Aurora Borealis

Unresolved (Sexual) Tension

Being back on the ship feels good. It's not like coming home, but it does mean exchanging enforced relaxation and a certain anxiety for a different tension; it means an awareness of adrenaline ready to burst forward on a moment's notice.

Correction: Yzak can't remember a time when tension wasn't breathing over his shoulder, when excitement wasn't ready to explode through him, hard and fast enough to make his ears ring with the mad beat of his pulse, to have his stomach turn with the intensity of it. There are, however, different kinds of adrenaline.

There is the sort that just never lets you rest, that lingers perpetually in your bloodstream and taps into your consciousness. It makes you so tense it exhausts you, far too tense to rest, and then you're too tired to relax, and grow even tenser, and so more exhausted; and so on goes the maddening circle. That's the sort of adrenaline brought forth by the knowledge of trials to come, unavoidable and unmanageable.

There's a good version of that, too, the anticipation of tasks to accomplish, of goals to reach. This tension is like a tightening of your mind, but not constricting like in the previous case, merely as a help to focus. The beat of your heart and the adrenaline it pumps through you is a comfortable reminder of what is to come, easing and sharpening your knowledge of what you'll do. It can be experienced when waiting to write tests, but that's nothing compared to in the face of battle.

Those are before-occasion, and intense as they can be they're nothing compared to the furious concentration brought about by the actual events. There are bad and good kinds of that version too, chiefly two of each.

There's the wasted energy of losing to Athrun Zala, the all but painful frustration of unused energy throbbing through you. Adrenaline will have made your head light, so light that you think you'll puke or something since your grip on your body isn't as good as it should be; it's acting directly on your emotions and reflexes, without consulting the brain, and inwardly you're retching up your failure.

Worse is the pain of panic – how you can't see or hear or move, how fear paralyzes you and so leaves you without an outlet for the adrenaline pulsing though you, cascading inside the locked cavity of your body. Panic is the tension taken to its highest point with no control left over it whatsoever, it's fear so strong it hurts, and then it hurts for real, and the excitement continues to rise, forcing the unwanted sensations upon you ever more strongly. The sickening humiliation of being bested by Zala is nothing compared to that, and so Yzak is very glad to be back on a ship where a few losses to his comrade is the worst that can befall him.

Here, too, is where the good tension can be found.

There's a thrill in battling, in concentrating only on the fight, excluded from everything but the strained, overwhelming excitement, the rush of adrenaline washing over you like a tidal wave. It's close to the bad version, if you lose that's where you'll end up, and the slight fear spikes the experience to even greater heights of intensity. This, like the milder form of bad tension, sometimes used to take him so strongly that he had to lock himself into a room and just scream it out. He threw a lot of tantrums as a child, but this was different.

Finally there's the endorphins of knowing that you'll win, that you'll succeed and survive, that you made it and were important enough to shape your own destiny. That's thrilling and sweet and more exciting than it logically should be given that the danger is over.

Yzak is intimately acquainted with all of these states of mind. He's experienced them off and on since before his memories are clear and comprehensible, and to a large degree they shape his world. How strange, then, how enticing and disgusting, to suddenly be faced with a new type of excitement entirely. The accelerating pulse is familiar, and so too are the sensation of being shaky and the way his chest rises and falls with soundless panting – not so well, indeed hardly at all, known is the feeling of warmth sweeping over his face, the tingling of his lips or the tightening of his insides, like they're leaning in closer to something precious.

Dearka's eyes are on him and the feelings take his body from him; the new ones are startling through their mere presence, the old ones through their sheer magnitude and strength. If his ribs weren't there to cage it, he's ready to bet his heart would have beat its way to the far side of the room by now.

That figure of speech, by the way, is absolutely not influenced in any sense by the fact that Dearka's leaning against the wall opposite him.

Focus on something else, he tells himself sternly. Though I am ready to bet… Bet! Right, that's it, betting's been rather lucrative lately. Athrun and the traitor sissy, who'd have thought? Haven't seen either of them yet, come to think about it.

"Yo," his friend calls. "See you got here in time after all."

Yzak's rather nasty reply is halted by Nicol entering the room, not from the entrance like he himself minutes ago but from the bowels of the ship.

