Work Text:
Pariah
Despite (or perhaps attributable to) being the most intelligent person in the galaxy, Brainiac 5 has never been particularly popular. So it comes as little surprise when his planet is quick to reject him after Computo’s evolution and departure; the labels used are not particularly creative either.
Traitor. Outcast. Pariah.
And despite (or perhaps attributable to) being the most intelligent person in the galaxy, he is inclined to ignore them. It isn’t logical to allow sentimentality to cloud one’s intellect or to allow one’s work to be disrupted by the misinformed opinions of the less mentally developed. By all accounts, Brainiac reasons that he should consider the entire affair to be an unexpected boon. No longer must he concern himself with the pressures and expectations of his government or his people. He’s a free agent.
So, being free to do as he pleases and beholden to no one, it is a conundrum then as to why he isn’t actually doing anything that could be considered work. No research is being done. No experiment is being performed. The lab is quiet and almost completely dim save for the lone circle of light he sits within, fingers toying idly with the hem of his sleeve whilst staring at a rotating geographic holovid of his homeworld. Of Colu. Of the place that he, now being an outcast, will most likely never return to.
It is…sobering.
Reaching out to the glowing image with unsteady fingers, he watches them pass like ghosts through the soft pink clouds that float across the Sea of Episteme, drifting beyond the Plains of Arete and down the Sophrosyne Spire. The symbolism of the act is hardly lost on him, and Brainiac curses -for not the first time- the upgrade which has left him so damnably maudlin. Angrily jerking back his hand to wrap both arms around his bent knees, he rests his forehead against them and closes his eyes, hating the uncomfortable dampness that suffuses the lashes at the corners.
He wills it all away. He would not give in to these childish feelings. He would not give his detractors one tear, one second thought or one regret. What he’d done had been logical. Had been right. Whether 99% of his people disagreed with him was utterly immaterial in the face of the sensible truth.
So why did everything feel so wrong?
The laboratory doors hissing open momentarily shatter the silence, and Brainiac 5’s head snaps up in reply. Waiting, he is only vaguely aware that his breath is held, that his throat has gone dry and tight. Amazingly, for the first time in his life he hopes some trivial problem has been brought for his attention, yearns for some ridiculous piece of gossip or inconsequential nonsense to divert him from what is quickly becoming something of a pity party. But when his visitor says nothing, padding silently through the dark, Brainiac knows that chance is not on his side.
He knows who’s here.
Because it would just figure that the one Legionnaire who has always managed to play his every emotion without even realizing he had the power to do so would be the only one with enough gumption to approach when things are already…in disarray.
“I heard.” Lyle’s voice is a barely above a whisper, the light of the holo catching in the lines between his tightly knit eyebrows when Brainiac risks a glance up at him.
“Did you?” Querl looks away pointedly, unfolding himself into a more dignified position. It is awkward witnessing such open concern on his friend’s face, especially with how things have changed over the last year. Especially with how it makes him feel. Being cast out by society was nothing in comparison to being cast out of the universe, and being so far from home for so long had made him analyze his prior relationships more closely.
All his prior relationships.
Pausing until he is certain his voice will come out evenly, Querl steeples his fingers and attempts to look casual. “Well, I’d hardly consider it official. I’ve received no formal documentation in the matter. I’ve committed no definable crime. Furthermore--”
“Hey, hey.” Invisible Kid’s hand coming to rest on his shoulder cuts off both his rambling and his air supply, the other boy’s thumb drifting against the curve of his neck in a way that makes his hair stand on end. “My compound microscope needs calibration. Help me out?”
Before Brainiac can answer Lyle reaches down and turns off the holo, plunging them instantly into darkness. All at once, Querl finds himself in a state of sensorial saturation, hyper-aware of each move that Lyle makes, of the subtle smell of his cologne, the heat of his body positioned so near Brainiac’s own. All the things that he could usually ignore with ease are now inescapable.
“Come on…”
It must have been later than he’d supposed; the lights of the hallways are soft and dim as they pass through the empty corridors, Lyle’s voice dipping to match the atmosphere as he explains one of his experiments. Brainiac assumes that they must be traveling to the brunette’s quarters, though he didn’t think to ask where they were going when he was coaxed from his laboratory. He’s never been to Lyle’s rooms before, and he’s imagining what they might look like when the two of them stop in front of a nondescript door.
A soft calling startles him from his reverie. He blinks. “Hmm?”
“You going to stand in the hall all night?” Lyle is already within, looking back over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised as he pulls off his headband. Dark brown hair drops down alluringly, partially obscuring his eyes from view, a stark contrast to the milky skin of his forehead and cheeks. He’s shedding his belt and boots when Brainiac finally realizes he’s been staring longer than is polite and walks into the room, casting his gaze around to feel things out.
