Agori celebrations - especially ones held in closed quarters - could get awfully overwhelming for biomechanical creatures. The fault was in part due to the smells and lights and sounds, but most of all for the sheer amount of textures. Wading through a crowd of mostly metallic beings, their general composition the same as your own, would end up wearing out anyone in the long run; it quickly got even harder to handle when every single body you bumped into was so completely different from one another.
Tahu had lost sight of his siblings hours earlier, when the festivities had started. Not that he was worried about them; no doubt they were enjoying themselves across the streets and huts of New Atero, boogie-ing it out to whichever song was playing closest to them or seeking respite in a quiet corner like he was doing right now.
The Glatorian had similarly scattered in every direction - fairly so, as all this was to mark the closing of the tournament named after them: the Toa's only intervention had been a couple spectacle matches to warm the arena for them, and the spontaneous hoisting of Kiina in the air to parade her fourth victory to the whole city much to the fighter's brief terror and subsequent howling elation.
So it took him by surprise when Ackar, looking out as he leaned onto the thick balcony, turned to him and smiled.
"Evening," he greeted. He raised an arm in Tahu's direction and dangled his cup, held between two fingers, in place of a wave. "Out to get some fresh air?"
Of all the places he could have been, in a city as big as this, he was there.
Waving, with eyes glimmering and an amused smile.
"Yeah," the Toa replied. "Not much space to breathe inside."
The Glatorian snorted: "It always gets like that with these sorts of things. Come on, be my guest - there's a breeze tonight that's just like heaven."
It took five steps to join him at the railing; Tahu could have fought and won against any who dared question the accuracy of that number, because he'd had ample time to measure the distance in the sluggish hours it had taken him to traverse it - although, considering the sky had not changed a bit by the time he did arrive, he would admit he wouldn't have fared that well in a struggle regarding his perception of time.
He leaned into the void beyond the balcony, breathing in to steady himself as the cool air danced across the creases of his mask. He stole a glance at Ackar beside him to find him still grinning, eyes closed, almost aglow with a warm air of contentment.
The distance between their elbows couldn't have been more than a bio. It was probably less.
Thank Mata Nui for the breeze.
"Is it always like this?" Tahu asked. A cough got caught in his throat, and he tried to explain: "The whole... Thing. Since you've done this before."
"The tournament?"
"No, I meant - this. The after."
The other hummed, peaceful expression still fixed on his face: "Not really, no... We went for drinks, sometimes. Mostly the winning party had a whole thing back at their village, and everybody else went home and sulked."
Mechanical hands fiddled with one another.
"This seems nicer," the Toa offered.
"A lot," the Tapyri agreed.
Tahu watched him throw back his drink and click his tongue as the burn satisfied him.
His neck had shifted for a moment to push the liquid down, an undulating movement lasting half a second that biomechanical throats simply didn't do. His mouth had leaned onto the cup just enough to let it perch on it, like a carnivorous plant successfully beckoning its prey onto its heavy petals.
Entrails twisted around machine parts.
He must have made a face, because Ackar raised a hand to cover... Well, essentially everything above his shoulders: "Ah - sorry, sorry," he mumbled apologetically, though he sounded like he was still smiling, "Forgot it grosses you out."
"It doesn't," Tahu reassured him quickly: "It's eating that's messier, I was only... I was thinking of something else."
"Nothing to be worried about, I hope. On a day that you can relax..."
"No, no, everything's fine. Just had other stuff on my mind."
The Glatorian hummed.
It was hard to see in the soft fading light, but his nose seemed to be of a darker shade than his cheeks: he was blushing.
Agori always blushed from their nose first - or at least, the ones whose skin was somewhat exposed did. Tapyri and Gaquri were the easiest to prove this on, and it could be rather fun to see how it affected their sometimes wildly different pigmentations; Lebori and Koniri, on account of having every inch of them covered in some fluff or other, were more easily betrayed by the position of their ears, the size of their pupils or the trembling of their feathers.
To think that such a frightening process (blood pooling rapidly into a single area of the body, heating up enough to be felt at a slight touch) led to a completely innocuous phenomenon... One that happened so simply, for many pointless little reasons. Like getting flustered, or drinking alcohol.
Tahu turned to face the city again, trying to make out familiar masks in the streets below.
Lanterns and lightstones were springing one after the other across every wall, almost like nocturnal fruits that skipped the blossoming altogether to violently ripen once the suns disappeared, but even their growing glow wasn't enough to distinguish the hundreds of colors and features melting in the crowd. There was still music, dozens of songs glued together by too many voices and instruments, reaching up to the balcony with a frantic syncopathed rhythm - and yet it was all muffled to him, all soft, all distant.
