baby i'm a giver

ryland didn’t even look up. “option one: we open it and potentially discover advanced human knowledge. option two: we don’t open it and i slowly lose my mind wondering what’s inside.”

“option three,” you added, “we don’t open it and you will forever be curious about the content but hey, at least you'd still be alive!”

he glanced up at you with a grin that immediately told you he was not going to pick option three.

“ryland last time you said ‘this’ll probably be fine,’ we almost suffocated.”

“counterpoint,” he said, straightening and placing a hand on the latch, “almost.”

you sighed.

“i just don’t like it,” you said for what was probably the fifth time.

ryland made a thoughtful humming sound that meant the exact opposite.

“you don’t like anything that comes from rocky.”

you crossed your arms without taking your eyes off the object. “that is objectively untrue. i like the parts that don’t explode, corrode, or attempt to rewrite the laws of physics.”

“so.... none of it?”

“exactly.”

pause.

just when ryland reached for the cylinder, you spoke out again.

“and just for the record....” you said, voice flat, “i am deeply against whatever you’re about to do.”

“come on. what’s the worst that could happen?”

you dragged a hand down your face, already bracing for disaster. “okay, i need you to understand that that phrase is cursed. like, historically cursed. civilizations have fallen after someone said that.”

he ignored you.

of course he ignored you.

the seal popped before you could argue more. the cylinder hissed open with a soft, pressurized sound.

for a second, nothing happened.

you leaned forward slightly, squinting, peering into the opening, expecting.... something. a device. a sample. anything.

“okay.... maybe it’s empty—”

poof!

a burst of fine gold dust shot out of the container in slow motion, catching the light as it drifted upward and outward, directly into both your faces before either of you could react.

“oh— come on—!” you coughed immediately, stumbling back and waving your hands uselessly through the air. “why is it always airborne—”

“i didn’t—” ryland coughed too, turning his head and blinking rapidly. “i didn’t know it was going to do that!”

“it’s a mysterious alien container, of course it was going to do that!”

the dust settled almost as quickly as it appeared, vanishing into nothing. no residue, no smell, no visible trace that anything had even happened.

you both stood there, breathing hard, staring at each other.

“....okay,” you said slowly. “status report.”

he blinked a few more times, then patted his arms, his torso, like he might find damage. “uhhh.... lungs: functioning. skin: not melting. vision: normal.”

“define normal.”

“i can see you glaring at me, so, yeah. normal.”

you exhaled. “great. fantastic. we inhaled space dust and survived. love that for us.”

“see?” he said, already relaxing. “nothing to worry about.”

you pointed at him sharply. “you do not get to say that. you lost that privilege the moment you opened it.”

“fair.”

then there was a beat.

“so.... that’s it?” you asked.

he peered into the cylinder, turning it upside down. only the residue of the dust fell, nothing else was inside.

“that’s it.” he confirmed.

“okay,” you said finally, though your voice carried a thin edge of disbelief. “either that was completely harmless, or we just inhaled something that’s going to kill us slowly and mysteriously.”

“statistically,” ryland said, already turning back toward the console, “it’s probably the second one.”

“great,” you muttered.

“yep.” he clicked his tongue and made a double finger gun. “nailed it.”

only for a while.

only for a while, it actually seemed like he was right.

you two ran scans, double-checked the air composition, monitored your vitals like you were waiting for them to spike into something dramatic and undeniable. everything came back normal. no toxins, no foreign pathogens, no radiation spikes, nothing that explained the golden dust or what it was supposed to do.

it should have been reassuring.

it wasn’t.

because about an hour in, you noticed something off.

not dramatic. not alarming. but subtle enough.

you shifted in your seat, tugging slightly at the collar of your yellow jumpsuit. the fabric suddenly felt too close, too warm against your skin.

“hey,” you said, not looking up from your screen. you were in your station in the lab, your back facing ryland. “did the temperature go up?”

ryland glanced at the panel beside him. “nope. holding steady.”

“huh.” you leaned back, frowning. “feels warmer.”

“maybe you’re just stressed.”

you snorted. “yeah, because inhaling unknown alien particles was such a relaxing experience.”

you tried to ignore it.

it didn’t work.

because by the second hour, it got worse. worse enough that it distracted you from doing your job.

you were restless now, shifting every few minutes, hyper-aware of your own body in a way that was getting increasingly distracting.

“okay, nope. something’s happening.” you said, standing up. you zipped down your suit. it pooled around your waist and left you in nothing but a dark green tank top you wore underneath. now you looked like a formula 1 driver walking around the garage in the middle of a malaysian heat.

except you were pretty sure that the heat in malaysia was tolerable enough and the drivers were used to it.

this, whatever this was however, was far from it.

“i'm sure it's nothing—” ryland finally turned but then paused.

“what?” you asked as you tied your hair into a ponytail.

he was sitting still. too still. his posture was stiff, shoulders slightly tense, like he was holding himself in place. his jaw tightened and his eyes that were currently fixated on you slightly dilated.

“....ryland?”

he flinched, snapping back to the present. he fixed his glasses while his eyes withdrew, focusing on somewhere else but you.

“yeah?” his voice came out a little too quick. a little too tight.

you narrowed your eyes. “you okay?”

“fine. totally fine.”

“you don’t look fine.”

he let out a short laugh that didn’t sound entirely natural. “well, looks can be deceiving.”

“you’re flushed.”

“it’s warm,” he said immediately. “i’m…. internally warm.”

“....that’s not a thing.”

“it is now.”

you crossed your arms, studying him.

“you’re acting weird.”

ryland scratched the back of his neck. you did not miss the way he licked his lips. and there was a faint flush creeping across his face, coloring his cheeks and the tips of his ears, subtle but unmistakable once you saw it.

“nothing. nothing. um—”

you frowned. “are you okay?”

“yes, yes,” he cleared his throat while still staring at a very specific spot on the floor, like he was avoiding your eyes.

“okay....” you turned, walking back to your station, trying to not let his sudden weird behaviour get to you. it's ryland. he was always a bit odd, even back on earth when you first met him on the ship.

by hour three, thankfully you finished your work quickly because the heat was no longer tolerable.

“fuck....” you muttered under your breath, standing up and started pacing around.

ryland was still busy with his duct-taped-computers, probably working on the algorithm to translate rocky's melodic language.

he stopped typing on the keyboard and grabbed his notebook, writing something there now.

your paces halted. and unfortunately your brain decided that right now was the perfect time to let your eyes wander to his arms out of all places.

you didn’t know why but it just happened.

you didn't get to stop yourself. you brain drifted, catching on the absolute ridiculous size of his biceps. since when did he work out? the thought of middle school science teacher ryland grace going to the gym and working out during the weekends got more ridiculous the more you think of it.

you should have stopped. should have sat back down and worked or went to take a nap or— oh my god his veins—

you flinched.

jesus, what the fuck?

since when the fuck did you notice that?

nope. absolutely not.

you squeezed your eyes shut briefly, exhaling through your nose like that might reset your brain.

it didn't.

you sighed, audible enough just to your ears. your gaze flicked, just for a second, and then immediately snapped back to somewhere else.

that was a mistake.

because now you knew, and knowing made it harder not to look again.

your brain, completely unhelpful, decided to supply additional commentary. since when does he have arms like that? it asked, again, like this was new information, like you hadn’t been working side by side with him for months.

you squeezed your eyes shut briefly, exhaling through your nose. get it together. this was ryland. your crew mate. your friend. the only other human being alive within literal light-years.

and yet—

“oh, for fuck's sake,” you cursed under your breath.

“what?” ryland immediately turned, ears sharp enough to hear you. he looked concerned for a bit.

“nothing,” you said quickly. too quickly.

he adjusted his glasses. “that did not sound like nothing.”

“it’s nothing.”

ryland tilted his head. a hint of amusement decorating his face.

“you were staring at me,” he pointed out.

you jerked your gaze away. “i was not.”

“you absolutely were.”

“i was not,” you insisted sharper, which would have been more convincing if you hadn’t immediately glanced back at him again.

he let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “wow. okay. so it’s not just me. good to know.”

you pressed a hand to your forehead, giving up on your pretenses. “no, it is definitely not just you.”

you paced again a few more steps, trying to shake it off, but it didn’t help. if anything, it made you even more hyperaware of everything. your breathing, the air, him.

and by the fourth hour, denial was no longer an option.

“okay, that's it.” you said, pacing now because sitting still felt impossible, “we need to figure out whatever the hell this is.”

“yep,” ryland said, standing up simultaneously.

“define what you’re feeling,” you asked.

he hesitated. “uh, okay. so, scientifically?”

“obviously.”

“i feel.... distracted,” he started, frowning slightly as he tried to articulate it. “like my brain keeps derailing. and also—” he stopped.

he looked at you and held his gaze for a second too long.

“ryland.”

“....also very aware of you,” he finished.

pause.

“define 'aware'. like when you were staring at me?”

“i wasn't—” he stopped, then frowned, like he was trying to catch his own thoughts mid-escape. “okay, maybe i was.”

you crossed your arms. “why?”

“i don’t know,” he said immediately, which somehow felt worse than any actual answer. “i just— looked up and— there you were.”

“i’m always here!”

“yes,” he said, a little too quickly. “i am aware of that. conceptually. but right now it’s.... more noticeable.”

you stared at him.

“more noticeable.” you repeated.

he rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “that sounded weird.”

“it sounded very weird.”

“i meant it in a normal, non-weird way!”

“there is no version of that sentence that is normal, ryland!”

“you were staring at me too!” he reminded.

you opened your mouth, then shut it again, abandoning whatever argument you were about to attempt. he got you there.

then you sighed. you realized that you both seem to be doing that a lot today.

“you know what? nevermind. just— are there any other symptoms? like what, hormones? perception? impulse control?”

“all of the above, probably.”

you exhaled slowly, forcing yourself to think. maybe it was—

“the dust,” you said suddenly, stopping in your tracks.

he went still. “what?”

you pointed at the cylinder. “it has to be that.”

“yeah,” he said, nodding slowly like he just pieced all the puzzles together now. “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. mysterious alien substance, unknown effects, sudden onset of—” he gestured vaguely between you “—this.”

you raised an eyebrow. “'this?'”

“i don’t have a better word!”

“well, find one!”

“i’m a scientist, not emily brontë!”

you dragged both hands down your face. “oh my god.”

“okay,” you continued. “let's not panic. let us all calm down. so, we agreed we got exposed to an unknown particulate substance.”

“yep.”

“we’re experiencing.... thermal dysregulation.”

“yep.”

“and—” you hesitated, “—behavioral anomalies.”

he made a small, distressed noise. “that is a very scientific way to say that i cannot stop staring at your lips.”

you frowned. “you were staring at my lips?”

“and you were staring at my arms! we can do this all night!” he said defensively.

“did you just quote the sequels— nevermind. not important.”

you pressed your lips together. which, unfortunately, made his eyes drop there again.

you both noticed, and you both looked away at the same time.

“okay,” he said, pacing once, like movement might fix this. “okay, okay, okay, okay, we can figure this out. we always figure things out.”

“right,” you said, latching onto that. “we analyze.”

“we observe.”

“we hypothesize.”

“we do not panic.”

“we are absolutely not panicking.”

you were both very clearly panicking.

“let’s list everything again.” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. “all symptoms. no judgment.”

“no judgment,” you agreed.

“elevated body temperature.” he started.

“check.”

“heightened sensory awareness.”

“check.”

“uh....” he hesitated, visibly struggling. “increased.... focus on.... specific.... features?”

you folded your arms tighter. “check.”

“compulsive attention,” he added weakly.

“check.”

he swallowed. “and a— a noticeable shift in, uh—”

“attraction?” you said bluntly.

he closed his eyes. “yeah. that.”

the word hung there, heavy but accurate.

you both went very still. because once it was said like that, clean, clinical, undeniable, something in your brain clicked into place.

not just the symptoms.

the pattern.

your mind started pulling threads together, faster now. the dust. the delivery method. the lack of any visible organism. the immediate onset being minimal, then escalating over time.

you frowned, thinking harder.

“okay,” you said slowly. “if this were any known terrestrial system, particulate exposure with delayed onset behavioral changes would suggest—”

“toxins,” he said automatically.

“but there’s no impairment,” you countered.

“cognitive function is intact. motor function is intact. we’re not disoriented.”

“right,” he said, catching up. “so not a neurotoxin.”

“and not a pathogen,” you added. “no immune response. no inflammation.”

“so it’s not attacking us.”

“it’s affecting us.”

you both went quiet again, thinking.

he ran a hand through his hair, pacing again, faster this time. “okay, so— delivery system: aerosolized particulate. effect: behavioral modification. targeted toward—”

he stopped.

you watched it happen. the exact moment the realization hit him.

his entire posture went rigid.

“....no,” he said.

your stomach dropped. “what?” you asked, even though something in you already knew but refused to acknowledge it.

he looked at you. then away. then back again, like he wished reality would swap out for a better option.

“no, no, no, no, no, no,” he muttered, shaking his head. “that’s— that’s not—”

“ryland,” you said, sharper now. “what.”

he gestured helplessly toward the empty cylinder. “there were no organisms. no plant matter. nothing visible. which means whatever this is, it doesn’t rely on traditional biological structures.”

“okay....?”

“which means,” he continued, words picking up speed like he couldn’t stop them now, “it could be a synthetic analog. or an alien biochemical system that doesn’t follow earth-based taxonomy. something that mimics a known function without the same physical form—”

“ryland.”

he stopped and looked at you.

you held his gaze.

“say it.”

he hesitated. like if he didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be real.

“....on earth,” he started, carefully, “there are airborne particulates that influence behavior in very specific ways.”

your chest tightened.

“they’re typically produced by plants,” he went on. “released into the air. inhaled. they trigger physiological responses that.... alter attraction. increase reproductive drive. reduce inhibition—”

your breath caught.

he exhaled, defeated.

“....pollen,” he finished.

silence.

thick.

absolute.

you stared at him.

he stared back.

“that’s not possible,” you said, even as your brain was already connecting it. "that's not fucking possible. what the fu—”

“i know,” he said quickly. “i know. there were no plants. there’s no visible biological structure. it doesn’t make sense.”

“so it’s not pollen.”

“it’s not plant pollen,” he corrected weakly.

you both paused.

“but it’s doing the same thing,” you said.

“yeah.”

another silence. longer this time.

he let out a hollow laugh, dragging a hand down his face. “that’s— wow. okay. that’s just— fantastic. amazing. incredible. we got hit with alien.... pseudo-pollen that—”

he stopped himself.

you finished it for him. “that makes people.... like this.”

he nodded, looking like he wanted to walk directly into space.

you swallowed. your skin still felt too warm. thoughts still kept drifting back to him.

to his hands. arms. the way he was looking at you right now.

you dropped your hands. wanna know the worst part of this? it's that now that you understood it, it didn’t make it stop. it just made it clearer.

“we’re in trouble,” you said quietly.

he nodded, equally quiet.

“yeah,” he said. “we really are.”

“and rocky just gave it to us with no warning?”

“to be fair,” ryland said, “he might not have known humans would react like this.”

you stopped pacing. “react like what, exactly?”

“like this,” he said weakly. “he probably thinks this is how humans reproduce. like, 'here, have some breeding dust, make more crew for the mission!'” ryland continued.

“oh, jesus.”

another pause.

longer this time.

he shifted his weight. “okay. solution-oriented thinking. we just.... wait it out.”

“wait it out,” you repeated.

“yep. it’s a chemical thing, right? it’ll metabolize, wear off, we go back to normal, and we never speak of this again.”

“not even a little bit.” you agreed quickly.

“not even in a funny anecdote way.”

“especially not in a funny anecdote way.”

he removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut tight while his other hand was gripping the edge of his desk for dear life. firm, almost rigid, like it was the only thing anchoring him in place. “good plan. great plan. love that plan.”

you stopped pacing and looked at him properly.

really looked.

the flush hadn’t faded, it had deepened. his breathing was just slightly off, not enough to be obvious unless you were paying attention, but you were paying attention now. and the way he was holding himself. tense, contained, like he was actively stopping himself from—

“ryland,” you said slowly.

“yeah.” he did not look at you.

“why are you holding onto the table like it’s about to float away?”

he let out a short, strained laugh.

“because if i don’t,” he said, voice tight in a way that made something in your chest twist, “i might do something incredibly stupid.”

your stomach dropped. “define 'stupid.'”

his eyes flicked up to yours, and whatever you saw there made your breath catch.

“i think,” he said quietly, “you already know.”

pause.

you stole a look at him. ryland had gone very still, hands braced on the edge of the console, head bowed like he was trying to think his way out of this. he looked just as wrecked as you are. tense, flushed, jaw tight like he was grinding through it.

the lab suddenly felt too small, like the walls had inched closer, like the air had thickened into something you had to push through just to breathe. you were still standing too close to each other. close enough to feel the heat rolling off him. close enough that every tiny shift felt amplified. and neither of you seemed able to take that one simple step back.

you both pretended to think. which would’ve been easier if your thoughts weren’t constantly derailing.

“okay,” ryland said finally, too quickly, like he’d been holding the word in his mouth for a while. he wasn’t looking at you. he hadn’t been looking at you for a solid minute now, which somehow made it worse. “solution. we need a solution.”

you nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “yeah. yeah, obviously.”

he paced once, twice, hands flexing at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. “we don’t know the duration of the effect. could be hours, could be longer.”

“right,” you said, your voice coming out tighter than you meant.

“it might not get worse,” he said quickly.

you both paused.

“it’s definitely getting worse,” you said.

“yeah,” he admitted. “yeah, that’s fair.”

another stretch of silence followed, thick and charged and deeply unhelpful.

another beat. he stopped mid-pace, suddenly locking eyes on your lips again as you bit the lower one in concentration. a visible shiver ran through him.

you, meanwhile, were transfixed by the way his t-shirt stretched across his chest when he breathed. arms. shoulders. that stupid little strand of hair falling over his forehead.

it was ridiculous. you were both adults. professionals. stuck on a ship light-years from home with an entire species depending on you not screwing this up.

and yet.

both of you looked away at the same time.

he continued pacing, then he straightened slightly, like he’d latched onto something solid. “okay. i’ve got it.”

you perked up. “yeah?”

“isolation.”

silence.

“what?” your voice came out small.

“we isolate,” he repeated, more firmly now, like saying it again would make it more reasonable. “separate areas of the ship. minimal contact. we wait for the effects to wear off.”

you stared at him. “you’re kidding.”

“i’m not kidding.”

“ryland, that’s not a solution. t-that’s— what if it gets worse? what if it doesn’t wear off?”

“then we reassess,” he said, easy. “but right now, the safest option is distance.”

you laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “distance? on this ship? we share literally everything. systems, controls, workload—”

“yeah,” he said, gaining momentum, talking faster now. “we separate. different sections of the ship. minimal contact. we only communicate over comms when absolutely necessary. reduce exposure to.... stimuli.”

“stimuli,” you repeated flatly.

he made a small, helpless gesture. “i’m trying to keep this clinical.”

you stared at him. really stared this time.

“ryland,” you said slowly, “we are on a single-crew mission with two people.”

“yes.”

“yao and ilyukhina are—”

“i’m aware.” his voice was tighter this time, jaw clenched.

“we barely manage everything together on a good day.”

“we’ll adjust.”

“adjust?” you let out a short, disbelieving breath, shaking your head. “we’re already compromised. you said it yourself. attention issues, cognitive interference. you think splitting up is going to make that better?”

his jaw tightened. “it removes the trigger.”

“it removes the only person who can help when something goes wrong,” you shot back. “we don’t have backup. we don’t have a third crew member to pick up the slack. if something breaks, and something will break, we need both of us functional.”

“we are functional,” he insisted, but it came out strained, like he didn’t fully believe it.

you took a step closer without thinking.

his entire body reacted.

it was subtle. so subtle you almost missed it. but it was there: the way his shoulders went rigid, the way his breath hitched just slightly, the way his hands curled like he was holding himself in place.

that alone made your point for you.

you gestured between the two of you. “this is not functional.”

he didn’t answer.

you softened your voice, just a little. “we don’t know how long this is going to last.”

“it could wear off in a few hours,” he said, but it sounded more like hope than certainty.

“or it could be days,” you said quietly.

he didn’t argue.

“or weeks or never at all!” you added, pushing it, because you needed him to really think about it, not just cling to the best-case scenario.

“it’s the only plan that doesn’t make things worse. it’s better than the alternative.” he replied.

you stilled. “what alternative?”

he didn’t say anything.

which, unfortunately, was an answer.

you exhaled slowly, your chest tight. “okay. no. we’re not doing this vague shit. we need to actually say it.”

“we really don’t,” he said quickly.

“we do,” you insisted. “because if we don’t, we’re just going to keep circling around it and nothing gets solved.”

he dragged a hand down his face. “no.”

“ryland—”

“no,” he repeated, firmer this time. “we are not— no. that is not the solution.”

you stared at him. you've never heard his voice went that rough. that low. “it’s the only solution that makes sense.”

“it’s not a solution,” he shot back. “it’s—” he stopped, jaw tightening. “it’s not something we should even consider.”

“we both know what this is doing to us,” you pressed, voice low but steady now. “it’s not just going to fade if we sit in separate rooms pretending we’re fine. it’s getting worse.”

“i said no,” he repeated, sharper this time.

“and what happens if it peaks while we’re in the middle of something critical?” you continued anyway. “a maneuver, a repair, a calculation— what then? we just hope we can think straight?”

“we will think straight,” he snapped. “we’re not animals.”

“no, we’re worse,” you shot back. “we’re aware of it and still can’t stop it.”

he looked away first, jaw flexing, like he was trying to clamp down on something.

“we are not going to make a decision like that under the influence of alien—” he gestured helplessly, “—whatever this is.”

“we might not have a choice,” you said.

“we always have a choice.”

“do we?” you asked. “because right now it feels like we’re both in agony and pretending that distance is going to fix it.”

he flinched. barely, but enough.

