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“I had a daughter once.”
Foolish says softly, each word barely grazing past Juan's ears. They’re leaning against the wooden railing of his balcony, overlooking the serenity of the lowering sun, heads full of a simple summer buzz that seemed to infiltrate every corner. Juan swiftly turns. His body facing Foolish, attentive, with his hands slipping from the railing and face laced in open concern—it’s more emotion than he should be comfortable with showing so freely, but with them alone, he rips down every reservation. Together like this, they’re just Juan and Foolish. Nothing more. Nothing less.
So when he asks, “once?”, it's spoken like a secret held on his tongue.
Foolish nods. “You probably heard about things from the previous island. Like the eggs.”
“Who hasn’t.”
The totem laughs wetly, sounding as if waterworks were about to start, but he merely turns away. For some reason, that feels worse. Juan finds himself searching for that comforting gaze. He doesn’t ask for it, but he hopes, and that’s enough for him.
“Then you’d know about…about Leo, huh?”
Juan pauses.
He couldn’t lie and claim he knew about anything, really. Bits and pieces scattered against normal conversations, sometimes Maxo would try to bring it up randomly, and maybe a few other islanders would mention their deceased sons or daughters. Yet, he didn’t quite understand the “eggs”. Their purpose was compromised from the beginning, and no matter what anyone said about their overwhelming adoration for them, they knew it was a trap waiting to happen—maybe that's what hurt them most in the end. All the previous islanders knew it was meant to be a set-up, but still, they fell in love with those eggs anyway.
“Uh, no.” He holds his tongue, feeling the dust of iron spew past bitten lips. “Well…sort-of?”
Foolish laughs again. It’s punched-out and weary, but Juan hangs onto the sound of it like his own little medal, because he’d rather hear that than oppressive silence. “It’s okay if you do.” He responds, his hand slipping from the railing, and somehow finding itself closer to Juan’s. Out of instinct he moves his hands further away. Foolish continues as if nothing happened, so obviously he hadn’t meant to do it the first time: “Not like I'm trying to hide my past or whatever.”
Juan knows that.
He’s heard so much from the totem about thousands of other topics, like his old devotion to the Federation, or his relationship to Vegetta, yet he’s never heard anything more about Leo besides a flimsy mention from someone who wasn't Foolish; hell, he’s never even heard the eggs name before today. He clenches his teeth in unwanted emotion, a jealous type of feeling rooting itself in his lungs even when he knows better than to let his heart ache for someone as distant as him. Juan can’t help it. When they’ve been living together like this for months, it’s an incessant thing. They live, burn, breathe together, and somewhere along the way Foolish became a constant in his life. He learned patience. He learned the taste of morning dew and laughter. He learned that there are things he cannot solve, no matter how hard he tries, and that he has to live with that reality. Foolish helped him realize that. So, yes, the fact that the shark totem can’t trust him with the name of his child hurts. It makes him believe their friendship is a one-sided affair, with him spilling all of his deepest, darkest secrets and the other only wanting a quick chat about the weather.
“I was waiting for you to tell me,” he finally says, “with your own voice. With your own view, because only you know how you felt about Leo.”
The sun is completely set now. Only the hanging lights and the nearby glow of candles created brightness in its absence, until the beautiful crescent moon rose above the nearest hill. Shining streaks of white hit the river below, and Juan traces the outline of it with his eyes, memorizing this moment in both feeling and sight. He could create poems from the sun, but what is it without the allegories of the moon? Juan turns his gaze back to the totem, and he has to stop himself from using a finger to trace the bridge of his nose too, completely lost in his own thoughts.
“How…I felt? Nobody has—No one’s asked that before.” Then Foolish says, nearly breathless and tone turning accusatory. “Why do you even care?”
And normally he’d recoil at a sentence like that.
Barbed and harsh and curt. Fire back a few quips, or disengage from the conversation entirely, yet for some reason he keeps pushing forward, if only to smoothen out the hardened lines between Foolish’s eyebrows. He understands this means a lot more to the totem than he lets on. He pretends to be above it all, feigning disinterest in human nature, but beneath his neutral exterior lies a hidden truth; Foolish burdens himself with more than he lets on.
“‘Cause I care about you, stupid.” Juan responds, even-toned, but still jabbing a finger into Foolish’s arm. If he were a human, the indent alone would create bruises upon impact. “And because… you're my…you’re my best friend! I don't care about anything other people say about you, or what you did wrong, or whoever you once knew—I just care about you.”