Louder than the symphony was the sounds of his own mechanisms; louder than those, the cool air coiling around his too warm body; louder still, Ackar's calm breath.
He swayed against the railing.
A tentative glance spared at his side found the Glatorian still enjoying the breeze, dangling his cup thoughtlessly.
Salamander eyes blinked open a few times. He tilted his head with a slight delay, first right, then left, as if he couldn't for the life of him parce where the sound that was making his ears twitch (the soft, antsy tapping of many little thimbles on some kind of hard surface) was coming from; at last he remembered his neck could turn, and faced Tahu just as the Toa realized his own fidgeting and stilled his hands into fists, hushing them.
The Agori smiled at the apologetic gleam behind the Hau's sockets; he gave a sort of wave, as if to say 'no problem, no problem at all', and didn't move his gaze away.
His chin slipped from the knuckles it was propped on, letting his cheek slide onto them, fold to accomodate their shape.
They were so... Difficult, to understand.
Toa could not swallow, but he tried.
"I like you."
Ackar, not changing his expression in any way, blinked very, very slowly, and nodded in thanks.
His brain caught up to the words later - just a few seconds, though it felt like each one had stretched into about a week - with an enviable tranquillity, flattening his mouth in a pensive line. He blinked again (definitely faster than before), lifted his head a little, parted his lips with a quiet click, and gazed into a distant part of the sky to better collect his thoughts. Then he squinted.
"In... In the Agori way, you mean?" he asked.
Tahu, all other words so ashamed that they refused to leave the depths of his throat which they had burrowed into, nodded meekly.
He held back a flinch when the swaying cup was gently placed down.
"I am... Very flattered, by that," the Glatorian half-chuckled, nose dark and a sort of sheepishness about him - his smile had returned, a very sweet variant of it that sounded like mildly bad news being delivered with tact. "I'm also about... Over twice your age."
"I like that too," the Toa breathed.
Ackar's eyes widened.
He laughed properly this time, louder, in a startled manner - not mocking the Toa in the slightest, just too embarrassed to do anything else with his voice - so taken aback that even his ears unfolded briefly as if he'd been threatened at gunpoint. His free hand raised to cover his face and the blush spreading like wildfire across it, or maybe to shut himself up; he managed it only when his hooked teeth caught on his lip, briefly stitching his mouth closed, and his knuckles pressed against it before he could dare untangle it free again.
Tahu watched his oval pupils dart away from him and reach out into the crowd below as if to escape his disastrous confession. With each jolt of the old shoulders from a stray baffled chuckle he could feel his muscles tense enough to snap, to make him cry if he only could have, and he had no idea how to handle it: so he just remained very quiet, freezing in his mortification.
The Tapyri sniffed and coughed into the back of his hand as he at last regained his composure in the suffocating awkwardness hanging heavy between them.
"Is this your first time?" he asked - so, so very kindly. "Being in love and all?"
Tahu nodded again.
A splendid grin, if a bit wobbly, soothed his anxiety somewhat: "Lucky you," Ackar told him, his eyes almost glossy and his voice so warm, honest, and he raised his arm just enough to make a shaky little toast in his direction. "Hope you get to experience it many more times - for people much better than me."
Why would he say something like that? What did he even mean? His crystal mind almost sparked a shortcircuit as he scraped it for an answer in the folders he'd devoted to what little he'd gathered about this hopelessly alien experience, and he still found nothing, nothing to base himself on.
Just confusion. The kind that rolls in the skull like a ball in a bowl, that makes one feel like a Hapaka stumbling uselessly on unsteady legs after chasing its own tail in circles for too long.
"You are good," the Toa only managed to argue. He'd been nothing but good, as far as he was concerned.
"Not for this," Ackar rebuked. "Not for you."
"Why?"
"Because I'm slimy," and though it was a joke he drawled the word like it was something truly awful - which it was, for Agori who hissed threateningly at too mature fellows trying to slide their hands where they shouldn't have, but Tahu's only thought was that it couldn't be. Mucus didn't even stain protodermis. "And you're young. I've gotta look out for you, not... I've gotta look out for you. Who's gonna do that, if I don't?"
"I have my siblings."
"No, I don't think they'd..." the Tapyri trailed off slowly. His head craned to the side - his neck creased, waves of skin piling softly on one another as a doubt snaked into his mouth. "Do you?"
"Do I... What?"
"Understand? All - all this, that we're talking about? Do you... Do you understand what it means?"
Of course he did.
... To an extent.
