execution | oh look, what's this? they're hanging mistletoe

Although Clear cannot truly sleep as humans do, he’s come to enjoy this sort of ‘pretending’. His home, his bed, his most precious person within it. He cuddles up to Koujaku’s side, or is cuddled up to in turn, or sometimes he’s even left in amusement as Koujaku manages to sleep-sprawl away entirely for Clear to watch in the moonlight.

And sometimes—like now—when he picks up on the signs that Koujaku is stirring towards wakefulness, he rolls over so that it’s his back pressed against the other man. Not to be a barrier, of course, but because he loves the way Koujaku rolls over and presses against him just like that.

“Yes,” he agrees readily, his usual chirp as always, his tone warm and a little laughing even though he stays facing away. He’s learned, after all: just as Clear hastens to close any distances Koujaku’s playing around puts between them, Koujaku does exactly the same whenever Clear tries it on him in turn.

“Good morning, Koujaku-san. Did you sleep well?”

"Yeah, I did." He kicks his end of the blanket to one side and drapes his leg over Clear's, more or less keeping him trapped and blanket-cocooned in that position while Koujaku wraps his arms about the other's waist.

Yep, just another morning for these two, albeit with one crucial difference.

He'd asked Clear of what he knew about Christmas, of course, and especially about its traditions, but if Clear remains clueless about mistletoes in particular, Koujaku hasn't really been forthcoming about the tradition surrounding it.

But now that Clear's locked against him, Koujaku nuzzles him in the back of his neck and nips at an ear, whispering,

"Look up."

Beni's fluttering above them with a sprig of mistletoe in his beak, and once Clear's let his guard down, Koujaku's going in for the kill.

Like a lot of Clear’s preprogrammed knowledge, it was one of those things he had to stop and actively think about in order to provide the relevant information. Just as it was for someone who knew information only from books or other secondhand sources, Clear had made his replies in abstracts and hypotheticals. He had no individual experience with the season, but wholeheartedly looked forward to its arrival.

He melts backwards into Koujaku’s arms, as ever feeling that rush of warmth and jittery circuits for having come so far with someone so beloved to him and already starting to turn his head in response to the nip, but stops in surprise at the whisper.

If not for the bright red flutter of Beni’s wings to catch his eyes, Clear might not have even noticed. It’s such an unassuming thing, such a little sprig of green leaves and white berries. Beni’s motion and plumage provides the perfect contrast for Clear to actually see it.

To recognize it, on the other hand, is not so immediate.

“Ah?” An innocently puzzled sound and Clear is quite distracted as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing.
“What is that?”

Koujaku doesn't even answer—not when he's trying to shove his tongue inside of Clear, anyway. His arm had slid up, stopping under Clear's arms as fingers curl over his chin and bring him close to Koujaku's searching mouth.

And Beni, fluttering above, only thinks, finally, and wishes Ren's new body still had some sort of wireless communications port installed. Alas.

There are only so many ways Koujaku can do to show how glad and grateful he is for the life that Clear's given him, and he's not even sure if it's enough—sure, Christmas isn't such a significant holiday in this part of the world, but in Koujaku's mind, it's another opportunity for thanks. And isn't that what Christmas is all about?

His kiss is long and lingering, swallowing queries and protests from the other as his fingers loosen their grip on that piebald chin and curl up gently against the hollow of his throat instead.

Well he did want Clear’s guard down, and so it is. Even as his face is being further turned, Clear’s pale eyes are still tracking that spray of greenery and wondering what it could be, what significance it could have that he’s not—

And then there is the warmth of a familiar mouth upon and within his with equally familiar enthusiasm and Clear is still caught enough by surprise for a blush to surge up into his cheeks. It’s 0% embarrassment and 100% pleasure, though, just set on delay as, once again, life with Koujaku fails to be boring.

So there’s a muffled sound from him that’s a little like another almost laugh, quick dissolving into a throaty sigh under Koujaku’s hand. He cannot turn around without fighting that comfortably tight tangle of Koujaku’s limbs and so he does not, he just leans backwards against him as much as he can and turns his head further, making his mouth all the more available to the other.