The other boy’s room, despite being less organized, is actually surprisingly like Querl’s own. More like a second workspace than a place to sleep, the room is littered with beakers and burners, lab benches and microscopes, flasks and tests tubes of every color and shape. It smells of old chemicals and burnt carbon, complicated equations sprawled on digital boards mounted to every available wallspace. Notes and theories are scribbled onto discarded omnicoms, tossed haphazardly into any space that isn’t already occupied.
But here and there, in the small spaces in-between, there are personal things. Trinkets, baubles, holopics of happy times, of smiles and graduations, of intimate get-togethers and quietly candid moments. His eyes fall on a holo of a much younger Lyle, his arm around the shoulder of a dark-skinned boy that Querl doesn’t recognize. Their smiles beam with mischief, their faces covered in soot and dirt. Beside it is a later shot, the same boys dressed in dapper suits, grinning and entirely too pleased with themselves.
“Who?” He questions before thinking, watching Lyle set up the microscope that Querl assumes he is to adjust.
Glancing up, the brunette’s smile is wistful, but the set of his jaw speaks of more. “Jacques. Mon frere.”
Sensing a line he shouldn’t cross, Brainiac moves wordlessly to help his friend begin the calibrations, bumping him out of the way with his hip when he doesn’t move quickly enough. There is comfort in this, in routine, in twisting the first knob of the microscope, in mindlessly balancing the cyclic levels and the energy output cycles, in doing it all instinctively, his fingers moving without thought or contemplation. There is comfort in this.
And it is then, all at once, that he realizes he feels better.
“You didn’t need me for this,” he says upon the realization, his voice just loud enough to carry, forced out through the sudden tightness of his throat. Turning the enantiomer dial --once, twice, three times-- it clicks loudly into place. “You’ve been a biochemist since you were six, and I’d wager you’ve calibrated this instrument four dozen times at least.”
“Maybe I wasn’t the one who needed it,” Lyle replies, jumping up to sit on the table. He lands heavily just inches away from where Brainiac is working, the impact jostling the table and distracting him into noticing (read: staring at) how close they now are to touching. How perilously close his hand is to brushing Lyle’s. A few mere centimeters, the breath of a quark.
How close, he thinks…yet, such a seemingly insurmountable distance. “Thank you, Lyle. I…I appreciate it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
And that was the truth. Despite how awkward and self-conscious he feels, despite how confused his feelings are, he appreciates this small gesture. He appreciates the fact that Lyle knows him well enough to try to comfort him. He appreciates being in this room, calibrating a microscope that doesn’t need calibration, not thinking about being cast out of his homeworld, not thinking about the future, not wondering if or what would happen.
Swallowing hard around an unfamiliar lump that wells up in his throat when he looks into Lyle’s face, he tries to smile. He’s not sure if he succeeds; the tension singing between them is making his concentration falter, the tips of his fingers going numb where they grip the knob of the microscope.
Color, soft and pink, blossoms on Lyle’s cheeks, so faint that Querl wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. There is something there, unnamable, gathered in the line of the brunette’s lips where he presses them together, seemingly at war with himself though Brainiac doesn’t know why. Still, he has sense enough to know that he should stay silent, feeling every muscle go taut with an odd anticipation.
“I’d like to…,” Lyle says, his words trailing off, his expression becoming distracted and distant. Long moments pass as he stares down at their fingers, until finally his eyes rise to meet Brainiac’s own. “You know?”
“What?” The response is as instantaneous as the confusion, Lyle’s uncharacteristically shy behavior throwing Querl even more off-balance then he’d already been. The other boy is usually bold, impulsive, confident; Brainiac can’t reconcile those things with the person standing before him now. Can’t reconcile anything, and so can’t react.
And he hates it.
“No, I don’t know at all. Like to…what?”
The answer, when it comes, is not the one that Querl had expected.
Because in one breath Lyle has breached the seemingly insurmountable distance and gently covered Brainiac 5's fingers with his own, suffusing them with a warmth that tingles like electricity across his entire body. Impossibly, all air vanishes, and despite being too scared to actually look down and confirm it, the world seems to have stopped spinning as well.
“Do things you appreciate. Do anything you appreciate. Make you happy,” Lyle says, his upper canine coming out to catch his bottom lip before flashing an almost self-depreciating grin. Lyle’s brown eyes rove his face like he’s searching for something. Something very specific. And Brainiac 5 might have asked him what that something was, had it not been for one very important variable.
They are holding hands.