“you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, quieter now. steadier. like he was forcing the words into place. “okay? whatever this is, it doesn't make that decision for us. you don’t—” he stopped, swallowing. “you don’t owe me anything. not for survival, not for the mission. nothing.”

your expression softened for half a second, before hardening again.

“this isn’t about owing anyone anything,” you said. “this is about reality. about what’s actually happening. we can’t function like this, ryland.”

“we can,” he insisted. “we will.”

“you don’t believe that.”

he didn’t answer.

you stepped closer without thinking. his shoulders tensed immediately, like proximity itself was dangerous.

“look at me,” you said.

he did.

“you’re telling me to isolate,” you said, softer now, but more intense. “to stay away from you, to fight this out on our own, when we both know exactly what would make it stop.”

his breath hitched. just slightly, but he held his ground. “knowing something doesn’t mean we should do it.”

“why not?” you asked. “if it works, if it stabilizes us, if it lets us actually do our jobs.... why not?”

“because that’s not a choice,” he said, the words coming out sharper than he meant them to. “that’s a reaction. that’s the pollen making the decision for us.”

“or it’s us making the best decision with the situation we have,” you countered.

“no,” he said, shaking his head, stepping back now like he needed the space. “no, that’s not the same thing.”

you followed without realizing.

“then what is?” you demanded. “we wait it out and risk compromising the mission? we split up and hope nothing goes wrong? how is that better?”

“because at least it’s ours,” he snapped.

the words hung there. then he froze, like he hadn’t meant to say it that way.

you frowned slightly. “what?”

he dragged a hand down his face, exhaling hard. “if we— if we do this, it shouldn’t be because we’re backed into a corner. it shouldn’t be because some alien dust messed with our heads and left us with one option.”

“it’s still us,” you said. “it’s still our choice.”

“is it?” he asked quietly.

that got you. because there was something in his voice now. something deeper than just logic. something personal.

“i don’t want that,” he went on, more quietly now, but more intense for it. “i don’t want.... something like that to happen because we had no other way out. because we were trying to survive it. i don’t want it to be something we look back on and think, ‘we didn’t really choose that.’”

you stared at him.

he looked away again, jaw tight.

“that’s not—” you started, then faltered. “that’s not what this is about.”

“it is for me,” he said.

there was a beat.

“we don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect conditions,” you said, more gently now. “we have a mission. we need each other functioning.”

“i know,” he said. “i know that.”

“then stop pretending this is something we can just outlast.”

“i’m not pretending,” he said, voice rougher now. “i’m choosing the option where you don’t wake up later and regret it.”

pause.

you blinked at him. your voice came out quieter than you intended. “you think i’d regret it.”

“i think,” he said carefully, “that this isn’t exactly a clear-headed situation.”

you opened your mouth but no argument came out. because he wasn’t wrong.

“i’m just saying that it might fix the problem.”

“at what cost?”

a beat.

he stepped closer. just one step, but it closed the gap enough that the heat surged again, sharp and immediate, both of you feeling it.

his hands flexed at his sides like he was actively resisting the instinct to do something else with them.

“you think you won’t regret that?” he asked, voice lower now, rougher around the edges. “you think we won’t look back at this later and realize we only did it because we didn’t have a choice?”

you didn’t answer right away.

he shook his head, almost to himself. “that’s not…. that’s not how that should happen.”

there was something else in his voice then, something quieter, buried under all the logic and resistance. something that didn’t quite belong to the situation at hand.

“if we’re going to—” he stopped, jaw tightening, then tried again. “if something like that ever happens, it shouldn’t be because we’re trying to survive some alien.... whatever this is. it should be because we actually—”

you watched him cutting himself off. the way his shoulders were locked, the way his whole body looked like it was braced against something internal, something he was refusing to let slip.

“isolating wouldn't work,” you said quietly. “we can’t do this alone. not here. not now.”

“maybe not,” he admitted.

“then—”

“i’m still not doing that,” he cut in.

you blinked. “ryland—”

“i’m not,” he repeated, firmer now. “we’ll figure something else out. we’ll manage it. we have to.”

“even if it makes things harder?”

“yeah,” he said. “even then.”

you searched his face. trying to understand. trying to find the line he wouldn’t cross.

“you’re really that set on this,” you said.

“yeah,” he said quietly.

another pause.

“fine,” you said at last, though it didn’t sound like agreement so much as reluctant acceptance. “we do it your way.”

he nodded once.

“we isolate,” you added. “but if it gets worse—”

“we reassess,” he said immediately.

neither of you moved.

just stood there, separated by a few steps and a whole lot of tension, both of you very aware of how fragile that distance felt.

like it could disappear in a second.

like he might cross it.

like you might let him.

his jaw tightened.

his shoulders went rigid again.

and for a split second, he looked like he might—

but then he turned away.

“i’ll take the lab first,” he said, voice a little rough. “you can have the cockpit.”

you swallowed. “okay.”

“we’ll.... check in. over comms.”

“right.”

—

you weren't sure what time it was, but two things for certain: you were going crazy because sleep refused to come and the ceiling was mocking you.

you had been lying in bed, tangled in your sheets for what felt like hours but was probably just twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling, flipping from one side to the other like a rotisserie chicken. the gold dust still simmered under your skin, turning every shift of fabric into slow torture. your tank top clung to your damp chest. your shorts felt too tight, too rough, too everything. you rolled onto your stomach, then flopped onto your back again, kicking the blanket off with a dramatic groan.

“this is stupid,” you muttered into the dark, dragging a pillow over your face like that might solve anything. “this is so fucking stupid. i am the pilot of the hail mary. i’ve navigated black holes in simulations. i should not be this horny because of some stupid alien dust.”

another wave of heat rolled through you, settling low and insistent between your legs. you whimpered softly, pressing your thighs together, but that only made it worse.

your brain refused to calm, looping the same thoughts over and over again.

ryland’s voice.

ryland’s face.

ryland's arms.

ryland's hair.

just him in general. the way he’d looked at you before you separated. the way his voice had tightened. the way his shoulders had gone rigid like he was holding himself together by sheer force.

you groaned softly into your pillow, pressing your face into it like that might smother the thoughts.

with a frustrated sigh, you shoved the covers off and swung your legs over the side of the bed, the cool floor a brief relief against overheated skin. you sat there for a second, breathing, trying to steady yourself before started pacing.

“isolation,” you scoffed under your breath, pacing faster. “yeah, great plan, ryland. fantastic plan, ryland. terrific plan! it was never gonna fucking work.”

you sighed again before stopping to take a deep breath.

“okay,” you said to yourself. “it's fine. it's fine! you're okay. you're doing good. just— breathe. it’ll pass.”

you closed your eyes and tried to focus.

in.

out.

in—

“mhmmph—”

pause.

you blinked an eye open.

what—

“mhmphhh— fuckk—”

—the hell was that?

you tilted your head slightly, listening.

at first, nothing. just the low hum of the ship, steady and familiar. long enough you were starting to think that your brain was playing tricks on you.

but then—

“oh, please— please—”

it was soft and faint. slightly uneven. and came from the other side of the wall.

and the other side of the wall was ryland's room.

you froze. you heard it again. a low, muffled whimper drifted through the thin wall

unmistakenably ryland.

he was in the room next to yours.

awake.

and very clearly not handling this any better than you were.

he was trying so hard to stay quiet, really committing to the bit, but failing miserably. another whimper followed, shaky and desperate, quickly bitten off. the faint, rhythmic sound of skin on skin. a muttered curse. your name, whispered like he was cursing the universe for putting him in this position.

heat flooded your face so fast you probably matched the emergency lighting. you stood there, mouth slightly open, ears straining despite yourself.

is he—

no.

no way.

no fucking way.

another moan, softer this time, but unmistakably him. he was doing a terrible job at being stealthy. the wall might as well have been paper.

you paced faster, hands flapping uselessly at your sides like a malfunctioning robot.

dilemma time. big, stupid, pollen-fueled dilemma.

option #1: stay in your room. be responsible. respect the isolation plan he’d suggested earlier like the noble scientist he was. suffer in dignified silence until the dust wore off. maybe meditate. or count rivets in the ceiling. very professional.

option #2: march over there, bang on his door, and finally deal with whatever this is, together.

you stopped, pressing your ear against the cool wall, right where the sounds were loudest. another whimper from his side. your stomach flipped. your body voted very enthusiastically for option two.

“but he said isolate,” you argued with yourself in a harsh whisper. “he was all ‘we’re professionals, we can handle this.’ what if i go over there and he freaks out? what if it gets awkward? what if he opens the door with his dick in his hand and we both just scream?”

you frowned at the mental image. not very flattering thing to think about.

“fuck, no. i’m strong. i’m a pilot. i’ve done evasive maneuvers in asteroid fields. i'm on a mission to save earth. i can handle one night of alien-induced horniness without climbing my crewmate like a tree.”

you resumed pacing, arms crossed tight over your chest like that would somehow contain the fire. three steps. turn. three steps. the sounds from his room continued. another low moan, a bitten-off “shit” that sounded way too sexy for your sanity.

you stopped again, staring at your door like it was the airlock to certain doom.

your hand hovered near the door panel. you yanked it back like the button burned.

“no. professional boundaries. we have a mission. we have dignity. we—”

a particularly broken moan cut through the wall, followed by a muffled thump like he’d smacked his head against something.

you groaned, dragging both hands down your face. “okay, fuck it. i’m weak. i’m so fucking weak. if he doesn’t want this he can yell at me tomorrow when the pollen wears off.”

a beat.

“if.... it ever wears off.” you added.

before you could talk yourself out of it again, you marched to the door, heart hammering like a faulty thruster. you raised your fist and banged on his door, loud, impatient.

no turning back now.

inside, everything went dead silent. then frantic shuffling. something clattered to the floor. then the door finally slid open.

ryland stood there, flushed crimson, hair a disaster, breathing like he’d just run a marathon. his glasses were crooked. shorts wrinkled, barely even on, one hand still guiltily hovering near his waist. his eyes widened comically when he saw you.

you didn’t give him time to speak.

you grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him forward, and kissed him hard.

he made a surprised noise that got immediately swallowed when you kissed him, the door sliding open the rest of the way as he stumbled back into the room.

for a second, he didn’t move. just froze, like his brain had short-circuited.

then his hands came up instinctively, one landing on your waist, the other tangling in your hair as he kissed you back with pent-up desperation. you stumbled forward into his room, mouths still locked, and kicked the door shut behind you with your heel.

the kiss was messy at first. noses bumping, tongues fighting. but neither of you cared. you poured every ounce of frustration and heat into it. his back hit the wall and he pulled you closer, hips pressing against yours so you could feel exactly how affected he still was.

after a long, dizzying minute you forced yourself to pull back just enough to breathe.

“wait, wait,” you said, out of air. “you were the one who wanted to isolate. if you want me to stop.... say it. we can pretend this never happened—”

“no— no, no, no, no. don’t you dare,” he said immediately.

you blinked. “what?”

“don’t say we can stop and then actually mean it,” he said, like that was a personal attack. “that’s— no. absolutely not.”

you huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “you were literally the one arguing against doing this.”

“i know,” he said. “i was wrong. past me was— misguided. naive. deeply out of touch with current events.”

“current events,” you repeated.

“yes,” he said, nodding once, very serious about this. “new data has come to light.”

“and that data is?”

“i need you.”

a beat.

“please.” he stared at you, eyes dark and glassy, lips swollen. his hands flexed on your hips like he was scared you’d vanish. for a heartbeat the only sound was your ragged breathing and the low hum of the ship.

“i tried— i really fucking tried to be good. but this dust is evil and you were just right next door and you look too good in that tank top and i’ve been losing my mind for hours. please.”

you raised an eyebrow, smirking. “oh, so that's what the staring was for earlier?”

“i.... well, i mean— yeah.” he stammered, realizing there is no point of pretending anymore.

you couldn't help but chuckled. “yeah, okay. the feeling's mutual.”

“yeah?” he laughed too.

“yeah.”

“can i kiss you again then?”

you smiled. “thought you'd never asked.”

this time it was him who surged forward, kissing you slower this time, deeper, letting the burn build deliberately. his glasses fogged up immediately, the lenses clouding over from the combined heat of your breaths. he didn’t take them off. didn’t even reach for them. just kept kissing you through the haze, like the fog made it somehow hotter. your fingers traced his jaw, his neck, the rapid flutter of his pulse. he shivered under your touch.

you walked him backward toward the bunk without breaking the kiss. when his knees hit the edge he sat down heavily, pulling you with him so you straddled his lap. the new position pressed you right against the hard line of him, making you both gasp into each other’s mouths.

slowly, you started undressing each other. your hands slid under his shirt, palms mapping the warm, flushed skin of his chest. he lifted his arms so you could tug it off. you tossed it somewhere behind you, leaving him in only his glasses. he returned the favor, peeling your tank top up inch by inch, kissing every new strip of skin he revealed. your stomach, the underside of your breast, your collarbone, until the fabric was gone.

his fingers hooked into the waistband of your shorts. you rose up on your knees so he could slide them down your thighs along with your underwear. you kicked them away. then you focused on his shorts, tugging them down slowly, savoring the way his breath hitched when you freed him.

naked now, you settled back onto his lap, skin to skin. the contact was electric. you took your time, rocking gently against him without taking him inside yet, just feeling the slide and heat while you kissed him lazily, tongues tangling in slow, filthy strokes.

you reached between your bodies, wrapping your hand around him. he groaned loud, head tipping back, the sound vibrating through his chest. “fuck— your hand feels so good,” he breathed, hips twitching up into your grip. “please don’t tease me— been dying for this.”

“you sure about this?” you murmured against his lips between kisses, giving him one last out even as your hips rolled in a slow, teasing circle.

“never been more sure of anything in my life,” he breathed, hands gripping your thighs.

you laughed softly into his mouth, the sound turning into a moan when he shifted his hips just right. one of his hands slid between your bodies, fingers exploring with gentle, curious touches until you were trembling.

only then did you reach down, wrap your hand around him, and guide him to your entrance. you sank down inch by torturous inch, both of you moaning at the slow, perfect stretch. when you were fully seated you stayed there for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other in while your bodies adjusted.

then you started to move.

slow rolls of your hips at first, savoring every drag and press. ryland’s head tipped back, exposing the long line of his throat. you leaned in to kiss along his jaw, his neck, sucking lightly at his pulse point while you rode him with deliberate, unhurried patience. his hands roamed your back, your sides, your breasts, learning every curve like it was new data he needed to memorize.

gradually the rhythm built. your movements grew deeper, harder. the bunk creaked steadily. soft gasps and moans filled the small room. his fingers found your clit, rubbing tight circles that made your rhythm falter and your breath catch.

“ryland— fuck, just like that—”

“you feel so good,” he panted, voice breaking on the words. “oh, baby— don’t stop, please—”

it hit you like a solar flare. you cried out his name loud, clenching around him hard, hips stuttering through the waves. he followed right after, burying himself deep with a broken, guttural moan.

“yes— fuck— coming— inside you— god, you’re perfect— take it all—”

you collapsed against his chest, both of you trembling, hearts hammering in sync. his arms wrapped around you tight, holding you close while the aftershocks rolled through, glasses still fogged and slightly askew on his nose.

for a long moment, neither of you said anything.

you were half sprawled across him, one leg tangled with his, your arm draped somewhere over his chest like you’d both simply.... collapsed and decided to stay that way. the room was quiet except for your breathing, slowly evening out, though not nearly fast enough to feel normal.

ryland was staring at the ceiling.

very intently.

like it had just revealed the meaning of life and he was still processing it.

“....so,” you said eventually.

“so,” he echoed.

another pause.

you shifted slightly, propping your chin on his chest so you could look at him. “on a scale from one to ‘we should never speak of this again,’ where are you at?”

he didn’t look at you.

“....i’m considering faking amnesia.”

you snorted. “wow. rude.”

“i’m kidding,” he said quickly, then paused. “mostly.”

“mostly,” you repeated.

“okay, no, that sounded worse than i meant it,” he said, finally turning his head toward you, eyes wide like he was trying to fix it in real time. “i don’t regret it. i do not regret it. i just—” he gestured vaguely with one hand, which was difficult considering you were partially pinning him down, “—need a second to emotionally catch up with my own life choices.”

you raised an eyebrow. “your life choices led you to space.”

“for the record, i did not consent to that.”

fair, but you ignored him. “and then to alien pollen.”

“unfortunately, yes.”

“and then to me.”

he hesitated.

“that part i’m less willing to categorize as a mistake.”

you stared at him for a second.

then narrowed your eyes. “that was almost smooth.”

“thank you,” he said. “i panicked halfway through it.”

“i could tell.”

another stretch of quiet settled in, but it was different now. looser. like the tension that had been buzzing under your skin all day had finally burned itself out, leaving something softer in its place.

“....for the record,” you added after a moment, “your ‘being quiet’ plan earlier? terrible.”

he made a strangled noise. “oh my god.”

“like, impressively bad,” you continued. “i heard everything.”

“you did not hear everything.”

“ryland.”

he covered his face with both hands, cheeks heated up. “i would like to be ejected into space now.”

“denied,” you said immediately. “we need you for the mission.”

“please, just kill me already.”

“also,” you added, very seriously, “for future reference, the wall is not soundproof.”

“i have gathered that,” he said into his hands.

“just making sure.”

he peeked at you through his fingers. “....are you going to bring this up again later?”

“oh, constantly.”

“i walked into that one.”

“you really did.”

another quiet moment passed.

you could feel his breathing steady under you now, less uneven, less strained.

“....hey,” he said after a while.

“yeah?”

there was a small pause before he spoke again, like he was choosing his words more carefully this time. “are you okay?”

it caught you off guard.

not the question itself, but the way he asked it. steady. grounded, like he needed the answer to mean something.

you blinked, then nodded. “yeah,” you said, softer. “i am.”

he turned his head then, just enough to look at you properly, like he needed the visual confirmation to go with it.

“okay,” he said finally, the word carrying more weight than it should have. “i'm glad.”

you nudged him lightly with your shoulder, a small, grounding kind of contact. “you?”

he let out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck somewhere in his chest for a while. “yeah. i think so. which is honestly surprising, given.... everything.”

another quiet stretch settled over you, but it wasn’t awkward. not really. just calm, in a slightly surreal, post haze kind of way.

eventually, the exhaustion caught up with you. real, actual exhaustion this time. not the restless, jittery kind from before.

you shifted closer without thinking, your head settling more comfortably against him.

he stilled for half a second then relaxed. his arm tightening just slightly around you.

“also,” he added, voice softer now, almost drowsy, “for the record…. i don’t regret it.”

your chest tightened. you didn’t lift your head, didn’t look at him. just let the words settle somewhere quiet inside you.

“…me neither,” you murmured.

that was the last coherent thing either of you said.

If there was one thing you knew it was that Ryland Grace and you perfectly orbited each other, even when he was far off in San Francisco teaching the next generation of young scientists. It had been that way since you met him in college and it just never stopped. Part of you thought it was written in the stars that Ryland Grace and you were meant to do great things together.

Even after everything that happened with his research paper, even after your lab group dropped you post college from lack of funding, it was still the two of you. Science Partners, pen pals, best buds….among other ambiguous unstated things. You stayed in contact over the years, frequent calls, letters, the stupid punny e-cards he would email you on your birthday every year. There was a time, in college, when the two of you were together almost every day. And your excuse was always that we just work well together.

You knew Ryland Grace, you would say it was your next best subject. However, in this specific, very rare instance, you had no idea what the fuck Ryland Grace was even talking about.

Have you ever considered helping save the planet?

You must have reread the email a thousand times. Enough where your brain eventually shut off from confusion and your head met the keyboard in place of a pillow. Only when a loud thudding rattled through your dingy apartment did you finally realize that you had even fallen asleep. You blinked at the screen, lifting your head from your keyboard, the sun shining through the windows onto your desk. Reaching up, you peeled a small sticky note off your face, rubbing your eyes.

BANG, BANG, BANG. The sound rattled through your thin walls again and only on the second time did you realize it was coming from your front door. You paused for a second and glanced at your small digital clock, it was only six in the morning. Shooting up from your chair you made your way to the door, grabbing an umbrella on the way over, just in case.

You peered through the peep hole, only relaxing for a second when you saw a woman…then her two, what you could assume were body guards, behind her. Right about now you would have called Ryland but he had been off the grid, that email being the first sign of life you had gotten in days.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What do you even do? You glanced back out, seeing them talking amongst themselves before knocking again, the woman calling your name through the door. Quickly turning to the mirror on the wall near the door, you  let out a groan at what you saw. There was mascara smeared under your eyes from sleep and your hair stuck up in fifteen directions, all completed by the oversized t-shirt you had on reading “This gal believes in aliens”. 

Fuck it!

You threw the umbrella to the side, brushed some hair out of your face and opened the door, casually leaning against the frame like everything was under control.

“Hi,” you spoke up, voice rough from not sleep, quickly clearing your throat in response, arms crossed over yourself to hide the stupid shirt. “Hi…uh is there anything I can do for you?”

The women did not look amused, only offering you a nod, slightly peaking into the small studio apartment behind you. 

“Yes, actually, you received an email,” she spoke, sharp, straight to the point. It wasn’t a question really, more like a confirmed fact she was repeating. Her eyebrow quirked ever so slightly at your silence. “Am I wrong?”

You shook your head quickly.

“Yes or no? It is really that simple”.

“Yes, yes, sorry…” you hesitated for a second, coming to the quick realization you had no idea who these people were. And yet, you were so scared to see what would happen if you lied. “Yeah I got an email”.

“Not my decision. Dr. Grace thought however that it would be most efficient,” she continued. “He has spoken very highly of you and from my own research, I can understand why”.

Dr. Grace? Ryland? 

She gestured past you which you could only respond by moving to the side. Her presence commanded space and you respected it, or feared it, there was a lot to unpack. She stepped past you, turning to give a nod to the two men with her who remained outside.

