rareslash | Fic: The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Madagascar)

Title: The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Fandom: Madagascar (movie)
Author: shaychana
Disclaimer: I do not own Madagascar.
Word Count: 1185
Warnings: PG-13. Implied lion/zebra sex.
Pairing: Alex/Marty
Notes: This fic takes some liberties with realistic animal behavior, but so did the movie.
Summary: Hunger is more acute at night.
Feedback: All comments and criticism welcome.

-

Alex wakes up and finds his tongue glued to a monochromatic stripy ass. Well, technically, that's not an ass his tongue is glued to, but hey, ass… zebra… ass… zebra… all part of the same general horse family, right?

"You're doing it again," Marty whines.

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am – oh, fine. So what if I am?"

"I thought you only eat seafood now."

"I do!"

"Then why are you licking my ass?"

Alex tries not to look shifty. "I was dreaming. It's not my fault if I was dreaming."

"Well, what on earth were you dreaming about?"

"Nothing." Alex totally meant for it to be a flat statement, but it comes out with a bit of a squeak at the end that makes it a question.

"Okay," says Marty, going back to sleep.

-

"Hey! I just got a great idea!"

This can't be good. The last time Marty'd said that, they'd had to brave the New York underground (very spooky), being shipwrecked on the open sea (definitely scary), and having the wild sicced involuntarily on them (Alex still hasn't quite recovered from that one). So he says with a storm-cloud of foreboding hanging over his head, "What?"

"Let's race to the lake! First one who gets there first wins," says Marty, grinning around a mouthful of large, square teeth.

"Uhh… I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Come on, it'll be fun!"

"That's what you said about going wild. After a year here, I will admit that it's not all bad, but seriously, Madagascar isn't always the Fun Side. Don't you miss home?"

"Course I do. I think about the zoo every day. I miss the smell of hay bales, I miss the ambient sounds of the urban jungle… hell, I miss alive people." With that, Marty slumps to the ground and looks up at the dangling dead human.

Damn his stupid big mouth. Now he's gone and got Marty depressed again, and this time, Alex is pretty sure that there'll be no birthday wish mysteriously granted any time soon. He'd be surprised if this savage land has birthday cakes.

Still, it's undeniably his fault that Marty is gloomily pondering the bones swaying gently in the wind, so it falls upon Alex to cheer him up. He leaps up and starts bounding towards the lake, calling out over his shoulder, "First one to the lake wins!"

"You're cheating!" Marty protests, but comes running after Alex anyway. Alex laughs, and Marty collides into him at top speed, and then they're tumbling in a jumble of feet and tails over the rolling green, laughing for no real reason and just feeling glad to be alive.

-

"Wake up! Alex, wake up!"

"Stop slapping me," Alex rumbles groggily. "Wanna sleep. Lemme sleep."

"Are you okay, man? You were shivering, and if anything, it's ridiculously hot."

"Was dreaming."

"Nightmare?"

"Yeah."

"What was it about?"

"I… nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Okay." Marty lies back down and is fast asleep in a second. Alex stays awake, chasing flies away with swishes of his tail.

-

"First one to the beach wins!" Marty yells, and they're off, helter-skelter through cobwebbed bushes and low-hanging tree branches. Marty's ahead, and as Alex crashes through a patch of bramble, he sees Marty bursting forth from a thicket, hind quarters jauntily lifted in the air and as unmistakable as a felon in an orange jumpsuit.

He braces himself for the inevitable: any moment now, Marty will turn into a giant slab of steak. His stomach is already beginning to growl. He doesn't want to hurt Marty, but when instinct takes over, it's red bloodlust and roaring and a feral voice telling him to kill kill kill, and the small rational part of him that's tamer than a pussycat is helpless against that animal rage. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. That is not me, he tells himself.

"Alex!"

"Here!"

Marty comes trotting over. "You all right?" he asks.

"I don't want to eat you," Alex blurts out.

"Glad to hear that!"

"You don't understand. I have these horrible dreams… I eat you – tear you open with my bare claws and bloody my muzzle gorging on your heart." It's a shameful confession, and Alex expects Marty to recoil in horror.

To Alex's surprise, Marty just looks puzzled. "Seafood-only diet, remember? You're not gonna eat me."

"How do you know?"

"I know. Trust me."

And Alex finds that he does.

-

A sharp jab in his ribs, and Alex hears Marty complain, "You're biting my neck."

"Um. Sorry."

"What's up with you? Dreaming of eating me again?"

"Not exactly."

"Then why were you biting my neck? It's kinda creepy, to be honest."

"You remember when we saw each other on the beach after going overboard? We ran towards each other and the birds were singing – Vangelis, I think. I was dreaming of that." That much, at least, is true. To say more would be deeply awkward and embarrassing for all parties involved.

Unfortunately, the flaw in Alex's sneaky lie-without-lying technique is immediately found by Marty. "That doesn't explain why you were biting my neck," he says, persistent as a bull-terrier with a slipper. "Why were you biting my neck?"

"I don't know?"

"You're weird."

-

The truth has a nasty habit of coming to light at the most inconvenient moments, especially when one is attempting to keep it a secret. Alex's secret grows until it fills his chest, pushing against his throat and dangling precariously on the tip of his tongue. Each time he opens his mouth, he has to be careful to keep it all in, but it's when they're both on three feet by the lake (one cocked in the air for better access) that the truth leaks out with the steady streams of urine tinkling into the water.

"I really like you."

"Aww, ya big softie, I really like you too. You and me – we're best buds!" says Marty.

"No, not like that. I mean – I – that is to say that I – uhm – really like you." There's nothing for it but to demonstrate through action what he means.

"You're licking my nose."

"Yeah," Alex says, and does it again.

"Feels nice," Marty mumbles.

"Good."

Alex takes one tiny step towards Marty, and their noses bump against each other. They stand like that for a while, nose to nose, looking into each other's eyes and breathing the same air, then by unspoken signal their eyelids fall closed and they tilt their blunt snouts up until their lips meet.

Stars don't explode, and hippos don't dance (Gloria won't be caught dead in a tutu), but it feels like homecoming and that's good.

-

"So that's what the neck-biting is about," Marty comments idly from his position sprawled decadently under the beachfront hut. "You lions are a kinky lot."

"Shut up," growls Alex, and places a long, wet lick along the black stripe on Marty's neck that runs a little unparallel with the other stripes.

There are no dreams tonight, only light snores and the entwined tails of a lion and a zebra.