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Blue stared across the fire at the boy. He was asleep, chest rising and falling under yellow tunic as gently as the soft drift of clouds across the sky above. His hat was still on his head as he slept, but it was slightly off tilt, revealing just a hint more blond than just the shock of bangs that Yellow usually showed off.
Blue thought he liked the additional hint under Yellow's clothes. He thought he might like a little bit more of a hint, and that thought made him think that he needed to screw his head on a bit tighter. They were here to find Red, not to mess around in the desert like they were hippies or small mice or something else that Blue definitely wasn't but he thought Yellow could have been in another life.
He tried to turn away from Yellow to forget the thoughts, but found he couldn't. In the day, Yellow was almost an annoyance. Not good at battling, oddly attached to his Pokemon in a way Blue had never seen before, yet completely incongruently uneducated about how Pokemon fundamentally functioned. But here, under the cold moon of a desert night, he looked oddly beautiful. Almost ethereal. Someone who had certainly been blessed by the forest after all.
Instead of turning away, or taking a walk to clear his head, Blue scooted a little closer to Yellow. The sand was still a little warm under his palms. Yellow must have fallen asleep really fast, as he did often, or maybe the sun had just been particularly hot that past day.
Blue stared down at him. His soft breaths were light enough to have been imagined, body just barely still enough to seem dead. Blue remembered Red then, and the jolt through his body made him think momentarily that his heart had stopped.
His body twitched painfully at the thought of his rival. Red was lost and hurt somewhere. Maybe dead. Probably dead. Blue's stomach twisted and he looked down at Yellow with a newfound grief. This boy wasn't like Red at all, so why did being here with him feel so much like he was replacing Red?
Blue struggled to his feet, shocked by the strange sensation of tears stinging in his eyes. He hadn't cried in years, not since he trained with Chuck really. But then there he was anyway, trying not to cry and staring down at a beautiful boy like he was a different one entirely.
”I'm sorry,“ Blue murmured, gazing down at the young blond boy, unsure if he was staring at him or at the version of Red Blue kept close to him.
Blue's shadow lay over Yellow, leaving Blue backlit by the wide moon.
Blue thought that was fittingly dramatic for the twisting in his mind and belly. He could almost imagine a sad harpsichord piece playing over the whole thing.
He stared and stared, until eventually something about his presence caused a stirring in Yellow. The boy shifted, and, not wanting him to wake fully, Blue took a scared step backwards. He didn't know why he was scared. He was never scared. Not when they'd realized Red was missing, not when he'd lost the league, not even when he'd been about to die at Koga's hands. But something about Yellow made him feel weak at the knees, and for the first time since he was very young, Blue was terrified.
The step backwards had been the wrong choice, as the crunch of sand was enough to wake Yellow. This felt more unlucky than anything that had ever happened to Blue, which was ridiculous because he was generally a very unlucky sort of person.
Yellow blinked up at him, confused and dizzy. His eyes were dark in Blue's shadow, unlike the slight yellow hint they got when Yellow used his power.
Blue couldn't move, he could hardly breathe.
“Wha-, Blue?” Yellow asked, his voice just a bit scratchy from sleep, “What are you doing?“
Blue wasn't sure what he was doing either. He hovered over Yellow, not wanting to scare him, but not wanting to back away either. Unable, really.
”Blue?“ Yellow asked again, rubbing his dark eyes and sitting up, "is something wrong?"
Blue liked the way the moon shone off of the worried pose of his jaw and his pointy nose. He wasn't sure if it really did remind him of Red, or if he was just telling himself that to feel better about staring.
"Yeah," Blue lied, sitting down heavily. He was acting so human it was scaring him, but he couldn't stop. He leaned forward. He couldn't stop.
Yellow didn't lean back.
Blue put their foreheads together, and stared into Yellow's dark eyes. The angle was silly. Yellow looked confused, not uncomfortable. Blue shut his eyes and breathed against Yellow's face slightly.
Yellow breathed back. Blond eyelashes fluttered next to Blue's skin.
Blue didn't know why, but he leaned in closer.
He thought almost that Yellow as glowing as he kissed him. Maybe he was. He did that sometimes.
Yellow took a moment to kiss back, but suddenly he was, and their hands were on each other's sides. Blue felt like crying. He hadn't kissed anyone since... well since before Red had gone missing. He didn't know he had missed it so much. His parents were dead and he had never known he could miss anything this much.
The kiss became more, and then Blue was sure that Yellow was glowing. He could feel it in his bones, that magic of life and love and forgiveness. It was addicting, and he wanted more.
Blue began to unconsciously slip his hand lower, and the magic flickered out. Yellow yelped and drew back from the kiss, bringing a hand to the top of his head the way he did when wind came through.
Blue found his own body almost following Yellow to start the kiss again, but he stopped himself. He really wanted to go for it, but he knew he couldn't. Yellow's pale face was an unnatural color under the moonlight, but Blue could still tell he was blushing.
At least he didn't look scared.
”I'm sorry," Blue breathed, surprised by how human his voice sounded, ”I'm sorry.“
”I'm sorry,“ Yellow repeated back. Blue didn't think he had to apologize at all. He was the student, after all. Blue was supposed to be the put together one, not the one crying over friends he knew were dead and kissing the first boy he saw as if that would make it better. Yellow was just too nice to him, that was all. This wasn't his fault. He just wanted to help.
Maybe both of them loved Red as much as each other, really. Maybe that was why the kiss had felt so good. Maybe they'd been both pretending it was him. He should tell him that theory and laugh about it.
But Blue couldn't voice any of that because he knew it wasn't true.
Instead he just cleared his throat and scooted backwards to his own bedroll, dragging sand into the sheets as he went. ”Long day of training tomorrow,“ he said, voice stilted like it had always been before, completely unlike how he had sounded when he'd kissed Yellow, ”We should get some rest.“
He turned away from Yellow before he could say anything back. Blue yawned as realistically as he could and fell still, pretending to be able to fall asleep as easily as the blond could.
There was a shuffling as Yellow lay back down as well.
But as the moon slipped across the sky, Blue was pretty sure even Yellow hadn't fallen asleep this time either.