End of fic RD... for now

[sakon76]

Ryu knew the power of wishes. They didn't bring back a mother lost to cancer. They didn't bring back a father killed in a traffic accident. They didn't get you out of the state care system, win you friends, catch the eye of Takamichi Hinako, who he'd loved desperately from across the classroom all three years of high school, or have any effect on reality. He knew this in a rock-solid way, and had long ago given up wishes.

So when the one he hadn't even tried to wish, the one he'd wanted more than he'd wanted anything since the day he'd been taken from his classroom and told his father wouldn't be coming home again, came true, he didn't know why.

Beautiful aliens with effervescent smiles and a heart big and brave enough to defend Earth against anything that attacked it just didn't come along and fall in love with people like him. They didn't look down the evolutionary ladder and fall for someone a rung or two below. It would be like falling for a chimpanzee, Ryu had reasoned. It wasn't done, not even by idiots like Mirai. So when he'd realized his own feelings, he'd been careful not to show them. You didn't fall in love with the sun, or expect to hold the moon in your hands, and if you were such a fool, the gods struck you down.

Ryu had tried to dissuade himself, reasoning that he was pretty sure he was heterosexual, and Mirai was clearly male. To his devil's advocate hindbrain's argument that Mirai was an alien and thus it didn't count he responded with what he'd read in Mirai's name, the wavering bar that said Mirai was male, of a bi-gendered species, the same as him. In telling Ryu what the Ultra script said in Ryu's name, Mirai had perhaps unwittingly taught Ryu how to read his own as well. But the argument hadn't seemed to make a difference, and now Mirai's name hovered before Ryu in softly glowing green fire again, the same character appended to it that had ended his own.

"Why?" Ryu asked numbly.

"Why what?" Mirai asked in return.

"Why love someone who's not even like you," Ryu replied, not knowing what to think, what to say. He should be happy. Why did he feel, then, like this was just a mistake on Mirai's part, that he was going to realize that at some inevitable point, and that the resulting fallout would tear apart whatever in Ryu still hoped?

Mirai hesitated. "When I was little," he said finally, "and learning not to use concepts like ‘love' so lightly, I was told that it's never a what someone loves, but a who." His expression was still but his eyes were earnest. "Falling for someone who isn't an Ultra isn't common, but it's not unheard of, either."

"Can't control who you fall for either, huh?" Ryu asked.

Mirai shook his head. "We can, somewhat... if we couldn't, we'd all be pretty miserable. For us, once is for always."

The implication sunk in slowly. "Mirai...." Then Ryu got to his feet and glared down at his teammate. "What the hell are you doing, wasting that on me?" he demanded.

Mirai stood too and glared back. "It's not wasted, Ryu-san! You're what I was sent here to find...." His voice trailed off. Ryu waited. "My important thing," Mirai said quietly. "The person who completes me." His eyes flickered down briefly, then he looked back up, and there was something firm in his glance. "Will you trust me, Ryu-san?" he asked, holding out a hand.

Ryu thought about the question honestly for a second. He trusted Mirai with his life; that wasn't even in doubt. And he trusted Mirai with his own life, mostly; not to pull some stupid stunt or get himself killed crossing the street, though there'd been one call, when they'd all found out who Mirai was, that had been closer than Ryu ever wanted to come again. But there was a difference between a life and a soul; try though he might, though, Ryu couldn't think of anyone in whose hands he'd rather place his.

"Yeah," he said, and took Mirai's hand.

Mirai smiled, and abruptly the hairs on the back of Ryu's neck stood up as something touched him, not physically but in some indefinable place that he'd never noticed before. Something vast and fiery, with quicksilver energy melting the ice around him, warming Ryu where he hadn't even known he was cold. "Mirai...?

"Trust me," Mirai repeated, still smiling. "Close your eyes, Ryu-san. Feel."

Slowly, Ryu obeyed.

The warmth around him--where?, it wasn't physical--touched him gently, sparkling bubbles of amusement and deep currents of happiness brushing against Ryu. A densely woven cat's cradle of impressions welled to the forefront: friend/admired person/protector/protected/loved person, and Ryu let it in, a pearl in sake, realizing that somehow it was a sense of himself, a name parsed into emotion: Ryu-san? And beneath those emotions he could feel all the descriptives that Mirai had named him in Ultra script.

Mirai? he wondered.

As if that had been the opening of a door, the warmth all around him rushed into Ryu. Somewhere far away he fell to his knees with a choked gasp, Mirai with him, still holding his hand.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that would hurt you-- Mirai apologized anxiously, backing away, images still more in concepts than in words, but clear to understand, meaning ringing in Ryu's mind.

Ryu opened his eyes. Mirai was looking at him anxiously, as though he'd somehow inadverdently damaged Ryu. "What the hell did you do?" Ryu demanded, not wanting to shout, but needing to know. He could still feel Mirai inside his head somehow, hesitant but there.

*

Carefully, Mirai moved back, pulling the energy that was his self away from that which was Ryu's until they barely touched. Too much, he realized. Not now... maybe not ever. But where he should have felt a sense of loss at what he'd never be able to share with Ryu, instead he found a certainty that Ryu was worth it. "Something I shouldn't have," he said aloud. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again." But as he tried to pull entirely away, he found he couldn't.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ryu asked again. "I can feel it, Mirai."

Threads of Ryu's energy had interwoven themselves with Mirai, and woven him into Ryu's energy at the same time. It wasn't the complicated complex interlacing of selves that Mirai had seen among Ultra; in comparison it was little more than a child tugging at the hem of a garment, begging don't go. But it was enough to catch Mirai's breath in wonder. That Ryu, who was bound so firmly to flesh and body and matter, could do such a thing....

"I wanted to show you," Mirai said, standing. Ryu got up as well. "What we are. What I am."

"I thought you said humans didn't have those senses yet," Ryu said suspiciously.

"I said most," Mirai reminded him, and tugged just a little at their energy bond.

Ryu's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that," he snapped.

Mirai smiled a little. "You're not exactly letting me go, Ryu-san," he pointed out.

"You..." Ryu growled, with the intonation that said he wanted to wipe the smile off Mirai's face.

Gently, Mirai touched up against Ryu again.

*

Whatever the hell Mirai was doing now, playing with psychic energy fields or whatever, Ryu admitted, it felt nice. Warm. Like sitting back-to-back with someone and knowing you could trust them, that they'd be there no matter what happened.

That Mirai would be there no matter what happened....

"I'm not letting you go?" he asked to confirm. Mirai nodded. "Hmpf. Guess you're stuck with me, then. Are you done sulking out here?"

"I wasn't sulking," Mirai protested.


"Sitting outside, all alone, brooding in the dark. Right."

"I wasn't!"

"I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie, but since you're busy...."

"Ryu-san!"

Ryu just smiled. "So. Movie?" he asked.

"Godzilla?" Mirai asked.

"What is with you and Godzilla movies?" Ryu demanded.

"I think Moebius could beat him."

Ryu wasn't sure if that was a sign of Mirai developing a sense of humor or not. "It's fiction. There're people in rubber suits playing the monsters."

"So?"

"We're not watching Godzilla. Marina and Konomi voted for The Princess Bride, and made eyes at George and Teppei."

"The one you said had swordfights?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go!"

*

Two Days Later

"Wow, Teppei-san, your monster collection has grown so many! Where did you get the money?"

And four voices broke into simultaneous coughs and mumbles, while Captain Sakomizu merely smiled indulgently and sipped at his coffee.