Aurora Borealis

Daffodils

"Dearka…" his father says, voice uncertain and hesitant. The man looks none too happy, but more shocked than upset. He takes a deep breath, coughs into his hand as though to gather his thoughts before saying, "We obviously need to talk."

For once Dearka keeps his mouth shut, though -sad as that might be, he really doesn't know his father well enough to predict the man's reactions and hence probably shouldn't blabber away. Especially not when he feels like being aggressive and defensive and isn't in a position to wreck things.

Unfortunately he can't quite concentrate on the situation at hand.

Allergic to daffodils? he thinks instead. What the heck? What did he mean?

He is quite clear on the fact that he cannot afford another misunderstanding when it comes to Yzak. When he first returned he was so certain, so determined to fix everything, but the Duel pilot was exactly as angry and hurt as he hadn't wanted to expect, and then they were of course interrupted. Oh damn, and here I even abandoned the Archangel in a hurry to search him out.

That worries him a little; she was a nice girl, that Miriallia, and he'd like to be sure that she gets along all right.

"Look," his father says now, pulling him from his thoughts. "Explain this to me. What's going on here, with you and…well. Are you," he struggles with the word, "Are you a homosexual?"

Duh, Dearka thinks. You just heard Yzak say we fucked. That didn't clue you in?

"Not sure," he replies with an honesty that startles himself. Then again, why not be truthful when lies will gain him nothing? "I seem to be Yzak-sexual, as of late."

His father closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, takes an additional deep breath – then, startlingly, fixes a resigned but not admonishing gaze on Dearka and places an awkward hand on his shoulder. "All right," he sighs, voice firming gradually as he speaks. "I can't say I'm happy about it but I also acknowledge that it's not my choice. Just… give me some time to get used to the idea. Okay?"

"Sure," Dearka says, too surprised and grateful to mind his wording. "Of course."

The elder Elthman departs almost immediately after that, leaving Dearka quite bored – he has no work waiting for him, and the others are all occupied. Athrun and Kira still aren't out of their room, and Dearka fancies he is quite capable of figuring out what they're doing in there. Even Nicol is busy, as evidenced by the muted song and music leaking out through his door. And Yzak, most unfortunately, has left and won't be back until tomorrow. There was a reason Dearka was in a hurry to find him before.

Sighing, he finally decides that he might as well get on with Buster. His father's reaction was a pleasant surprise; he wonders what Yzak's mother will have to say. He wouldn't spontaneously imagine her being very upset, but this hypothesis is somewhat contradicted by the other pilot's death-white face as he followed her. Well, he'll find out as fast as Yzak returns.

It feels like it takes a thousand years, but eventually the day ends. He goes to bed unusually early, subsequently curses the decision because he can't fall asleep for several hours. Eventually he must have managed, though, for he wakes tired and disoriented to the alarm. Struggling out of bed, his weariness nonetheless disintegrates rapidly as he remembers that he'll see Yzak today. Rather immediately, too, since he set the alarm to be in time for another brief lecture that they're all supposed to attend.

To his puzzlement and discontent, Yzak isn't there. This constitutes a majorly weird occurrence, as Dearka can't call to mind a single time when the Duel pilot has been less than perfectly punctual. He himself is early for once, at least for being him, but even after the others have dropped in as well Yzak still has not turned up.

All through Le Kleuze's briefing Dearka can think solely of the fact that his ex-roommate is missing, he stares at the chair Yzak usually claims and has to physically restrain himself from starting to bite his nails. It's worry without clear reason, but strong none the less, perhaps made keener by the profound lack of information.

"Where is he?" he asks Le Kleuze as fast as they're done. "Where's Yzak?"

"7th Memorial Hospital," the commander says quite calmly, not sounding overly concerned but with an underlying thread of seriousness that kicks Dearka's world out from under his feet. It is possible that Le Kleuze adds, "You may go visit him if you like," but it is also quite possible that he does not. What is certain is that Dearka takes off at top speed, headed for the hospital, heart pounding frantically in his chest. Oh god what happened his father must have hurt him oh god oh god –

Objectively speaking forty minutes isn't a very long time to get there, but it feels to him as though he's moving in slow motion until finally, finally, he's there and speeding towards the reception desk.