Holding hands. That means something. Something big. He knows that means something big, but can’t scrutinize it because his head is suddenly filled with static and insane amounts of biofeedback. He can’t think, can’t focus, can’t concentrate…
“Lyle…you.” Damn it all, but he is so infuriatingly ineloquent! Hating his woeful lack of experience, he squeezes the brunette's hand--once, twice, thrice, harder with each compression. “I…I…” Querl has nothing to base an appropriate response off of, nights upon nights of seeing the other boy in his dreams never having prepared him for this eventuality. He wishes he could translate his thoughts through touch alone.
Seemingly sensing his frustration, Lyle slides quickly off the table, his expression one of fierce intent. Within seconds he’s invading Querl’s personal space, reaching up to cup his face as he crowds him into the nearest lab bench. The brunette’s grip is hard, urgent, almost too tight, but that’s fine. That’s perfect. Because the act is real and grounding and just what Brainiac 5 needs to see that this intent is for him. That this urgency is for him.
“I mean it,” Lyle whispers, nodding as though he’s convincing not just Brainiac, but himself as well.
“And I don’t care if you let loose the devil himself and the entire universe rejects you for it,” he continues on, his voice beginning to quiver, mirroring the fingers that mindlessly stroke Querl’s cheeks. He’s so nervous, spilling over like an emotional waterfall, the words pouring out of him in a flood to drown them both. “Because a year ago I thought you died. I thought you were gone. And I...and I broke up with my boyfriend because he had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen but they weren’t green and they weren’t yours. I couldn’t be with him when I kept wanting you…but that was then and this is now and…”
Lyle’s breath stutters out, trembling and unsteady against Querl’s cheeks.
“Do you get it? You died. You died and now you’re back and…if you’d let me…we’d be so good…”
Lyle’s hands drop as though exhausted, as though the confession has taken every bit of their strength, and the warmth they’d brought with them fades away as well. Instantly, Querl wants it back. He wants that heat, that contact, that intimacy; there’s a heady determination to regain it rising up within him. It’s a strange sensation, this desire. It’s something entirely different than the want he’d felt for Andromeda all that time ago. While that had been something of a whiplash crush, this quiet yearning had waited patiently in the dark, building slowly, biding its time until Querl was ready to acknowledge it.
A year in another galaxy, worried he’d never see home again, has made him ready to do just that.
It isn’t really a conscious decision to lean forward and bridge the gap between them. He’s never actively kissed anyone before, and so it isn’t as though he has some specific plan in mind when he tilts his body, when he tips his chin and closes his eyes. Instinct alone guides him to Lyle’s mouth, urges him to brush their lips together, to press in with tongue and teeth when the brunette gasps in surprise. It feels good when their bodies accidentally bump together and so he intuitively wraps his arms up and around the brunette’s neck, draws him into the circle of his arms so they’re lined up together like a single seam of sublime heat. For once he lets his body take the driver’s seat, trusting it to know what he wants and how to get it.
At some point Lyle reaches around him in return, warm hands coming to rest at the small of Querl’s back to rub patterns in the indentation there, setting a blaze that starts in his hips and works its way up the ladder of his spine. Lyle is murmuring soft words of approval in the spaces between their lips, gentle encouragements and tender praises that give the blond enough confidence to continue until they’re both too breathless to persist.
“Oh, babe.” They pull apart, and Lyle’s smile is wide and beatific when Querl hesitantly opens his eyes to see it. Despite hating pet names, the endearment is so earnest that he can’t bring himself to be annoyed. “I missed you so much.”
“Well, seeing as I’m a social pariah on Colu, you’ll probably never have to worry about missing me again.”
“Wow, Querl...mood killer.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Sheepish, he feels a blush start in his cheeks and travel up to his ears, scorching hot. Lunging forward to hide his face, his lips connect with the corner of Lyle’s mouth, less a kiss than a simple press of skin. But, interestingly, it makes him feel good to just…remain there. To feel the other boy breathe, to tentatively run hands over his shoulders and arms, to simply be.
They stand that way for long moments, drawing each other into what becomes an increasingly smothering embrace until Lyle finally breaks it. “So…I guess that’s a ‘yes’ then?”
“Yes?” Querl doesn’t remember the brunette asking him anything.
“Good. I’m glad.”
“What? Wait! What have I agreed to?” They’re holding hands again, Lyle leading him away and towards the door. Querl admits he doesn’t particularly care where they’re going, but he does care about the fact that he’s apparently settled some bargain.
One brown eyebrow raises incredulously. “To dating me? You know…you and me? But don’t expect me to wear a leotard, man. I’m not Laurel.”
Unbidden, an image of Invisible Kid dressed in Andromeda’s uniform springs up in Querl’s mind, prompting another round of furious blushing followed by a soft chuckle.
“You don’t have the legs for it anyway.”