'I'd Rather Be Whatever You Are' - Costume for 2010
Written for karaokegal's 5th annual 'Come As You're Not' Halloween Party, with my apologies.
Title: I'd Rather Be Whatever You Are
Fandom: Animorphs
Pairing: Marco/Tobias
Rating: R (contains explicit slash)
Word Count: 1,662
Summary: None of Marco's friends are the same people any more.
Notes: Fear not: by my maths of the series, it's not underage. In my head, these characters were always 17, anyway. Those afraid of uncertainty may wish to avert their eyes.
Why It's a Costume: New fandom! A pairing that not only violates what I think my OTP is, but made several of my friends recoil in incomprehension and argue with me about how I was writing a literary monster. Also, it may be bad, which I like to think is not my usual style.
I'd Rather Be Whatever You Are
At some point during that afternoon, something important had changed. It had started off normally. Actually, Marco thought, he'd rephrase that. It had started off as normally as any day he'd experienced in the two years since an alien had crash landed in an abandoned construction site and given a group of totally hopeless teenagers the ability to fight the bad guys by turning into any animal they were able to get their hands on. It was a mouthful, but it was the truth. Anyway, it had started off normally, being cornered in health class by a pop quiz on human reproduction and being unable to think of anything except the way he'd seen that Taxxon burst, and the way it started eating itself. Marco had started wondering when he'd become this way; at what point this stupid war had started changing him, and whether it was an irreversible change.
The war had to be fought, he knew: there was absolutely nothing to be gained from rolling over and playing dead. He remembered when they'd all been made sick, all of them except for Cassie, and she'd had to go into the Yeerk pool alone. She's told him about feeling the Yeerk close to her, a fraction of an inch from her ear, and every time he thought of it he swore he'd go down fighting. Anything to avoid that happening to him.
That wasn't what was eating at him, though. It was the feeling that he'd been forced to be someone much older than him, someone who was okay killing and destroying. He was changing; they all were. Walking home from the food court that afternoon, Tobias had flown over him, his wings cutting a clear curve across Marco's field of vision as he wheeled above him. Something about that image had made Marco tear up a bit. Tobias could only morph back into human form, never for more than two hours, and no matter how many arguments he made in his head about how Tobias hadn't really enjoyed his human life, or how being a hawk was infinitely cooler, it was wrong. It always felt wrong. Even those two hours of morphing, every now and then, weren't enough to fix Tobias' face in Marco's memory. It was as though he was slipping away.
It was fine for Jake. He was finding more and more time to concentrate on the battle, and had seemed to move on from the fact that his friend and ally was a different species now. Cassie was more sympathetic, but she was concerned mostly about what made Tobias happy, and he seemed to be happier as a hawk, so that was that. As for Rachel... Marco wasn't sure what Rachel thought any more. None of them could help him get his head around this weird feeling that none of his friends were the same people any more.
Tobias swooped down over the fields at the edge of the farm and settled on the edge of the log that Marco was leaning against. Marco had almost forgotten that Tobias' territory was around here; he'd wanted to be alone with his thoughts for a while, and his dad was going through one of those 'I want to be a part of my son's life' phases, so home was out of the question.
He straightened up and forced a smile. "Hey, man. How's the hunt going?"
Tobias cocked his head at him, and Marco felt like he was being carefully read.
"Uh... no, not really." Marco shrugged and, frustrated, ran a hand over his face.
"I'm feeling a little bit lost today."
The hawk sidled closer to him slightly, as though he was getting a closer look. Like he needed it, with those eyes.
Marco laughed weakly. "You realise I don't really remember what you look like, Tobias?"
Tobias laughed. It never got any less weird, only hearing someone laugh in your head.
The red-tailed hawk fluttered to the ground, and after a few seconds began to grow. The feathers, all at the same time, began to shrink back into pink skin. Tobias' legs thickened, the talons replaced by toenails. It was a thoroughly revolting process, but through the changes Marco could see Tobias' face beginning to reappear, and it felt... better, somehow.
Finally, Tobias stood there, sheepishly shifting from foot to foot on the rough bark. He'd clasped his hands in front of him, maybe because he was unused to having to deal with hands, maybe because he was standing in a field at dusk in a pair of bike shorts and nothing else.