There’s silence, and Juan’s mouth dries up quickly. He didn't mean for it to sound so soft. They don’t say these things aloud, normally. He gulps down the saliva to quell the scratchiness of his throat.
Instead of addressing it, Foolish blinks, eyes wide and lips parted.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Juan huffs, heart hammering and removing the finger from the totem's golden skin. He tries to shift away from Foolish, discreetly, putting distance between the both of them. “Why don't you believe me?”
Foolish only moves closer. It's suffocating, but for obvious reasons (that Juan won't name), he doesn't mind the weight of the shark totem's shoulders pushing against him antagonistically. In truth, he enjoys it far too much, and he knows he shouldn’t. “I believe you,” Foolish whispers, leaning his head down so the second-in-command could hear it, “It’s just nice to hear you admit that you care, sometimes.”
“It’s hard when you're an asshole all the time.” Juan responds while laughing.
And he only hums in response, no sudden actions, nor any continued squabbling. A comfortable silence stands in the little space they left between each other, so small he could reach out and wrap around the shark totem easier than breathing, yet they stay entrapped in time. The unshed tears are forgotten. Birds no longer chirp this deep into night, owls hoot, and Foolish breathes out a small, mesmerizing sigh with every breeze that passes by. Juan listens. He always listens, and in that sigh hides the keys to the universe—his universe, bashful and avoidant, opening and closing his mouth as if trying to yell, but without a voice to even speak.
So, he bites the bullet and revives the conversation. He gives Foolish the chance to try, bestowing him a gift with his own two hands. A subtly wrapped love-note written in a language only they understand.
“Who was Leo?”
Broad, a topic that can unravel into millions of tangents, but it's everything the shark totem could need; the option to talk about whatever is on his mind. Foolish takes it without a second thought.
“She was everything, when she was alive,” he says, tone suddenly tired. “From the little time we got to spend together, I—”
“No, wait.”
Juan stops him. He notices how Foolish tries to distribute time into his feelings, making it seem lesser than it was because it happened in the distant past, like grief is allocated by the amount of years spent apart and not by love. The other pauses mid-sentence, head tilted, and Juan levels him with a reproachful glare.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You know what I'm talking about. That.”
Foolish knows. The look of guilt is displayed all over his face, and no matter how much he wipes at his forehead, the evidence won’t disappear. It’s engraved in the way his eyebrows furrow, his frown deepens, or the faraway stare; a frequent sorrow he refuses to acknowledge. That look he gets when he stares at the dragon too long, or when Vegetta enters a room, and Juan grimaces.
“I don’t know how to stop.”
“My god.” He sighs, but it feels more like a shout. The palm of his hand intertwines itself with the shark totem’s forearm, and he guides him to the table, knowing this conversation is best had while relaxing. “You're allowed to be sad, Foolish.” He finally continues, staring into his friends eyes, their knee’s brushing with every movement. “Just—tell me about Leo as if I’m about to meet her for the first time. Can you do that?”
Foolish nods. “Leo was—”
“Is.”
He breathes in. “Leo is my daughter,” he pauses, voice cracking. “She…her other parent was—is Vegetta. She looks more like him than me, in some cases. Well, in most cases. Her wardrobe is… huge, enough hats to fill a closet. She’s the sassiest kid you’ll ever meet.” Foolish laughs outside, but has to close his eyes to keep himself in check, and while Juan doesn’t entirely like it, he lets him. “My little queen, Leonarda.”
“Okay, good…and what does she do for fun?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.” Juan leaned in closer, head dropped into his resting arm. Unintentionally, his leg brushes against the inner portion of Foolish’s knee this time, and he jostles backwards a bit before continuing. “I need to know how to entertain her. What fun things does she do?”
“She likes…photography.”
“What does she take pictures of?” His eyebrows rise, genuinely surprised by the fact.
“Everything. She likes to capture memories as they happen, showing life through her own eyes.” Foolish chuckles. His hand drops right beside Juan’s, but this time, the second-in-command doesn’t move. They stare at each other silently. “Y’know, she also likes painting.”
“Oh really?” Juan smiles, his glasses lifting from the severity of his cheeks rising in reddened hues. “You never told me that you know other artists.”
“I wanted you to feel special. Your art pales next to Leo and their paintings.”
“Of course,” he agrees solemnly, before continuing. “Favorite movie?”
“Shrek…and The Greatest Showman.”
“Food?”
“Hamburgers or pozole.”
