Independence Day

It was getting harder and harder to hide their secret dance; they knew they were skating on the thinnest of ices, one dropped step away from disaster. Ever since the Second Uprising, when X had come back blood-splattered and carrying the broken pieces of his best friend in his arms, they'd known- felt it, absolutely, in the way that some things can only be understood as precious secrets.

They danced so carefully, so delicately.

They danced with eyes- deep, intense looks, blue and green stares, mouths taut and silent, yearning without words across the base floor as one parted from the other to mount a Ride Chaser and roar off into battle.

They danced with touches that played off as casual and jolted their bodies to the bone; touches blatantly intimate, a momentary brush of X's hand along Zero's hair before a mission or Zero's effortless placement of a hand low on X's hip, as they waited to drop.

Every step brought them a little closer to the cracks, to breaking. If they were honest-which they were, relentlessly- the danger of being caught made some of the appeal. Their secret was thrilling, invigorating, terrifying and something completely their own.

As far as X and Zero knew, they were the first of their kind to love, the first Reploids with the deepest capacity of humans to feel utmost desire and compassion and longing. Sexual fantasies had been a dizzying, terrifying shock, once they understood the aches and yearnings in their mysterious old bodies for what they were. X and Zero trembled in the night in the face of what was overcoming them.

They were dancing on the thinnest of ices, and it was getting so much harder to pretend they were still simple machines.

- - -

Soft low sounds, in a darkened lab room. Hard exhalations, hissing breath sliding over titanium plate. Around them, explosions echoed beyond the plasterboard walls.

An aurora of colors burst outside the windows of Dr. Cain's institute- the humans celebrating something called 'Independence Day'. X vaguely understood it as a historical tradition, but Zero, a little more worldly, had simply remarked it was just another excuse for humans to party.

And Zero with his practical, no-bullshit logic, realized that the explosive sounds and ethereal lights outside would draw the humans away. It made perfect cover. But he still kept his hand pressed over X's mouth as they rocked harshly against each other. X was flat on his back on the edge of a table in one of the sub labs, Zero between his legs, the blue Reploid's hands fluttering to touch anything he could of the red Hunter, mad with a lust that had been chained down too long. Random pieces of their armored shells were shed all about their feet and as they moved, desperate to touch and feel each other, their inner circuits ground together. Impulses arced from X's body to Zero's, popping and bursting like smaller versions of the riotous lights outside.

X bit into Zero's palm to stifle himself, and grabbed hold of the red Reploid by the nape of the neck, fingers pushing in hard enough to raise bruises on the quick-healing skin. He didn't know how to name what he wanted; he had no frame of reference for it, no routines or protocols to implement, but whatever it was, he wanted it more than anything. Wanted Zero to keep moving, stroking him, making him feel so good it hurt.

Zero moved his hand down the back of X's thigh, and gasped something hot against his shoulder, and dragged his teeth against the artificial perfection of X's white throat. He yanked X up against his chest, releasing X's mouth from his hand only so that he could claim it again with his tongue.

They groaned and kissed, and the sky burned outside, popping open into a thousand crackling fragments.

X came hard, to the sound of distant explosions. Zero screamed into X's hair, below a shrieking rocket that rose from the earth to scrape the moon and howl.

Panting, X and Zero stared into each other's eyes and fought a desperate, insane urge to giggle- there they were, half-naked, pressed together like two magnets, and the fires were roaring outside, a memory of war in the heavens.

X pushed back sweaty strings of Zero's hair. Zero grinned at him, slick and flushed, and whispered, "I think I get this Independence Day thing a little more now."

They were back in armor within minutes, after a brief scuffle and panic to find all the missing pieces and make sure that they hadn't put on any bits of each other in the dim light. When they emerged to the hall, only a little worse for wear, they didn't feel the same need to touch each other so desperately, brush their hands together and pretend it was accidental.

X's hand slipped into Zero's, and Zero squeezed back before they naturally let their hands part.

They were free.