Archive of Our Own

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

– “Wild Geese”, Mary Oliver

When the Hail Mary is pulled down from orbit into the biodome, there's an element of surreality about it. What had felt so small in space, home for the many months of scientific discovery and then of quiet desperation on the trip to Erid as he slowly deteriorated from malnutrition, feels larger than life on land. The plan was to begin stripping it down, to use parts as models and examples for synthesizing. The Eridians want to make things for Ryland, familiar things. They want to help him make a home. More than anything, they want to learn how humans live. The minor details of life that were expected, taken advantage of, not given a thought. The tines of a fork, the spiral of a notebook, the screws that hold it all together.

The synthesizer is limited for now, but with enough materials to learn from and to expand on, Rocky and Adrian estimate Ryland's diet, hobbies, and overall lifestyle could improve considerably. Once the Hail Mary is there though, settled firmly into the dune's hillside, Ryland finds himself frightened to go back inside and see it all again. The fuel tanks had already been stripped in orbit, leaving a vertical thirty-foot pseudo-building left of the entire ship. A set of stairs had already been constructed up to the airlock door.

There'd been a lot left behind when Ryland first landed on Erid, since priority one was survival. And over the past year, once deemed stable, priority two has become comfort. More and more scouting shuttles have made their way to orbit and come back with various equipment and personal items on their return trip. But even with the excitement to see and feel all the things he'd missed, the airlock door is daunting.

“Get a grip, Grace,” he mutters to himself, shaking his hands quickly as if to remove the nerves.

“Grace okay, question?” Rocky chimes from beside him. Ryland's learned enough to recognize the tilt of concern in Rocky's expressionless form.

“Yeah, bud, I just –” the next breath out of him is halting. “Just a bit nervous.”

Rocky is kind enough not to comment on it, having learned a lot about when to poke fun and when to let Ryland be a stupid human with stupid human emotions that don’t make sense.

The lab looks the same when they step in. Rocky's tunnel system is still up, the whiteboard still has equations scrawled across it, the quilt Ryland has been missing is tossed over a chair next to a microscope.

Taking a deep, grounding breath, Ryland begins sorting everything into organized piles: keep in the Hail Mary, use for synthesizing, bring back to the house. Slowly the Hail Mary is stripped of monitors, beds, personal items from Ilyukhina and Yao. It's more than what he needs in the house, but Ryland wants it all, and doesn't want to have to walk the quarter mile over the dunes to get it all later. Ideally the Hail Mary becomes just a lab and his home is just his home.

Rocky is scuttling around removing the xenonite tunnels with two other engineers, while Ryland is deep in the storage below the dormitory. He's just squeezing the last white storage cube through the port when he spots a hidden hatch near the floor. It's tucked under the bottom shelf, a silver latch visible on the stark white wall. A thin line can be seen traced on the wall where the door seals. Ryland finishes shoving the last cube through before kneeling to get a good look at it.

Emergency Supply is embossed in a glossy white font, only visible when the lighting hits it at an angle.

“What the –” Ryland whispers to himself, clicking the latch open. The door hisses slightly as it opens, releasing whatever pressurization was encased. Inside is a two foot by two foot storage container not unlike the others: soft-shelled with a firm siding. On the cover it again states Emergency Supply. The zipper is smooth as Ryland opens it.

“Rocky!” Ryland shouts, standing up sharply. “Rocky!”

Inside are seeds.

–

The first thing the synthesizer can make is salt, totally normal and common salt. Me-burgers start to taste just a little more bearable and better yet, can be salted and cured into something akin to jerky. Ryland dubs it me-meat-jerky, in the classic human way of naming things that Rocky finds ridiculous. But food preservation is something Ryland begins to feel passionate about quickly. Mainly just food in general. The house doesn’t have mirrors for the first few months. The sight of his thin face feeling more foreign than the entire planet of Erid.