“I am sorry,” you began, closing the door, turning to face her. “Maybe you got the wrong person-”

“That is not possible,” she replied. “He was very insistent that we must contact you in order to move forward”.

For what? Contact you for what?

You watched as the woman moved around the room like it was her space, picking up books and skimming through old pages of notes you had written. Then she turned to face a white board you had mounted messily in your kitchen, scribbled with notes and doodles that surrounded three big words: THE PETROVA LINE.

“Seems we are on the same page,” she mused, the first time you had heard any significant change in her tone. 

The space and the stars and the idea of infinity above had kept you up late into the night as a child. Your parents should have expected your world was one far away from the grounds of Earth, that you would live your life with your head in the stars. Your father used to have to drag you inside from your backyard, you set up with a blanket and a small telescope that they had bought you for your birthday that year. Each night would end the same, your parents calling you to come inside and you asking for five more minutes, which turned into ten, which turned into hours. But your little sixth grade self could not fathom how school was more important than the world above, the possibilities of the stars.

And when you went to college to study that world it was the easiest decision of your life. Then the stars turned on you and you could not understand why.

The Petrova Line kept you up at night.

“You studied the Tau Ceti System, yes?”

The name of the planet system sent a shockwave through you in a way you didn’t even know was possible. Tau Ceti was your whole life, or it had been in a distant past, it was a system you believed to have more potential than people truly gave it credit for. Yes, you knew Tau Ceti, however you had let that ship sail a long time ago. 

“Yeah,” you spoke up, quieter than before. “Yeah I did some work on Tau Ceti”.

And you could not help the wave of disappointment that hit you at those words. You had been recruited to a lab group after college that was specifically dedicating funding to researching the Tau Ceti System, and when it fell through, so did all your plans. You had dropped every other offer for the one that, it was everything you had wanted. It was a risk, and it fell through. No one really prepares you for post college as an Astrobiologist, no one ever tells you that you will end up working as a waitress at the Extraterrestrial Eatery near your house. At least you got to wear a cool space suit there. Tau Ceti and your other research had been benched, pushed to the side for evenings when you had nothing else to do.

“Perfect. Now that is cleared up, grab anything that might be important and we can be on our way”.

The women turned to move past you back for the door and you felt like your feet were suddenly glued to the ground. You opened your mouth to speak, before closing it, then opening it again. Yet no sound seemed to come out.

“What is this?” she asked, turning back, gesturing to your face. “I do not need the fish impression right now, this is a serious matter, we do not have the time”.

You immediately shut your mouth, then took a breath.

“Who are you?” you finally cried out. “What is this? No one is telling me anything!”

You felt insane, like you were living in some simulation where everyone knew what was going on but you. Where were the cameras? When were they gonna jump out and say it was all some weird, honestly unnerving, prank?

“I am Eva Stratt, head of the Petrova Taskforce” she began. “And you have been selected by Ryland Grace to help solve the Petrova Line”.

“I have work tomorrow,” you breathed out, a loss for words. The Petrova Taskforce, some of the world's most brilliant minds coming to you…a waitress at an alien restaurant. The email came back to you, the ominous words from Ryland, saving the world. This was news that a long time ago would have been everything you had ever wanted to hear…now you felt like some imposter, out of place.

Why you? Why now? Why after years of beating around the bush did Ryland Grace need your help to solve one of humanity's greatest emergencies. Why was Ryland Grace solving one of humanity's greatest emergencies?

“That will not be a problem,” Stratt countered. “We have already contacted your place of work and put you on an indefinite time of leave”.

“You can’t just do that!” you fought back, even if you knew that was the least of your worries. It was all so much, all at once. Ryland and Tau Ceti and the Petrova Line and saving the fucking planet. 

You remained still glued to the floor, grasping at straws, scared of saying yes…maybe even more scared of saying no. You glanced around the room, the books, the hours of work, the pictures of Ryland and you scattered around the room from college. It had been years since you saw him and maybe that scared you too, seeing him again, reopening feelings you had sworn to bury too deep to ever reach again. 

Your curiosity for the world remained, your love for space had never quite gone away, that would be impossible. It was just more of a hobby now, you looked less like someone with a PhD in Astrobiology and more like a crazed conspiracy theorist. You weren’t the same scientist from college, bright eyed and ready to fly into space if she had to.

Dr. Stratt spoke your name from the silence, your eyes snapping back to meet hers, “the sun is dying.”

The word settled heavy, lingering in the air between the two of you. 

“Dr. Grace is my last hope,” she continued, honest, blunt. “And you are his”.

And that was all it took as you nodded, a loss for words, moving in a sort of trance to gather your things.

-----------

If there was something you would be fine never doing again it was that fuck-ass fighter jet. But now, standing in front of the door to the conference room, you think you might rather go back and ride the jet a few more times to stall. You hadn’t seen Ryland Grace in years…and now you were there, feet away from him and the idea overwhelmed you more than you thought it would.

The ride over had been a bumpy, hazy mess. Anyone you tried to ask about what was happening would ignore you as if you were a ghost…which only left you with more questions. By the time you landed on a boat your brain was too tired to even try to make sense of it all.

You had met Ryland in college. You both ended up in the same class, ‘The History of Extraterrestrial Life’...better known on campus as That One Alien Class. It filled both of your general education requirements, or at least that’s what you told him was your reasoning.  It had taken him weeks to get you to admit that you believed in Aliens and even longer to admit that the class really wasn’t a joke to you. 

The two of you were paired up for most of the semester, spending time whispering in class and making jokes about how deranged the content was. Even if it did open your eyes up to the whole Tau Ceti system. 

You remember the last day of class so vividly. It was your final presentation and Ryland had taken it upon himself to get you these dumb matching shirts reading, “This gal believes in aliens” paired with “this guy probably is an alien”. It was stupid. And it was so perfect.

The thought made you smile, only for a second, before the nerves of it all settled back in. 

There was too much there, floating, left unsaid. And it scared the shit out of you. 

Before you could even fully prepare, the doors opened, your body moving in autopilot as Eva Stratt led you into the room. There you were, suddenly standing in front of what felt like a million eyes, all looking to you like you had answers. You had to remind yourself not to do the whole fish thing again as you just awkwardly gave a small wave, trying hard to keep your mouth shut. What am I doing?  You were a waitress at an alien themed restaurant, not a scientist…at least not anymore. 

Stratt introduced you to the room, briefly detailing your credentials to be here. You had kept your gaze straight, scared to look in either direction, straight was safe, straight was easier. You had imagined what it would be like seeing him again, more times than you would ever like to admit, and this was nowhere close to what you thought it would ever be. In a room surrounded by some of the world's most important people. 

“This is Dr. (last name),” you hadn’t been referred to as that in a while…and you could not lie, it felt kinda good. “She has researched the Tau Ceti system most of her career and will help us identify why exactly the Tau Ceti star is the only one not losing energy”

Great. They really loved leaving out the important details. You knew the star, probably more than the back of your hand but there was still immense mystery to it.

“Anything you want to share, Doctor?” Stratt finished, turning the room over to you and you made the one mistake, moving your head. There, at the left end of the table was him, Dr. Grace. Not an email, not a letter or postcard, not a lingering memory…no it was really him, looking at you. Every emotion you had ever felt about him hit you at once in a way that made you want to grab on to the nearest wall so as to not crumble to the ground. Ryland, your Ryland, the same one you remember, albeit a little older, a little more tired. Your heart stuttered for a moment, actually stuttered, like it too had forgotten how to function. And all you could do was muster a small wave. Nothing could have prepared you. 

You had spent years pretending that he wasn’t the sun of your own personal solar system. It turned out that was much easier when he was not standing feet away from you, his glasses practically falling off his face.

You swallowed, mouth running dry. And funny as it was, after all the years, after all the anticipation and wondering, your body eventually went back to the familiar state it always did when it saw him. You softened. Your heart beat steadied and your breathing returned to something much more normal.

Stratt cleared her throat, your eyes snapping back to hers.

“Um…Tau Ceti is… pretty dang cool,” you finally choked out, the people around the room sharing looks between each other. “...Thank you”.

Sporadic, unsure claps filled the room as you took a step back, ready to smash your head through the nearest wall. You did not lie, Tau Ceti was pretty freaking cool. But you were sure that was not what the Patrova Taskforce really needed to hear from you at that moment. 

“Thank you,” Stratt said, a slight shake of her head, before she gestured towards the empty chair in the one section of the room you had planned on avoiding for at least a little longer. You tried to ignore her before one of the men in suits began to guide you there himself.

Each step you took felt heavy, like your body was trying to stop you. But there was the other part, your heart racing in anticipation, in want. This was what you had wanted, your work hadn’t been the same without him. You two brought out a fire in each other, seeing the best in the mess of crazy ideas the two of you brought to the table. The two of you.

As you walked down the table, a few of the other scientists took turns shaking your hand, welcoming you on board. Maybe your speech was not a total mess afterall. You hadn’t even realized you had made it to the end of the table, his hand reaching yours before your brain could catch up. 

“Tau Ceti is pretty dang cool,” the familiar voice spoke. Your eyes immediately met his and you felt like the world had stopped for just a second. Every version of him you remembered and every version you didn’t hit you all at once. Then you felt him squeeze your hand, his head slightly tilting. “Earth to alien girl?”

It was an odd feeling, seeing someone after so long. The memory of him was hazy until that very moment. You had tried so hard to remember the shade of his eyes and the way they kinda squinted up when he laughed. You had tried to commit those things to memory, tried to live through the pictures, but nothing compared seeing them in-person, in front of you.

You tried to form words, frozen in place, only coming back to reality as Stratt began to talk once more. You quickly sat down, pulling your hand from his and forcing your attention forward.

There were a few seconds where neither of you spoke, ignoring the weight of his eyes on you. You were supposed to be professionals…since when were you ever professionals? You were on a boat, with the world's best scientists, saving the planet…next to your best friend. And somehow, that felt like the most overwhelming part. You were sure your brain would eventually catch up one day, the shock fading with every minute that passed.

Then he slightly shifted in his chair, “Pretty dang cool?” he asked, just loud enough for you to hear, just like the two of you used to do in those alien class lectures. A smile grew on your face, one you tried to bite back.

“I panicked,” you whispered back, eyes still focused forward on Stratt, nodding along to words you weren’t even hearing. You didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling too.

The silence again, the silence of years of pushing off visits and ignoring the hard questions. It made you twitch slightly, racking your mind for anything to ease it.

“So, are you the one responsible for the U.S. government pretty much knocking down my door this morning?” you whispered from the quiet, a slight quirk of your brow, gaze still set forward. 

“Guilty,” he said, seeing him lift his hands in mock surrender in the peripheral of your vision. You could almost roll your eyes at how predictable the response was, slightly nudging his foot with yours under the table. He let out a quiet, breathy laugh, one you wanted to be the reason for forever.

“I didn’t think you would come,” he spoke again, his words softer this time, real.

Those were the words that broke your focus, your head turning to meet his gaze, really meeting his gaze, for the first time.

“Kinda didn’t have a choice,” you replied, half-joking, the other half completely honest, thinking back to the morning and the woman who was now commanding the room. Then you smiled, looking back at him, “But I would have come regardless”.

Even if you still weren’t exactly sure what all this was, what you had somehow signed up for. Even if it made you question who you were, why you were here…what you were to him.

You looked down to your lap. You were among the greats because Ryland Grace said you should be. You were not quite sure yet if that was reassuring or terrifying.

“It’s gonna be like old times, huh?” he added, as if it would make it all easier. “You know, you and me, figuring things out, putting the pieces together”.

Fuck. That did not make it any easier.

The meeting breezed by in a blur, words flying all around you as you tried to catch up to speed with what exactly was happening. You could pick out Petrova Line, Astrophage, Tau Ceti, among several other things you weren’t quite sure on. 

And then it was quiet. Just you and him, alone, in a room that now felt much too big. You both started talking at the same time-

“So-”

“Hey-”

You stopped, laughed, apolgized…tried again.

Then you did the exact same thing once more.

“Out of sync,” you joked, a quiet laugh, as the adrenaline wore off and gave way to a feeling you could not describe. You knew him but then again, it had been years. It was finding the balance between an old friend and a stranger. 

“It’s been a little bit, huh?” he added, hands digging into the pocket of his jeans. You finally got a glimpse of his shirt, a science pun you were sure he was so excited to show his class of middle schoolers. 

“Yeah, just a little bit,” you added, feeling exposed now without the other people in the room, the slightest bit bitter that it had taken all this to see him again. But then again, who really was to blame for that? You looked down at the ground for a second, shuffling your feet against the floor, racking your brain for anything.

 “So…saving the sun?”

You barely got the words out before he stepped forward, closing the space between the two of you, pulling you into a hug. So tight, like you might disappear. You stood there for a second, air caught in your throat before you caved into the feeling. Your arms looped around him, head rested against his chest, as if this was something the two of you just did.

“I missed you,” he said, honest, real.

You stayed there, just together, quiet in the chaos of the day.

“I missed you too,” you finally let yourself say, quiet as if the whole world was listening and you wanted it to be just for him. “Why me?”

He quickly pulled away, as if he was shocked into motion, a wild look on his face, you almost started laughing.

“What?” he gasped out, dramatic as ever.

‘What do you mean ‘what’?” you countered, slightly shoving him in the chest. “Why am I here, dumbass?”

“Hey, so first, we are not cursing anymore,” he scolded, his voice morphing into something you only imagine came from years of teaching. “Second, you are the only person I know who would be crazy enough to show up here”.

He shrugged as if it all was nothing, that dumb smile on his face, as he began to move towards the door. “And you would kill me if I got to research Tau Ceti and you didn’t get the invite”.

You wanted to interject, fight it, but you knew, deep down somewhere, that Ryland never stopped knowing you and you never quite stopped loving him. 

“You just gonna stand there?” he asked, already at the door, holding it open. “Or are we gonna do some science?”

It really was like no time had passed between college and now…well if you ignored the millions of dollars worth of equipment now at your complete disposal. It’s funny, the way the body reverts back to old habits. The way Ryland and you moved in the lab was your own sort of rhythm, brains connected in a way that seemed almost superhuman. You needed to grab a tool, he dropped it on your desk before you could even move. He had a question, you were answering it as the question left his mouth…then he would smile at you and roll his eyes and go back to his work. It should have felt different after all this time…and it just didn’t. It was dangerous. And it was so wonderful.

The Vat, or Stratts Vat as everyone began to call it, was a hodgepodge of every science you had ever dreamed of. You could talk to a biologist from across the world and then suddenly meet an engineer who happened to be from your hometown. For a while you pretended that this wasn’t what you wanted, you ached to go back to what was safe and comfortable. But as you stood there, another day on the boat, you realized that maybe this is what you had been waiting for. You were researching again, being curious, all the things your younger self could have only dreamed of. 

Your days were mostly spent with Ryland, the two of you poking at astrophage while you dug through old research papers you had on Tau Ceti. Your presentation was coming up, only revealed to you a few mornings ago by Dr. Stratt. She had come into the lab early, you had just woken up, believing it to be a perfect time to tell you that you would be addressing the taskforce with any details you had on the planet system. You sat there, swiveling back and forth in your chair, your sidekick on the other side of the room jumping up and down about a new development in Astrophage breeding.

“I wish I had your energy right now,” you groaned out, shuffling through your notes.

“Tau Ceti not treating you well?” he asked, peaking his head around a shelving unit that slightly blocked your view. “Did you try taking it out to dinner first?”

All you could do was flip him the finger, scribbling notes at the same time. “You think I haven’t tried that yet?”

He let out a laugh, coming around to stand behind where you were sat working. You had been really trying, but there were some things that just needed to be seen to be understood…and one of those was Tau Ceti. You had theories, tons of them, hopefully enough to be of help.

“She is still my greatest mystery,” you admitted, turning your chair to face him.

“Well Rome was not built in one day,” he looked at you, a serious look on his face regardless of the word choice. “And Tau Ceti is not gonna be understood that quick either".

You let your head dramatically fall to rest on the desk, quietly groaning into the sleeves of your jacket. Then you felt Rylands hands on your head gently shaking it.

“Hey,” he began, a laugh already escaping him, you mentally preparing yourself for whatever he would be saying next. “Remember they used to call you the brain!”

“Uh, you used to call me the brain,” you retorted, lifting your head up and shoving his hands away. “and it was and still is stupid”.

He grabbed your head once more, shaking it around, “C’mon use the brain, I know it is in there somewhere”.

You turned to glare at him, his lopsided smile making it hard for you to be upset at anything. The energy settled down, the man leaning back against the desk across from you.

“Do you think this is all gonna work out?” you spoke up, looking back to your notes. “Tau Ceti and the Astrophage and all of it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, blunt and honest. “But beats sitting around and waiting for it to solve itself…ar at least that it what I choose to tell myself”.

You just nodded, letting him fade back into his work as you faded back into yours. If Tau Ceti wasn’t enough, the constant push and pull between Ryland and you was. You told yourself to keep it easy, to ignore it, all those dumb feelings squashed down from college that threatened to bubble over any second. You buried yourself in your work, that was easiest. But there would be nights where you would fall asleep at your desk and wake up to a blanket thrown over you. Or mornings when the mess you left in the lab were cleaned up…and there would be Ryland, a small wave and a smile, doing a ‘cheers’ with his coffee mug. You could not let yourself read into it, because then it would be all the much harder to eventually pull away. 

The presentation day had come in a blur, you now standing once again in the front of that room, papers gripped so tightly in your hands. You were never good at the presenting part of it all. In the bustle of the room you were able to find him, him waving his hands above his head to get your attention. You smile, he shot over two giant thumbs up, and all you could muster was one half as enthusiastic one back. You turned to look through your notes when he caught your eye again, pointing at his head and mouthing “the brain”, which you could only roll your eyes in response, a quiet laugh fighting its way out of you.

“Alright everyone,” the powerful voice of Eva Stratt entered the room, coming to stand beside you in front of the projector screen. “As you know, Dr. (LAST NAME), has been working hard gathering information on Tau Ceti, which will be our final destination for this trip”.

Everyone around the room turned their full attention to you as the women gestured to you and took a seat. Deep breath. 

Your heart was jumping in all sorts of directions, as you fidgeted with the clicker, trying to get the presentation to flip to the next slide.

“Hi,” you began.

“Tau Ceti, it  is pretty dang cool!” Ryland called out from the back, heads turning to him, him once again shooting the thumbs up.

“Uh, yes…as Dr. Grace put it, "Tau Ceti is really ‘dang cool’,” some of the scientists laughed at that, the stress easing the littlest bit off your shoulder. You began clicking through slides, diagrams of the systems and the potential planets in its orbit. “Thank you for your enthusiasm”.

You took one last deep breath before diving right in, trusting yourself and the years of work you had put into this already.

“What makes Tau Ceti so interesting, while not an exact match, is that it has the potential to be the closest relative to our own solar system,” you began. “Which means, there is a great likelihood of it supporting life or even already having life within it.”

“Now we know that the Tau Ceti sun is the only star to have not been impacted by the Astrophage, however what is harder to understand is exactly why,” you continued, switching to the next slide, getting into a rhythm. It was easy when it was your whole life's passion. “Which is why our mission is going there, to better understand it…however I have some theories that could be useful to prepare our travelers for what exactly might be going on”.

There was first, the idea that the spectral output on Tau Ceti did not match that of what Astrophage was looking to feed on. However the spectral output is very similar to the Sun so it would have to be significantly off to be a problem, which was unlikely. Along with this, there could be some sort of natural defense, like dust specific to that atmosphere. However, the most exciting idea was that of evolutionary pressure…another lifeform that could be eating away at the Astrophage to keep it in balance. While so extremely far fetched, it was the one that made you the most excited to get the data back from the scientists on the Hail Mary. It could change everything that scientists know about that system.

“But the honest answer is, we don’t know until we get up there and bring back some samples,” you closed out. “Now we do have to be aware that this planet is around twelve lightyears away from us”. 

You were in a rhythm now, comfortable enough to really look up and around at the people in the room, several of them taking notes and nodding along. “Which means we are kinda looking at it in the past. The light we are seeing right now left Tau Ceti twelve years ago. Which is incredible, but there is the risk that this system is already gone or changed and we wouldn’t know until we get there”.

“However,” you flipped to your final slide. “The data we are able to gather from here points to strong evidence that this system is very alive and this trip will not only open doors for Astrophage but open up a world to an entirely new solar system that could be inhabited by human life”.

You clicked again, the slideshow coming to a close, “And, uh, yeah that is it from me…thanks guys”.

The sound of applause filled the room and you finally felt like you could actually breathe again rather than having to remind yourself to. Your face hurt from smiling, looking around the room, taking it in. You imagined your younger self, sat with her big telescope and book of constellations in a chair in the back. She is smiling, the biggest smile you have ever seen. She knew all those late nights would eventually pay off. Even after your original Tau Ceti lab fell through, even when you couldn’t find a job and ended up at an alien restaurant, even when your door got busted down by Eva Stratt…all those days led to this moment, right now. You wished you could go back and tell the girl in college that it would be okay, that she was enough, that one day she would do big things. But eventually she would learn and that made it all the more worth it.

And there was him too. You found his eyes in an instant, it seemed to be the first thing your body did. It was an old habit, one you could not break, nor really wanted to. He was beaming, an ear to ear smile, waving at you like you had just accomplished something so incredible and not just given a presentation. You made your way towards him, your bodies drawn together like magnets. However with each step you took, you felt like you were being pushed further and further away as people began to come up and shake your hand or ask you questions. Further and further until he faded away in the back of the crowd, now a lone hand stuck up above the crowd trying to get your attention. A thumbs up and you knew everything was gonna be okay.

----------

You were sitting at the bar, hot off the mic with Ilyukhina, who had forced you up against your will. The slight buzz in your head was enough to make you cave, you were sure that was the whole reason Ilyukhnia had insisted on getting you a few drinks at the start of the night. All of it leading to a horrific and yet kinda beautiful version of “Space Oddity” by David Bowie …it felt fitting.

