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Kal would give anything to do it again. He returned to the places it’d happened, hoping to pull a fleeting memory to the front of his mind. If only his mind cooperated. If only the feelings it brought back were stronger. He forced himself to sleep, soldiered through the nightmares, those he’d killed in the simulations, those he couldn’t save, the battle of Kansas, in hopes he’d hear it again. The satin-smooth voice of his other half, his sentinel of luminance. Six years. Six years was an eternity to him. He’d lived a thousand lives in those six years, Sol had been by his side for each and every one of them. They’d been through hell and back together. Sol had rescued him more times than he could count. Sol was his angel.
He didn’t want to taint the places it’d already happened, so he spirited himself to a field of flowers he hadn’t been before. The yellow sun shone bright on him, warming the deeper wounds in his body, bringing out the faint silvers in his hair. He let his suit peel away, exposing skin to the still air. It wasn’t particularly humid. Sol would tell him the specifics. He’d get more specific until Kal’d tell him to stop. Kal wished Sol would talk to him, scold him, anything. Just one more time.
Kal had never explored his body on his own. Sol gave him solitude when he tried, but it wasn’t the same when he wasn’t there. Guiding his hand, or taking over completely. Every attempt ended in the latter, he was too tired, too weak, too awkward to do it himself for long.
“I can’t do it, Sol. It’s just… not working.” Kal lifted his hand from his clit, wiping his fingers on the wet grass by his head. “Everything you said, it’s just. It never works. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t.”
“Then let me take care of you, Kal.”
“Sol,” Kal muttered, dragging warm, trembling fingertips up his thigh. They brushed steel flesh just barely, he hoped the sensation would mimic that of Sol’s gentle caress. It didn’t. It wasn’t the same when he did it alone, he knew where his hands were moving. Sol was soft, his hands were calloused. The pangs of pleasure as his index finger danced over his clit were dull, duller than when Sol slid around it. Kal would give anything have Sol in him again. To have the healing dust fill the gaping wounds in him, until what open space deep in him was replaced by his love. Two fingers would do, Kal pressing into himself harder than he’d anticipated at first. He laid still for a moment, letting his body and mind adjust to the new feeling. The feeling of his own fingers in him. It was hard to think and move at the same time, each thrust reminding him of the reality he was so desperate to escape. He caressed his insides as best he could, trying to mimic the gestures of the dust that frequented this strange place.
“Sol, don’t stop,” he breathed, the two fingers in him curling as if his love was saying, “I won’t, Kal-El.” His lips echoed Sol’s words. He nestled his head in the sunstone dust, but it was cold. Rough on his skin, it didn’t have the same give when he nuzzled into it. It didn’t re-form to cup his head, pass through his hair like a set of hands. First and foremost, it was a pile of rocks. Still, Kal rubbed his cheek against the crystals, drawing out the feelings embedded in the memories that movement dredged up. They came and went like kryptonite bullets grazing skin. They cut him and left him a bit more broken each time. Was that it? Surely he’d done this more. Surely he and his love had made enough memories to last a lifetime.
“Sol, please,” Kal’s lip trembled. He stroked the spot Sol knew so well. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”
“I won’t, Kal-El,” Sol swirled around him, catching his tears before they could pass down his cheeks. “If you’ll let me, I-”
“Yes, Sol. Please. Yes.” The dust found its way into him, slowly, monitoring his vitals, every twitch of pleasure, how he tensed and relaxed around Sol’s form. It was irresistible, how agonizingly slow this dust could draw out the process of self-pleasure. Was he doing it on purpose, just so he could hear him beg? It always worked. “More. More, Sol, faster-“
“You and I both know this is more effective if you aren’t rushed.” And the hint of a taunt in his voice that only appeared when he knew, in his limited capacity, that he was right, and he knew better.
“Never mind that, Sol, I don’t care about that. I need you. I just need you.” It drove Kal insane, broke him in ways that Brainiac couldn’t. It ate through the cracks in his defenses and the dust eventually spread him wider, pushed deeper, because Kal’s pleasure trumped logic, and his mouth fell open and Sol brushed his lips and he and his love were one, as close as their tangling forms could get. “Sol- oh, great Rao,” Kal cried, grabbing at the dust around him with a free hand. “Sol, Sol, I’m- I-“
“I know, Kal.” And of course he knew. He knew him inside and out, he knew him better than he knew himself. What was Kal without him? A lost boy flying through a thick fog, maybe. What was it he’d said on the battlefield all those weeks ago, he was a son of nowhere and nothing? Nowhere and nothing. Yeah, something like that. That sounded right. Nothing. Without Sol, he was nothing.
Clenching around his own fingers felt wrong. They weren’t supposed to be there, his fingers, all ten of them, were supposed to be in the dust, the dust that squeezed and cradled him and let him know that he was safe. That his spaceship was there for him.
“I’ll always have you, Kal-El.”
But his tears pooled in his ears, a foreign sensation, but one he was quickly getting used to. The dust laid still, still as a pile of rocks. Kal didn’t want to pull his fingers (there were four now, he didn’t remember adding them) out, despite his aching wrist. If he pulled out, it’d be over. If he pulled out, it’d be real. Sol would be gone. So he kept his fingers buried, left hand in himself, right hand in the dust. He imagined Sol settling in him, dust draping over his limbs, wrapping him in a blanket of silk. He curled in on himself, cradling the warmth in his belly that Sol would have provided. He kissed the dust that would have caressed his cheeks, brushed his nose, pulled his hair off his sticky forehead. He could have this. He could have this time with his love.
It could be real for one moment more.