[zapdragon555]

[Zane - Cody]
(Using Zane with Baconwizard's permission!)

It almost hurt to look at, the ocean was so blindingly blue. After so long without color, the trip to Sa'fir had been worth it; it felt wonderfully comforting to see something other than shades of grey, and as soon as the car had parked on the pier, Cody was hopping out of the passenger seat and breathing in the fresh, salty air.

He exhaled in a sigh, one that brought a grin to Zane's face as he ducked out of the car and moved over to stand by Cody's side. "Wow," he breathed out the word that they were both thinking, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked out over the glittering blue water. "I don't think the ocean's ever looked that beautiful before."

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Cody's heart squeezed at the sentiment, and he leaned in to lay his cheek on Zane's arm, finding Zane's fingers with his own. "Wanna see it up close?" he asked with a laugh, tugging Zane's hand as he started for the pier. Zane let out a small grunt of surprise as Cody pulled him, chuckling and catching up to the other man.

"W-well sure! But, do we wanna get anything out of the trunk, or...?" Cody shook his head in response to Zane's question, peeking back behind him at the redhead, his face obstructed by his mess of blonde hair being blown about in the wind.

"Later. We can unload at the hotel first... I just wanna get an eyeful of real color, first."

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The two picked their way down the steps of the pier to the sand, and Cody immediately reached down to bury his hands in it, warm and colorless. Zane watched him with bright eyes, grinning as he straightened back up and dusted off his hands rapidly. "How's the sand?" Zane asked, playful, and Cody smiled sheepishly and shrugged.

"Pretty sandy," he acknowledged, as they kept walking over the little mini-dunes made by the wind.

"Good for sand castles?" Zane mused, jutting the ball of his foot into a small sand hill and reveling in the little fwip! sound it made. He answered his own question with the action--much too soft and dry, here. But maybe closer to the water...

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And what water it was. Cody stopped where the sand turned hard-packed and drenched with sea water, raising up on his toes ever so slightly with anticipation as the tide rolled in and engulfed his ankles. It rolled back, sucking sand from under his feet with it, and Cody felt a strange, wonderful emotion well up in his chest. "I dunno why we don't come here more often," Cody murmured, turning around to look up at Zane.

Zane's eyes widened in realization, suddenly bending down and reaching his hands out to cup Cody's face. "Your eyes," he murmured in wonder--as clear as the blinding blue behind him, Cody's pale eyes were soft with blue. Cody's hands came up to touch Zane's wrists, holding onto them with a bemused curiosity, until finally it clicked in him, too.

His smile widened, affectionate, and he turned his face to kiss Zane's palm once. "No fair. We should find out where brown comes back, too," he mused softly, referencing the deep brown eyes that seemed to want to take in every flick of Cody's blue irises now.

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The tender moment passed; even if the beach was sparsely populated, the two remembered their shyness after a moment and returned to quietly holding hands as they walked along the beach. Zane was starting to notice it, now--dotted along the beach were families here and there, singular beachgoers too, little blips and swatches of their clothing standing out like sore, blue thumbs. "It's like," Cody began, drawing Zane's attention back to the short blonde man. He seemed to fall quiet for a moment, thinking, then took a breath and continued.

"It's like an art piece. Every part of the world, now... like a black and white painting with just one color allowed to stay. In a way... I think it's kind of beautiful." Zane was quiet as Cody rambled, his hand squeezing Cody's as fondness filled his expression. Cody jumped slightly, flustered as he waved his free hand to clear his own words away. "N-not that I'm just saying that because you talked about my eyes! I-I know I complained about all of this yesterday, and that's what sparked this whole trip, a-and..."

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"Cody," Zane laughed, releasing his hand and instead drawing an arm around his thin shoulders, pulling him just a little closer in a half-hug. "I get it. And I think you're right. Maybe after all of this is over, someone will make an art gallery about it. Or maybe you could! Gosh we'd need so much black and white paint though."