"You must've returned way early," Dearka, whose suitcase reveals that he too arrived rather recently, remarks. "How come?"

Keeping his gaze on the plant in the corner, Nicol replies, "I never actually ventured far from the ship before I was told to return in order to monitor Athrun and Kira-san. I was relived of that duty earlier this afternoon and thought it simplest to make my way directly back here."

"Watched the guy of your dreams smooch around with his sweetheart?" Obviously, from the way the blonde's words drive a violent blush to the amber-eyed boy's cheeks. "Gross."

Yzak forcibly hinders his face from tensing. Kissing on the floor-turned-bed, touching, testing, tasting –

"That's gross, is it?" he asks.

"Well, would you want Nicol witnessing your escapades?" Dearka replies, leaving Yzak uncertain as to whether his friend understood his question.

"My… escapades?" he inquires.

"Now, now," Dearka says with faux surprise painted over his face and advances upon him. Yzak curses himself for not preventing it until the blonde is already standing scant inches away from him, cornering him between the wall and his body – then he curses himself for thinking there's something about the situation that requires preventing. They've been in close contact hundreds, thousands, of times, and this is no different, there's no reason to panic that Nicol can see them, because, damn it, they aren't doing anything. Then Dearka croons, "Don't tell me you've forgotten," and now Nicol really shouldn't see for they are doing something, and – and –

He can't move, is simultaneously frozen and burning up, intensely aware of and infinitely distant from how Dearka trails a hand down his face, stroking lightly through smooth silver hair, whispering over his fronthead and across his temple, teasing the corner of his eye before minutely cupping his cheek. Next a fingertip brushes across his lips, followed by all its siblings along his jaw and spilling underneath, trailing the veins in his neck. Even now, with Dearka leaning over him with the fingers of one hand caressing his throat and those of the other tracing his ear, he only stand there stock-still and lets him, wide-eyed and breathing deeply and forgetting Nicol's presence. He should do something, either push the blonde away or reciprocate, take back the initiative in some manner, but he can't.

"Your attention, if you please," one of the workers from the bridge calls suddenly from the doorway, looking much too smug for his own good. How close to one of his comrades Yzak happens to stand is no one else's bloody business – even if they'd been freaking shagging it still wouldn't concern–

Now where did that thought come from?

Dearka pulls away and Yzak vows to kill the interrupter for seeing him blush. Yzak Juhle is not in the habit of blushing, but he is in the habit of making sure that those witnessing it are willing to die before spilling.

"Yes?" Nicol says at last, addressing the older man. "What is it?"

Straightening, the bridge-worker reports, "Commander Le Klueze, who is currently attending a meeting, sent me to inform you of some new developments. Firstly, the shuttle your comrade Athrun Zala-san traveled in got caught up in an unexpected battle between the Arsenus Squadron and an unconfirmed number of vessels from the EA. Evidence suggests that the transportation device escaped, and the 7th reserve group is currently searching for it. Furthermore, in view of recent events, the locating and capturing of the legged ship have been delegated, and this vessel is to heed to the Suzamo front."

Nicol collapses bonelessly onto a couch, face white and terrified. If he were the type to argue with their commanders he'd be demanding they take off to look for Athrun this instant. As it is he just looks shell-shocked, even going so far as to direct a pleading gaze at Yzak – perhaps desperate for reassurance, perhaps hoping the more outspoken boy will at the very least argue for a continued stalking of the Archangel, which would also grant them opportunities to find the missing shuttle.

But the legged ship is no challenge without its G-unit, and Yzak knows enough about tactics to be aware that they'll do a world of good at the suggested front. It'd be lunacy to go after the Archangel with elite troops when the dregs will suffice. That ship's of little interest without the Strike pilot, and he's gone along with Athrun – and yes, that was exactly the thought he didn't want to entertain. Sure, he doesn't like Athrun, often even going so far as to hate the blunette, but if Zala, arrogant, aloof, perfect solider Zala with face and voice that Yzak knows has been shot down, then… then something's very wrong.

"That was all," the messenger sums up. "Good night."

"Hey, Nicol…" Dearka ventures uncertainly.

The smaller boy makes an abortive gesture with one hand, effectively shutting the blonde up. With slow, over-careful movements Nicol stands up, lips pressed tightly together and eyes not entirely focused. "Not now. I'll go play for a while. Excuse me."