He’ll figure out the actual significance of the plant later.

All going according to plan so far—maybe he should wise up and keep things simple like this, next time. Koujaku pulls himself up and over until he's bracing one hand in front of Clear's totally-still-there beating heart, until he's kissing Clear from up above before pulling away for air.

It's good to have someone who can outlast his stamina for a change.

Of course, Koujaku doesn't pull away too far, and he most certainly has yet to pull himself from this embrace.

"Merry Christmas," he lilts, rubbing cheek and stubbly chin against Clear's exposed cheek.

And Clear twists his torso until he’s essentially lying on his back, despite his legs being twisted in their Koujaku-pinned-blanketroll off to the side. He gets his hands touching Koujaku wherever they might reach—one curls under and around the far side of his upper arm, another lays over the hand on his chest and holds onto it there.

As usual, he’s still trying to kiss when Koujaku has to pull away to breathe, but he sags back into his tasseled pillow compliantly enough to just beam up at the other man. The odd bit of plant is new and it’s niggling something at his thoughts that he can’t quite catch, but waking up to kisses never gets old or trite and—

He’s ambushed by stubble. It’s the strangest sensation, the kind that makes his sensory circuits go the strangest kind of haywire and he jumps and squirms reflexively. That he doesn’t get very far is admittedly testimony to him not using all of his robotic strength, rather than Koujaku’s limbs actually holding him trapped, but who is Clear to really try to escape?

But his circuits are haywire—which is to say, it tickles.

“K-! Koujaku-san!” It tickles and he’s laughing, his hands scrabbling on Koujaku’s skin but never shoving him away. “Your face!”

Beni takes the moment to spit out the mistletoe and flutter away to a cherry branch outside. Sure, he's programmed to assist Koujaku in all endeavors, but that doesn't mean he can't find some of his antics a little insensible.

That, and he figures they never needed the fucking mistletoe in the first place.

Koujaku stops when the sprig bops him on the head, his chin still pressed to Clear's cheek. They do this way too often—ever since Koujaku's gotten most of his strength back. (He will never be the same, the doctors and everyone else keep whispering behind them. Koujaku thinks, Damn right I won't.)

He will always feel that dull creak in his bones, the barely-there-but-still-very-much-there squelch of tendons and muscle fibers straining, grazing against his fused bones. It's barely been a year since Clear's moved in and Koujaku still feels those phantom aches and pains whenever they make love, but they've all melted into a steady rhythm over time, a harmless pianissimo of his remade body moving, beating, flowing in time to Clear's.

"Hmm? What about it?" His voice is languid, syrupy, as he breathes in the smell of Clear and the smell of him all over Clear.

"Don't you like it?" It's definitely an acquired taste, but some of the women he'd been with had expressed delight at having to deal with his five o'clock shadow on some days. Go figure.

After that nearly-year, then, it’s not as if Clear’s never encountered Koujaku with a case of the stubble before, but getting tickle-assaulted with it like this is about as rare…since it involves Koujaku slacking in his personal grooming enough for the stubble to show up in significant quantity, after all.

Clear’s laughter settles along with the pseudo-flailings of his hands when the tickling stops for the moment, but it just leaves the android rolling over even further to face Koujaku better and more comfortably.

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” he retorts warmly, putting his palms to Koujaku’s stubbled cheeks and for a moment just holding on, admiring scars and tattoos and that single crimson eye all, before curling his fingers over and gently ruffling that scruff with his fingertips.

“Zara zara zara~” he chimes with happy playfulness, no less devoid of his love of onomatopoeia as he was back two-odd years ago when everyone first met.

He ducks, catching the tip of Clear's finger in his mouth and just as quickly releasing it.

"How bad is it?" It's a playful query. He's spent all year preening himself despite his injuries, anyway. This had seemed like a good time to slack off is all.

There really isn't any rush on his end. It's a special enough occasion for him to skip work, right? Beni's already sending his regrets to his usual contacts as they lie in bed, snuggled in and against warm blankets—warm bodies. Anyone who thinks robots are only cold don't know what they're missing.