“Favorite color?”
“Purple, duh.”
“What about your favorite memory of her?” He asks, not mentioning how the distance between them was slowly closing from every question. Juan doesn’t want to be the one to call-out the tension in the air, but he fears he’ll have to if it continues like this. “And tell me why.”
“So many questions…” Foolish frowns, jaw tightening as he scans through the contents on the table, trying to recall old memories. A small tut lingering in the air as he drops his leg deeper into Juan’s space, practically covering his thigh, invading every proximity. Juan shivers at the touch. “If I had to choose, I wouldn’t be able to say a specific moment,” he looks up, the green of his eyes growing brighter with time, staring at him with a soft gaze. “There's so much I could remember about her. The dramatic performances, the way she fought with Roier in everything, or how she was too shy to try to make friends for a long time…but the thing I loved most about Leo was her selflessness. She put the world on her shoulders and always tried protecting others first, even when she didn’t need to. Those times were my favorite.”
Juan smiles gently. “You really loved her, huh.”
“Yeah, I mean—she was my daughter.” Foolish replies, the tears that started slipping halfway through his monologue only come down faster, and he rushes to wipe them away.
The tension fades into sadness.
Juan is there to hold the pieces together, hazardously pushing broken glass into place, repairing the fractures. It will never erase the cracks. So when he reacts without thinking, bending over the corner half of the table, startling Foolish’s relaxed leg as he reaches over to dab a finger over dampening cheeks—no one can blame him. He pretends to not notice how the totem leans into his touch. It shouldn’t make Juan’s heart jump the way it does. He feels like he’s exploiting the situation, but when doubt starts clouding his mind, Foolish only worsens the situation by keeping his hands in place. Juan’s thumb brushes his upper lip. They stay stuck in a limbo until the totem's grip loosens, and stunned, he can’t take his hands back—can’t continue the dance of will-they-won’t-they when Foolish is looking at him like that. His stomach fills with nerves that start to flutter with every breath of air dusted onto his fingertips.
Another beat goes by, and then Foolish can’t help breaking the awkward silence with a long, loud sniffle. “Sorry…I’m sorry,” he breathes out a rushed breath, one that tickles down Juan’s wrist. “This is just…I know I shouldn’t be acting like this. Crying like this.”
“Why not?” Juan's question is genuine, eyebrows furrowed. “Why do you think you’re not allowed to feel sad about what happened?”
“Because I’ve already come to terms with her death. Because it was going to happen either way, with or without the Federations help.”
And Juan is really trying to be supportive, really, but he’s starting to feel like he’s talking to a wall at this point. He sighs, and lowers his hand next to Foolish’s on the table, no longer touching. “That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel sad about it, stupid!” Juan shakes his head again, before lifting up his chin to meet the totem’s green eyes. “Foolish, tell me truthfully. If I died, would you mourn me?”
“I’d laugh.”
“I’m being serious here, asshole!” He huffs, slapping at his shoulder. “Let’s say I was—I was stabbed through the heart, impaled. Would you be sad I was gone?”
Foolish bristles at the description. “Of course I would, but that’s never going to happen.”
“You can’t promise that!” he barks back, and the totem recoils at that slightly, making Juan regret the words that fall out. He doesn’t correct them though. “I can die whenever, the same way Leo did. I could die right now from something stupid, like—like choking on this sandwich!” He points to the lunch he’d made himself earlier today. “How would my death be any different from her’s?”
There's no answer to that question. He hopes that within that little comparison, Foolish notices his flawed judgment, but still the totem's lips are pressed into a thin line. Juan knows his words will do nothing to dissuade what’s already cemented in his mind, and he’s come to terms with this reality since he began living with hard-headed, dumb immortals who take in every single detail and dwell on it.
He just wishes that somehow he could help them in their self-imposed guilt.
Juan ends up answering his own question, eyes warm and fingers curling around the totem's hand. “It’s not any different, Foolish. When you love someone, that grief never goes away, no matter how ready you are for them to leave.” He leans forward, no longer hiding the affection in his eyes, and for the first time, he thinks that maybe Foolish doesn’t mind; that maybe, he hasn’t been imagining this whole hidden affection laced between everyday activities. “And I need you to promise that when I’m gone, you don’t try to hide that grief away like this, because I… I love you too much to watch you suffer like this.”