The second thing is sugar, which once the apples begin to grow, gives something back to Ryland he didn’t even know how badly he’d been missing: dessert. Applesauce, unspiced but sweetened, feels like a dream. Working with the Eridians, glass jars are made that Ryland begins canning with. They’re all clinically identical in that way Eridians like to be. Just applesauce to start, but once apple cider vinegar is perfected, first by Ryland himself and then by the synthesizer, it opens up an entire world of possibilities as the rest of the garden comes in. Pickles, jams, beans; food slowly becomes stable and predictable in a way that it hadn’t in a long time. Ryland gains the weight back. He's still perpetually lean, but his body feels like home again. Mirrors get added to the bathroom. Waking up in the morning isn’t as exhausting anymore. 

Ryland begins being able to experiment more freely with his food, to not feel the compounding weight of guilt when an experiment fails and supplies are wasted. It gains him a rendered me-fat to cook with and a cold storage system to put up root vegetables and squashes. The time between harvesting is allowed to slow down. Ryland can breathe a little easier. Soon he blinks and he hasn’t eaten taumoeba in months. He pretends that he can't even recall the taste of it anymore.

The one thing Ryland and the Eridian’s have not been able to replicate with any sort of success: dairy. With no solid alternatives (nuts or seeds) and no viable animal milk to synthesize from (not even, and Ryland cringes at this, his own), he eventually has to admit that ice cream won’t be in the cards for him ever again.

He does not get teary eyed about that. 

Well, not anywhere near Rocky.

There are more practical ingredients the synthesizer is able to produce too: sodium hydroxide, lye. Bars of me-soap are a huge game changer to Ryland's mental health, even if Rocky doesn’t understand it. Eridians can’t smell, but Ryland certainly can and even if his skin is a little dry now, he’s at least clean in a squeaky sort of way. Eridians sand bathe and Rocky did not find the erosion joke Ryland had cracked at learning that very funny. 

Eventually Armando needs supplies replaced in order to maintain efficiency. Basic human medication provides Eridian medics a lot of fun and Rocky lets him know an entire branch of Eridian medicine has spun up solely to keep Ryland alive.

The funny thing is, through it all: starting the garden, filling his home with “human comfort items”, finding reasons to feel hope again, to laugh again. Through creating a small world for himself on Erid –

There’s still a weird little pit in Ryland that burns in his chest, hot and unstable. He feels it worse in the dead of night, after Rocky and Adrian return to their own home. He’ll raise his arms above his head to ease the tightness on his lungs, sigh, close his eyes, and mentally poke at that spot in his chest. Months in – a year in – and it doesn’t seem to be going away no matter how much success and comfort he finds on Erid. So Ryland does what Ryland does best: ignores it and pretends he doesn’t know what it is. The bed always feels miles across and his skin always aches.  

–

Ryland cries the first time he makes a loaf of bread. He tells himself it’s not because of the bread, because that would be – well, that would certainly be a new low. But with the house smelling like warm heat, the round loaf cooling on the counter, and a bag of wheat berries just waiting to be milled to make more. It’s at least sixty percent because of the loaf of bread. 

He presses both palms to the surface of the stone counter, extending his arms, and droops his head to sob like a child over the first successful loaf.

The wheat field is connected to his enclosure by a narrow tunnel, carefully maintained by a group of Eridian student scientists doing what Ryland has jokingly called their thesis project. Whatever it is they’ve been doing: monitoring the soil health, balancing the wet and dry cycles, optimizing the minerals and nutrients, has created a fast growing and hearty crop. 

Once the crop showed signs of success, Ryland had worked with Rocky and Adrian to build a small mill, an iron dutch oven, and rigorously studied how to keep a starter alive. He’d kept taumoeba alive for the entire trip to Erid. How hard could it be for some flour and water? He tried not to get his hopes up. His first three starters all died.

And now, as he takes deep steadying breaths, he cuts into months of work between himself and the Eridians. It’s perfect on the inside, airy and still slightly warm because Ryland had gotten impatient waiting for it to cool completely. The first bite tastes like home, even though he doesn’t remember the last time he had fresh bread. It’s crisp and light and gosh, what he wouldn’t give for butter. He cuts himself a second slice before the first is even gone.