In his wake Dearka accompanies Yzak to their room in silence. Putting away what little stuff they've brought and getting into bed is rather a quiet affair, too. Talking would bring up either what has befallen Athrun, what's going on between them, or something completely unrelated and probably funny. This really isn't the time for the last, and Yzak is not ready to deal with either of the real options for conversation. Instead he just says "Goodnight" before turning off the light, glad that he and Dearka are close enough for the silence to be comfortable.

xxxxx

He has a pretend piano here, one that for all its shortcomings is painfully better than nothing. After much prodding around and with some help he has managed to produce the instrument that together with the bed takes up almost eighty percent of his single room. It's the same size as one of those play pianos for children, but crafted and toned to be comparable in sound-quality to a normal one of mediocre standard. Taking distant note that he's breathing so shallowly and fast that he's probably not getting enough air, which might be why these dark little spots keeping fluttering in front of his eyes, he eases down onto the stool and blindly seeks the keys.

Athrun's gone. Athrun's gone.

Not completely – though the best way to save himself heartache and worry would probably be to mentally declare his comrade dead, he absolutely refuses. With some reason, too, since they said the shuttle probably got away, and Athrun is very good. He'll survive. He has to survive.

Nicol hopes for Kira's life as well, but it's Athrun who has to make it. Otherwise… otherwise…

Swallowing repeatedly, he hammers on the keys, marveling at and cursing the impossible fact that even now the notes are beautiful. Wonder child that he is, he can't help but to make even grief appealing in a dark, saddening sort of way through his music. And he resents that, because there is nothing good in this. Fury and frustrated helplessness and hope so desperate it hurts, the pain of loss in all its incarnations, is so very much better expressed through his choked, anguished cries.

His voice has never been one of his talents, and it feels to him that now it has finally found its calling. Something so ugly and awkward as the sounds he produces are exactly the kind of noise that grief would make if it had a mouth. It doesn't, and so Nicol lends it his body, letting it rein free and pour its essence into the world through the million tears pouring from his eyes and making rivers down his cheeks, through the hiccups that lodge in his throat before exploding as muffled yells, through his clenched fists hammering the keys of the piano.

Athrun's gone and the naturals killed him and Nicol hates them.

He wishes he could hate Kira too, since these feelings tormenting him would be legitimate if he'd been in the brunette's place, but in fact he hates the EA even more for murdering him as well. Nicol and Athrun were nothing but distant though good friends, but, safely and wantonly with the blunette now gone, he can realize and admit that he loves him.

He couldn't ever have gotten him in any case, would very likely never have confessed, but the emotion is there nonetheless, at the core of the music that finally comes to him. Just briefly, though – soon, far too soon, it's gone again and he's once more lacking any outlet for the feelings tormenting him. The rage is gone, leaving him to be overtaken by bleak hopelessness and endless misery.

Unable to stand the empty room and only distantly hoping that no one will be around to see him in this sad condition he flees out into the main corridor, his feet tracking the way to Athrun's room without any instruction from his admittedly rather short-circuited brain.

Inside and with a locked door between himself and the misery of the world he collapses onto the blunette's bed, burying his face in the pillow which retains such teasing traces of Athrun's scent, and proceeds to unceremoniously cry his heart out. His very broken heart.

What comes to him when he'd done, surprisingly, isn't a mental image of Athrun, bold and bony and beautiful, but of Lacus Clyne, mild and wise and sweet. Startlingly but unquestioningly heartened by the memory of the girl whose songs he knows he'll play for Athrun tomorrow, he gets up from the bed and opens the closet, rescuing some clothing from the dusty depths. Because he doesn't want to forget, not even the smallest things like which brand of soap the blunette uses or that habit of his to leave little notes in his pockets; because he is in love and wants to keep some part of Athrun for himself, and it won't matter to the Aegis pilot now anyway, so why should he mind?

It is possible that the blunette will come back. It is possible that he won't. What is certain is that right now Nicol is a Gundam pilot of the Le Klueze Team of the Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty, headed for the Suzamo front, and that right now he has nobody but Yzak and Dearka.

What is certain is that he'll do his best.

xxxxx