Temporary Lodging

—

It's been a while since he's shared a room with someone. Even if it is only the temporary lodging of a vessel taking them to Earth. But the cot opposite his is empty and has been all night.

The digital clock's display in the corner of the screen mounted in the wall is all the light in the room. In its dimness he absently plays with the unruly hair that tumbles over his shoulder and his pillow like a mess of weeds. Around his fingers he curls strands that in the false sunlight of the PLANTs were like the translucent pale green of immature maple leaves, and just as soft. If someone said they even photosynthesized, he would have believed it. In the pale light of the digital clock they are reduced to the same color as the walls and the sheets, and the bare shoulder peeking out from under them. Just a different shade of gray.

Beneath that verdant mop Nicol sleeps untroubled by the thoughts that brought him here, his eyelashes gently brushing his cheeks and the corners of his mouth upturned slightly in a faint smile. It is a smile to mirror that which he had shared unconsciously as they joked about Athrun's seeming to doze off at his concert just the other day. But it is a fragile smile as Athrun has long known, one that fails him in private, when its maintenance is no longer necessary.

Around Athrun, who wouldn't judge, he knew it was all right to let that facade drop at the intrusion of the thought they would soon be returning to battle after such a brief leave of peace. The door of their close quarters was closed beside them and the lights switched off when Nicol manifested himself there. Sitting in the dark on the edge of Athrun's bed he slid his arms under Athrun's and around his body and pressed himself awkwardly close, as though expecting to be turned away at any moment. As though at any moment his reason would return to him and he would make himself stop this nonsense. His curls tickled Athrun's nostrils as he murmured into the fabric of his shirt that he knew Athrun was with Lacus, but if it were all the same to him, Nicol didn't mind if he thought of her in his place. He just needed to be with someone right now, he said as though anyone would do. But he would never have been so bold with Yzak or Dearka, or even Miguel when he was still alive and they shared a room.

Athrun let himself be carried along by the desperation that he felt in Nicol's grasp. To abandon the music he was content to hide behind and be vulnerable for a moment. To know his existence mattered to someone. To know he was human—before the cockpit of a mobile suit changed his whole reality again. That unspoken emotion was what seized Athrun and wouldn't let go. Even if it couldn't quite unravel him. He doesn't remember thinking about Lacus once.

Instead he thought of asking Nicol why he had joined the war effort, just as he has thought so many times since they first met. It isn't that Nicol is useless to their cause; quite the contrary. But he knows his comrade's agony, almost as though it were his own, when Nicol holds him that close. Clings, rather. As though Athrun were his lifeline. Never able to say anything, nor shed a tear, just indicate the weakness that he holds inside with shame, and yet is afraid to lose, in this concise way. Hoping that, if not shared, it might at least be received with sympathy.

In that kind of position, Athrun can never bring himself to ask such a thing. Maybe someday he will, when an appropriate moment comes. But at that time, to him, it felt cruel. It felt like a death sentence.

Nicol doesn't even stir to indicate he's conscious. He startles Athrun by speaking suddenly—

"Can't get to sleep?"

Athrun smiles.

"How long?"

"I don't know." He feels like he should be asking that question. "Am I keeping you up?" he asks instead, but doesn't make any effort to stop the lazy turning of the curls between his fingers, recognizing he's been somewhat entranced by the motion and the feeling that takes him back to something innate and primitive.

Nicol shifts a little then, pressing the side of his face against Athrun's bare skin momentarily, but in the end moving neither closer nor farther away. In the lesser gravity, it takes a moment for everything to settle again. He seems to read Athrun's train of thought, but maybe that isn't difficult: "I rather like it." The tone of his voice suggests he might be referring to anything, but an intimate smile—like laughing at a private joke—spreads on his lips. For a moment. He avoids Athrun's eyes as he asks, "Athrun . . . who's Kira?"

A strange thing to ask. "Why?"

"I thought I heard you call me that, so I wondered . . . Wait. That was the name of your . . ." He stops himself from saying something like old friend. That Strike pilot.

It's no secret. Not anymore. Yet Athrun finds himself as taken aback by the mention of that name with no warning as Nicol must have been to hear it. Expecting to hear Lacus' name or, if he dared think it, maybe his own. But not that. Athrun's tongue feels numb in his mouth and can only form the cowardly words, "Did I?"

"You don't remember." Nicol glances up at him. But then he thinks better of it, and lowers his gaze again. "It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have mentioned it. I probably misheard anyway."

No, Athrun thinks, he must have said it, even though he can't remember. It must have slipped out in a moment of physical weakness, as natural and unconscious as breathing. And he recalls that feeling that had come over him when Kira returned Lacus to him, and how his first concern and desire was not for the girl who was destined to be his wife but for the other. The boy who had been his closest friend. Once upon a time. It frightens him a little, in the numb and distant way caused by exhaustion: some truth that he knows lies just below the surface of his conscious mind, for which he has no words of explanation.

For the time being the faculty of language escapes him and he only feels guilty for the sake of the person who shares his cot. Perhaps it is a futile thing to think, that it isn't fair he cannot give Nicol what he deserves. What he needs. Funny, that's just how he felt when he last left Lacus, as he was driving away with the fresh memory of her cool cheek under his lips. Like something had gone while he wasn't looking, but in reality had never been there to begin with.

He knows this feeling is temporary. His understanding of it is warped by the darkness with just that little bit of cold light in it, by this intimacy of convenience. Nothing more. This feeling too will be gone in the morning, replaced by awkwardness at the geniality in Nicol's Up and at 'em, sleepy head, hard-won, covering for something else, as he sits in uniform on the edge of his own bed and pulls on his boots: we're coming to Earth.