“Juan, I-”
But the second-in-command cuts him off by changing the position abruptly, nearly falling off the chair as he bridges the divide between. Their faces feel so close that they can’t tell where one starts and another ends, but perhaps it's always been that way. Juan bites the inside of his cheek. He reaches out hesitantly, his shaking hand cupping Foolish’s head, and he memorizes the involuntary shiver that wracks through the totem's body.
This feels wrong, so wrong, yet his limbs move like they’ve done this dance their whole lives.
“Tell me I’ve been reading this all wrong. Yell at me to stop,” he whispers, gaze lowering to stare at Foolish’s lips, “and I will. I will. Just… just tell me, please.”
It’s an easy out.
They don’t have to cross this boundary if he doesn’t want to—Juan would never put him in that position, or force himself upon the totem. Still, the words tremble against the midnight air, and he hopes to god and every divine being above that he hasn’t read the signs wrong, because this is all he’s ever wanted (needed, in fact). He waits for the answer like a forsaken dog on a curbside, tail wagging and excitement brewing underneath his skin, watching the gentle bob of Foolish’s throat as he opens his mouth to reply.
“Don’t you dare stop.” Foolish says, his voice cracking with the word ‘dare’, but Juan doesn’t spend any time ridiculing him. Not now, at least.
He kisses him like a starving man.
Eyes closed, hands searching for something to hold onto, and for a brief moment time stops. The sweet dryness of Foolish’s lips moving against his, the grip at the back of his waist pulling him closer, closer, and Juan clumsily trying to close that distance even more. He takes what he can, too fast, too quickly, savouring the taste of everything in the few minutes they spent in their own little bubble.
When they break apart, their faces are flushed in bright pigments, eyes crazed and fingers shaking. Juan loosens his possessive grip, but Foolish chooses not to grant the same mercy, instead pulling him closer and into his lap. They stare at each other openly now. Juan regains his breath, chest heaving, and tries to shimmy himself further away to get a better look at Foolish’s entirety.
But the totem only holds him harder in response.
“No. No more distance. Everytime I try to get close to you, you push me away.”
Juan flushes. “I didn’t-”
“Then don’t. Stay right here,” he sighs, pressing his lips into Juan’s hair, breathing in the scent of his shampoo. “I just need to stay like this for a bit, please.”
And how could he say no to a request so sweet?
“Okay, I’ll stay.”
They stay intertwined for what feels like eons, warm skin pressed against each other, and Foolish’s hold on him loosens in a matter of time. Soon enough, Juan’s able to finally move a little back and stare up at him. The totem’s eyes are still wet from the past hour of crying, and he wipes at the bruised area under his eyelid, fully knowing the mark will disappear in a matter of minutes with his regenerative skin.
“She would’ve hated this.”
He says after the comforting silence. Juan frowns. It was obvious who Foolish was talking about, even if context clues were discarded, because there were so few people’s opinions he cared about.
“She would?” Juan asks quietly with a sigh, tucking his head under Foolish’s chin. It’s a genuine question. He never claimed to know more about Leo than her own father, and he wasn’t going to be high and mighty by proclaiming ‘no, that’s not true! She would have wanted you to be happy!’, when he had never met the kid before. “Why?”
Foolish gives him a look, pointed, eyebrow raised like he’d just asked the stupidest question ever.
“Ah. Right.” Juan whispers, head turned bashfully towards the banner in the secluded corner of his room, a present he was given upon arriving to this island by a certain king. He didn’t need reminders to recall the first person who held Foolish’s heart. He grimaces. The mood in the air flips sideways, returning to a sorrowful aura that held you down like a hydraulic press. “Makes sense.”
“She was always head-strong in her beliefs…” Foolish continued, noticing the rigidity of the human’s posture. “But I’m sure with time she would have grown to love you,” fingers interlaced with Juan’s, nearly engulfing his whole hand, “the same way I do.”
Juan’s heartbeat stutters at that.
He smiles, weary yet blissfully content, a light blush dusting his cheeks. “You’re terrible. Are you just saying that to make me feel better, monster?”
The shark totem’s hum is quiet, his lips finding purchase against Juan’s forehead, the light breath of hot air exhaled against already reddened skin. He can feel the tell-tale smirk through the gentle kiss. In his own defense, Juan swats at Foolish’s arm (lightly, barely even there), and they launch up in a moment of ceaseless giggles—the world around them becoming a blur. Foolish finally replies:
“Only a little bit.”
When the sun rises in the morning, they wake up with their limbs entangled, perfect and content and together.
Together for the rest of Juan’s mortal life, at least.