There was silence for a few moments. "Thanks for this," Marco said. "I know it sounded like a stupid thing to ask."
"Not really," Tobias said, sitting down next to Marco. "I keep forgetting what it's like to be here like this. Reckon you can remember me now?"
Marco turned, and caught a glimpse of something flashing across Tobias' eyes. "I think so."
He knew, right at that point, that there was more than a want to keep his friends in his head. He wanted to be more than that with Tobias. It had been eating at him, that entire time that Tobias had been trapped in the hawk body, he just didn't have the words to describe it. And that look in Tobias' eyes made Marco think that something had been there too. He reached out and gently, just in case he was making a huge mistake, brushed his hand against Tobias' leg.
Tobias didn't turn to look at him, but his hand darted out and pressed against Marco's. Marco froze, staring wide-eyed at him, and only then did Tobias turn, letting go of Marco's hand and raising his to the back of Marco's head, pulling him into the kiss that was suddenly there in front of him, only he hadn't seen it and now it had him.
The kiss wasn't anywhere near as detached as Marco had imagined, not as red-carpet or perfunctory. It was animal and savage, Tobias' fringe between their faces and a few loose strands getting caught in Marco's mouth. He felt like Tobias was still part-hawk, tearing at him with a passion he didn't expect the other boy to have. Once upon a time, Tobias would have called himself a loser, but he wasn't that timid any more. Not by a long shot. Marco dropped his hands from where they were tangled in Tobias' hair down to his bare back, scrabbling to move deeper into the kiss. Tobias was gasping into Marco's mouth, his own hands fumbling with the buttons on Marco's shirt; failing at those; trying the jeans instead. Marco could feel, as they lay down together, the reason that Tobias had been hiding behind his hands. They were pressed against each other, struggling to get more contact, as though they were going to morph each other by sheer force of will.
Tobias had shucked off his shorts, and Marco kicked off his jeans and sat there, marvelling at the body that he didn't know he wanted, and how it made him forget about the bark and stones digging into his arse. Tobias crouched next to him, pushing him backwards and leaning over him, kissing him again. Marco's hands felt blindly for Tobias' cock, beaten only by a fraction of a second when he realised that Tobias was on the same hunt. They stayed like that in the failing light, hands working feverishly. With a wry smile, Marco noted that Tobias was biting his lip, trying to keep his moans collected rather than letting the forest hear what they were up to.
"I wanted..." Marco groaned, as Tobias grabbed him closer and kissed his way down his neck, "...I wanted this... You have no idea..."
"You think I don't?" Tobias said, feeling Marco shuddering against him. "It's easier to want that being human. You can do something about it then. Oh, crap, I'm going to..."
Marco tightened his grip around Tobias' cock, and kept going, feeling himself rushing closer to the edge as well. "Me too."
Tobias tried to answer, but they were both beyond any coherency and it wasn't until they'd both come, grunting into each others' shoulder, that they were able to look at each other again without their vision swimming.
"How long has it been?" Marco asked after they'd been lying there for a moment, arms circled lazily around each other. He checked his watch. "Dude, you should morph back."
"I'm thinking of staying like this," Tobias said. "I can't do... that, any of that, as a hawk."
Marco stared at him. "You can morph back to human whenever you want."
"Yeah, but you wouldn't.. wouldn't it be easier if I were human all the time?"
Marco shook his head and gripped Tobias' hand in his own. "You be a hawk. I can be your boyfriend no matter what morph you're in." Tobias didn't look totally sure, so Marco thought for a moment. "You're a boy hawk, though, right?"
Tobias laughed. "Damn straight." He got up and pulled his bike shorts back on while Marco made an attempt at dressing. "Thanks," Tobias said, pulling Marco into another kiss. "I don't say this enough, but I like your jokes."
"I like your feathers," Marco said. It was the truth, he thought, as he watched Tobias morph and, with a last look over his shoulder, fly off into the forest.
Marco walked home the long way that night, through the construction yard, past the shopping mall, and across to his neighbourhood. Life was going to hell. Aliens were coming to enslave humanity. Only a handful of kids could stop them, and half of them were flunking geometry. One was a hawk. But it was the hawk that was making it all okay.