Cody laughed at that, a small thing that shook his shoulders, one arm snaking around Zane's back to hold him in kind. "So much black and white paint. If we buy too much I guess I could always paint a bunch of Pengis and Auras."

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There was one thing that plagued Cody's mind, though. What if this didn't go away? This whole... strange color thing. Besides the fact that it was jarring, and he wasn't so sure about traveling all the way to Aldrect just to see red, there had also been a strange feeling in the air that Cody couldn't place. It wasn't so bad, now, but there had been a few moments where Cody almost felt paranoid. Like he was being watched. His meds had been working fine up until then, and it had only lasted a week at most, so Cody hadn't thought much about it. There were always bad days. They came with the territory of living.

But even so, the almost buzzing sensations behind his eyes plagued his memory. Static behind his eyes... eyes behind static. Cody shook his head to clear it, ponytail whipping at Zane's arm, making the tall redhead look over with raised brows. "You okay?" he asked, voice upturned at the end with a concerned curiosity.

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"Yeah," Cody answered quickly, waving Zane's worry away gently with a hand. "Yeah, m'just... it's a lot to think about." Zane's brows furrowed softly, and he looked up at the horizon, blinding blue ocean against a pale blue sky. It really was a lot to take in, after a month of no color at all.

But perhaps Cody meant something deeper than that. "It'll be alright," he murmured, rubbing Cody's shoulder as they walked. "Promise. We're tough... and we're adaptable." He spoke now under quiet assumption that maybe, just maybe, this new situation was something permanent. "You especially," he added, squeezing the shoulder he rubbed, and Cody's heart squeezed in kind, feeling an ache of love in his throat.

"Thank you," he whispered, smiling at the hand that flexed its fingers to gently poke him in the cheek and earlobe. "Quit," he giggled, pushing back at it and making Zane laugh, letting his fingers settle and behave.

[zapdragon555]

"I'll be kinda sad that video games are sorta hard to play now, but in way, we're kind of like dogs now, huh? All colorblind and whatnot," Zane mused aloud, glancing back behind them at their footprints, some of them being claimed already by the tide.

"Humans can be colorblind too, you know," Cody laughed, but nodded. "Wish we could've brought Copper, but it's kind of a distance. She's not great in the car sometimes."

"Ava loves Copper. She'll be just fine," Zane assured him, and gave a short, friendly wave to a fisherman on the shore as they passed him. "But yeah... you won't believe how hard some old Genesis games are without color. It all just blends into a big ol' grey clump."

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Cody made a sympathetic sound, bumping Zane's shoulder with his head. After a moment of thought, he grinned. "You know those old i-Spy computer games you have? Hard mode activated," he joked, and Zane laughed harder than he probably should have, squeezing Cody to his side as his body shook with giggles.

"'Hard mode activated.' Would totally work, if I didn't basically have all of the stuff in it memorized."

The two chatted back and forth a bit more, when Zane started to notice the sky was fading. That, and a long stripe of the water was turning grey; the sun was setting, it seemed. "Mmm... hotel and dinner time?" Zane asked, already corralling the two of them back the way they came. They'd walked longer than Zane had expected to, and he noticed Cody was limping a tiny bit.

"Hotel and dinner sounds amazing..." Cody sighed, then blinked when Zane stopped, and crouched down. He blinked owlishly at the redhead (or greyhead, as the case was currently) looking down at him quizzically.

"Hop on, pretty blue-eyes?" Zane murmured, and Cody felt like he'd been shot in the heart with an arrow. His chest soared.

"You're cute," Cody laughed, climbing carefully onto Zane's back, waiting for the hands that would hook under his thighs to support him. Zane lifted him with some small amount of staggering, and Cody kissed his nape gently for his efforts. "Put me down if your knees start hurting," Cody advised, and Zane chuckled as he started walking, nodding his head in promise.

[Color Harvested]