She had bought you a final drink as a thank you, one you were nursing now, looking around the room. Grace had stayed late in the lab, normally you were there too, but the others in the lab had started to joke that you hated fun and you were determined to prove them wrong. You were fun! Very Fun.

You hadn’t been down to the bar before, didn’t quite understand how people could celebrate knowing what was approaching. You weren’t even on the ship and you could barely get your brain to settle at night enough to fall asleep. The room was full of people, singing, laughing, leaning into each other and finding comfort. It made you smile, maybe made this whole thing feel more real. It made the pit in your stomach worse. 

Your eyes caught on DuBois, a drunk Shapiro leaning against his arm, the two of them laughing together, in their own world. Your gaze lingered, unable to pull away. The way they could laugh togethering knowing that DuBois would be gone, not set to return. They had people here, people they were leaving and for the first time that really hit you. You tugged your gaze away, looking back down to the bottle of beer in your hands, half empty…it would stay that way. You couldn’t help it though, like it was a piece of art, you found yourself looking back at the two of them. She looked at him with a quiet kind of intimacy, like the two of them could know what the other was thinking without speaking a single word. They moved in a perfect rhythm, a messy, beautiful rhythm. They weren’t just leaving behind Earth, they were leaving behind their people…a chance at a normal life.

You were gonna be sick. Quickly you set your beer on the table and left the bar pushing through the groups of people singing until you were finally out onto the deck of the ship, cold wind smacking you in the face. You gasped for air, but no matter how much you took in, it still didn’t feel like enough.

The ocean was dark ahead, it was like an abyss and as you looked up, you were met with the bright stars, their shine almost too bright with no other lights around to dim them. You felt so small, and in the grand scheme of things you were, and it both terrified you and brought you some peace. 

Your grip was tight on the railing, it almost hurt. You needed to be stable, grounded, anything-

“Hey,” a familiar voice approached from behind, your body tensing before slowly relaxing. You didn’t have to turn back, just slightly nodded your head, an invitation. 

“Hey,” he repeated himself, this time softer, as he came around to your side, gripping onto the railing next to yours. “Earth to alien girl?”

“I thought you were working late?” you spoke up, anything to take your mind off earlier, get rid of the image of people who would never see each other again. 

“The lab gets kinda lame without a certain scientist analyzing everything I do,” he joked, but you could not get yourself to laugh. “I love your analyzing…that’s uh, that’s what I meant”.

It was almost a compliment, a small smile crept on your face that quickly faded out as another gust of wind hit you, the waves crashing below you. The two of you sat there in silence for longer than you ever had before.

“You okay?” he broke from the silence, turning his head to look at you.

You nodded, “Just cold”.

He nodded back, unconvinced you could tell, as he began to reach for his jacket regardless. You did not fight him on it, you were cold, maybe it would help. The chunky fox cardigan draped over your shoulders as he absentmindedly buttoned the top to keep it  from falling off of you. You mumbled a quiet ‘thank you’, bundling into the thick yarn. 

“So are you gonna tell me what is really wrong?” he spoke again, him still standing in front of you, adjusting the sweater so it covered you. You met his eyes, his head slightly tilting.

“Have you seen Dubois and Shapiro?” you finally allowed yourself to speak your thoughts into the air. 

He nodded, returning to stand next to you, leaning once again against the metal rails, "Yeah, they are definitely hooking up”.

“No,” You shook your head, “There’s something more, you can see it in the way they look at each other”.

The silence met the two of you again, the waves below you getting louder and louder, them in their own conversation. You wondered if the waves too had problems like this, if they thought about the world and what they were meant to be. You felt nauseous, you chose to blame sea sickness. It hurt even more because maybe you wished he would look at you like that. You supposed that was your last tether to Earth, last tether from making you lose your mind…it seemed to be him.

“I just cannot imagine knowing the person that you loved was gonna be gone in a few days, just out in space, floating…and you just never see them again. And you can’t even do anything about it” your voice slightly quivered, it was all too much. The several drinks in your system did little to ease your worry, you actually think it made it worse. “After I lost…after my parents, I mean, it took so long to be okay with not getting a goodbye. But they, I mean Shapiro gets to say goodbye. How do you even say that kind of goodbye knowing they are out there and will die, alone?”

You hadn’t realized how blurred your vision had gotten until you looked up, finding Ryland’s gaze, his eyes scanning your face. He had been there, in college, when your parents had passed, had sat up with you for weeks on end keeping you distracted, helping you stay on top of work when your world felt like it was ending. 

He carefully reached to wrap his arm around your shoulder, pulling you close to his side, a silent kind of comfort, the kind you liked. You rested your head against his chest, melting into his touch, allowing him to be strong for you for a little. It made your head hurt, all of this and him…there was always him.

You weren’t sure how long it was before he spoke up again, you had counted at least twenty crashes of the waves against the boat. It seemed to be the only thing you could think about without falling apart.

“Where do you see yourself after all this?” he asked, pulling you the little bit tighter against him. You were not in the headspace to dig into that, nor the question he was asking. Because where did you go? You were doing the thing you had worked your whole life for and then what? Back to the restaurant? Back to serving punny dishes named after planets and pretending you were fulfilled? 

“Probably go home,” you began, your voice thin, a little shaky. “Can’t keep the Extraterrestrial Eatery without their best server for too long”.

It was supposed to be funny but it came out dejected. A quiet laugh escaped him at your words.

“That’s not-”

“That’s exactly what it is,” you cut him off, sharper than you meant it to be, gaze set down at your shoes, at the hem of his sweater, at anything that wouldn’t make you think so much. “That’s my life, Ryland”.

Before this your life had been small, so miniscule…your dreams seemed so far away. Now you were here, it was all right in front of you. You didn’t even think you would ever get this close to studying Tau Ceti, all the resources right there for you to use. 

“This…all of this is everything I ever worked for,” you continued. “Being here, doing things that actually matter, and then it’s just gonna be over”.

The lab, Tau Ceti…him. You had grown so used to it, too comfortable and the feeling of it being torn away felt weird. But that was life, you would adjust, or you would try.

“It doesn’t have to be over,” he offered, trying to comfort the ache in your words. And it hit you, with a force that could have sent you overboard. Your head snapped up, looking at him, you opened your mouth to say something but stopped yourself. 

“I gotta go,” you spoke, in a daze of sorts, his words replaying over and over in your head.

“Hey, no. Come on” he too stood up, no longer leaning against the railing. “Talk to me, I am here! We could go sing karaoke or  something, be stupid, forget about it”.

“You hate karaoke,” you countered, already edging towards the stairs back down into the boat.

“Maybe I could like it?”

“I am gonna go to bed,” you turned back to him, lying through your teeth. You searched his face once more, took a mental picture of him standing right there, breeze blowing through his hair, glasses slightly tilted. He looked perfect.

“It does not have to be over,” you repeated, more to yourself than to him, before ducking down into the stairs and back down the hall. You were sure he called your name but your body could not turn around. It could have been the alcohol in your system. Maybe you were losing your mind. Maybe it was a little bit of both, but your feet carried you right to Dr. Stratt’s office.

You didn’t even knock, pushing open the door, her head snapping up from the silence. Her eyes slightly narrowed, you standing there in the doorway, trying to catch your brain up to your movements. 

“Take me instead,” you blurted out, desperate. 

The woman did not react right away, just studied you, like she was weighing something you couldn’t see. 

“I have nothing keeping me here”.

At least, almost nothing.  

“I have worked my whole life for this,” you continued, words spilling out of you before you could even really think them through. “Tau Ceti is my everything and now I am here. And I can do it, I want to do it”.

You swallowed, a shaky breath, so loud in such a quiet room.

“I need to”.

You stood there, feeling so small in the doorway, waiting for something, anything that would confirm that you weren’t making a mistake. Doctor Stratt just nodded her head, short and direct, like she always was.

“Go get some sleep Doctor,” and you just nodded back, your brain going completely silent for the first time that night.

--------

When the explosion happened a few days later, it was all the justification Eva Stratt needed. The day had been a mess, the loss of those doctors devastating, the power of Astrophage even more extraordinary . There was no time to even process though, as just as quickly as it had happened, Dr. Stratt had pulled you into a conference room. The plans moved fast, there was no time to delay with launch day approaching. You agreed as quickly as it was proposed, Ilyukhnia sending you small thumbs up from across the table.

The explanation was a blur. The coma, the four year trip, the three hours until you would have to be ready. Three hours before your life changed forever. That was all it took for everything to become real. But you nodded along. You had a duty now, not only to yourself but to Dubois and Shapiro and all of humanity. For Ryland Grace and his students, for the young girls out there dreaming of studying the stars. It would all be worth it, for them. It had to be.

You made your way back towards the lab, moving in a sort of hazy trance. You were allowed a few personal items to bring with you on the ship, most of the ones you wanted to bring were stored on the shelves of your desk. A picture of you and Ryland at a weird alien museum your class had gone to. A photo of you with your parents on move-in day at college. Your favorite book. A journal of your personal notes. And that stupid alien shirt.

You smiled, piling the items into a box you kept in the lab, when the door came rattling open. 

Ryland Grace came stumbling into the lab practically lit on fire, out of breath, a million emotions on his face. You knew it before he even spoke the words.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a panic, searching your face, his eyes shooting in every direction, him taking steps closer to you.

“I don’t-”

“No, you aren’t doing this,” his stopped you. “What are you doing? They can’t just take you?”

“I volunteered,” you countered back, simple, straight to the point…it would make it easier. You turned back to the box, finishing placing the items, scared what looking back at him would do. He was quiet behind you and that hurt the most. Maybe it hurt because of the quiet, maybe it hurt because he didn't have more to say.

“This is it for me,” you said, still facing the box, busying yourself with organizing and reorganizing the objects, anything to keep from facing the truth. “I have studied Tau Ceti my whole life and now I am going to see it, I am going to help save this planet”.

“You don’t know that,” he bit back. “I mean we can hope but you have no idea if this is even gonna work-”

“Beats the alternative,” you countered.

“And what's the alternative?”

That made you turn, you finally facing him. He looked so tired, a mix of confusion, anger, sadness… somehow all at once. 

“This,” you admitted. “Going home to that apartment, living through pictures of a better time while I work that shitty job. That’s not living, that is not how I am going to live!”

“So what, now you are just going off to die?” he was upset, you hadn’t seen him like this in a while, not since his theory about water had not been received well in college.

“I am saving humanity”.

“Oh wow, yes, real courageous of you,” he retorted, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Fuck you Ryland,” you said, quiet, cold. “You’re the one who brought me here”.

His eyes snapped to yours, the two of you just looking at each other, breathing.

“And it was supposed to be a temporary thing,” he bit back. “Empahsis on the whole temporary part of this all. I mean, just a couple of days ago you were saying how you couldn’t imagine people having to say goodbye like this.” 

You didn't have the heart to tell him that you hadn't planned on saying goodbye to him at all. It was wrong, you knew that, selfish, but you couldn’t get yourself to do it. He was your last tether to Earth and it was growing thinner and thinner.

“I have nothing here for me,” you spoke from the silence.

“You have-” and then he stopped himself and your head once again snapped up to meet his eyes.

“Say it,” you spoke, quietly, pleading for him to say the one thing that could make you stay. “Please Ry, just say it”.

Everything hung there, floating in the air  and he couldn’t, his head just slightly shaking in disappointment. The tether snapped right there. 

“Okay,” it was so breathy, barely even a word. You had no more fight left in you, no words left to say, nothing he could do that would change your mind. He was too stuck in his ways, too stubborn. You grabbed the box, looking at him once more, before you shoved your way past him and out the door of the office. It was quiet, too quiet down that hallway and when you looked back he was looking at you and you just gave him a smile, a small one…I will learn to forgive you.

You felt no regret.

Not when Eva Stratt thanked you for your sacrifice. Not when the doctors came in and prepared the injection that would put you under. Not even when the needle pierced your skin. You only did, just for a second, when you heard your name. When his voice called through the room, faint but desperate. It was muffled, your vision growing thinner and thinner, fading at the edges. The voice just grew quieter and quieter. A hand gripped tightly onto yours, shaking you more and more until you felt nothing at all.

----------

The first thing you realize is that you cannot open your eyes, like they are glued shut. You squeeze them a couple times, blinking over and over until they finally force themselves open.

So bright!

You should have just kept them close. You blink a few more times.

Then you realize that you can’t move, and not because your arms are stiff…no, there is a giant, what you could best describe as, plastic bag wrapped around you.

“Eye movement detected,” you  practically jump out of your skin at the sound disrupting the silence. The voice is clean, almost inhuman, as it once again repeats its previous statement. 

You try to move your arms, nothing. Your legs, nothing. Your fingers…just a little bit. The feeling of helplessness crashes all over you at once as you come to the slow realization that this was not just a bad case of sleep paralysis. 

Before you could even begin to make sense of it, a giant robotic hand swept across your vision, reaching down to unzip the human sandwich bag you were being trapped in. Now was your change, you shifted your weight as much as you could side to side until you rolled and made contact with the hard floor. A groan escaped you, the only sound you could really get out.

What the actual fuck?

There are tubes, connected in places you didn’t even know were possible. But nothing was as alarming as the realization that you had no idea where you were…no idea who you were. You looked around in a panic, trying to worm around off the ground, the robot hand stopping you in your place, lifting you off the ground and placing you back onto the table. You left out a mix of muffled objections, the most you could muster…your vocal chords were somehow still waking up. The computer acted before you could even protest, removing all the tubes, sensations you had never felt before and hoped to never feel again. At least, you assumed you had never felt them before. 

You saw it as your chance, the robot hand busy putting the tubing away, you jumping off the table and immediately crumbling to the ground. 

“Fuck!” the sound surprised you…you were making progress. Using the little strength and feeling in your limbs that you had, you scooted and crawled across the floor. Where was the door? Your head snapped back and forth, up and- There it was, on the ceiling, of course it was. The ladder connected to it seemed daunting but what choice did you have.

The robot spoke again, speaking a name, or you assumed it was, “detected, alive”.

It must have been your name, huh, you didn’t completely hate it. You continued to move across the floor, slow, scared that the robot arm might just yank you right back into the air. 

“Movement detected in the dormitory," the robotic voice spoke once again, causing you to speed up. It was trying to blow your cover, ruin your plan. Who knew, there might be a whole army of robots up there ready to get you. With each scoot across the floor, the feeling in your limbs began to find itself again. By the time you reached the ladder you were able to somewhat pull yourself up, each step getting harder and harder. You were tired, even if it seemed you had just woken up from some coma-like situation. You reached the top, banging the door over and over until it eventually popped up.

Reaching the top, standing on solid ground again was a feeling you had a new respect for. Then you turned your head…and you came to the jarring realization that you weren’t on solid ground at all. A giant window looking out into the great plane of stars…you were in space. You took slow, cautious steps towards the window, scared that you might somehow get sucked out. 

It was beautiful, you were at a loss of words for a reason other than your inability to talk. 

“Holy shoot,” a voice spoke from behind you, you stumbled slightly turning around, throwing your hand up in defense. “You are awake”.

“Am I?” you asked, genuinely…you wouldn’t have been shocked if you had died and were now in some weird waiting room. 

The look on the man's face was one of relief and that was enough to slowly allow your hands to fall back to your side. He seemed slightly more put together than you were, except for the glasses titled slightly on his face…though he made no move to readjust them. Maybe he was an alien and that was how they wore their glasses? Were you an alien too?

“Where am I? What is this? What…” you trailed off, once again catching a glimpse of the stars. The feeling was hard to explain, like you were floating in your own head, nothing there but faint blurry glimpses of something that you knew came before this. But no matter how hard you fought, you could not get yourself to decipher the memories. “I can’t remember what…”

He nodded as you spoke, and you knew he understood. You couldn’t understand, but your body softened slightly, your heart beat became steady and your breathing returned to something much more normal. 

“I, uh, I woke up a couple days ago…in that room,” he tried to explain, looking as if he too was piecing it together in real time. “Where do I even start…”

You stood there, helpless, waiting for something.

“We are in space,” you rolled your eyes at his words, pointing out at the window next to the two of you. “Oh right, well, just clarifying”.

“Anything else genius?” you didn’t mean to come across as on edge but you were confused and hungry and annoyed that your brain could not do what it was meant to do.

“We aren’t in our own solar system,” he spoke again, finally with some seriousness to his tone, you perking up and meeting his gaze. “We are, according to the map in the control room, in the Tau Ceti system about twelve lightyears away from Earth”.

He trailed off on the last word, giving you a second to absorb…but you were not a sponge and your brain was rejecting all of it. It made no sense, it was insane…but so was the giant robotic arm that picked you up earlier. 

“We were sent here for a reason,” he finished. “I just am not sure what exactly that is yet”.

He then paused, a long pause, like he was choosing his next words carefully, “we were sent in a group of four”.

“Oh,” you looked up at him, a feeling of relief washing over you, maybe they knew more, maybe they had been awake for longer. “Well, let’s just go pick their brains?”

“They didn’t make it,” he added, the words sitting heavy in the air.

You just nodded, unsure of what to say, scared of how it would all feel once your memories began to trickle back like his were. 

Would they have been your friends? Would the grief hit you later? The words sat weird in your stomach, even weirder knowing that there was a time where you knew everyone on this ship, there was a time where you knew why you were there. People who were your friends and now it was just you and strangers, chosen by some sort of fate to survive. 

“What happened to them?”

“What am I? Your magic eight ball,” he joked, a weak attempt at trying to lighten the mood…you hated that it made you smile the way it did. “Don’t fight it, I know it was funny.”

“Oh wait, the memories are coming back…” you pretended to think, before letting a blank look spread on your face. “You’re an asshole”.

He threw his arms in mock defense and you weren’t sure why but it all felt so natural.

“I found some vodka earlier,” he offered up, a shitty solution, a temporary one for sure, but a solution nonetheless.

“We brought vodka?” you paused. “At least we know we had fun”.

He laughed and you laughed too, anything to keep you from thinking about what this all was, what this meant and how exactly you get back to Earth from twelve light years away.

The man, who you learned was named Ryland Grace, took you around the rooms he had already spent time exploring. The labs…so you were scientists? Then the controls, and the space suits and the shelves of equipment that you could not even begin to understand. He eventually showed you a small closet, one containing boxes labeled with four names, pulling the one with yours on it down. 

In yours were some pictures…one of the two of you, so you were friends? Maybe? You should go with friends for now. Then a picture of two older individuals stood next to you, in front of the sign of a college…they must have been your parents. Did they know you were up in space? Did they send you up here? The thought made your head hurt so you stopped, tucking it away, it was for another day. There were too many questions floating as is. Then the shirt, a giant shirt that confused that shit out of you even more. You took it out of the box, holding it up to show him and the two of you just burst out laughing. 

“So I have bad taste in clothing?” you asked, trying to regain your breathing, him wiping away the tears from his eyes. 

“You should see some of the other clothes people brought,” and those words were just the start. Too much vodka flowing through your system, the two of you found comfort in trying on stupid hats and shirts packed throughout the ship. At some point you found yourself collapsed on the floor with him, laying there, the bag of alcohol laying between the two of you.

You talked for hours that night…well you assumed it was night, trying to hypothesize about who the two of you might have been. Were you smart? Where had the two of you met? Were you friends? Somewhere in your mind you felt like there was something else there. But you did not want to dig there, when you tried your head would just pound right back. So you laid there, accepting the silence of space, accepting that none of it made sense.

“I am glad I am not alone,” he spoke up from the silence, so quiet you might have missed it.

“I am not sure why, but I feel like we were meant to do this together,” you replied, turning your head to the side to look at him.

There was a heaviness in the air, an almost uncertainty. The woman infront of you is so focused.

“Dr. Grace is my last hope,” she spoke up, honest, blunt. “And you are his”.

And that was all it took as you nodded, a loss for words, moving in a sort of trance to gather your things.

The memory shoots you up from where you slept, leaving you gasping for air, hands clenched tight in your sheets. Ryland and you had been taking shifts, one sleeping, one monitoring the flight path set for Tau Ceti. However you had been going in and out of consciousness for hours. The memories just kept coming, so fragmented that they did little to help you understand 

Funny enough, the easiest part of all this to swallow had become that fact that you were in space. Because it was obvious, clear, right in front of you. Every other question felt endless, every answer felt hollow. Some memories were helpful, and others had sent you spiraling, unable to sleep for a few days.

It had been a few days ago when you woke up from sleep to a memory of your parents, the knock on your door from the RA of your dorm…that they were gone. The grief felt so heavy, yet so misplaced, for people that were vague shadows in your mind. That hurt you the most, that you could not recall these people…people you knew deep down were so good. Ryland had sat with you that night, silence between the two of you, no words good enough to mend what had happened.

Then came the flashes to a time before the ship. Bits and pieces of labs full of equipment that you somehow knew the names of, a flash to a jet sweeping through the air, a paper bag being your best friend in that moment. The two of you had come to each other in a sort of unison one night, both yelling the word Astrophage and beginning to dig through the memories together. It was that night that you came to the realization that Ryland Grace was a genius and the two of you would not be returning home. Staring at the equation he had completed on the whiteboard, the two of you sat in a silence so loud it made you want to cover your ears. It was exactly enough Astrophage to get to Tau Ceti…and none left to return. It was a suicide mission, the two of you had signed up to die. There had been a mutual understanding that night that if the two of you were gonna die you would die trying to solve the Astrophage problem, you owed it to the world, to yourselves. Though deep down your brain was far from ready to process that you would never be back to the normalcy of your home planet.

You glanced across the room, looking around for anything to ground you back to the present. The whiteboard caught your gaze, one the two of you had started to keep track of questions, checking them off when a memory came back to fill in the blanks. 

Who are we? How did we meet? Friends? Enemies?

