Secret Santa
Read the Terms of Usage
A casual observer could make the mistake that Yzak was a sun around which a planet called Dearka orbited, a larger object drawing in the smaller by its gravity until it found a safe distance to circle it, remaining close and bound to it, yet not falling in and being subsumed. The observer could be forgiven for an error in judgment, based solely on their constant proximity and their relative prestige, but it would be a mistake nonetheless.
Yzak stared out the window of his office, wishing the stack of papers on his desk would disappear. He would rather have been in the small apartment he shared with Dearka, which was barely a step up from the barracks room, and was graciously allowed to council members and aides who, as military officers, should still have been in barracks.
He smiled to himself. It had been half their lives ago when they first met, at the preparatory school for the ZAFT Academy, a pair of eleven-year-old kids, sons of council members, who were being groomed for military greatness.
Somehow, he thought,
we were drawn to each other. I still haven't figured out why. We were assigned as roommates in the dormitory, then became friends, and stayed friends even in the Academy. I had to be the best, number one, and I didn't care who I had to step on to be there. Outside his window, a gaggle of children played soccer, and one of them pushed past the others as hard as he could.
Dearka didn't care about that. He still doesn't. He's content being number two, or even three. I don't know what I would have done if I'd pushed him away.
Yzak sighed and turned to his desk, sorting the papers by what he'd have to deal with personally and what he could foist onto some underling. Fortunately, the latter stack was growing faster than the former.
Tariff negotiations on alloys, applications for resident status... why am I – ZAFT Elite – dealing with this garbage? He heard Dearka's voice clearly in his mind: Because the Academy trained us for more than just war and military manoeuvres; our training was to help us lead the people of PLANT to a better future. He knew Dearka was right.
What does he see in me? I'm short-tempered and overly competitive. He's always relaxed. I only can remember two times he's been angry, and one was because I had a gun pointed at him. The other... was because I'd once had a gun pointed at him. They had been in the barracks then, toward the end of the second war. Yzak had made an offhand remark about traitors, which touched a nerve and Dearka walked out. Yzak had been very contrite for weeks, trying to make it up to him.
When did it become love? Yzak guessed he'd been around 13 when he realized that the awkward feeling he got when Dearka came out of the shower with just a towel around his waist was sexual attraction. The next 6 months after that had been torturous; every time Dearka sat near him, he couldn't stop the picture of his bare skin, towel low on his hips, appearing in his mind. Dearka hadn't helped, either, when he'd "accidentally" let the towel slip. Yzak had had no idea how to make a move, or whether it was even wise, and one day he found that all his worrying was moot. Yzak smiled at the memory. There had been no words, just hands and mouths and bare skin and the awkward exploration of 14-year-old boys. And an unspoken acknowledgment of the other, that this went beyond friendship, but never love. Not then.
When Buster went missing, I thought I would die. It felt like part of me was gone. I wanted revenge more than anything, as if it would have brought him back. That was when I realized it was love. And finding him working with the enemy, the people on Archangel ... that was almost as bad as if he were dead. But he was right; he's always right. He glowered at the stacks of paper, then shuffled them further: more urgent tasks he separated out for his most competent aide. Then he tapped the comm unit.
"What is it, Yzak?" Dearka's voice crackled through the speaker.
"I'm going home. Come with me."
Yzak could almost hear his smile. "It's not even lunch yet."
"I'm delegating. Let's go."
"Fine. I'll meet you outside."
Yzak grinned and cut the comm. He stuck the papers into the appropriate mail slots and let the aides deal with them. The secretary barely raised her eyebrow at his instruction for anyone who needed him to leave a message. She was used to his periodic disappearances.
When Dearka met him outside the lobby doors, he asked, "Is something wrong?"
Yzak shook his head. "Can't concentrate on work, if all I can think about is you."
Dearka narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't sound like the usual kind of thinking about me. You're in too serious of a mood."
"Am I?" They turned the corner into the street that held their apartment block. "Maybe." Yzak swiped his badge for admittance to the building. In the elevator, he continued. "When did you realize you loved me?"
Dearka exhaled thoughtfully. "I don't know. Lusted after you, well, about the same time my hair came in. Love was later." The elevator stopped, and they walked to the apartment door in silence. Dearka sat on the small couch. "While I was on the Archangel, I thought about you: how would you be feeling, since you thought I was dead? I worried about you. I thought you might do something drastic, like take on the entire Earth fleet yourself. Is that love, I wonder?"
Yzak, divested of his long uniform coat, sat next to him on the couch and dropped his hand on Dearka's thigh. "It could be." He sighed. "I'm sorry. I've been thinking like this all day. I need something to get my mind off it."
Dearka looked at Yzak, read his expression – the set of his eyes was hungry, his mouth serious. He slipped his arm behind Yzak's shoulders. "It doesn't matter when I realized I loved you. What matters is that I love you now, and that we're here." He leaned forward and kissed him, pushing him backward. "And I still lust after you." He tugged Yzak's shirt from his pants, unbuttoned it, and pushed it open. "Always," he said, before his teeth closed on Yzak's nipple. He heard Yzak hiss as his hands worked on the buckle of his belt, and he sucked the nipple harder. He kissed quickly down the smooth skin of Yzak's chest and stomach, to the opening of his pants, where his cock bulged in his underwear. Yzak moaned as Dearka took the head into his mouth and sucked it, one hand stroking the shaft while the other stroked his chest and pinched his nipples. As Yzak's breathing became more ragged, Dearka moved his hand faster, until Yzak's hips arched up and he came. He rested his head on Yzak's thigh, just below the hip, and his hand wandered down to his own erection.
Yzak felt the motion against his legs. "Let me," he said. They shifted, and Yzak knelt across Dearka's lap, hand rubbing his cock. He pressed his lips against Dearka's, slid his tongue between, and kissed him, kissed down his neck, back up to his earlobe, which he caught between his teeth and sucked in. Dearka tipped his head back, and Yzak bit the soft skin at the front, eliciting a long moan. His hips thrust upward in orgasm.
With his free hand, Yzak reached for a tissue, wiped off, tossed it. He leaned forward against his partner, arms wrapped around his back. "You always know just what I need."
"I do my best," he remarked.
"Love you," Yzak said.
Dearka kissed his cheek. "You too. Now, you really should get back to work. Our disappearances are already a source of gossip."
"It can wait until tomorrow, and let them say what they will. I don't care." Yzak unfolded himself and lay down with his head on Dearka's lap. "I'd rather be here."
An astute observer would note that Yzak and Dearka were binary stars, forever locked in orbit around a single point of gravity, remaining separate, yet unable to escape the other.