And there will always be that subset of people who think that that's what he's keeping Clear around for—as a "companion," of sorts, with pitying looks and elbow-nudging all around.

That's rough, buddy.

Never mind that that's hardly the end-all and be-all of his functions, but that's people for you. But he'd started a fight on those grounds a little too often, lately.

"Not too rough for you, right?"

To such a question Clear could only laugh, wrapping his arms around Koujaku’s neck and stretching up to rub his cheek against the other’s all on his own.

The growth of hair: such a simple thing if you were human. Clear’s had never grown a millimeter in all of his existence. It was the same short crop Koujaku had done for him that wonderful day last year, so simple and yet so blatant a reminder that he was something made, something inhuman.

But he was human to his friends and to the person that mattered most. Though Clear still dreamed of being human, his life was happier than it was not. Call it racism, call it speciesism—whatever it was, the discrimination saddened him each time it was flung in his face, but as long as he had Koujaku at his side to support him he would be alright.

Nuzzle nuzzle, nuzzle nuzzle.

“You feel all sandy, like a beach,” Clear answers brightly before sagging back into his pillow, putting a piebald palm back where his own cheek was just the moment before. It wasn’t fuwa fuwa, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

“I like the beach,” he then reminded the other man with a grin, since Koujaku seemed ‘concerned’.

A perfect life is hardly a viable Christmas wish as it is, especially not in Midorijima, but if the Oval Tower could fall and robots could turn human, then maybe it could be possible.

Koujaku doesn't need to ask him if he's content—as a matter of fact, he's taken to asking Clear the most inane kinds of things instead. Like, for example, whether or not his stubble was any bother.

Frivolous though it may be, it's only another way for Koujaku to edge them both towards normalcy, and maybe hope for a less eventful New Year's afterwards. Rescuing Aoba from the Oval Tower and Clear from a differently shaped one is more than enough adventure for him, thanks, especially when he's finally allowed himself to settle down.

"It's too cold for the beach," he rejoins with a chuckle. "But maybe not if we just take a walk there." Not that there's much to see—the waters surrounding Midorijima are, of course, polluted enough that only the skeletons of marine flora and fauna ever made their way onshore.

And that wooshing sound was not that of Beni’s wings as he fluttered out of range of these morons’ morning bonding, but of Clear’s flirt going right over Koujaku’s head. Well, that was probably only to be expected. Clear was so straightforward a soul it was natural to take his words at face value rather than see them as the attempt at wordplay that they were.

“I don’t want to go to the beach,” Clear smiles, amused anyway. He replaces his nuzzling with the touch of his hand again, fingers running over the ‘sand’ of Koujaku’s stubble and then up, tracing the sweeps of his cheek tattoo.

Jack traced his piebald scars, Clear traced his tattoos. It was just one of those things they did in exchange for each other, silent affections to reassure the things that had once shamed them.

No, it's the sound of that tease going right over his head, of course. Koujaku of all people would know what teasing and flirting sound like, and what they sound to him is a…sad trombone.

Oops.

"Then I'll bring the beach to you," Koujaku replies, nuzzling into those touches, feeling the pressure of Clear's much smoother skin against his own roughened chin. He breaks away from the touch to pepper that beloved face with light kisses—warm puffs of breath dotting forehead, eyelids, nose, and at last, of course, his mouth.

What follows is another lingering kiss, and with no mistletoe to blame it on, besides. It's amazing how habits simply fall into place the longer they remain with each other—it's barely been a year and yet he feels like he's doing it forever, like he's used to seeing Clear with his heart on his sleeve, to cupping it in his large, rough hands.

And if it wasn't obvious, he's definitely going to follow through on that little threat.

Well like Clear said, he didn’t want to go to the beach. Maybe there were no waves to hear, but he already could feel the coarseness of sand and a sun-like heat…so why go anywhere but here?