You had added the last part, you thought it was funny. But none of it felt so funny anymore…his last hope, the words pounded loud in your mind. Like two metal pans banging together over and over with no sign of stopping. There was something there, in that memory, a feeling of deep care, of admiration. He was someone you had left your life to help, he had asked for you to join his research. So…you must have been a scientist too? There were too many questions floating. At least you knew where you were going and what you needed to do…but who were you? And why were you even here?

You pulled yourself out of bed, seeing no purpose in forcing yourself to try to sleep. Your sleep schedule significantly shifts when it looks dark outside at all hours. Wrapping yourself in a jacket you had found packed in one of the several boxes, you made your way to the ships controls, Ryland sat in his chair scribbling in a notebook.

“I think I was a scientist too,” you spoke from the quiet, that piqued his interest as he looked, a smile growing on his face. 

“Were you as smart as me?” he asked, looking back to his notes, his usual tone.

“Am,” you corrected. “Am I as smart as you…and the answer is probably smarter. I am smarter than you”.

You shrugged, as a burst of quick laughter came from him, his focus still on the notes. You moved around the room, taking in all the buttons, too many buttons. It had become normal, all these small memories popping in. It was like adding baseball cards to a collection, sometimes they were insane and other times they were mundane little additions that made the collection a little more unique. They were fun and sometimes not so fun…but details none the less, and you would take any your brain could muster to give back.

“What do you think is so special about this system?” Ryland spoke up, more to himself as he erased something in his notes. “The Tau Ceti system was the only star not infected-”

“Well it could be a lot of things, you know?” you spoke, as if on autopilot, words escaping you before you could even fully process them. “I mean, it could be a difference in spectral output that the Astrophage doesn’t want to feed on. Or, you know, evoluntionary pressure?”

He just stared at you, you just stared back.

He spoke slowly, eyes wide, “evoluntionary pressure?”

“Yeah, the idea that another life form could be eating away at the Astrophage and keeping it balanced,” you answered, equally as confused…the tiniest bit excited, maybe more than tiny. “Like a predator, but that is pretty far fetched”.

He shook his head in disbelief, a smile on his face, murmuring unbelievable under his breath. 

“Smarter,” you reminded, a shrug of your shoulders. You had felt so useless thus far, not that you hadn’t been able to help but you weren’t sure where you fit. That’s why it was all so exciting when you remembered that you studied Tau Ceti and you were gonna see it. You were sure the earlier version of yourself, the one who remembered it all would be freaking out at the fact. You wanted to find her, she was in there somewhere. 

The silence returned again, it was however much louder in your own head.

“You doing okay?” he spoke up, still focused, you still roaming the room, the two of you in perfect orbit. That’s what happens when you have no one else but each other, you are sure your brains may eventually murge into one. His jokes had become funnier, even if you knew they weren’t and he had become a friend, more than someone you were forced to coexist with.

“Yeah,” you spoke quickly, unsure what would happen if you let yourself dig deeper into the feeling.

He hummed…he didn’t believe you, you knew that. “Come on, let’s go”.

He spoke it so casually, getting up from the chair and setting the notebook down.

“Hey, so I am not sure if you realized, but we really don’t have anywhere to go to,” your voice slightly trailing off, watching as he began to walk out into the hall. “Ryland?”

“You know you have gotten a lot more sarcastic lately and it's really taking a toll on this relationship,” he yelled from down the hall and you could do nothing but roll your eyes and trail behind him. 

When you finally caught up to him, he was already shifting through settings in what you had begun to call “that big room of screens” and he corrected that it really was a “projection deck”...same fucking thing.

“What’s your favorite place in the world?”he asked, turning his head to meet your gaze.

And you paused, really paused. You were sure that before all of this you would have been able to answer in a second but now you were drawing a complete blank.

“I…I don’t know,” you spoke up, quieter, honest, and it was a scary thought, to not know the smalles thing about who you were, what you liked.

“Just think of something, make something up,” he pushed.

“Fine,” you called up to him, before moving to join him up on the small platform. “Uh…maybe, the mountains?”

With a click on the small computer, the screens morphed into beautiful scenery of lush green mountains, the sound of the breeze flowing through the leaves filling the room. You took a seat, letting your legs slightly hang over the platform. He joined you. He pointed to a digital bird that flew across the screen, miming fake binoculars on his face with his hands, you just nudged him with your shoulder.

“Where would you have picked?”

“Probably somewhere with fog,” he spoke up, looking at you. “I am pretty sure I am from San Francsios…they got a lot of that”.

It felt like meeting someone for the first time, asking all those familiar questions. The two of you found yourself doing that on nights that were too quiet, asking things like favorite color or movie, making up the answers when you couldn’t remember. Placeholders until the memory came back.

You nodded along, letting the two of you fall into a familiar comfortable silence. One you had to get used to with two strangers who had nothing to talk about because they were strangers to themselves. It made your stomach ache in that now all too familiar way.

Then he stood up, practically jumped from where he was sitting and reached his hand out to you, gesturing with his head. 

“What?” you asked, genuine confusion on your face.

“Up,” he just said. “Dance with me, come on”.

You just began to shake your head, waving your hands at him. 

“No,” was all you said, turning to face forward, though a smile tried to force itself on your face.

He turned to the computer, you trying your best to remain uninterested but then he turned on a song  and you felt like you had just gone down the hill of a rollercoaster.

“Stop,” he yelled at you, which made you shhh him with a significant amount of aggression. The whole library had turned to look at him, throwing needles at him with their eyes.

“What?” he whispered back.

“We are in the library,” you whispered back, just as aggressive.

“And you are freaking out about an alien presentation,” he deadpanned. You opened your mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again. “See, even you know it's dumb.”

“It’s not dumb!”

“Making a fake planet with a made up alien species where we decided they all dance to sort through political conflict…”he drawled out the last word, a quirk of his brow, that dumb look he always did. You wanted to smack him.

“Okay, well,” when he put it that way.

“Yes?”

You just rolled your eyes and turned back to the papers, sorting through all the details you had spent way too long on. You never did anything halfway, it was something you had followed your whole life.

“Come on,” he spoke up, standing and throwing his things in his bag in a way that made you cringe. "Let’s go”.

“Where?” your head shot up. “We have an assignmet to do”.

“Not in this state we don’t”.

You just looked at him, a staring contest, him raising his brow up and down causing you to bury your head into the table. He then leaned down right next to your ear.

“Uh, earth to alien girl,” he spoke, covering his mouth to sound like a plane speaker…or radio…you weren’t quite sure but it made you laugh. You quickly stopped yourself. “I heard the laugh. The jig is up, we are going”.

He did not wait any longer, heading out of the door, eyes following him as he left. You quickly stood up, without much hesitation, laying your stuff in your bag and running out after him. There he stood, outside, at the bottom of the steps to the library, phone turned up to the highest volume, playing your song. “The Two of Us” from the Beatles blasted, a song the two of you had come to associate with the other. He was moving in sporadic ways, akin to the way a dad does to embarrass their own kid. 

“What are you doing?” you called down to him.

“Seeing if our alien system we set up works,” he called back, never breaking his messy groove. “Come on!”

It was hard to say no to him, his exictmnet so infectious, his care to make you smile being one of your favorute things about him. It had gotten you through a lot of long nights. So you dance, him spinning you around, you trying to dip him. Even when people walked by staring, it was just the two of you who existed in that moment. It was perfect, you never wanted to forget it. The joy of dancing with a person, your person. Maybe your alien planet was on to something.

You came back just as quickly, looking at him, really looking at him. It was like you had jumped into a memory, only now you were both older, more tired…and potentially actually meeting aliens. You felt somewhat far away, in a daze, as he just waved his hand in front of you, waiting for you to take it.

“For all I know, we could have actually hated each other,” he urged. “Let me keep the peace for a little bit”.

“I don’t think there is any world where I could hate you,” you replied, and you knew somewhere it was true, as you reached for his hand and he pulled you up. 

The dancing was a mess for a while, the two of you laughing through the stupid moves. He did the one person wave at a certain point, one you eventually joined in on. Then you stumbled into his arms, him steadying you, holding you. And you just leaned into it, the feeling of safety, of knowing someone was holding you up when you felt so uneasy. His head gently rested on top of yours. 

The two of you just swayed, the sound of the music mere background noise to the way your heartbeats became so loud. Thump. Thump. BEEEEEEEP

You jumped apart.

“Approaching Tau Ceti".

The two of you froze, two deers in the headlights. You hadn’t considered what would happen when you actually reached Tau Ceti. For a while you were still sure this was some sort of bizarre dream.

Then, as if in sync, the two of you went into panic mode sprinting back down the hall to the control room.

—--

It was under control…really it was. You just were now floating in zero gravity and an alien ship was approaching.

Holy Fu- , wait you weren’t cussing anymore, or that’s what Ryland said…Holy Fudge!

You stood there in awe, Ryland looked like he was turning a shade of pale that you had never seen before. The ship approached, getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it parked right beside the two of you. It was strange, practically glistening, made of shapes you never would consider for a ship. But all you cared about was that aliens were real and you had been right.

“I was right,” you whispered out, the revelation of it all taking you back. 

“What?” he practically yelled, looking at you for some sort of answer.

You just turned to smile at him, two words, “alien girl”.

The ship or Blip-A as the robotic voice continued to call it made itself known, so big it could swallow your ship up. There were a few moments where Ryland had tried to steer away, you gripped on to the back of the chair as he moved the ship back and forth. Then Blip-A would do the same thing. You went forward, their ship moved forward. You went back and they shifted back. It was like a game of Simone Says.

“What do you think it wants?” Ryland whispered, as if the other ship could hear, you turned your head and gave him a look. “What?”

“Blip-B approaching,” the robotic voice began, the two of you turning your heads in sync back to the screen. A small object was tumbling towards the two of you at an impressive rate…yeah okay maybe this was something to be worried about? But you couldn’t help the curiosity that stirred in you, the want to understand those on the other ship, to learn their world, what made them happy. Well, if there was even anyone actually on that ship. Ryland went into a full panic mode you had gotten used to, you still gripping onto the pilot chair to stop yourself from floating too far away. You braced for impact, one that never game as the mental canister hit the side of your ship with a small DOINK. 

“Not a bomb,” you corrected, Ryland could not tear his face away from the screen. “Maybe they are friendly aliens?”

“There is no such thing as a friendly alien,” he bit back.

“Well, in our Alien class in college-”

He just glared at you once again, you smacked him on the head lightly with your hand, “Maybe they need help”.

“And maybe they want to inject us with eggs,” he looked at you like he had just said something profound.

“And you are a scientist?” you countered, a slight tilt of your head, still holding onto his chair.

The two of you watched for a while, just waiting for what was next. Maybe you were supposed to send something back. The two of you didn’t have to wait long before the next “Blip” was thrown, however this time much slower. They wanted the two of you to grab it, each move from them intentional.

“They think we are dumb,” Rylan practically deadpanned. 

“Well, we better prove them wrong,” you began, gaze intently on the small object tumbling through the air towards the two of you. You tuned your head slightly upwards, making sure your voice could be heard by your robot companion. “How would we get to something like this?”

“Nope, nope nope nope,” Rylands voice began to come back, shaking his hands at yoy.

“Would you like to take a space walk Dr. (Last Name)?” the voice spoke.

We were gonna die out here anyways, might as well do it all. 

“Yes” you spoke up and Ryland said the opposite at the same time. You didn’t even give him another look as you manuvered yourself down the hall, pushing against the wall to move, feeling so weightless. It was an odd feeling, one you had never experienced before and part of you was fine with maybe never expeirnecing it again. You were quick to find the set of spacesuits lining the walls, searching for one with your name on it. Now it became very clear how difficult it would be to get on but with the help of the computer voice you were able to find the manuel and squeeze your way inside. 

In the middle of wiggling into the pants, Ryland came flying around the corner. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice in full panic. However, he too began to read the manuel, taking steps to pull the suit on. 

“We are taking a huge step in human history,” you replied, like it was the obvious choice. “First contact”.

The two of you moved in a sort of connectedness, him putting on his suit because you said you would. It was how you worked, two people, trying to survive this all. And to do that, sometimes you had to do something insane and hope it worked. You stood in the tunnel now tethered to the inside of the ship, deprezerization happening around you as the door opened. You couldn’t have been prepared, how could you? The image of the infinity of space before you made your heart ache and deep down you knew this was big for you. You moved forward until you were just at the edge, nothing but stars. You were about to take the step when Ryland Grace came flying into you, shooting the both of you out of the ship. 

His grip on yours was tight, the two of you wrapped together as you drifted out into the stars. You looked at him, really looked at him, his glasses slightly tilted inside his helmet. You wished you could reach out and adjust them for him. 

“So…saving the sun?”

You barely got the words out before he stepped forward, closing the space between the two of you, pulling you into a hug. So tight, like you might disappear. You stood there for a second, air caught in your throat before you caved into the feeling. Your arms looped around him, head rested against his chest, as if this was something the two of you just did.

“I missed you,” he said, honest, real.

You stayed there, just together, quiet in the chaos of the day.

“I missed you too,” you finally let yourself say, quiet as if the whole world was listening and you wanted it to be just for him.

You would unpack all of that later, the hug feeling even more familiar now, even more personal. You gently released your hands wrapped around him and nodded with your head back in the direction of the small object tumbling closer and closer.

He nodded, the two do your drifting back towards the ship until you could grip onto the rialing outside of it. In a sort of quiet understanding, Ryland tied your tethers around the railings so you could move up and down the hull of the ship without drifting too far.

“Who do you think's gonna get it first?” he spoke through the radio system within the suits. A challenge, you didn’t have to even look to know he was looking at you with that stupid grin.

“Well I know it’s not gonna be you,” you bit back, eyes set on the object tumbling closer and closer. 

Then he jumped and you did too, the two of you reaching for it, your hands getting closer and closer to the object until you were holding it tightly. You went to celebrate when Ryland Grace did it again, flying into you, this time on purpose, sending the two of you flying. You shut your eyes, grip on it so tight.

“I just sacked the quarterback,” he joked, grip still tight around you, the small cylinder pressed between the two of you, keeping you apart. Then you just laughed, laughed so hard you could barely breathe. Because you were in space, with a stranger you once knew, trying to catch an item from an alien ship and Ryland Grace had tackled you like it was football. And he laughed too, and for a moment, so small you could almost miss it, everything felt right. For a moment, a very small moment, you felt like you remembered him fully.

And when you looked at him, you knew he was someone important to you.

------

You sat at your desk, head propped up on your hand as you absentmindedly clicked your pen over and over. Enough that the sound began to fade into the background, anything to break the silence.

Procgess had been made in the past couple of days. Especially with the discovery of the centrifuge system. And then there was, of course, that other discovery. As in your new neighbor. As in, the alien. 

You had yet to meet the guy but the new presence felt rather large. An alien ship had tethered themselves to your ship and you were sitting and clicking a pen for entertainment. You paused the clicking, glancing up at the camera psoitioned on your desk. Ryland thought it would be good to film logs…guess there was a first time for everything. Even if an alien encounter was not one of those things yet. 

You reached up to hit a switch on the camera at the desk, watching as the red recording light began to blink on. 

“Hi, uh, I am sure Ryland…or well, Dr. Grace has shared with you that we have made contact with an alien,” you began, leaning back in your seat. “I haven’t yet”.

A quiet laugh slipped out, the words sounded insane speaking them out loud.

“He said he had to make the sacrifice just in case,” you explained. “Because I know more about Tau Ceti than him so he would be less of a loss”.

You shook your head at the idea, a smile tugging at your lips no matter how hard you tried to keep it off.

“Which is-” you trailed off trying to find the word. “...kinda endearing if you really think about it…in a sort of messed up and terrifying kinda way?”

Your gaze dropped back to your hands for a moment before reaching for the pen. Click. Click. Click.

“But I wouldn’t really call him dying instead of me a success,” you were quiter now, gaze still set on the pen. “I’d rather not be alone”.

The words hung in the air, heavy. You had developed a mindset quickly on this ship, well after a lot of denial. You were dying. It was as simple as that, because there really was no other choice. And you would live like that, like there was no tomorrow. There was no time for hiding or being scared, it was a time for risks. It was a hard pill to swallow, sometimes that pill would get stuck in yor throat still no matter how hard you tried to wash it down with water.

You cleared your throat, setting the pen down. Your eyes drifted to the small figurine you had placed on your desk. The first time he had made contact he had returned with a small sculpture, a figurine that looked like two human shapes entangled in a hug, a tether tying them together. You were quick to realize it was the two of you when you had first entered space. 

You smiled.

“Not like you guys arent great company,” you continued, gaze fixing back on the camera. “But he’s kinda growing on me…just don’t tell him that, it will get to his head pretty quickly”.

The sound of footsteps caught your attention, your head turning, seeing Ryland now leaned against the entrance to the room. He acknowledged the camera with a nod, giving it an awkward wave, well more like a flick of his hand, before turning back to you.

“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing down the hall with his head before continuing in the direction.

No explanation. What was new? You turned back to the camera.

“He does this a lot,” you admitted. “Just absolutely zero context”.

You looked back to see if he was there still. 

“He is not a perfect teammate”.

“Not true,” his voice called through the ship.

You gave the camera a look, whispering a quiet, “this guy”.

“And grab your alien shirt!” he called out again and you quickly sat up in realization.

Oh. Oh Oh OH!

You snapped your head back to the camera, so fast that it made you dizzy for a second. Eyes wide, grin so big it was actively stretching your face. Reaching up, you clicked the switch for the camera, giving one last wave and then you lept into immediate action.

You found Ryland halfway in his suit, slightly struggling with one of the clasps, even so he refused to ask for any help, just giving a small thumbs up in your direction.

You were quick to grab your suit, attempting to catch up. But your hand shook with energy and you weren’t sure where to place it or how to use it. Your skin felt like it was on fire…in the best possible way.

This was it.

This was really it.

You wrestled with the zipper for a second before pulling it up. As you stood back up, you came face to face with the man, him standing there holding your helmet, placing it on your head. With a click it secured and he tapped on it like it was a fish tank. You fliched slightly, shoving him back.

“Am I really a bad teammate?” he asked and as you looked at him you realized he wasn’t fully joking. 

You paused for a second, scanning his face,

“Yeah,” you answered, flatly.

You just as quickly smiled and tapped back on the glass of his helmet, his eyes meeting yours.

“Not at all. I got pretty lucky”.

The tension in his body slightly eased at that, a smile growing onto his face.

“I should have let you come the first time,” he admitted, beginning to walk down the hall. “You are the alien expert. I am just some guy who was wrong about water”.

“Everyones wrong sometimes,” you replied, trailing behind him. “You know, you kinda have to be every once in a while”.

At that, he glanced back at you.

“Can’t find the right answer if there hasn’t been a couple wrong ones,” you continued with a shrug of your shoulders.

The two of you fell into a comfortable silence, a growing understanding between the two of you. It was funny, you felt like you had known him your whole life. Maybe you had? Or maybe you just had been together for far too long on this ship with no one else but this guy and a camera. Either way, it could have been worse. You were happy with whoever decided they should send you up with the middle school science teacher. 

When the door opened you were immediately blown back into the wall, you landing with a loud thud. A quiet groan escaped you. He had left that part out when he told you about his first encounter.

“Hey, hey,” Ryland began, scooting over to you, hand gently placed on your shoulder. “You okay? That has never happened before”.

You just nodded, at a loss for words for the tunnel system in front of you. It was a hard thing to fully comprehend, that there was another life form existing in parallel to your own. One that could build tunnels that connect to your ship.

“Gravity?” you just spoke up, standing to take a few steps into the tunnel, boots still connected to the ground. 

“This, uh…yeah this is new,” he replied, standing up from where he had fallen and walking to meet you. “Just be prepared, this guy is pretty jumpy”.

You nodded, one again embracing the silence, taking in everything with each step. You knew Ryland was behind you, you knew he would be ready to help if anything were to happen. But you could not get yourself to be fearful, ever since Ryland brought back the small figurine, you knew this was not a harmful connection. 

The end of the tunnel was made of different glass pieces, or something resembling glass, all creating different angles. You reached up, gently pressing your gloved hand to it, looking into the darkness behind it.

“I just, kinda tapped last time,” he offered, you smiled.

“Very scientific approach Dr. Grace,” you joked, glancing back at him.

A piece of you ached inside to feel how this would have felt having you remembered everything. But your body has not forgotten. Your body grew with energy, your heart thudding in your chest, your fingers practailly tingling, a smile so wide it could not be suppressed. You reached out and gently tapped on the wall and that's when you saw it, a small figure dash across your view.

You tapped on more time, soft, inviting, other hand still pressed to the glass. Then it appeared, a spider-like rock formation, slowly moving its way towards you. It stopped, moving its body in a way that reminded you of how a dog would tilt its head in interest and confusion. Then it reached out, a small hand placed against your palm, the glass being the only thing stopping full contact.

“Dr. Grace showed me the figure you had made of us,” you spoke, quiet, not wanting to scare your alien neighbor. “Thank you, it was beautiful”.

The creature in response made a symphony of noises, as if you played all the chords of a piano at once. A quiet laugh of astonishment left your your head turning to glance at Ryland whose gaze was on you. A gentle smile and a thumbs up, his signature move.

There was a burn in your eyes, it was all so overwhelming. All you could do was laugh, unsure what to do with all the pent up emotion. 

The alien made another sound before tapping on the glass. You tapped again, the two of you going back and forth until it let out an almost grunt. You paused, stopping. He tapped again in a direction behind you and you followed it. 

“Oh,” you breathed out, seeing another capsule. “Is that for us?”

The symphony of noise returned, the creature jumping around, moving erratically.

Ryland walked over to grab it before you could, coming to meet you by the glass, gently twisting it open. Inside was another model…figure…art piece? It was close in resemblance to a letter eight, small blue dots lining the exterior of the rings. 

“Wow,” Ryland, spoke up as you continued to admire it. “Yeah, wow, I don’t have anything like this”.

