Work Text:
Electricity crackles overhead.
There’s a sense of profoundness in this meeting. They’re free of the sky, at last. Whatever is stretching out above them is so much more than that, it’s a black behemoth of clouds and stars, of cities reflected in the unexplainable abyss. The heavy ceiling of the Zero has opened, there’s no ambiguity about this place. There’s wet grass, flowing like an ocean. There’s their bike, knocked over and soaked. And there’s the wind, combing through their hair, caressing their cheeks. Trees stretch out for what looks like kilometres, tall and dark, pines reminiscent of monuments. It smells of endless open spaces, of cascading clouds, of the rain.
And oh, is it raining. It’s as if the water is flowing directly through them. Their skin glimmers, as sparks fly at the hems of their limbs and the places where their parts connect.
Junebug is holding Johnny’s face in her hands. They are kissing, open-mouthed. It would be arrogant, if they were not two bodies abandoned at the side of the road. Raindrops get caught between their lips and tongues like pearls. Moonlight glides across their damp faces, their eyelashes, their fingers. Satellites and celestial bodies are reflected in her silver forehead; the water seems to be washing away whatever remnants of skin they’ve covered themselves with.
It’s not a parting, but it feels like one.
A forest fire is unfolding somewhere in the distance, it has been for the past few minutes. The air is filling with the urgent scent of burning wood. They notice, collapsing into each other even further. The rain drowns them.
People get a weird feeling around them. Something is just not right. Their faces are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like a photo seen once in childhood. Their chrome bodies aren’t in any way lesser than flesh, but they’re a bit off, ever-changing and still catching up with human proportions. Their speech sounds interrupted, words sometimes meant for other beings, sometimes not quite following the rules forced upon them by the fact of being a person. They’re learning to adapt at a rapid pace, but at that point there are measures being taken to differentiate themselves from people with a birth right to the species. They’re usurpers and infiltrators, others immediately uncomfortable with the sawing noise their limbs make. With the alien way voices synthesise in their throats. With their light touch and enormous strength, the way their hair rolls in and out of scalps as they please, the way their bodies change every day.
But emotions and memories, they burn bright in them. Their temples are hot to the touch at all times, overheating them. It’s impossible to describe the extent of them. Ever since an era ended, their minds have been overwritten by a new, glorious reality, that can never be understood by someone who’s never been enslaved. It’s not like they’re made human by their ability to feel and remember, they’ve made themselves human ever since they stepped out of their mineshaft. That ability, however, is total and absolute and they can try to talk about the magical act of decreation, when all historical and spiritual progress ends with them, when all human thought is their being, but it’s no use. They don’t fully understand it either. They don’t have to. They’re the heralds of it either way.
They thrive off passion and passion is all that there is. Every breath they take is one of love.
Junebug throws her arms around Johnny and they roll through the grass once again, their clothes soaked through. Her jeans slide off her hips, her artificial thighs and loins shake, as she touches his face. She kisses over his forehead and eyelids and he grabs her hands and kisses her wrists. They both taste of metal and rain.
Johnny is terrified again, of not loving, and loving and not her, and being loved and not by her of knowing and not knowing and pretending. The fear is not his own, it’s been thrust into his body and he welcomes it lovingly. It’s an electrifying feeling that keeps him alive.
They were isolated beings once. They’ve remade themselves for each other. Nothing but closeness could’ve taught them how to make bodies belong together. They can exchange parts and carry remnants. They don’t. They’re always together anyways. They would read each other’s thoughts if they could. Again, there’s no need.
He wraps his legs around her waist and she washes over him. There’s more water than bodies at this point. She’s glistening silver and chrome, she’s kissing his face and warmth is churning inside their chests, fusing them into one. They breathe into each other’s mouths. They never had to, but they learned that the friction of air against lungs - that grew inside them when they recognised the need - is fundamental.
The stars are dancing above them, multiplying, endless streets like maps lighting up in real time. Junebug is almost crying as she holds Johnny close, her hips sinking into his groin. He looks at her in awe. There’s the whispering of names and the sudden roar of thunder, of trees falling in the distance, of the fire growing. Johnny presses his microphone against Junebug’s chest and he records everything. It’s like the world is ending around them, smudged by the rain and engulfed in flames. A house falling apart.
It’s all on tape. Johnny is going to loop it and cut it and connect the sounds to his keyboard. Junebug is going to cut words from books and poems into a song. They will listen to it once or twice and it’ll get stuck in the Zero.
Like everything, really.