I dunno, guys. I think I'm gonna go ahead and slap the "slash" warning on this story now. If you're paying attention, it might be hard to ignore at this point. Still could be read platonically, but I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable.
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Ziggy wakes up the next morning feeling better than he has in days. He's stretching wildly when his elbow bumps something squishy and a gruff voice says, "Oh good. You're awake."
Startled, Ziggy retracts his limbs hastily and rolls over to come face to face with a bored looking Dillon working on a crossword. Working on a crossword in bed. With Ziggy. This has got to be the weirdest start to a day since Ziggy first became a ranger.
"Oh," he says, stupidly. "You could have woken me up."
"Yeah, I'll cut short the sleep of the energy-afflicted guy. Good plan."
"It's too early for sarcasm."
Dillon eyes him dryly. "It's noon."
Noon? Dillon must have been lying here for ages waiting for Ziggy to wake up. "Alright, wise guy. If I'm so afflicted, I assume I don't have to cook my own breakfast."
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In fact, no one cooks breakfast. Summer invites him out for 'brunch', acting suspiciously gung-ho about it, but Ziggy is so hungry he doesn't complain. When they get back, Ziggy is feeling slightly worn out and climbs upstairs, hoping vaguely that Dillon might be in his room so the Green Ranger can collapse on his mattress for a while. However, when he passes his own quarters he realizes that it is lacking something rather obvious: his bed is missing.
"Hey guys?" he shouts, hearing voices next door. "Where's my bed?"
"About that," says Flynn, appearing in the hallway. "There's been a bit of a rearranging."
"Rearranging?"
"Don't look at it as losing a room, look at it as… gaining a roommate!"
Scott joins them, exiting Dillon's quarters and steering Flynn away by the shoulders. "C'mon Flynn, let's leave the lovebirds in peace."
"Lovebirds?" squawks Ziggy, heading through the door Scott left open. "Dillon, are you hearing this?"
He notices Dillon first, lounging in his socks and flipping through a box of CD's. Then, of course, he sees the newest addition to the room. Pushed up against the opposite wall and taking up most of the remaining floor space is Ziggy's own bed.
"Huh. And here I thought I had misplaced it." Ziggy crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. "It isn't nice to steal other people's sleeping areas you know. Is this why Summer was so keen to get me out of the garage?"
"Might have been," says Dillon, not even looking up. Well, that's just a bit rude. Ziggy opens his mouth to complain, but Dillon cuts him off. "Don't bother. This is non-negotiable. Get used to it."
"Who said anything about complaining," says Ziggy, switching tactics. "I was only going to point out that I'm not as easy as you think, buddy. We may have moved in together, but I expect dinner, a movie, and some very expensive gifts before this goes any further."
Dillon's mouth twitches, a sure sign he's amused. "And you wonder why Scott and Flynn make so many jokes."
Just as Ziggy's starting to protest (because he wasn't the one carrying Dillon around bridal style and he didn't start the whole 'our love is too big' debacle last night), he breaks off into a cough, a reminder of how tired he is feeling. Dillon ushers him into the room and tucks him into bed; Ziggy too tired to protest that he isn't a child. He dozes, half aware of soft piano music playing in the background, until he finally feels rested enough to sit up again. Dillon is back on his own bed, messing with his music box, but he puts it away when he catches sight of Ziggy.
"It's getting worse, isn't it," the Black Ranger says and it isn't a question. Sighing, Ziggy picks at the strings on his sheet and nods.
"We're going to fix this, Ziggy."
It's silly, but Ziggy feels infinitely better just hearing Dillon speak the words so confidently and he replies, "I know."
.
Ziggy forces himself to get up for a while after that, if only to give Dillon an opportunity to leave the room. Flynn abandons the new invention he had been tinkering with and reveals a bad horror movie he rented earlier. Popcorn is provided by Summer and Ziggy curls up on the couch feeling content as they watch stupid teenagers get torn apart by chainsaw-wielding mad men. After the credits roll, Ziggy spends a few moments being proud that he only nodded off a couple times and then spends a few more moments disturbed for being proud of something so ridiculous.
K emerges from her cave once to make some more coffee and watch ten minutes of the movie, long enough for the sluttiest character to fall prey to the business end of a machete. Then she's right back into the lab, waving off Summer's concern that she's overworking herself. Ziggy is feeling strangely shy about her obvious drive to find out how to fix him, torn between burdensome and endlessly grateful.
He manages several more hours of handing fruit to Flynn as he concocts new smoothie flavors, handing what look to be dangerous chemicals to Gem and Gemma as they create something that will likely go 'boom', and handing tools to Dillon as he works on his car. Then he's completely shot, regardless of the fact that none of those activities were strenuous.
He's in the process of looking for the energy to drag himself over to the sofa when his eyelids droop and he falls asleep against the tire of Dillon's car. A slight jostling wakes him for a moment, enough to realize that Dillon is carrying him again, but Ziggy is back under by the time Dillon deposits him gently in bed.
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The Green Ranger has no sense of self-preservation. Dillon berates himself for getting caught up in the underbelly of his car and not noticing just how fatigued Ziggy had become. Still, the boy should have said something, instead of 'manfully' trying to resist the tug of exhaustion.
Dillon glances over at the slumbering body now occupying his room. He gets that Ziggy feels like a burden, but Dillon finds that he isn't bothered by keeping Ziggy around all the time. The boy has been a wild card since day one, worming his way under Dillon's skin and settling there like he belongs. Dillon might play at being aloof, but he'd cut off his own arm before he'd let anything happen to those he cared about. And Ziggy is right at the top of the list.
A throaty cough catches his attention. Ziggy is shivering, bed sheets vibrating with the movement and Dillon is across the room and slipping under the covers before he even makes the conscious decision to act.
"Hmm, wha?" Ziggy slurs around another cough, blinking blearily at Dillon.
Wrapping Ziggy up, Dillon pulls closer and hushes him. "Go back to sleep," he says, even as he's panicking. Not only is the rate of energy loss is increasing, but it seems that Dillon has to be closer to make much of a difference. This is bad and getting worse.
Luckily, Ziggy's discomfort lessens noticeably after a few moments and he tangles his fingers into Dillon's tank top and burrows closer.
"Mm, thanks." There's soft breath on his collarbone and Dillon raises his eyes and swallows. Thinks of attack bots and Scott's stupid hair and K's two hour long lecture on hygiene. He doesn't sleep.
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I think I need to watch this series again. I recently put on the LOTR trilogy and informed everyone in the room what little Frieda in the second movie grew up to act in. Oh Dr. K, how I love thee. Of course, I got a lot of 'wtf, power rangers, really?', but that's kinda par for the course.
Possibly the ending to this is going to be unnecessarily dramatic. Not positive yet.