The way he sounded genuine made you break your focus to smile. It was sweet.

“What is it?” he asked, more quietly, turning back to you. 

You could only shrug, trying to examine every angle of it. Everything so far had a meaning, but maybe this was the exception?

You looked back up at the alien, waving the art piece in his direction, “it is beautiful, thank you”.

Ryland reached for it and you handed it over as he tried to place it on his head, “Is it a hat?”

The alien just grumbled in response, beginning to erratically tap again. You watched, trying to understand.

“Maybe a bow tie?” you asked, grabbing it from him and setting it against where the collar of his shirt would be.

The alien just continued to explode with sound and then you turned to watch him, really watch him. His two limbs reached up to tap his head…or you assumed it was head. He then gestured as if removing it, you slightly tilted your head.

“You want us to take off our heads?” Ryland spoke up, confusion lacing his tone. “Buddy, I am not sure how it works for you but this is kinda all connected”.

You slightly glared at him, he just shrugged. Thank you captain obvious. 

The alien once again repeated the action…head? No, OH, helmet, he was meaning helmet.

“Our helmets?” you asked and the alien bursted with even more sound. You glanced back down at the figure in your hand, the pieces starting to connect. He had made the tunnel adaptable for the two of you, there was gravity and now, there was oxygen. 

You looked back up at Ryland, showing him the piece again, “it’s oxygen…its the symbol for oxygen”.

“What?” he looked at you in confusion, taking the piece and turning it around. Then he held it up to the creature. “You are clever buddy”.

The alien just continued its explosion of emotion, once again repeating the gesture. You followed along, reaching up to unclasp the helmet when you flet a hand rest on yours. 

“Maybe this isn’t the smartest idea,” he said, quieter this time, sending a quick glance towards your neighbor before snapping back to you. “I mean, this is a life or death kinda choice here…”

“And we aren’t already in a life or death situation anyways?” you bit back, he opened his mouth and then closed it. “I trust him”.

“You just met him”.

“And he made us a sculpture, created gravity and gave me a high-five,” you pushed back. “Most guys I have met don’t even open my car door for me”.

“You know, you just said something pretty profound back inside,” he countered, hand tighter on yours now to stop the movement. “You said people can be wrong sometimes”.

“Well I am not”.

“Well…we don’t really know if this is just some weird hat he made”.

You just stared at him, he stared back, then slowly his grip released and he nodded.

“I won’t change your mind,” he took a few steps back, a look of uncertainty on his face, shown futher in the posture of his body. Alert. Stiff.

You gave him a nod of ressaunace and a thumbs up, his classic, before turning back to the alien. Gently reaching back up, you unclasped the helmet and began to pull it off. Your heart beat in your chest louder and louder and louder, your ribcage felt as if it was shaking. 

Then you gasped, taking in the air and for a second panic filled you. You opened your eyes, gaze snapping to him…you were breathing. You laughed in pure astonishment, the alien creature celebrating with you, and Rylan looked like he had just aged fifty years watching it happen.

It was late, the moons shining through the windows of the library, your desk in the corner lit by a small lamp. The usual, Ryland and you, there way too late. You flipped through your textbook, he stared at you in disbelief.

“You totally think aliens are real, don’t you?” Ryland spoke up from across the table you were studying at, finishing up notes for the class you shared.

“Well,” you stumbled for the right words. It wasn’t that unbelievable. “I mean, it would be kinda cool”.

“No, no, don’t shrug it off like that,” he pushed. “You lied, you did not take this class cause you had to”.

“Okay, fine!” you practically yelled, earning a few annoyed glares from others still studying. “I just…I mean is it that crazy of an idea? The universe is quite literally endless, there has to be something”.

He just smiled at you, that dumb smile, one you would normally throw a pencil at his face for. But you just smiled back because he didn’t laugh, didn’t make his usual dumb joke, he just nodded.

“Okay alien girl,” he began. “I will be waiting for your name to pop up on the news when you are the first to make contact with one”.

And you nodded back, cause he would.

And you had just  done it, you made contact with an alien…holy shit. Where was your shirt again?

------

How do you prepare for an alien to move in? The answer, after much scientific research…you really can’t. The presence of Rocky, what Ryland had named him, was not a small one. You couldn’t ignore him, he was a permanent part of your lives, your new partner. And yes, he had opinions on everything. After the two of you had found his voice, most nights were spent with Ryland asleep in the tunnel while Rocky and you talked all night. You asked him any questions you could think of, him happy to answer in exchange for a few of his own for you. Sometimes the two of you would get too loud and Ryland would throw a pillow at you, which you would of course throw back. Grace okay? Rocky would ask and you would reply Yes, Grace is just cranky when he doesn’t sleep. The rock laughed at that, you did too…and even Rylan did from his sleeping state on the ground.

Most days were spent answering Rockys questions as the three of you worked through solving the Astrophage problem, the connector between the three of you. You all had a misson, one you would complete. There was now more than one world that depended on it.

“What do you miss most about home, Rock?” Ryland asked one night, the three of you in the projection room. Ryland sat against the hamster ball Rocky had made hismelf while you laid down on your back, staring up at the screens, listening and chiming in when you could.

You could think of a few things you missed, memories drifting in with each day.

Rocky sat with it for a while before speaking up, “My mate”.

As if in sync, Ryland and you both turned your heads to him, you finally completely tuning into the situation. The two of you shared a look.

“You have a mate?” Ryland asked, then stopped. “Not that…that’s like shocking it’s just-”

“He means how long have you been together?” you stepped in, Ryland relaxing back against the aliens enclosure. 

“Hmm,” Rocky perked up as he talked, though you sensed the sadness that still followed him. “186.3 years”.

“That’s incredible buddy,” Ryland replied, gently patting the ball.

“Not long enough,” the alien replied, settling back down, a few quiet symphonic sounds leaving him.

You understood, understood more than you wished you had. It never was. It never would be. You scooted over to the other side of the ball, leaning against it, gently patting it as Ryland had earlier.

“We are gonna solve this and get you back buddy,” you spoke up, facing towards the screen, taking in the world you had left behind forever. A pit settled in your stomach, at least he would be able to return home, that was enough to keep you going. “Your mate will be so proud of you”.

Rocky shared his mates name, a beautiful symphony of sound that only the person you loved could ever be represented by. A silence settled over the three of you, the sound of waves crashing coming from the speakers. They were loud, they felt familiar, maybe you used to enjoy the waves. 

“How long have Grace and (Last Name) been mate?” the alien spoke from the silence. And you and Ryland both snapped back to life instantly. You met his eyes for a second before turning away, trying to form words. 

“We aren’t-” Ryland began.

“We aren’t mates,” you fisnihed for him, him sending you a grateful look. Rocky, always so blunt.

“Then why bicker like mates?” Rocky pushed further. “Why Grace look at you like that when you do not see, question?”

You kept your eyes planted to your hands, scared what would happen if you let them wander. Did he really look at you? Maybe that’s what you had been, long before this, maybe there had been a time where it was something more. You felt it, it lingered in the air, in the memories that would stir. It lingered in the present too, in late nights and honest conversations, in the way he looked at you when you took off your helmet, in the nights he would drape a blanket over you when you fell asleep at your desk.

You were about to answer, try your best to muster words, when Grace beat you to it.

“I am tired,” Ryland said, standing up, not giving a second glance to either of you. “I, uh, I am gonna head to bed”.

You noticed that with him recently, when questions got hard. It had happened a few days ago when Rocky had asked about going home.

You watched as he jumped down from the platform, heading into the hall, him dragging a hand down his face. You sat there for a while, in silence, unsure how to feel. What did you expect? There had not been any reason to assume anything, and he just…he wanted to leave an awkward conversation. But was it really that hard of a question?

“Grace okay?” Rocky spoke up, tapping on the part of the xenonite ball closest to your head.

“Yeah, “ you replied, not because it was honest but because it was easy.

“Dr. (Last Name) okay too?” and you could only laugh at that, cause you hadn’t truly been okay in a while, not since before you woke up on this ship. 

“Yeah, buddy, I am okay,” you turned around to face him instead, tapping your fist against the ball, in which he mirrored. 

You glnaced back at the exit to the room and you weren’t sure why this time was different, what the pull was, but you got up.

“I am gonna get ahead on some of my work tomorrow,” you spoke more abruptly. “I will see you in the morning, Rock”.

“Friend need help, question?” he spoke up and the words, those three words felt like a punch to the gut. You just shook your head at him and you were sure he sensed the feeling as he rolled back to lay in his ball.

You made your way through the hall quickly, turning each corner sharp until you made it to the dormitory again. There Ryland sat, edge of his bed, head in his hands. You had never seen him look so small and you were almost scared to approach him, like he might shatter.

You stepped slowly into the room, pausing right next to him, he made no move to akcnolwged you. Placing your hand on his back, you gently moved it up and down, him leaning into the touch, giving his weight over to you. You let him be selfish, let him give you something to carry because he always was the one doing it for you. 

It was a while before he spoke, his words loud in the silence of the room. It was the quietest it had been since Rocky moved in. 

“I’m sorry about what happened in there,” he spoke, so quiet, words thin and shaky. He took in a breath, barely getting a full breath in. “It’s just…everything is a lot right now”.

You just shook your head, hand still trailing up and down his back, “we don’t have to talk right now”.

“No,” he stopped you, meeting your eyes, his so heavy. “I want to. I need to”.

Then the silence greeted the two of you again, but not uncomfortable, just knowing. You moved to sit beside him on the edge of the bed, watching as he sat fidgeting with his hands.

“Do you ever get memories of the two of us before all this?” He asked, though his eyes did not leave his hands.

You nodded, even if he wasn’t looking, the question making you glance to your hands as well, “Yeah…yeah all the time”.

There was silence again but there was something in the air, a push and pull, a want to speak and a fear of what would come out. You glanced past your hands at the floor, gently bumping your leg against his, he bumped it back.

“We really liked studying late in the library,” you joked, still quiet, just for the two of you, as if Earth could hear you from all the way out here.

He let out a breathy laugh in reply, “yeah we really did”.

“I think we worked well together,” you added, then pausing to correct yourself. “We still work really well together”.

You watched as his hand slowly moved closer, till it rested atop of yours. A reminder that you were both there, alive, breathing. The words of Rocky echoed in your head over and over, a broken record, that it was “not enough”. That’s what it felt like, a ticking timer, its numbers growing smaller and smaller. Even if you had accepted it, even if you told yourself you did. This right now, with him, it would never be enough.

“I think I loved you,” he spoke from the silence and you looked up from your hands, meeting his eyes. You searched his face for any sign he was joking, maybe he was messing with you like he always did. But he was there, fully there, looking at you. And you knew, you knew for a while you had loved him too. “And I never got to tell you that”.

“Why didn’t you?” You asked, an uncertainty in your question. A push and pull between wanting to know and peaceful ignorance. He swallowed, and you just watched him, watched him fight for words.

“Do you remember?” 

You just shook your head, pleading with your mind to catch up in this moment, to tell you why.

“Do you?” you asked, quiet, waiting for the truth…and he just shook his head.

“I just know I didn’t…I owe you an answer,” he replied, hand gripped tighter on yours. “I love you, I know I love you…I think I have always loved you”.

The words just floated, words you knew you needed to hear, but words you had not expected. You just nodded, unsure of what words you could possibly give back to him. What words were enough at this moment? You wanted to pull him close, wrap your arms around him and tell him you loved him, of course you loved him. You felt it when you saw him the first time, a pull towards him, one only love could possibly create.

“I know,” you whispered, scared to admit it, scared that it would be there, a constant reminder of what you could not have. “I love you”.

This was present, not past, not “loved”, it was there. Because you did. You loved when he would do the stupid dance moves anytime he got something right. You loved how he would make you laugh when you were spiraling. You loved how you bickered and how he looked at you like you were a genius, even when he teased that he was smarter. You loved him, you had seen it in every memory that had come back. You saw it when you left your home to join his research without a second thought. You loved him but life was cruel and time was not on your side, not even a little.

“I love you and I am scared,” he spoke up, pulling you from your thoughts. The tension in your body slightly eased, but the pit in your stomach grew deeper. You tried to meet his eyes but he would not look at you, his gaze cast down, his hand moving down to fidget with your fingers. You weren’t sure if he knew they were yours or thought they were his. The thought made you smile. “Because we are going to die out here and it’s not fair. It’s not fair to you if I tell you this knowing we are just going to die”.

“I would rather die knowing,” you admitted, hand gently reaching out to cup his jaw, pulling his gaze up to yours. His eyes rimmed red, watery. He blinked a few times, shook his head, tried to erase the emotions he could not escape. “I’d rather know we will die and get to love you than pretend and try not to love you at all”.

Silence.

“I can’t keep getting these memories and not pretend you aren’t the most important person in the world to me”.

Silence again, your heart was beating so loud you could barely hear the words you were speaking.

“And if you can pretend, good for you,” you continued, quietly, gently releasing your grip on his face. But he just grabbed your wrists before you moved too far, carefully placing it back where it was.

“I can’t pretend anymore,” he admitted, shaky. “I can’t.”

“Then let’s stop,” you spoke, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Because in space, time ticking lower and lower, it seemed like maybe it was. And there, something snapped, him reaching to cup your jaw. You grew closer and closer, foreheads hovering against the other.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his thumb brushing gently against your jaw. 

You just nodded, “Are you?”

“I’ve been sure since I first saw you again,” he replied, leaning into your touch, something you didn’t know you needed so badly. “I’ve known before I even understood why”.

Whatever hesitation left slipped away in that moment as your bodies allowed for it, allowed you to be selfish, the space between you closing. The magnets had finally collided. The kiss was so soft, you committed the feeling to memory. You never wanted to stop feeling it. 

He was so careful, like you might shatter right there. And you just might, the feeling so overwhelming. And then it deepened, just slightly, the pent up hunger for something you both had tried so hard to fight. You scooted closer, as close as you could, his hand traveling up your jaw and slightly gripping into your hair. For a moment, one small moment, the ticking clock seemed to stop.

He pulled away with an “I love you” on his lips before you could even speak. You met his eyes, and there was something there. It was bittersweet, knowing there would come a time where you would no longer get to see his eyes right in front of you. The thought made your stomach turn, a familiar burninig in your eyes. You hoped that if there was something after all of this, after life, that it would be a place you could still see his eyes.

“I know I should have said it a long time ago, I should have given us more time-”’

The words knocked you back, it felt like a blow to the stomach as your head pounded, it always seemed to feel heavy but this felt different. It all falls into place, all those missing pieces, the scientists in the bar, the conversation on the deck, the volunteering…the goodbye. 

“So what, now you are just going off to die?” he was upset, you hadn’t seen him like this in a while, not since his theory about water had not been received well in college.

“I am saving humanity”.

“Oh wow, yes, real courageous of you,” he retorted, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Fuck you Ryland,” you said, quiet, cold. “You’re the one who brought me here”.

His eyes snapped to yours, the two of you just looking at each other, breathing.

“And it was supposed to be a temporary thing,” he bit back. “Empahsis on the whole temporary part of this all. I mean, just a couple of days ago you were saying how you couldn’t imagine people having to say goodbye like this.” 

You stand up, your head pouding as you hold onto it, feeling as if it might explode. You slightly stumble, falling against a wall for support, Ryland is quick to follow. You slide down the wall, slightly caving in on yourself, pulling your knees to your just. There were so many emotions coming to you at one, regret, fear, anger, longing…love.

“Hey, hey, hey," he says gently, reaching down to try and help you. “What’s happening? What…what’s going on?”

You look up and there is a panic in his eyes, one to match your own. You try to speak but you can’t, you can’t find the words.

“I have nothing here for me,” you spoke from the silence.

“You have-” and then he stopped himself and your head once again snapped up to meet his eyes.

“Say it,” you spoke, quietly, pleading for him to say the one thing that could make you stay. “Please Ry, just say it”.

Everything hung there, floating in the air  And he couldn’t, his head just slightly shaking in disappointment. The tether snapped right there. 

“Okay,” it was so breathy, barely even a word.

“Talk to me,” his voice comes back, his hand stretched out to you, you now sitting back against the wall. Your hands gripped your head, your eyes burned and your body shook. There were so many feelings, too many. You just shoved his hand away, before you could even process that it was there. “Just tell me you are okay”.

“You didn’t say it,” you whispered out, scared to say it, scared to acknowledge that it was real. 

“What?” he asked, gently crouching down to your level, gently reaching to brush hair out of your face, you shifted your head away. “What didn’t I say?”

“You didn’t tell me to stay,” and the look on his face was one of unimaginable regret. “You let me get on this ship”.

“You wanted to,” he pushed back and your heart dropped. “I mean…come on, it’s not, it reall-”

“You knew,” the realization hurt more than the memory. He didn’t say anything, he had said he didn’t know why. He had pretended like it was fine but he knew…he knew why you were here.

“I didn’t want to go back to all that,” he tried to reason, and it reminded you of the memory, the samn panic on his face. “I finally have this, I finally have you and it didn’t…I didn’t want to-”

“So you just were never going to tell me?” you looked at him, searched his face for something to understand. “What? You were just gonna hope it never came back to me?”

The same silence as he fought for his words.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” you finally asked, an answer you knew had been weighing on you, a feeling in your stomach you did not understand until this moment. “Please Ryland”.

And it was like dejavu, the same as the memory as he did not say anything. You flet it all over again.

“I stay up at night wondering why I couldn’t have just said it,” his voice was so fragile, you looked up to meet his gaze and this time he was looking at you, focused on you. “And I wonder if maybe we would be living a normal life right now. Maybe we’d be together and you’d be doing your research and I would still be teaching. And maybe you would have come into my class sometimes as a guest teacher and…my kids would have loved you”.

A choked laugh escaped him at the thought as he reached up to run his hand though his hair. You let him talk, let him make up for all the silence as you just waiited to understand. 

“And then I think about how I couldn’t have ever stopped you,” he spoke again. “Because you have always loved space more than Earth and then I wonder if I maybe could have but would that have been fair?”

“I just wanted to know,” you finally spoke up, and you shifted slightly, patting the space next to you, inviting him to sit rather than couch infront of you. He accepted, sitting beside you. “I just wanted you to stop being so scared and say it…because I dropped everything to come and help you”.

“And I begged Eva Stratt for days leading up to take off to put me on that ship,” he admitted.

You hadn’t thought about it really, about how he had gotten there.

“Your mission was to find purpose and see Tau Ceti,” he said. “And mine was to tell you that I love you…because I could not stay on Earth without you”.

The words were so loud.

“That was my mission, that is why I am here,” he continued. “And if you are mad at me, I understand why…but I will take those few seconds you were not and know it was worth leaving everything behind just for that”.

The clock seemed to come back, ticking louder and louder in your brain. The heavy realization that this was it, that there would be a day where this was gone and there would  no longer be the pain and the wondering and the want. That there would come a time where you would not get to hate or love Ryland Grace anymore. And if you could pick one, you would love him for as long as you could. Even if you were mad, even if you wished it was different, he was still here and he had left the world for you.

“We are going to die out here,” you spoke, bluntly and obviously. “And I won’t do that angry at you, I won’t”.

"Let me fix this," he pleaded, his voice sounding so small. "Let me love you with the time we have".

You just leaned your head on his shoulder in response, his head resting a top of yours, a silent agreement. A silent truce. A page turned because dwelling in the past had become something you learned you could not do anymore. You wondered why people ever had at all? Because life was meant to be lived, because the past could offer you only ways to change and grow, it was not a place to remain in. It was your guide forward into a better future. 

“We would have had a good life together,” you spoke from the quiet, honest, no more pretending. 

“We will,” he corrected. “I mean it isn’t really how I pictured it, but the views are pretty nice up here”.

You just laughed, laughed at how ridiculous this all was. How he had chased you all the way into the depths of the solar system, all the way into a new one entirely. 

“I will take any time I can with you,” he spoke, gently reaching up to wipe a tear that had escaped. “I would take a few seconds”.

“This sucks,” your voice cracking slightly, a small huff of laughter escaping you because what else could you do.

“A little less with you here,” he corrected and you just smiled, a watery smile.

“Grace and (Last Name) not go home, question?” the familiar voice caused your head to snap towards the entrance to the room. The normally loud creature had somehow made himself a fly on the wall…you wondered how long he had been there.

“Hey buddy,” you squeaked out, wiping your eyes with the palm of your hand, sitting uop straight. 

“Rocky not understand, why not go back to Earth, question?” he persisted

The question was a hard one to answer, one you wanted to keep avoiding. To speak it into the air was to acknowledge that it would come soon, that it was real. 

“This is a one way trip for us,” Ryland spoke, calculated and straightforward, though you could hear the slight shake at the end of his words. “They gave us enough Astrophage to make it to Tau Ceti and then we will send our findings back on probes”

“We have our mission and then we will be done,” you added, Rocky rolling into the room to stand in front of where the two of you sat. You shifted slightly, an appropriate distance, but his hand still lingered on your thigh, your hand atop of his.

“No understand” Rocky just repeated, shifting back and forth in his ball as if he were pacing. You would have laughed if the conversation wasn’t about your inevitable death floating out in space.

“Earth is too far from here for us to get back Rock,” you continued, a shaky breath, a glance at Ryland, anything to ground yourself. You told yourself you were fine with it. But the thought, the thought of a normal life with Ryland, it ached all over your body. “We have enough food to get us through a couple of years-”

“And then what, question?”

“We will die,” Ryland answered, no longer beating around the bush. “We chose this mission knowng we would die out here”.

We chose this mission. Rockys movements only got more exaggerated, him shifting around in a panic. Ryland gave your hand one squeeze before standing up to follow Rocky as he zoomed around the room.

“We, uh, we have made peace with it,” though it sounded like more of a question than a statement. “We know what will happen and we have made peace with it”.

Rocky stopped moving, turning back to Ryland who now stood in front of him, trying to corral him like a dog that had escaped the house.

“How much you need return Earth, question?” he spoke up, rolling back towards you, Ryland trailing behind him, trying to catch up with his quick changes in direction.