Clear’s arms tighten around Koujaku’s shoulders and that’s how the man can know he got it right this time. Not a passionate kiss, but a lazy and comfortable one, the kind that says there’s nowhere else to go and nowhere they need to go. There’s extra blankets heaped on the bed to ward off the winter chill and it’s Christmas morning. Breakfast for Koujaku will need to be a thing somewhere down the line, but maybe they should have it in bed, and Clear will have to get out his Christmas present….

And that’s when Clear finally gets it. That twist of leaves and berries tumbled onto the pillows as well and Clear’s knowledge finally strings itself together.

His mouth pops free of Koujaku’s and his eyes sparkle with delight no matter the belatedness of his revelation.

“That was mistletoe!”

Koujaku barks out a laugh before he can stop himself. Took him long enough, though it hadn't helped that he'd been very tight-lipped on this particular tradition.

"That sure took ya," Beni mutters from outside, hidden among dark branches, behind a curtain of frost and ice. The outside world is pale—a clean slate where the ice has scoured this year's sins away. When spring comes all of this will melt away, watering the seeds of a new year, coaxing the flowers to sprout upon the barren branches of the cherry tree outside their window.

Everyone deserves another chance. That's the point.

Koujaku reaches behind him, groping for the mistletoe. "Ignore him," he says with a laugh, reaching up with the sprig and brushing the leaves across Clear's forehead.

"Wanna go again?" The thirst is real.

That’s the problem when you fill a robotic brain with so much information it can’t access it all at once—or perhaps that just counts among Clear’s flaws, the reasons he was thrown out and would have been scrapped for parts if not for the intervention of a lonely and kindhearted man.

All just little bits of history repeating.

This particular formerly-lonely and still-kindhearted man doesn’t need to ask twice and Clear has no reason to be shy of Christmas kisses. He tightens his arms, pulling Koujaku down to him, and slants his lips enthusiastically across the other’s. There’s nothing special or significant about it, and yet it is: his first Christmas morning with his first and only beloved and his first kisses under the liminal space of mistletoe.

…even if Koujaku didn’t hang it in a doorway so the tradition is a little bit lost, but does Clear care? You bet he doesn’t.

Kind of hard to hang it anywhere, considering that it's all sliding doors inside. Besides, Beni's been slacking off on babysitting him lately, now that Clear's taken over most of the duties that comprise of keeping Koujaku from hurting himself by being a musclebrained oaf. And maybe helping him with technology sometimes.

But this oaf, once-lonely and never shy, gladly lets Clear pull him over for more of many kisses to come that day, and that's partly because Clear's gotten used to handling his body in general. Koujaku can be a big baby as far as his injuries are concerned, after all.

Clear really shouldn't do all the work there to begin with, so maybe that's why Koujaku's a little rougher, a little more inclined to dig his fingers into patchwork skin and use his teeth more often.

But mostly it's because he's ravenous.

In other words, he’s the same as always, but that’s another thing that can be said for Clear: he’s never not in the mood. Even if it’s another day that’s seen him refused proper citizenship, another day he’s told robots can only be property—or even something more ridiculous and far lesser, like he dropped some of the groceries on the way home, or has to flee a furious pecking from Beni because he tried to ‘fuwa-fuwa’ the Allmate’s feathers again…whatever a day may do to make it a ‘bad’ day over a ‘good’ one, Clear has never refused the refuge of Koujaku’s arms and vigorous attentions.

His friend, his best friend, his crush, his beloved. A progression not of exclusives but of one added on to the others, Koujaku is all these things and more to him.

So he winds his hands up into Koujaku’s bed-mussed hair and takes everything the other man has to give and enjoys every bit of it.

Eventually, though—

“Are…mm…Are y—mph!”

—well, alright, Koujaku’s going to have to let him get a word out edgewise first.

At least Clear will never lack for love, no matter how ridiculous its source. He may be hard to take seriously at times, but Koujaku is always there to comfort and reassure him, mostly because he can't do much else as he is. And then there was one point when he did his hair up in a heavy, curly afro just so Clear could have something to fuwa-fuwa into.

He might never live it down, but at least it had been fun.

"Wha—?" He has to break that kiss anyway, if only to catch his breath again. That, and Clear seems to be struggling to make some sort of reply. Whoops.