The floor is cool on his backside when he sits down, leaning heavily into the cabinets. The happiness is fleeting and bright. He grins stupidly at the crumbs that have spread across his shirtfront. Another bite has him laughing tearfully, glad for the feel of the bread on his tongue, in his stomach. He opens his mouth as if to say something, anything, and pauses. He looks out of his kitchen into the living room. The sky is blue outside the windows. Clouds roll by quickly in the wind. Inside, the floor cushions are covered in his dirty clothes, a laptop surrounded by ceramic plates and wonky mugs on the coffee table. Small figurines made by his students cover a series of shelves along one wall. He feels the silence like a weight on his chest. The bread goes cold in his mouth. He continues to chew and swallow mechanically. 

Ryland’s always been good about being alone, had never felt – he’d never felt lonely. He spins the remainder of the slice in his hand, contemplative and sad. This was something he’d have liked to share with – someone. The hole in his chest grows.

–

Rocky is waiting for him when he gets back from the garden one evening. There’s dirt crawling up Ryland’s arms and in his fingernails and he’s feeling more content in his body than he has in a while. The garden does that; puts him back together. The night has a way of undoing that. 

His stride is slow as he crosses the beachline. The toolbelt clanks with his xenonite gardening tools and a pair of gloves pokes from a backpocket of his shorts. He’s due for a haircut, he thinks, as he runs a hand through the long bangs. The waves crash softly along the shore and a discolored sunset is painting the sky and the water. He and Rocky weren’t scheduled to see each other, but that’s never stopped Rocky from stopping by on his way home. Ryland is about to shout his hellos when he notices the way Rocky is pacing his legs up and down. The way his top carapace is lifting out of sync.

Ryland waits until he’s ascended the few steps to his front door, always unlocked, so he’s unsure why Rocky didn’t invite himself in. “Hey Rock, buddy.” 

“Hello, Grace,” Rocky says, chiming politely. Ryland squints at him as he opens the door. They take a place in the living room in silence. Grace on a floor cushion, Rocky standing awkwardly by the coffee table. Ryland waits patiently for Rocky to work himself up to it, whatever it was.

“Rocky –” Rocky clicks his claws. “Rocky concerned.”  

Ryland’s eyebrows shoot up. This is the last thing he expected. 

“About what?” Ryland tries to catalog all the things Rocky would have to be concerned about. Adrian, for one. But between how happy he and Adrian had been, how much prep work they’ve been doing to get ready for their pebbles, Ryland doubts that is the cause. That leaves –

“About Grace.”

Ryland nods even if he doesn’t fully understand. “Okay.” He leaves the statement open-ended, letting Rocky nervously fill in the silence afterwards.

“Grace not himself. Quiet. Not sleep enough. Not eat enough.” And Ryland can’t even fault Rocky, because he’s absolutely right. Ryland wonders how long he’s been working up to this. How long has he watched Ryland fall into himself before he figured out something was wrong with him? How many times did Rocky tell himself Ryland was just being a stupid human before realizing it was more than that? 

The mornings have gotten difficult lately. The weight of his chest has felt worse and the wetness at the corners of his eyes is too quick at coming. His skin feels like it’s burning. His arms reflexively hug around his shoulders. Stupid humans with their stupid bodies.

How do you explain to an alien what it is to be starved for touch?

“I’m okay, bud. I really am.” Ryland’s not really sure who he’s trying to convince with that, but it doesn’t work on either of them. But more than anything, he doesn't deny it.

“Grace not happy, statement.” Rocky skitters a little closer, nudging Ryland to place a hand on the top of his xenonite suit. It’s warm and smooth and not at all what Ryland’s skin wants. It’s a comfort all the same. He pets down the side of it.

“I am happy.” It’s not a lie. It’s not. And there are not tears in his voice as he says it.

“Grace bad liar.”

Ryland huffs a humorless laugh. It sticks in his chest. His cheeks are wet now. “I’m lonely, Rocky. There’s a difference.” A pause opens between them while Ryland lets the tears run down his cheeks soundlessly.