“Around two million kilogram,” the words sounded hopeless.

“I can give”.

Your gaze moved quickly to meet Rylands, an astonished look on his face. You tried to breathe, tried to keep yourself grounded, to not let yourself consider the option.

"I have extra. Can give that much from my ship and still have plenty for return to Erid".

"Rocky, you cant do that”.

“That's too much to ask for Buddy," Ryland replied.

“Let Rocky fix,” he insisted, rolling to your side, as if he were sitting next to you. “Rocky crew die, Rocky cannot fix. Rocky friends need help, Rocky fix”.

Ryland had practically slammed himself into you on the ground, him holding you so tightly, a laugh of disbelief escaping him. The chance, the chance for something else for the two of you. Rocky bumped against you.

“Confsued, confused, confused,” as he rammed into your side. “Grace hurt Alien Girl”.

Someone had leaked the nickname. You pulled away to give a pointed look at Ryland, he just shrugged his smile so wide. 

“Get in here Rock,” he said, pushing the creature into your embrace, the two of you wrapping your arms around his sphere. 

“Confused,” he repeated, insisting.

“It's a hug Rocky,” you replied. “Just go with it”.

The three of you moved with a newly lit passion, a new ease in the way you worked. There was hope, there was a future, a world where you would all make it back. The journey continued on, a new sense of understanding between Ryland and you. It was small glances in the lab, kissing in the hallway whenever you could get a minute away from Rocky…though he would normally somehow find the two of you, it was late night talking about what life would be like when you returned. A hopeful view of a world that could be better.

You worked hard, trying to understand whatever you could about Astrophage, as you got closer and closer to Tau Ceti E. And when the bright green planet comes into view you finally understand why you had picked this system to study. It was beyond what you could imagine, the siwling greens and oranges and reds so vibrant. 

“Ladie and Gentleman,” Ryland spoke. “I give you Tau Ceti E”.

You could just nod, no words fully encapsulating everything you felt in that moment as you looked at the planet. Your lifes work, there, in front of you. And when you walked out onto the hull of the ship with Ryland, you felt as though you could not breathe. It was astonishment on a level you never knew was possible. You were really seeing it, a system you had studied your whole life. And it was then you understood what Ryland meant when he said he could have never stopped you…because this was everything you had worked for. 

“Is everything okay over there?” a knowing laugh at the end of his words.

“Yeah,” you spoke up, unable to form words. “It’s just…wow”.

“It is wow,” he agreed, coming to float beside you, bumping your shoulder. You looked at him, him already looking at you, as if you were Tau Ceti E itself. 

You think you blackout by the time you are back in the ship, so overwhelmed by emotion. You were sure your brain turned off once the Astrophage had surrounded you, the red dots filling your vision. Your brain could not handle it, as you sat back down insid the ship, buzzed with adrenaline. And when the data shows that there is another life form on Tau Ceti E eating the astropage to keep it balanced, you feel your body almost collapse. You laugh, an extremely loud laugh, the only thing your body could do. 

“What?” Ryland asked, him and Rocky turning to look at you.

“I was right,” you speak, much quieter than the laugh, hand coming up to wipe your eyes. This was not the time, there was work to do. 

“You were right,” Ryland reassures, a nod and a smile, one as if he knew all along that you were. And you could just smile back, giving yourself a moment to feel it all. To feel that accomplishment after years of work, after almost giving up. You know your parents are out there somewhere in the universe smiling because they knew too. They knew you would do it all and it had taken you so long to truly believe that you were capable of it.

You jumped into action once more, because this was what you had prepared for, because this was what you had studied. And you knew. Right then, that you were meant to be up there, Ryland and Rocky and you…all of you with one risky plan. A risky plan you would pull off.

And you would, you would get close. When the alarms start flashing so loud, you start to wonder how it went wrong. The beeping rattles through your body, each flash of red light burning your eyes as you try to copilot Rocky as Ryland attempts to get the sample. It is a flash, a blur, your brain moving too fast for you to even process. And when the ship turns too sharp and you bang your head against the control board, you feel your hearing start to dwindle first. You blink over and over, trying to stop it but your head is pounding and you can barely keep your eyes open. You slump against the board, you call out for help for anything and you hear the panic, muffled voice of Rocky call back. Your name is yelled over and over again until you feel nothing at all.

You felt no regret.

Not when Eva Stratt thanked you for your sacrifice. Not when the doctors came in and prepared the injection that would put you under. Not even when the needle pierced your skin. You only did, just for a second, when you heard your name. When his voice called through the room, faint but desperate. It was muffled, your vision growing thinner and thinner, fading at the edges. The voice just grew quieter and quieter. A hand gripped tightly onto yours, shaking you more and more until you felt nothing at all.

You wake up gasping for air, shooting up from your bed trying to focus your vision, as everything begins to come back to you. Ryland and Rocky and the sample on Tau Ceti E. The panic feels worse the second time around. You move quickly, looking around, when you see Ryland asleep on the bed beside yours. You cautiously move towards him, hand gently running through his hair, your other moving to his chest. He was breathing and you feel a sense of calm wash over you at the fact. 

Then you realize that it is quiet, much too quiet and you move quickly out of the room and into the halls. Your head still pounded and the running made you dizzy but you pushed through to get to the main room. Then you see it, the splotches on the ground all leading to a small figure crumbled on the floor. You rush quickly, so quickly, dropping to the floor to meet your alien roommate. You move your hands over him, feeling no sense of movement. Your heart beat won't steady, your breathing is ragged as you move to pick him up. You move him gently, as careful as you can back to the area he had built himself, back in his own atmosphere. And you knew then what he had done, what he had risked to make sure Ryland and you survived. You stand there for a while, watching him…just waiting.

“You gotta pull through, okay buddy?” you speak as if he can hear you, words trembling as they escape you. “You are the smartest part of this team”.

You don’t know how long it is until you feel a hand on your shoulder, your head snapping and your body only calming when you realize it's him. He's alive, he is okay. And you pull your arms around him just as quick, head pressed to his chest listening as his heart beats in a steady rhythm. He does the same, arms wrapped, holding tightly for as long as he could. There was just silence, no words big enough, his head just gently rested atop of yours like it always found its way to. A gentle kiss placed on your forehead, a rhythm of his hand moving up and down your back.

You pull away, you look at each other and just nod. You fall back into that familiar pattern, no words needed as you move around the lab organzing all the samples and getting it ready for Rocky. So close…you were so close and you would all make it. You had to.

A few nights pass, the two of you moving all the samples of Taumoeba into the tanks Rocky had crafted. He would be so excited.

You are sitting at the desk when Ryland comes to join you, sitting beside you. It was like this most nights, most nights the two of you wouldn’t even say a word.

But he spoke this time, he spoke with a hope that had not left him just yet, “what color would we paint our walls?”

You laugh at the simplicity of the question, “you asking me to move in Grace?”

“I thought that was established,” he shrugged, a small smile as laid his head against the desk, you moving to do the same. Heads laid on the table, the two of you just faced the other, smiling. “I mean, we have been living in this space tube for a while already”.

“I gotta think about it, the wall color is a big decision,” you humor him back, let yourself believe that you would still make it home. “We got some time though”.

The silence is normal now, almost more normal than any sound.

“Do you think he is just sleeping?” you speak up, wanting some sort of answer, one you knew you wouldn’t be able to get.

“He sleeps like a rock,” he tries to joke, but it falls back into the silence. He sits up again, running his hand down your back again, you leaning into any comfort you could get. “He is strong, he is gonna pull through”.

Neither of you knew that, but you would choose to believe it cause it made it all easier. None of this was easy.

“I don’t like this,” you let yourself be selfish, be completely truthful and it felt good to not pretend you were alright. “I hate not knowing what is gonna happen next. Not knowing if any of this will even work”.

He just nodded, looking down at you, your head still laid against the table, looking off into the distance.

“I used to think this was gonna be simple” he admitted. “We collect the data, send it home and then we wait for…”

He trailed off, the thought too heavy, to ugly.

“But now it isn’t that simple anymore,” you finished for him and he just nodded. The two of you had a sense of understanding, one where you could say no words at all and completely understand how the other was feeling.

“It’s him,” he added. “It’s…you. I just want it all, I want it all with you and it seems so close”.

Your heart ached at his words. You sat up, running your hands over your face.

“I don’t know if I even have the answers anymore,” he admitted. “I feel like I am lying when I talk, because I don’t know if there even is one”.

The silence wraps itself around the two of you again and you want nothing more than to just be as close as possible to him. You reach for his hand, and he just as quickly grabs it, his hand wrapped tight around yours.

“Do you think about what it will be like after this…if we pull this off?” you spoke up, looking at your two hands intertwined, rested on the table.

“Constantly,” he answered, and you couldn’t hold it in anymore as the emotions bubbled over. Tears fell from your eyes, as your body began to shake. He moved quickly, coming to stand behind your seat, wrapping his arms around you. That’s just how he was, he was your stable force. 

“What do you think it will be like?” you asked, quiet through shaky breaths. “If we get back home”.

“It will be everything I have ever wanted,” he said, like it was obvious, like it was so simple. And you just held him tighter, committing the feeling to memory. 

“What Rocky miss?” 

The words startle you so much you fall out of your chair and Ryland just laughs and you laugh. God you laugh so hard it hurts, so hard you know your stomach will ache for days and you hope it does. Because it would be a reminder of how somehow Ryland and you had survived this all.

“Rocky does not get reaction from friends,” he spoke, his familiar confused tone.

Through laughing you sit up, just moving slightly to reach him and throwing your arms around him. Ryland does the same, the two of you holding the alien in his enclosure, so tight, you didn’t want to let go.

“We are going home Rocky,” you spoke, head still buried into the embrace. “We are going to get you home”.

And everything felt right, right there with a rock and a man you loved. Right there in space, surrounded by the beauty of the stars that you had always yearned for. But you had found a new purpose, a purpose to get a new friend home and return back to yours to save it. 

“Rocky see mate again?” he asked, and the question made your heart ache because you could say yes. And Rocky would spin into a chaos of excitement at the answer, immediately asking what work still needed to be done. The craziest part was nothing, you just had to load the Taumoeba on his ship and get the extra astrophage. It waas bittersweet and you were thankful for that.

Much celebration filled the night, the projection room filled with fireworks and loud music. The two of you taught Rocky how to dance even if he found it dumb.. And that next morning when you said goodbye, a piece of you would leave with the alien creature.

In the tunnel, you stood by the glass formation he had built. He was already on his side of the barrier, staring at the two of you. What words could you even say?

You stood there for a while before moving to place your hand against the glass like you had the first time. 

“Thank you,” you spoke, two words, the only words that could ever come close to being enough. 

“I guess…I guess we should get going?” Ryland spoke, but you felt glued to the ground. Because this was it, that was the last time you would see him, separated by the galaxy. 

“You are bravest humans Rocky has ever met,” and the words hit you hard and you smile because Ryland had rubbed off on him. “It’s joke, you are only humans Rocky has met”.

You smile wider, a small laugh escaping you. You could not be sad, not when you had somehow accomplished the impossible. 

“You spent too much time with Grace,” you joked back and Rocky only made a sound in protest.

“Not enough,” he said and you pressed your hand once again to the glass, his meeting yours.

“Not enough,” you agreed, Ryland moving to stand behind you, hand resting on your shoulder. 

“Don’t forget about us,” he spoke, hiding the shake in his voice with a cough. 

“Rocky never forget,” and you just smiled, turning to meet Rylands eyes, them the same as yours, watery and overwhelmed with emotion. 

“Goodbye Rocky,” he spoke up, and the alien once again protested.

“In Erid we do not say goodbye,” he corrected. “We do this”

The rocky creature began to rub one arm over the other and the two of you just copied. It was easier, you did not have the words in you to say ‘goodbye’. You moved slowly back towards the door of your ship, sending one final glance back to the creature who just watched the two of you. And just like Ryland did, as the door to the ship closed, through the window you saw him give his version of a thumbs up. You smile, looking at Ryland who looked at you. It was going to be okay. 

The two of you moved in a silence through the ship until you reached the dormitory.

“Back to sleep?” you asked, unsure of what was next, four years of a journey ahead.

“I guess so,” he said, a hesitation in his words.

The thought of sleeping again sat heavy in yoru chest, the fear of forgetting it all again. You couldn’t, you could not forget any of this.

“One night?” you asked, and he turned in curiosity to look at you. “Let's sleep on it for a night”.

And he nodded, the two of you making your way to your individual beds. You stood there, pulling back the sheets when you hear his voice saying your name. You looked uo to meet his eyes.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asked, gesturing to his bed. “Please”.

You heard it in his tone, the fear, the want to be close and you knew you wanted it to. You moved across the room, a new sense of intimacy greeting the two of you. The bed was small, but you made it work as you climbed into it, adjusting to fit the two of you comfortably. His arms reached around you, pulling your back to be pressed against his chest and you buried yourself in comfort. There, in the silence, two bodies pressed together. Your breathing fell into a similar rhythm and you could feel his eyes on the back of your head. And then you turned, meeting his face, scanning his. And before you could make the move, he made his, his lips meeting yours in a rhythm of longing and you melted right into it.

It was built up energy, after days upon days on this ship, after years prior of beating around the bush about what the two of you were. And you needed it, your body carved the feeling. You grew closer and closer, the kiss growing deeper as you moved to sit on top of him. His hands reached up to run through your hair, slightly gripping onto it and pulling you any closer he possibly could. You ran your hand up and down his arm before finding a place cup his jaw. There did not need to be words in that moment, the two of you communicating in a new way. 

A quiet breathy groan escaped him, one that sent heat all up your body, and you made it your new mission to pull the sound from him again.

“You are so perfect,” he mumbled against your lips. “So, so perfect”.

“I love you,” you got out in between kisses, in the moments where you gasped for air before going back.

He sat up, you still sitting on him as he gently picked you up to move you on your back, him now above you. He held himself up above you, reaching to brush a stray piece of hair from your face. And he just looked at you, in a way no one had ever before, so intently, looking at every part of your face as if you were his favorite painting in a museum.

“I love you so much,” he spoke, for only you, so quiet. God you loved him too and you would say it a million times, as many times as you could…even if that would never be enough.

Then, as if on cue, as if the universe wanted to keep you apart the alarm began blare. He jumped up to attention, the sound triggered a panic that both of you shared. You looked at him, him at you. He quickly leaned down, pressing one last kiss to your forehead and then gave you a nod.

You moved quickly, joining him as he rushed down the hall to the control room. You quickly behind him, watching as he scanned the screens.

You notice it first, the other screen flashing the words FOREIGN PRESENSE DETECTED.

“The lab,” you breathed out, looking at the screen.

“The Taumoeba,” he finished for you, jumping out of the chair just as quickly,.He moved down the hall at the same fast paced, the adrenaline pumping through the two of you. It hit you quickly as you looked at the cylinders on the wall.

“They are leaking,” he observed, turning to look at you and the realization of what that meant hit you like a train.

“Rocky,” you turned to him in a panic and he just gave you back a dazed nod. And it was there, right in that moment that you knew. Ryland and you were always meant for unexpected. That a normal life wasn’t what either of you ever needed, you just needed each other. You needed a good friend who had given you both so much.

“Rocky,” you repeated. And he looked at your, pleading eyes, as he too knew what this meant. “We gotta go back for him”.

And you knew what that meant, that meant no going home, it meant leaving it all forever. What even was home? It was people, the people who carry you through life, lifting you up in celebration in your best moments and holding you together in the bad. And when you look at Ryland, you see it so clearly. Your home was not that dingy apartment, it was not San Francisco, it was anywhere the two of you were together.

He reached for your hand, and you grabbed it back, standing there together looking at the wall of samples.

“You want to do this?” he asked.

“We need to do this,” you replied, the most sure you had ever been.

He just nodded at you, that smile you never wanted to forget. Tomorrow you would wake up and you would be traveling back towards Rocky’s ship. It would take weeks and you would watch the days pass by, filled with Ryland and you arranging the samples to send back to Earth. And it would be overwhelming all over again. But for now, you were with Ryland Grace and you were alive. You were wearing an alien shirt and spending late nights in a lab on a ship beside a man with a beautiful smile and titled glasses. Floating absently among the stars and you felt like you have never felt so at home, because you were finally home.

You stopped and listened, the sound came again, so full of pain and angry despair that it made you flinch. 

For a moment, you considered turning around and running. You didn’t. You couldn’t. 

Your mind screamed at you in agony, calling you a fool, that whatever had happened here had nothing to do with you, that the only sensible thing to do was to vanish before anything worse happened.  

You had never been good at sensible. 

You stepped from the path and pushed through the undergrowth. The forest slowly darkened around you as the last remnants of daylight vanished behind thick clouds, but the direction you had chosen was right – the groaning grew louder.

A shape emerged between the trees.

A horse.

Dead.

Saddle half-torn loose, some pieces of armor scattered just next to it and several paces farther on – a man, sprawled against the roots of an ancient oak, one arm hanging uselessly at his side, face streaked with mud.

Your breath caught.

Not a bandit.

A knight, or rather what remained of one.

You stopped dead in your tracks. Men in armor brought trouble. Noblemen brought even more. 

For all their faults, thieves and bandits understood the sacred rule: do not bite the hand that heals you. They knew what it was to go hungry, to bleed, to depend on the mercy of another. Noblemen rarely did.

They moved through the world as though it had been laid at their feet for their use alone. Gratitude flowed upward, never down. Kindness was expected, service demanded, and debts forgotten even before blood had dried on a bandage.

You had learned that lesson young, and life had seen fit to repeat it often. 

Yet as you watched, the man’s head shifted weakly and you heard a strained breath escape him.

Not dead, not yet at least. You cursed at your foolishness as you moved closer.

The man's hair, damp with rain, stuck to his forehead, and even the mix of dirt and blood couldn’t completely hide the fine features of his handsome face. 

The embroidery on his green doublet, the remnants of his armour, every single thing about this man screamed he was someone important, someone dangerous and surely someone far above the concerns of a village healer living alone on the edge of nowhere.

You leaned in and put your palm on his forehead. Burning hot. 

His eyes opened. Blue of the morning sky and still sharp despite the pain. A shaky hand reached for you.

"Water," he rasped before his eyes rolled back, and his body slumped back against the tree.

You stared at him, at the blood seeping through his doublet, at the straight line of his nose, the sharp eyebrows.

The sensible choice would have been to leave him. 

Instead, with a muttered curse and a prayer to every god willing to listen, you set down your basket and knelt beside the unconscious stranger.

You fetched the flask hanging from your waistband and slid one hand behind his neck.

"Easy."

His head lolled heavily against your palm and his eyes opened again, unfocused and glassy with pain.

You tipped the flask carefully.

He swallowed once, coughed, then drank again, greedily.

"Not too much," you warned, pulling it away.

His brow furrowed, whether at your words or simply from the effort of staying conscious, you couldn't tell.

For a long moment he simply stared at you. He looked confused, trying to place where he was, who you were, perhaps even remember his own name.

You set the flask aside and turned your attention to the armor.

The breastplate was dented along one side and mud had worked itself into every buckle and strap. You had to get it off but it was clear it was not going to be an easy task. 

"What are you doing?" he managed as you started to pull at the straps.

"Saving your life."

Your fingers worked at the leather fastenings, the knight frowned and his hand moved weakly toward yours.

You slapped it away.

"Stop that."

A surprised blink and then, despite the blood loss and obvious pain, something almost resembling offense crossed his face.

"I can't carry you," you said with a slight scoff. "And you can't walk carrying half a forge on your shoulders."

The final buckle came loose, the breastplate shifted and he groaned in pain as you moved his body to ease it away from him. 

You kept going – the pauldrons, the vambraces, all went off. He didn’t protest anymore, and piece by piece, all the steel fell away.

You looked at the man revealed beneath it – wiry but well built, pale and far younger than he had first appeared.

The doublet was stained dark with blood. The wound would need cleaning, stitching, perhaps, but none of that could happen in the middle of the forest.

"We need to move."

His eyes closed briefly and when they opened again, they were sharper and more aware.

"I can’t."

"You want to live, you will."

The look he gave you suggested he was unused to being argued with.

You rose to your feet and dusted off your skirts, his gaze followed you.

You offered your hand and after a moment's hesitation, he took it.

You braced your feet.

"Ready?"

"No."

"Good."

You pulled, he cried out as he put all his remaining strength in holding on to you and pushing himself upright. For a second his knees buckled and you already thought he would fall back on the ground, but somehow he managed to keep standing. 

"Seven, help me," he muttered through clenched teeth.

You quickly stepped closer, draped his good arm over your shoulders and wrapped your own around his waist.

The weight that settled against you was considerable. 

"Gods," you breathed, looking with remorse at your basket on the ground. There was no way you could lean down to fetch it without letting the man drop back into the mud. 

The two of you stood there for a moment, swaying slightly.

“Move,” you ordered. 

There was a pause but then he shifted his weight forward.

One step. It was shaky and painful, the movement drew a sharp hiss from him but it was a step.

"Good boy," you gave him an encouraging smile. 

His jaw clenched but another step followed.

Consciousness returned slowly and in fragments.

First was the feeling of warmth, then the sound of crackling fire, next came the scent of dried herbs.

Pain. A dull, throbbing ache spread through his ribs, shoulder, and side. 

Gwayne frowned, his eyelids felt heavy but he forced them open.

A low wooden ceiling, smoke-darkened beams, a small window.

Memories run scattered through his still somewhat foggy brain. 

The battle. The screams. The pain. 

The fire. The rain. The forest. 

A woman.

Beautiful, large eyes looking at him with open annoyance.

He was alive.

The realization came with a fresh pulse of pain and a ragged gasp.

The door opened and you stepped inside carrying a wooden bowl filled with steaming water.

"Look who's decided to rejoin the living," you smiled seeing the young man awake and set the bowl down.

