[attr="class","text"]Andres’ eyebrows rise and then come together. Onyx wants to soothe them with his fingers. Instead, he tilts his head into Andres’ palm, feels the gentle touch around his sightless eye.
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It’s a weightless sort of weighty, this feeling. So much and everything and not enough, all at once. Gone are the days when the only thing Onyx wanted was to return to his no-man’s land and his heritage of none. Now, he has Andres-- something factually, verbally cemented, now, as Andres tenderly touches the crests and canyons in his marred skin.
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“I didn’t deserve you, before,” he says, leaning forward to press a kiss to Andres’ forehead, nuzzle into his hair, before lifting up off of him to swing his legs over the side of the bed. “I still don’t, to be perfectly honest.”
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He has questions. He’s use to a sort of aimlessness, floating from one job to the next; he’s never had this… point of return. A home base. Something-- someone-- to come home to.
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Where do we go from here?
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He squeezes Andres’ thigh under the blanket, transitioning into a standing stretch. “I’m gonna go pee. You want breakfast?”

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[attr="class","text"]He knows, a bit, that most of this is wishful thinking. Of offering a kind of vulnerability that feels as though Andres is extending his hand towards his teeth and asking Onyx not to bite.
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Fingers in his hair. Blue-black strands spreading, free of their braid, catching at snarls and working through them with flexion and gentle untwirling instead of ripping, tearing.
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“No,” he says, voice like a memory, awe in the proper sense; the kind of fear that blooms bright and settles like a blanket. “No, you-- you can call me that.” Emphasis on the word you, because it’s special, unique. A tenacious sort of delicacy. He will force himself to accommodate his weakness, his fragility, and not the other way around. A shard of glass sharpened to a perfect, certain point.
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“She was all I had, for a long time. But now… now, I have you?” His voice curls up in a question, like a wary cat.

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[attr="class","text"]Yeah, the Magikarp Splash was just as tricky as he remembered it being.

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[attr="class","text"]He passed the first item he’d retrieved off to Cymbalon for her to play with-- she liked to chase it around and blap it with her tongue-- and dove for a second.
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[attr="class","text"]This was, what, his third year doing this?
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He felt reasonably assured he was getting far too old for it. Never less so than when he shook standing up on the mantine.
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“Try this stupid-- splash thing.”

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[attr="class","text"]“This again, huh?” he asked, looking down through the shimmering sea at the fake Clamperl staged far below. Around him, people splashed in the surf, taking joy in the shining sun, the good weather, and the brief peace.
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Onyx sighed, and dove.
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[attr="class","text"]Look, the guy has two hobbies: fucking his boyfriend, and fighting. And his boyfriend ain’t here right now.
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Onyx steps to the side and lets the Shaymin’s zen headbutt do his job for him.
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“Look, I didn’t want to fight,” he says, pulling a face at how weird the words sound coming out of his mouth.
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Then the world begins to tremble. The ground shakes. Splinters of earth punch up through metal flooring. Racks of materials shiver, sending items big and small cascading to the floor with loud bangs.
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“I wouldn’t--,” do that in here, he starts to say, but a spike of earth pierces up and stabs Fawkes in the back. The little Charcadet squeals and tumbles forward onto his knees. Onyx curses, takes a few long strides towards the fire child, and scoops him up in one arm.
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“That’s enough of that. Have a good night.” He books for the way they came in as a rhythmic thudding fills the air-- the sound of shelf after shelf of heavy, metallic components crashes and falls into the next, one after another, one ton dominos tipping towards him and Noel.

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[attr="class","text"]Trust was a rare currency in his world, so the fact he was trusting Yuina, here, now, was… surprising, to say the least. But he’d have to deal with that later.
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Maybe more surprising was the way Yuina kept throwing out these gigantic, special-looking Pokemon.
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“Holy shit, woman,” he said, watching the giant elephant tear through the cavern and begin wreaking havoc, “where are you keeping these things?!”

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[attr="class","text"]Andres looks at Onyx like he’s a feral cat-- one wrong move, one too-quick breath, and Onyx’ll bolt for a secret hiding spot and be gone for a couple of days, minimum. It hurts, because Onyx has done this to him, has made him this way, like he’s walking on shards of glass, but he exhales out that hurt because now it’s time for the unmaking.
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He presses a gentle kiss to Andres’ sternum and leans forward to bomp their foreheads together lightly-- oh, god, maybe he is a cat-- and is laughing softly with Andres until--
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--he freezes. His eyes go distant, unfocused, his cheeks a little slack; all the oxygen leaches out of him. He swallows once, twice, blinking through his reboot.
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“No one’s called me that since my sister died,” he manages to choke out in explanation, mid-restart.

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