“Grace not alone. Not understand.” Rocky pushes in even closer. Ryland leans in to hug him, face pressed down onto the top of his suit, arms wrapped loosely around. He stares unseeingly into the rest of the house. “Rocky Adrian here.”

“Humans –” is cut by a deep, shuddering breath. A stupid quiet human noise of sadness is ripped from his throat. A sob rocks him and he does his best to keep it quiet. Rocky is patient. “Humans don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”

“Rocky help how, question? Rocky fix. What Grace need to not be lonely not-alone?”

It takes him a long time to get enough breath back to whisper, “I wish I knew, buddy,” and he really really wishes he did. Rocky stays with him until the tears dry up. It’s almost enough.

–

Months later, Ryland is thrown out of sleep to the sound of Rocky slamming the front door open.

“Grace! Grace!”

He shoots out of bed so quickly that the blanket tangles through his feet and he crashes down onto the floor sideways. All of the breath shoots out of him at once. His pulse skyrockets even as he groans lowly against the pain. Something clatters to the floor in the other room and the thumps of Rocky's footsteps follow it, hollow from his suit.

“Rocky, what –” It's still dark out, a fake moon hanging low in the sky outside his window.

“Grace! Grace need to –”

“What time is it –” 

“– emergency!” Finally Rocky scuttles his way into the bedroom, only a silhouette in the darkness of the room. A light from his desk glows from across the house through the doorframe. Rocky's voice is a high-pitched one of anxiety, reserved for when he is stressed out. It’s always harder for Ryland to understand even after becoming fluent.

“We talked about this, man –” Ryland complains, working on freeing his feet from the sheets.

“– found human!”

Everything pauses, including Ryland's own breath. Dully, he finishes unwrapping his feet and sets the blanket aside. That’s not right. He shakes his head and at some point, his eyes slowly close. “No, I'm sorry. I heard you wrong. I thought you said –”

“The exploration mission, Project Explore –”

“Still a bad name, Rock,” Ryland interrupts, touching a hand to his temple. He must have hit it on the floor. This isn’t right. He crawls to where the lightswitch is, flips it, but stays seated on the floor. He drags the blanket up to his chest. What time is it? Rocky is somehow in disarray in the doorway. There's an air of panic about him in the way his armatures click impatiently and he bobs up and down. If an Eridian could somehow look disheveled, Rocky is accomplishing it.

“Shut down!”

“Up –”

“Shut down up!” Rocky trills, annoyed. “Grace not listen!”

“Rocky talk nonsense!” Ryland defends, rubbing at his eyes.

“Project Explore found human,” Rocky repeats slowly, purposefully in his normal tone. He stops bobbing and stops the mindless pacing he does in place. He shrinks his body to half its size.

There’s a long pause where neither of them speak or move.

“What?” is clawed from Ryland's throat. No. Everything feels out of body. What is Rocky saying? He's not understanding this correctly. He hit his head when he fell out of bed. Rocky is playing a joke on him. He shakes his head again. It throbs at his temple. There's a better explanation for this than – he doesn't understand – and yet somehow the next word out his mouth is, “Alive?” And he sounds so small when he says it. His cheeks feel hot and his hands – one of his hands is clutching the sheets to his chest. A shaking feeling is pounding in his throat. 

Please.

“Alive.”

Please –

“Where – where did they – ?”

“They set up isolation chamber across biodome.”

Ryland's never ran so fast in his life.

–

There's a man. 

There's a fudging man.

Black hair is plastered down onto a strong jaw. Broad shoulders and a tall stature. Ryland would notice more but he's too taken by the sheer amount of blood. It coats everything, seemingly dried and flaking from pale skin. The tattered clothing, what's left of it, sticks across the panes of his chest, to the thickness of his thighs. Only the whites of his eyes stand out stark against the copper blood. Black eyes against a sea of red. 

Mindlessly, Ryland notes he's not wearing shoes. The sight of his bare feet is so human against everything else that it stutters Ryland's next breath. 

Why did he feel like he was drowning?

