nikita watched this going on for a while, a slight feeling of something ominous beginning to brim in his chest as Gomora attempted again and again before breaking off, trailing off into silence. Niki was about to break the half-silence by way of inquisition when Gomora finally looked up, into Niki's eyes. He looked very sad.

"…Can I say that I'm sorry?", he asked.

"…Why?", returned Niki, who might've also asked why Gomora was asking permission.

"…Just for making you feel bad", answered the larger Experiment, looking down and then up again.
"It's been…weighing on my mind a lot. Quite a bit. What I did. I've felt bad about it."

"…What do you mean?"

Gomora faltered on this, opening his mouth, saying nothing, and then closing it again. He pondered the question and its answer for a moment, before seemingly deciding that there was only one acceptable, and it was not an easy one to speak out.

"…Me…telling you that I…liked you, a few days ago."

Gomora looked back to his feet, then at the ground, and again at Niki.

"I…I just need to get it off of my chest…it's been bothering me, that I might've said something direct like that, that might've made you feel uncomfortable…I didn't mean to, and I'm sorry."

Having said this, he sat back, somewhat resolutely, still not looking at Niki, who continued to sit as he had, and digested this small apology.
He felt confused for a moment, as he didn't find much difference between what Gomora had just said now and what he had said just a few hours ago, in the diner of the mall.
Obviously, the larger Experiment felt strongly enough about it to iterate it…and, Niki figured, Gomora didn't have to be a genius to figure that his telling his guest that he was attracted to him might have some negative effect on him, and tried to think, in irritable thoughts, why he hadn't apologized before. Was that the sole reason for Gomora bringing him to this place – to get him into a good mood to accept an apology?

Try as he might, a curious buzzing sensation inside his head, present still from the even at the laundromat, kept him from employing his full focus on being ill-inclined towards Gomora. It was an irritable, un-psychological sound…feeling…sensation…presence. Niki attempted to push it out of his consciousness like an unwanted thought, but try as he may, it remained in place, buzzing, which turned into a humming, and seemed aware of its own being inside of his mind.
Oddly enough, Niki felt no symptom of sickness, dizziness, or nauseousness, eliminating the possibility of a cranial episode like the one at the disco, but further leaving him in the dark about what this presence was cause of, and what it was doing in his head. He didn't like it, but didn't yet feel alarmed.
Gomora finally raised his eyes to Niki, whom he found gently scratching his head, a thoughtful expression upon his face.

"I'm sorry, Niki", he repeated, softly, leaning slightly to his side, hoping that he had not been overheard by Niki, who might've been pondering something other than his words.
"…are you alright?"

The smaller, peach-furred Experiment looked up as Gomora spoke, though not at the speaker, but straight ahead, yet at nothing, as though in a severe daydream. He made no sound or further motion, but sat there, as still and as silent as a statue.
Gomora leaned towards Niki further, his widening in concern at this unexpected behaviour in his comrade.

"Are you alright, Niki?", he repeated.

This time, Niki turned his head about to face Gomora, looking at him…with a curious, surprised expression, as though he had noticed something about his host which had until then gone overlooked by him.

"…Yes…yeah", he finally answered, and the odd expression melted from his face, and he was Niki again.
"…I'm fine."

He looked down, and Gomora thought him to be contemplating what he had been told.
When he looked up, he appeared still contemplative, but he opened his mouth slowly to speak.

"…I know you didn't and don't mean any harm, Gomora…", he said slowly, speaking each word as though he were calculating it with careful intricacy.
"…but you don't need to feel concerned…I'm fine…really."

He didn't exactly look it, Gomora assessed in disappointment – not while he still eyed the ground and spoke as though there were difficulty about it.
The larger Experiment thought about saying something else, but the overwhelming, uncomfortable feeling that he may have lost the end of the mutual thread which he had found earlier depressed him into closing his mouth. He looked away, as well, and felt a familiar stream of dejection beginning to trickle down his back, as he drew his legs up to his chest, ready to submerge…when something on his shoulder stemmed the trickle with a level of effectiveness that wasn't of unphysical cause. It was warm, soft, and gentle.

He looked to his side, and found Niki's hand on him, resting tenderly, so as it hardly weighed upon his skin.
He looked to Niki himself, and found him with his head still down, still refusing to look at Gomora, with the expression on his face just as unreadable as before…yet it wasn't the same.
Gomora opened his mouth, half-heartedly, to say something…but what was to be said if he couldn't understand what was going on?
There were no words, and likewise, no looks. Hardly any expressions. How Niki had crossed the distance between them to quietly was beyond the silent Gomora, who sat and felt the gentle, surprising warmth of his guest's hand on his shoulder, nearly insignificant in its physical presence, were it not for its significant power of radiation which seemed, at the moment, to act as a magnet, holding the two Experiments together for reasons unknown – alone, at the edge of the trees, unseen by those in the valley below.

Some time later, Nikita and Gomora arrived back at Gomora's apartment, the freshly-washed bundle of new clothes in-arm. Gomora mentioned that he'd sort the clothes into a few empty drawers of his closet, and disappeared into his room.
Nikita took a seat on the couch and didn't look at much. He looked around the side of the couch, and found Mel's urn, where he had stored it, securely. He took it into his hands and eyed it single-mindedly, whispering something unheard under his breath before wrapping his arms around it, hugging it tight, sitting in silence, and wondering why…
For whatever the sensation in his head had been (and what it was at the time, still buzzing in an under-existence inside of his skull), it had been remedied or partially alleviated by his advances towards Gomora…

Listening to Gomora's voice seemed to suggest this.
Answering Gomora positively had amplified this.
Touching him had proved it: the sensation, so irritable, and slowly growing more urgent, had been very much reduced by this.
Niki didn't know why, or what it was…but, when holding Mel so close to his heart, it didn't make him feel very good.