It wasn't as if he could help it. There was no other way about it when it came to such complex, strange, inexplicable Agori things: the Great Beings had seen no reason to build within his kind the capability for comprehending concepts so entirely superfluous to their function, unworthy of occupying any precious space within their crystal synapses. Pondering and studying only allowed them minuscule steps forwards, their path towards proper understanding akin to an ant's pilgrimage from one side of a mountain to the other: perhaps, in a dozen hundred years, they would have a solid enough grasp on these elusive ideas.
But he couldn't wait that long. He couldn't handle to wait that long. He'd never been the patient sort - always preferring to brute-force his way into things he struggled with so that eventually, by virtue of cracking his mask against them countless times, he would learn quicker than dallying about could have hoped to teach him.
Maybe, he reasoned while he struggled lightheaded not to tremble and stared into salamander eyes feeling like he was being spoken to in a language he didn't know, it would work for this too.
So Tahu gripped the railing, tried to swallow, and with a creak in his throat repeated: "I like you."
Ackar sagged, dismayed: "Oh, you poor thing."
(His chest heated up. Pleasantly.)
(He clung to the simple feeling as if it had been a rocky harbor arisen to save him from a ravenous, raging sea.)
The Glatorian rubbed his eyelids and wished he was sober.
Half his face disappeared inside his palm with a low mumble, almost closer to a whine - pasty words stumbling out of his lower lip muttering hopelessly about decisions, decisions, and not being in the condition for them...
An exhausted sigh shuddered through him as the glowing gaze refused to stop trying to worm underneath his fingers.
"How about," he drawled at last, at his wit's end: "We make a deal?"
Tahu furrowed his expression, confused.
He followed the slow movement of the Tapyri's hand as it finally left his head and swayed aimlessly, hypnotically, while Ackar did his best to string his thoughts into an orderly sentence.
"You just... Let the whole - this, that you're having, let it lay down without doing anything about it for, say..." Ackar squinted, and his voice lowered briefly as he discussed with himself: "Five years? Five years sounds reasonable enough, not too short or too long... Or maybe it is too short. Might be too short. Should it be...? No, no, that's excessive, five years is good--"
"Why?" Tahu interrupted him. "Why should I - what are five years good enough for?"
"It's just - just to give yourself time to think this all over."
He tried to insist, but the Tapyri held out his hand in a quiet plea.
"You take that time," he repeated gently. "And I... I'll give you a kiss. Now. How's that? Is that a good deal?"
No, a part of the Toa's brain wanted to reply - no, because I don't get it.
What was he talking about? It was already a mess figuring all of this out as it was, without the Glatorian skirting pointlessly around fine details the Toa couldn't hope to comprehend anyways. Love was an impulse, wasn't it - it wasn't something that required thinking, or waiting, just feeling, and at least in that it was so simple... It was something to speak out so it could be spoken back, or at least that was the gist of it. Why was he so bent on complicating it? Why the questions, the stalling? Was he trying to deny it? Reject him? Why? He couldn't understand it, so he couldn't understand the deal, so it couldn't be good.
But.
There was the kiss.
Tahu stared silently for a long minute before nodding several times, fast and small.
Ackar sighed in relief, smile returning at last to his face.
His hand reached out for the Hau, snaking behind it to cup the Toa's nape and gently coax him a little closer as he leaned towards him: his lips pressed onto the scratched red protodermis for little more than a second, right on its forehead, kind and simple with only the smallest click to accompany their leave.
His finger leaned towards the mask, almost close enough to graze it: "We've got a deal then," he reminded. "Five years. I'll hold you to it, hm?"
The Toa nodded again.
His silent assent was met by a vigorous head pat and a kind, breathy cackle, a gentle sound hiding within its hiccuping folds something akin to 'good kid'.
The warm hand then moved onto the Glatorian's face, sliding across his cheeks to eventually cup his head in the spotted palm, two fingers rubbing tiredly at one of his eyes as he let the wind drag this whole mess off of him and into the streets below - though it made no promises to save him from a headache he was sure to find waiting for him the next morning.
No matter. At the very least, one of his many problems could wait.
He exhaled, exhausted.
"I need to go to bed."
His body tore itself from the balcony with a seemingly gargantuan effort, half empty cup abandoned like an offering to the night by now upon them. Fingers cupped the protodermis shoulder for a quiet goodbye in the form of a light, fatherly squeeze - and off he walked, back into the world of noise and light they'd both left in search of a moment's peace, the brightness of closed quarters slowly coating him in shadow.
He turned back only briefly - offering the other a last glint of his orange eyes curved into a smile, a wave of his hand, a huffed laugh: "Five years!Remember that!"
Tahu stared at the doorway long after Ackar had disappeared into the crowd, completely quiet in the breezy air.
The cup on the railing, less than a bio from his hand, cracked from the heat.