"Yzak Juhle," he pants at the nurse. "I need to see Yzak Juhle. Where is he?"

Directing a suspicious look at his uniform, she slowly replies, "Eight floor, room five-o-four."

If he had Buster here, he'd blast the stupid elevator to smithereens for being so slow. He's ready to scream long before it at last deposits him at the correct floor and he can make his way to Yzak's room. He starts out by gingerly edging the door open, not wanting to disturb the inhabitant should he be asleep, but the first brief glance at the contents of the room has him slamming it up so he can storm inside.

Yzak is sitting hunched over in the bed, coughing desperately, breathless, teary-eyed, obviously close to puking.

I'm allergic to daffodils.

And the room is practically covered in the offensive yellow flowers, their scent lying thick in the air. There is no time at all to think or hesitate; gratefully letting instinct take over, Dearka rushes inside, grabs Yzak and half-drags, half-carries him to the window. When it won't come open he impatiently kicks it, glass exploding outwards. Cursing at the realization that the frame is littered with sharp fragments he leans over to pluck a pillow from the bed and places it over the glass. Then, finally, he can jostle a still desperately coughing and mostly limp Yzak partly outside.

The Duel pilot offers neither protest nor encouragement as Dearka hoists him and deposits him on the window-frame, letting his head and upper torso hang outside. Gradually, though achingly slowly, the coughing subsides, leaving Yzak white-faced, teary-eyed and sore-throated but breathing without serious interruptions. Having ascertained that his comrade can stand by himself Dearka retreats back inside to dump all the daffodils outside and employ some handy cleaning spray that someone's left in the corner.

When he turns back to the window he finds that Yzak has pushed himself back inside and is leaning weakly against the wall. "Help me back to bed," he says. It's not really a demand, nor truly asking. Dearka obediently loops an arm around the other's waist and escorts him the few steps needed to let Yzak gratefully collapse. Dearka sits down on the edge of the bed, narrowly avoiding crushing the Duel pilot's left leg. "Move, you big moron," Yzak protests, voice strained, hoarse and weak from the coughing but audible and understandable. It also reassures the blond that the speaker is all right, will be perfectly fine with just a bit of rest.

No longer needing to overly worry, he remembers to think, "Isn't anyone coming? I mean, first you're coughing yourself sick and then I break the window, and no one's turned up?"

Yzak shrugs weakly. "Low budget. No alarms." The last word is barely out of his mouth before a new fit wracks him, has him spasming helplessly with thick coughs.

Uncertain and anxious once more Dearka grabs hold of his shoulders, tries to steady him. "You sound like you're dying," he observes with very tense faux cheerfulness. "Anything I can do?"

"Sure, Captain Obvious," Yzak grounds out, placing a fingertip against Dearka's fronthead in a mockery of a gun. "Feel free to join me."

Thankfully the attack wears off comparatively soon, and Yzak reclines back against the remaining pillow, expression weary but not unhappy.

"You're allergic to daffodils," Dearka repeats. "How can you be allergic to daffodils? You're a Coordinator. We're not supposed to have allergies."

"You don't say," Yzak replies sarcastically. "I never knew." His expression thaws a little and he momentarily closes his eyes. "Actually, the reason I started disliking Athrun even before he showed me up was his mother's damn perfume that clung to him all the time. It was chemical so it didn't actually affect me, but the smell…!"

While Dearka smiles at the admission, two considerably less amusing things click in his mind. "One," he says, "you must have known you were going to end up in hospital, or there wouldn't have been any point to say you're allergic. Two, why the hell didn't you or your mother tell the staff not to bring flowers?"

Blue eyes flick uncomfortably around the room as Yzak shrugs. "My father was around. He didn't like me much before, and he really didn't like the idea of me being gay. It could hardly have ended any other way." He pauses, swallows, stares at his hands. "And the daffodils weren't really that much of a problem. You took care of them, didn't you?"