He pulls away, bumping his forehead against Clear's with a laugh.

"Changed your mind on the beach?"

Clear had looked adorable with his little crop of hair tangled up into a curly white perm like sheep’s fleece anyway, so as always, they’d been a surprisingly complementary match.

The kiss breaks but not the embrace, and by now Clear’s squirmed enough that even if he’s making no move to escape his little blanket burrito, he’s turned to face Koujaku completely under their covers.

“I like the beach,” Clear’s reminding him, because he’s petting his sandy-scruffy cheeks all over again, but it doesn’t stop him wondering either: “But it gets all extra silky-smooth when you shave, too. So, are you going to shave later?”

It’s the skin equivalent of fuwa-fuwa, so yes: Clear’s asking so he can be there to nuzzle up and enjoy the other side of the sensory equation. He’s a connoisseur of textures, our Clear.

Edited 2015-01-06 06:10 (UTC)

Holy crap they'd been matching poodles. The horror.

Moreso the fact that Clear seems to enjoy every bit of him, no matter what the change. There are times when he wondered if Clear would find him so much more satisfying had he been…whole, for lack of a better word. He'd be stronger then, rougher even, though Clear doesn't really look like anyone who needs some roughing up right about now. Or ever.

But he doesn't fail to notice that it never seems to matter to him, which is just as well. The stubble had been an experiment. A lot of things had been—they were more like indiscreet methods for feeling Clear's preferences out and adjusting accordingly. He'd had to do a lot of adjusting, after all, both in body and mind.

He brushes a thumb across his chin, with a thoughtful little hum.

"Guess I should." Since he didn't seem to care either way—rough sand or smooth water, what did it matter? What did it matter if all of him is for Clear to touch and touch and touch?

Then he reaches out to touch Clear's, to cradle that sweet face in the palm of his hand.

"Was that all you were gonna tell me?"

They’ll never live it down, but it had been fun.

Rough calluses and scarred knuckles, and still Koujaku’s hand is the most tender Clear has ever known. He tilts his face into it, his own hands dropping down to loop around Koujaku’s neck, lacing his fingers together behind it to languidly maintain contact that way.

That had, indeed, been all that Clear was curious to ask, but when Koujaku asks what he does in turn Clear takes a moment to think. Koujaku’s fishing for a little more, or so it seems—it’s certainly not unheard of among his usual manners of operation. Clear doesn’t always notice the bait, but he notices it a lot more every day that he grows all the more familiar with Koujaku’s own set of quirks.

“I like the beach,” he decides, “but I love you, Koujaku-san. Merry Christmas.”

And in he leans to kiss him again—for just a few moments, before he pops back out with a brightly childlike grin.

“Do you want your present now??”

Clear is getting scary-good at tugging at his heartstrings like that. Koujaku still manages to get surprised at all those little "clever" turns of phrases. Yes, there are times when he's a little slow on the pickup, but those times tend to get eclipsed by the furiously embarrassing show of affection either one would initiate anyway.

And Koujaku, being a boor with very little brain, had still managed to prepare his own surprise, despite his apartment's stark lack of a Christmas tree.

It wasn't that he hadn't been feeling festive at all—as the wreaths and garlands festooning his home indicate, he's simply more interested in working on his own surprise.

Shame Clear beat him to the offer, but it's not as if they're competing for anything anyway.

"Merry Christmas," he laughs, ruffling that pale crop of hair. "Do we really have to get out of bed for that one?"

“Well, I’ll have to get out long enough to get it, at least,” Clear replies after a little genuine thought, but making no move to free himself from the wrap of Koujaku’s arm and leg just yet. “It’s just in the bottom of my dresser-drawer.”

He glances over at the elegant furniture piece against the one wall of the bedroom. What once housed Koujaku’s clothes only is now also home to the many pieces Clear’s wardrobe encompasses now that he’s been educated in the ways of wearing more than the same labcoat ensemble day after day.

But after that glance he just flops his head right back in place on their pillows, looking a little puzzled, but content and untroubled. “You’d rather wait until later?”

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