The blanket shifted as he moved, attempting to sit up, and he instantly froze and looked down, realising there was nothing between him and the blanket. Completely, absolutely nothing.  

His eyes widened.

"What in the..." his voice sounded hoarse but it still was pleasantly soft.  

He looked pointedly at the blanket, then back at you.

You blinked.

"What happened to my clothes?" The accusation in his voice was hard to miss.

You folded your arms.

"They're drying."

A beat of  silence passed.

Gwayne's face grew steadily warmer as the implications arranged themselves in his mind and the speed with which the young man’s cheeks all over to his ears turned brightly red made you chuckle. 

"You removed them."

"You were unconscious."

"You removed all of them."

You stared.

He stared back.

Finally you let out a long, disbelieving breath. "Seven preserve me."

"What?"

"You wake up in one piece after nearly dying in the middle of nowhere and that's your first concern?"

His jaw tightened.

"You undressed me."

"I saved your life."

"You undressed me."

"I stitched your wounds!”

The man looked genuinely mortified and offended. You looked genuinely ready to throw something at him.

His mouth opened, closed, then opened again but nothing emerged. 

"Not even a thank you," your frustration spilled out before you could stop it. "Not one."

Gwayne blinked.

"I carried you out of the woods, spent half the night cleaning blood off you, used almost every bandage and pain soothing herb I had and unless you've discovered some miraculous method of treating wounds through a doublet, yes, I removed your clothes."

The room fell quiet.

Gwayne found himself staring at a knot in the wooden wall, and his ears felt suspiciously warm.

"You stitched my wounds?"

"That is generally how healing works when someone has a hole in his side."

Gwayne shut his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, the movement pulled painfully and he hissed.

The concern drove away the annoyance from your features so quickly that it caught him off guard. You immediately stepped forward.

"Don't. You'll tear the stitches."

Your gaze dropped to the bandages wrapped around his torso.

"Try sitting up slowly."

Gwayne eyed you suspiciously.

"Why?"

"Because if you're going to continue being difficult, I'd at least like you to be conscious for it."

It had been on the third day that the young man finally revealed his name.

To his credit, there had been no grand announcement, no expectation that the world should stop and marvel at it.

The truth had surfaced gradually, piece by piece, through idle conversation and half-answered questions until, with visible reluctance, he admitted that he was Ser Gwayne Hightower. 

You cursed inwardly. 

A Hightower. As if sheltering a wounded knight beneath your roof was not enough trouble to tempt fate. Of course he had to be a nobleman as well. Of course he had to belong to one of the most powerful houses in the realm, a house with its hands buried up to the elbows in the bloodiest war of the century. 

Just your luck.

You dragged a half-dead stranger out of the forest and somehow ended up with a piece of the realm's troubles sleeping in your bed.

The days that followed settled into a rhythm neither of you acknowledged aloud – each morning began with fresh bandages and a new argument.

Gwayne healed quickly, much faster than you had expected. The fever broke after three days and by the end of the week, he could cross the room without needing to lean on walls or furniture. He stubbornly refused your hand whenever you offered it to him. 

He had tried to ask you questions about the course of the war. You cut him off before he could speak them out. 

"No discussions about kings, queens, claimants, dragons, battles, or whichever noble lord is currently trying to kill whichever noble lord."

A faint frown appeared between his brows.

"I merely wished to know..."

“I said, no,” you tied off the fresh bandage with perhaps a little more force than necessary.

Gwayne studied you for a moment.

"I'm too poor to have the luxury of caring who sits on the Iron Throne," you finally said and turned to face him. "When lords quarrel, villages burn. While princes decide who is entitled to crowns, common folk bury their sons. Armies take grain, horses trample fields, and healers like me spend their days stitching together whatever is left behind."

You folded your arms.

"I heal whoever comes through that door. Farmer. Merchant. Shepherd. Drunkard. When I picked you up in the woods, I didn’t ask for your title.”

Your gaze drifted briefly to the fresh bandages wrapped around his torso.

"I have no desire to be part of noble quarrels," you said at last, more quietly. "I don't want favors. I don't want rewards. I certainly don't want enemies."

A muscle shifted in Gwayne's jaw as it slowly hit him, the reason for that distinct feeling that learning his name had somehow lowered your opinion of him. 

"You think knowing my name places you in danger."

"I know it does."

The certainty in your voice surprised him.

"When you leave this place, Ser Gwayne, I sincerely hope you forget the path that brought you here."

His expression tightened.

"You saved my life."

"Exactly."

You pointed at him.

"And if, after all that, the thanks I receive is having soldiers, rivals, debt collectors, spies, or ambitious noblemen showing up at my door asking questions, then I hope every old and new god in the Seven Kingdoms curses you for the rest of your days."

For a heartbeat, Gwayne simply stared, his blue eyes met yours and something softer flickered there, something unusually sincere.

"I give you my word. No one will hear of this place from me," the solemn certainty in his voice surprised you, and for reasons you could not entirely explain, you found yourself believing him.

A week later, Gwayne Hightower discovered that recovering from a near-death injury was considerably easier than earning your approval.

Gwayne had spent most of his life knowing exactly what was expected of him.

He was a knight. A Hightower. A soldier. The son of a powerful house.

There had always been a place for him in the world, a purpose that fit as naturally as a sword hilt in his hand until he woke up in your hut and discovered that in your world he had none of all that. Even more - he was entirely useless.

The realization did not come all at once.

At first, there was the wound. No man could be expected to work while half stitched together and burning with fever but the fever broke and the strength returned.

The days passed.

You rose before dawn every morning. 

By the time he woke, water had already been fetched, the fire lit, herbs sorted, breakfast prepared.

Then the rest of the day began: children with split open knees, farmers with swollen joints, old women seeking remedies for aching backs, broken bones, cuts, fever.

You treated them all.

Then there was laundry, cooking, cleaning, mending, collecting herbs, brewing potions, the work never seemed to end, and somehow everything that needed doing simply found its way into your hands.

For the first time in his life, Gwayne found himself uncertain of where he belonged within it all. Worse still, he discovered that he wanted to belong. 

Every morning he woke to the scent of porridge or fresh bread and the soft sounds of a household already awake around him. 

It was a small life by the standards of lords and castles, a simple one, hard, undoubtedly, and demanding in ways he had never seen before, yet there was something about it that drew him in.

Perhaps it was the honesty of it, the quiet purpose woven into every task, or perhaps it was simply you.

Whatever the reason, Gwayne found himself wanting, more and more, to be a part of this strange little world fate had thrown him into.

It took him a while before he braved to offer help, but it seemed the least he could do.

A mistake.

A terrible mistake.

The first task you entrusted him with was watching the bread.

It sounded almost insultingly simple – sit by the oven, keep an eye on it, take it out when it was done.

A few distracted thoughts later, smoke began pouring from the oven and by the time he realized something was wrong and dragged the loaf out, it had transformed into a charred black brick that could scarcely be called bread anymore. 

Your face when you discovered it haunted him for days. 

The bowls proved even less cooperative. The task was to wash and dry them. 

How could anyone wash dozens of fragile things every day without breaking them?

As the third one hit the floor, Gwayne stopped and sat down with his head in his hands. 

Not that he had more luck with the wood.  You had found him standing in front of the chopping block and watching the axe stuck in the log after his first swing with absolutely no idea how to get the stubborn tool out of it. 

The truth was humiliating.

He was a knight and yet you were more capable than him in almost every practical matter that kept a household alive.

At first he found that realization uncomfortable, then impossible to stop thinking about. 

He started to watch you. Not intentionally, at least, not at first.

His gaze simply found you. Again and again. 

There was confidence in everything you did – competence earned through years of doing.

There was no one else in your life. No servants. No household staff. No family helping. Just you and yet somehow you managed it all.

And for the first time in his life, Gwayne found himself wondering if fate had dropped him into the world with nothing but his own hands, would he have managed half as well as you?

He wasn’t certain, and it made him feel both shame and admiration.  

The realization arrived gradually like the dawn creeping across a room.

No single moment or dramatic revelation, just a growing certainty.

He liked your sharp tongue, the way you refused to be intimidated by him, the way you argued with him without hesitation or the way your eyes flashed whenever he said something particularly foolish.

Gods.

Especially that.

You were infuriating and somehow he found himself looking forward to every argument.

He liked hearing your voice, just simply being near you and seeing you smile. At some point, without noticing when or how, you had become the first thing he looked for when he woke and the last thing he thought about before sleep and once he acknowledged that, the rest became impossible to deny. 

Your handsome knightly patient was getting better with every passing day and somehow it made you inexplicably sad. 

Patients came and went. Some stayed for an afternoon, some for a few days. They arrived carrying pain, fear, and uncertainty and departed as soon as their bodies allowed it.

That was how it was meant to be.

Yet lately, whenever you looked at Gwayne, you found yourself wishing his recovery would slow.

Not stop, just... slow.

The wound along his side had nearly closed, the bruising had faded. He moved easily now, no longer wincing every time he stood, soon there would be nothing left keeping him here.

The thought sat heavily in your chest whenever you allowed yourself to think about it for too long, but even if you tried not to allow it, your attention kept drifting toward him.  

The truth was, he was not at all what you had expected.

When you had learned who he was, you had imagined the worst – a proud nobleman, demanding and entitled, the sort who believed the world existed for his convenience only.

Instead, fate had delivered you a knight who burned bread, shattered bowls, and spent half an hour contemplating a log because he did not know how to chop it.

The memory still made you laugh and there was one thing you couldn’t deny – his efforts had been genuine, even after repeated failures, especially after repeated failures, he still never acted as though any task was beneath him.

Despite all his attempts to appear composed, he still blushed every time you changed his bandages.

A grown man and a knight, reduced to awkward silence and burning cheeks whenever you untied the laces of his shirt.

You glanced up from sewing the torn sleeve of his doublet.

Lost in thought Gwayne was staring into the fire again. He looked so out of place when he did that. 

He looked lonely.

You had spent most of your life alone, you were used to it, and yet for a brief, foolish moment, you found yourself imagining what would happen if he stayed.

The thought lasted all of three seconds but it was enough for you to accidentally drive the needle into your thumb.

Then common sense returned with the pain.

“Ouch,” you hissed.

He would never stay and even if he wanted to, he shouldn't. 

Gwayne belonged to castles and armies and great stone cities, to duties and responsibilities, to a world you could scarcely imagine.

You lived in a forgotten hut at the edge of a forest.

Your lives were not even supposed to touch. 

Carefully, you brushed your fingers over the healed skin on Gwayne’s side one last time.

The gash was gone, the skin had knitted together cleanly and what remained would also fade with time.

You didn’t even notice Gwayne had gone suspiciously still beneath your touch.

"Well," you leaned back. "Congratulations. You are healed."

You both glanced down at the discarded bandage in your hands.

"There is no need for another one," you said more quietly. 

You knew exactly what that meant. He could finally leave. 

You placed the bandages aside and pushed yourself off the bed as a hand closed around your wrist.

Your eyes dropped to the place where his fingers touched your skin. 

Gwayne immediately looked as though he regretted every decision that had led him to this moment.

Color flooded his face.

Gods.

You had never seen a man blush so thoroughly.

The redness reached all the way to his ears.

For a heartbeat he simply stared at your joined hands.

Then he released a breath.

Opened his mouth.

Closed it again.

You waited.

Gwayne looked like a man preparing to charge a dragon.

You blinked.

"I … I…,” he stammered. 

“What?"

A flash of horror crossed his face.

"Gwayne."

His gaze found yours again.

"Come… come with me," he finally managed.

You stared, certain you had misunderstood.

"What?"

His grip tightened slightly before immediately loosening again.

As though he feared frightening you away.

"When I leave."

The words came slowly now.

Carefully.

"I want you to come with me."

For a moment, you simply looked at him, at the handsome knight sitting on your bed with an earnest terror in his eyes.

A soft, disbelieving laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

"Gwayne."

"I know how it sounds."

"Do you?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

That, at least, was honest.

Neither of you moved but neither of you looked away.

Gwayne still held your wrist lightly. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he loosened his grip and turned your hand in his.

His gaze dropped to your fingers as he lifted your hand toward his mouth.

The touch of his lips against your knuckles was feather-light.

You could have pulled away.

You knew that.

You should have.

Instead, your hand remained where it was.

Gwayne kissed your knuckles first, one after another, slowly, eyes shut close, savouring every touch of his lips against your skin. 

When he finally looked up at you again, something had changed.

The uncertainty in his gaze remained, but now there was something else alongside it.

Wonder.

As though he could scarcely believe you were still there, that you hadn’t pulled your hand away.

Slowly, giving you every opportunity to stop him, he leaned closer. 

"Gwayne..."

His gaze flickered briefly to your mouth then back to your eyes. You held your breath but didn’t move away.

Carefully, tentatively his lips brushed yours. So lightly, so briefly that at first you almost wondered whether it had happened at all, even so your heart stumbled painfully in your chest. 

Gwayne’s eyes fluttered shut and he leaned in once more. His hand cupped your cheek and you could feel the slight tremor in his fingers as though he could scarcely believe he was allowed to touch you.

You felt him smile faintly against your lips, a small, disbelieving thing, as if he had spent so long hoping for this moment that now he didn't quite trust it to be real.

Without thinking, your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. 

It drew a soft breath from him, something between a soft moan and a whimper.

The sound sent warmth flooding through you.

Gwayne's hand, still resting against your cheek, slipped into your hair, his fingers threading through the strands before settling at the nape of your neck. The touch was careful, almost protective, yet there was nothing uncertain about it anymore.

The kiss deepened, his lips moved against yours with impossible tenderness but you could feel the quickened beat of his heart beneath your palm on his chest. 

When you finally broke apart, it was only because breathing had become necessary.

"Gods," he murmured.

"What?"

A smile appeared. It was slow but bright enough to transform his entire face.

"I was certain you were going to throw something at me."

Despite yourself, you laughed.

Gwayne drew back with the unmistakable look of a man gathering the courage to say something that mattered.

His lips parted.

You already knew what was coming.

A promise, a plan, something sensible and reassuring.

You did not want any of it. You didn’t want promises that were impossible to keep. You wanted this moment, this beautiful fleeting moment between now and then, where everything was possible and nothing was spoken out loud. 

Before he could say anything, you lifted a finger and pressed it gently against his lips.

"Hush."

He blinked.

"Don't."

There was confusion in his gaze, you ignored it.

Slowly, you guided him backward. He let you. The mattress dipped beneath his weight.

His gaze never left your face.

You crawled on top of him, straddling his hips. His heartbeat picked up beneath your palm. Fast. Much too fast for a knight.

You smiled.

"Don't speak," you murmured.

His throat bobbed.

"Just feel. No promises. Just this one night."

Your fingers drifted absentmindedly across taut planes of his abdomen tracing the familiar lines of the body you had spent weeks tending back to health.

Beneath your touch, every muscle seemed to go still.

You leaned in and pressed your lips to the scar on his side. Gwayne's breath caught audibly, head tipping back with a soft gasp. 

The sound emboldened you. You kissed the line of the scar again, letting your tongue trace its length. His hips twitched beneath you and a low, broken sound left his throat.

“Gods…” he breathed, fingers flexing against the sheets as if he didn’t know whether to reach for you or hold himself back.

“Schhhh, my knight,” you whispered.

You took your time exploring him with your hands and mouth, every scar, every ridge of muscle, every place your fingers had once brushed as you tended his wounds, you worshiped them now with your lips and tongue – the hollow of his throat, the sharp line of his collarbone, the sensitive spot just beneath his ribs that made his breath hitch sharply.

Gwayne’s head pressed back into the pillow, eyes half-lidded. You loved the soft, helpless sounds that spilled from his lips with every touch, all the quiet gasps and shaky moans. His hands finally rose to your waist, gripping lightly, reverently, as though you were something sacred he was terrified of breaking.

“Don’t…,” he managed, voice wrecked. “I… I can’t…” 

You silenced him with a deep kiss, swallowing his words as you rocked your hips slowly down against his. His fingers dug into your waist, then loosened again, trembling with the effort.

“It’s my choice,” you said firmly. “You’re mine for this one night. Unless you tell me you don’t want it.”

Gwayne swallowed hard but didn’t say anything. 

“I take it for a yes,” you smiled and started to pull your dress over your head.

You let your fingers trail the hem of his breeches. 

The moment you pulled him out, your noble knight almost stopped breathing. He was beautiful, hard and flushed, a vein running along the underside from base to the flushed tip. 

You wrapped your hand around him slowly, stroking once from base to tip with a feather-light touch and Gwayne’s chest started to rise and fell rapidly, his hands fisting the sheets. 

You stroked him a few more times, gliding your thumb over the sensitive head, drawing  beautiful broken whimpers from him. 

His hands settled lightly on your thighs, fingers trembling. He didn’t guide or rush you. He simply held on, as if touching you was the only thing keeping him from shattering.

You shifted higher on your knees, Gwayne’s gaze snapped back to yours, pupils blown wide.

“Are you sure?” he rasped. You silenced him by sinking down onto him, slowly, unhurriedly, savoring every inch. Gwayne’s head fell back with a broken moan, hands clutching at your thighs.

You stayed still for a moment, savoring the way he pulsed inside you, then you began to move. Slow rolls of your hips, rising and sinking down on him again and again. 

You loved every desperate sound your movements drew from him: the soft, needy moans, the sharp gasps and pleas he couldn’t seem to stop. 

Your proud, noble knight was completely unraveling beneath your touch. The flush on his cheeks, the way his eyes fluttered half-shut with every roll of your hips, the broken sounds he couldn’t hold back… you loved it. You loved it more than you could ever admit.

His hips started to buck up to meet you, sharp needy thrusts that almost knocked the air out of your lungs. You stemmed your feet against the bed and rode him harder, faster, grinding down, chasing your pleasure shamelessly.

Gwayne’s back arched clean off the bed with a strangled moan, one hand flying up to clutch at your waist as he kept moving against you.

“Good boy,” you moaned, leaning down and capturing his mouth in a messy kiss. 

The praise hit him like a spark to dry tinder. Gwayne whimpered into your mouth, the sound raw and needy, his tongue sliding against yours in urgent sloppy strokes. 

His fingers dug into your waist as he flipped you over like you weighed nothing. 

“Say it again,” he gasped, voice wrecked and pleading, hips slamming against yours in almost desperate rhythm. “Please…, I need to hear it.”

You moaned beneath him, nails raking down his back, as the new angle sent sparks of pleasure shooting through every nerve.

“My good boy,” you breathed against his lips. “My perfect knight.”

“Fuck me harder, knight!” you moaned and a low, broken groan rumbled from Gwayne’s chest, his hips stuttered, rhythm faltering before he managed to get the hold of it and started  driving into you with deeper, more powerful thrusts. 

It didn’t take long, a broken sob of pleasure tore from you as you shattered, back arching against the bed. He kept fucking you through it, arms wrapped around you, holding you close. The tenderness never left him even as moments after he came, gasping, shuddering, groaning hoarsely against your neck.

The night passed in quiet whispers and lingering touches. Neither of you spoke much, there seemed little point.

Words belonged to tomorrow, tonight belonged only to the two of you.

Gwayne held you as though he feared the dawn, you rested against him, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your ear.

At some point during the night, when sleep still felt far away, Gwayne pressed his face into your hair.

"I never want to let you go."

The honesty of it was both beautiful and unbearable.

For a moment, you closed your eyes. Gods help you.

It would have been so easy to pretend, to let yourself believe impossible things, that the war did not exist, that he could stay or that you could follow.

Instead, you reached up and brushed your fingers through his hair.

"This was my parting gift, Gwayne."

You felt him go still and the silence that followed hurt more than any argument could have.

His arms tightened around you again.

"You could come with me."

"And go where?"

He did not reply.

You shook your head.

"You belong to your world and I belong to mine."

His breathing grew uneven, but he didn’t say anything. 

Morning arrived far too quickly, by sunrise you slipped out of bed. 

“It’s time,” you whispered. He didn’t answer.

A moment later Gwayne stood fully dressed beside the door, his sword at his hip.

The sight felt wrong.

Neither of you seemed able to find the right words, but in the end, it was you who broke the silence.

"You should go."

Gwayne looked at you, eyes moving over your face.

He took a step toward you, then stopped and nodded once. A small, broken gesture before turning and walking out the door.

You remained where you were, arms folded tightly across your chest. 

The path disappeared between the trees a short distance from the hut. 

Gwayne reached it and stopped.

Your heart betrayed you immediately.

For one terrible second, hope surged through your chest.

He turned around.

Even from there, you could see the question in his eyes.

Come with me.

Stay.

Choose differently.

Slowly, you shook your head.

No.

His eyes closed briefly, then he turned and continued down the path.

You watched until the trees swallowed him completely, only then did you allow yourself to sit down.

You did not see the tears that finally slipped down Gwayne's face once he was safely hidden by the forest.

And he never saw yours.

Years passed. The realm endured.

A fragile peace settled across the land, uncertain and imperfect, yet peace nonetheless.

Life continued.

The little hut remained where it had always been, tucked against the edge of the forest, the herb garden had grown larger, the roof needed repairing twice.

The ache had softened with time and become something quieter, a fond memory tucked carefully away, a story belonging to another life.

The afternoon sun was warm against your skin as you sat outside sorting herbs into neat bundles.

Your hands moved automatically, the work was familiar enough that your mind could drift elsewhere – toward a broad-shouldered knight with kind eyes and a talent for burning bread.

You paused, a stem of lavender still between your fingers as you couldn't shake a feeling of being watched.

Slowly, you lifted your head, the forest stood silent. Nothing there. You shook your head at your own foolishness yet looked up again. 

A movement caught your eye. A figure was standing at the edge of the woods, far enough away that another person might not have recognized him.

You did. Immediately.

Not because he looked unchanged, time had touched him, as it touched everyone, yet you would have known him anywhere.

A soft smile appeared on your lips before you could stop it. 

The figure remained motionless for a heartbeat longer, as though he needed a moment to convince himself you were real.