"You couldn't have known that I'd be in time," Dearka argues. "What the hell were you doing? Trying to kill yourself? Why didn't you just inform the nurse?"

Yzak continues to stare for a moment longer at his suddenly fisted hands before raising his eyes to Dearka's with obvious reluctance. He speaks as though the words taste sour, like they're a shot – painful but necessary. "I guess I wanted to be saved, then."

It takes a moment for that to sink in, to realize that Yzak's offering the both of them another chance, and another long moment for the blinding happiness and relief to clear sufficiently to allow him to act. With infinite gentleness he gathers Yzak in his arms, ignoring the other's grumbling as he's moved. "Prince on white horse reporting for duty." He isn't sure how much of that is serious, how much is joke.

"Fuck off," Yzak replies rather contentedly, leaning against him.

Dearka buries his responding smile in silvery hair before growing tenser again, embrace hardening subconsciously. "But your father," he says, soft but firm. "You can't let him continue doing this."

"He is no longer a problem," Yzak surprises him by replying, quite calm and just as firm as Dearka though a tad strained as well. "He said some… particularly bothersome… things yesterday. I snapped, I guess. He's ten rooms down."

"Oh," Dearka says stupidly. "Well then." And it is good. Not that he's generally positive to the idea of sons beating their fathers up, but in this case he's quite glad to hear it. He doesn't need to ask about the "particularly bothersome things" – if Yzak wants to tell him, then Yzak will tell him, and if Yzak doesn't want to tell him, then he won't and things will be fine either way.

Right now it is quite enough to sit here on the hospital bed, left shoulder acting as pillow for Yzak.

An hour or so later one of the nurses comes to check on her patient and is suitably upset at the state of the room. She and Dearka escort Yzak to the closest unoccupied room, fortunately one without any horrific yellow blossoms.

"I'll be back onboard tomorrow," Yzak says. "You should probably go there now."

"Probably," Dearka agrees, pressing a kiss to the half-asleep Yzak's brow before leaving.

xxxxx

Returning to ZAFT is almost always a positive experience for Yzak, or at the very least a less negative one, and today is no exception. Given, his throat still feels like shit after all that coughing, and a fuzzy headache is brewing in the back of his head, but his mood is unusually sunny; he even surprises one of the subordinates by waving a smiling greeting instead of just sneeringly ignoring the man as per his habit. His muscles are aching from the fits yesterday but he's well used to physical aches and the cause for most of them will never trouble him again. He will not seek his father out again, and well, should they happen to meet, the man still will not pose a problem. He really shouldn't have said what he did yesterday – then again, Yzak is somewhat grateful that he did, for, though he didn't seriously believe that his father would do that, the threat was enough to force him into action, and he's won at last over his childhood fear.

And while his stomach's churning and burning and tingling at the prospect, seeing Dearka is an anticipated event. After all, he did acknowledge yesterday that he… okay, deep breath, he might as well be up-front at admit it straight out: he's in love with Dearka. Quite badly.

Unfortunately he arrives in a ship seemingly deserted by pilots, and, having made his way to the bridge, he finds only the Captain, who reports that Le Kleuze has been called away to see certain politicians from the Council, and Yzak's comrades are out in their Gundams fighting; this ship to is to heed there and help out, only waited on the Duel pilot.

The Duel pilot who, unfortunately, will probably not pilot anything at all for the next while, since the stuffy air aboard sets his coughing off again. The personnel's looks rage from startled to worried as he abruptly bends over and places a hand on the wall for support, his entire body shaking with the force of the coughs. He can't breathe properly, is still impaired from inhaling so much flower-tainted air yesterday.

Pride and duty aside, he'd have to be a complete idiot to think he could be of any use in this condition. Instead of storming off to launch he therefore makes himself semi-comfortable and prepares to watch the battle in unaccustomed and strongly disliked but unfortunately currently necessary passivity.

Staying true to that is suddenly so very much more difficult as they arrive and he abruptly realizes that this does not look good at all for his comrades.

