estirose | Stolen from Loneliness (PR RPM)

Summary: Ziggy’s been there for Dillon. Dillon will be there for Ziggy. PG-13/13+

Note: Yeah, I wrote a fic that is Ziggy/Dillon. I’ve come close, I’ve paired them up prior to the story, I’ve done everything except written them as an actual pairing. I set out to remedy that.

Stolen from Loneliness
by Estirose
c 2011

Dillon didn’t want to move, not really. Ziggy had fallen asleep on him, exhausted by his first day of training and getting used to the whole routine of being a Ranger. It was something Ziggy shouldn’t have to be doing, and Dillon had wished more than once in the day and a half since Ziggy had bonded with his morpher that he had been a little bit faster, stopped Tenaya Seven, kept the young man from his fate.
Seventeen was far too young to be a Ranger, especially when the seventeen year old in question was as skinny as Ziggy was. Sure, Ziggy would make eighteen in less than a month, but that would merely make him a skinny eighteen year old instead. An adult, but still not a fighter.

Which was why Dillon had let Ziggy sleep in his room instead of Ziggy’s own for the night, and had ended up with their team’s Ranger Green cuddled up against him. As far as Corinth authorities were concerned, Ziggy was an adult, but Dillon knew that Ziggy was just a month shy of eighteen, records falsified to make him an adult a year early, and still needed a lot more comfort than he’d like to admit. Plus, Dillon wasn’t used to Ziggy having his own room, either, no matter how much he’d earned it. Ziggy had provided him the physical closeness that he hadn’t realized he needed, and he had to admit that he’d missed Ziggy’s presence when the other Ranger had moved to his own room.

It was kind of funny how they’d ended up together. By all rights, he could and should have bashed Ziggy’s head in for what he’d pulled, but at the time he hadn’t seen a human being for a while, and he ended up not minding the company, no matter how much he wanted to throttle his companion at times. Ziggy had provided familiarity, a rock for him when he was getting used to the whole Ranger thing, when he’d wanted to strangle Scott over his arrogance.

Ziggy had gotten him through his first frustrating week or two as a Ranger, when he was adjusting to morpher, Doctor K, and his team. Ziggy provided a warm body, somebody to lean on and to lean onto him, a familiar presence when everything else about him seemed to want to put him off balance.

He would do the same for Ziggy. Was having to do the same for him, now. His friend and lover was putting up a brave face to the world, but Dillon recognized the look. Ziggy was scared, he didn’t want to be in this situation, and he was nowhere near an athlete. Ziggy had ducked and avoided things his whole life, and now he was being told to run towards danger, not away from it.

It was even harder for Ziggy than it had been for him. He’d had the support of the team, at least. They’d wanted him there, unlike how it had been with Ziggy, initially unwelcome and unwanted. The other three had come around fairly quickly, because it wasn’t like they had much choice about it, but they still didn’t know what to do with him.

If it had been Dillon’s choice, he’d have kept Ziggy out of battle, safe at base, but Ziggy didn’t have that option as a Ranger. Corinth needed him, and only his death would bring a new Ranger Green. And Doctor K and the others were not murderers. At least he could say that for them.

But it did mean that he had to be there for Ziggy, to provide him the love and reassurance that he needed. The team didn’t know that they were boyfriends, just as they didn’t know that Ziggy wasn’t a legal adult, but they were. Ziggy was the person that he’d needed all along, and he was going to be just as much the one that Ziggy needed too.

And if the rest of the world couldn’t deal, it didn’t matter. Because they were together, they weren’t lonely, and the two of them together could get through anything.

Crossposted from Ramblings Yet Once More here.