Sure, all three of them are competent (well, that's arguable in Nicol's case but never mind, even the Blitz pilot is an ace compared to mostly every natural) and their mobile suits are the very best, but apparently the odds can still be against them.

Suddenly three instead of the accustomed four, without Le Kleuze's sparse but efficient directions, and against this unexpected mass of enemy units – no, Yzak can't be certain at all that all of them will make it.

He stands up abruptly, fully intending to sortie Duel, allergy be damned, only to find himself once more at the mercy of an intense coughing fit that leaves his legs shaky and his eyes sticky with involuntary tears. Oh shit, oh fucking bloody hell.

Because there's nothing he can do, abso-fucking-lutely nothing, and his team (Dearka!) is in imminent danger and the ship contains two sodding unused Gundams and not a single pilot to make use of them and –

No. Wait just a damn minute here.

A slow grin curves his lips – all right, so it's established that Yzak can't pilot, but why yes indeed, there's someone else who can.

He sure as hell doesn't like Kira Yamato, but if the other could hold his own against all of them with Strike, unprepared and scared, then regardless of luck and Athrun not fighting quite seriously – regardless of that Kira Yamato is obviously exactly what Yzak needs.

He stomps away as fast as he can, his rush to Athrun's room interrupted by no less than four coughing fits. Finally, feeling just a tad trembly, he reaches the locked door and starts punching in possible pass words to have it open. Third time's the charm, and the door whooshes open to reveal a surprised Kira Yamato sitting curled up on the bed.

"Get up," Yzak orders him. "Come with me."

"What?" Kira asks uncertainly, "What's going on? What do you want with me?"

There's no fucking time for this, not for explanaing and especially not for coughing, but the last isn't known to listen to him and a new fit has him clinging to the doorframe. When he manages to straighten up again and can wipe the tears from his bleary eyes Yamato is standing hesitantly in the middle of the room.

"Come on," Yzak urges, and the other obediently though with obvious uncertainty follows him out into the corridor and towards the machine hall. "You know the others are fighting, right?" He barely waits for the brunette's nod before continuing, "They're not doing too well and need help, and I," he coughs again, illustrating his point rather clearly.

Of course Yamato won't hesitate to do anything to help his beloved Athrun, and that'll be enough to save Dearka's and Nicol's hides as well.

"But they put lock-codes on Strike's systems," is the brunette's only protest, amethyst eyes wide and worried. "Do you know the pass words for them?"

Okay, so he doesn't. But, though he grimaces at having anyone else use it, "I know the passwords for Duel."

"Oh," Kira says. "Of course."

They're in the machine hall by now and Yzak drags the brunette past busy but staring mechanics, throws a helmet at him to put on while Yzak unlocks his Gundam's systems – then it's done and he makes way to let Yamato slip into the cockpit, and next second Duel launches.

Yzak slowly makes his way back to the bridge to observe the rest of the battle, which goes smoothly now with another Gundam to aid them. One elite pilot in a likewise elite unit makes a whole lot of difference, and it's no longer even a question of who will win.

Half an hour later his comrades and Kira return, and Yzak leaves the bridge to go meet them – well, to go meet Dearka, at least.

He finds the other pilot in the corridor just outside what used to be their room, where the blond is standing around dabbing ineffectively at a freely bleeding gash on his forehead. Purple eyes immediately focus on the arriving Duel pilot, however.

"Get in," Yzak offers, nodding towards the room. Dearka raises an eyebrow, which causes a new thick line of blood to trickle down his face, then enters and seats himself on his old bed while Yzak digs around in the med kit for some gauze and maybe some antiseptics. "Here."

"I'm surprised you let Yamato out in Duel." Dearka takes the items handed to him, but only to lay them down on the bed beside him, free hands grabbing hold of Yzak's instead and clinging to them until their fingers are intertwined and sticky with blood.

Yzak shrugs. "Yeah, well."

They stare at each other in loaded silence for quite a while before one of them finally caves, taking the other with him.

"I love you, you big idiot."

xxxxx