The man has backed himself against the far wall, chest heaving, and eyes flickering across the landing crew of Eridians in their clear xenonite suits. They putter around the enclosure they've placed him in for isolation. Rocky said something about what the medics were monitoring. Ryland hadn’t really been listening, his heart in his ears the entire sprint here.

Some scientists carry imagery tablets, the surface of them whirling to display vitals and findings in three dimensions. Others work along the side wall, connecting a decontamination bay and a pressurization chamber. Both will be large enough for either Ryland to enter or the man to exit. He sees Adrian in the mix of them all.

Running across the dunes worked up a sweat, and it's only in the cool night air that Ryland realizes he's wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs. He doesn't even have it in him to be embarrassed. Another person is on the other side of that xenonite. From the looks of him, Ryland's scar from Rocky pulling him across the Hail Mary wouldn't even be something to blink at. From the stance alone, Ryland can tell he’s been through something awful.

Ryland takes a step closer, into the lighting Adrian set up against the darkness of an Eridian fabricated nighttime. They knew humans required light. They didn't know it could be blinding to them; that it could be torturous. Ryland blinks to adjust his eyes, lifting a hand up to block it some. Sand slides under his feet. A breeze ruffles his hair and springs goosebumps along his flesh.

Those black eyes click immediately onto him. Beneath the layer of blood, Ryland sees his mouth twitch. Sees the riot of emotions fly across the rest of his face. First shock, followed quickly by hope, crushed by suspicion. It soon locks down, expression by expression, into nothing. A cool look takes over, hardened and unrelenting. It makes Ryland want to take that step back out of the light. The only movements the man makes are his deep inhales and a continuous pattern tapped between his thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger.

A man. 

Just –

Another human man. Cornered and trapped and surrounded by so many Eridians with their rock spider bodies. Ryland just keeps looking, feeling numb and unmoored. And the man keeps looking back.

Who is he? How is he here?

Ryland blinks and he's at the edge of the enclosure. He can't remember taking the steps. Clearing his throat, Ryland unhooks his glasses from one ear, looks down, and rubs at an eye. A pressure is building all over his body. His bones are too big. 

Even at Rocky's insistence, part of Ryland hadn't believed him. Impossible. No, improbable. Faced with the evidence, Ryland begins to feel a stinging in his eyes, a heaviness in his face. His near nakedness is making him feel more vulnerable than before. A shiver wracks his spine.

“Rocky, I'm gonna go get the translator,” Ryland finally says instead, after too long of staring at the man. His voice is wet and doesn't sound like himself. Based on the thickness of the walls the exploration crew built around him, the man wouldn't be able to hear him.

“Why, question? Human is human,” Rocky responds, continuing to work on crafting xenonite walls with the other engineers. Adrian continues to set up lighting around them all. “Grace can translate.”

“Not all humans speak the same language, Rock.”

Rocky pauses in his work before slowly turning around to stare at Ryland with his faceless face. “Humans are dumb.”

“What else is new, huh?” Ryland tries to joke back, his heart not in it. It falls flat. He needs to leave. Now.

“Grace okay, question?”

“Uh,” he glances down at Rocky again, back up to the man. He still hasn't moved. He's still just looking. All that blood is still there. “No. Definitely not okay.” Before Rocky can respond, Ryland spins around and hikes back up the dune, across the waxy grassland, and into his house. It's only when the rounded walls of his bedroom are around him, curled on the floor against the doorway, does he break down into a panicked sob.

–

With a new resolve, Ryland makes his way back to the other side of his biodome. The Eridian artificial sun has just begun to rise and the falsified atmosphere spins up a low hanging fog over the dunes and ocean. He grabbed his fox sweater for both comfort and warmth, and under it he’s put on loose white pants from the Hail Mary and a graphic t-shirt. His glasses are unhooked and dangling below his chin. Under one arm is a plastic crate of supplies from the house. Simple things from the last growing season: a jar of applesauce, carrots from cold storage, half a loaf of sourdough bread, and jerkied me-meat. Ryland feels a little bad with the last one, not being able to explain the protein to the man beforehand. He also includes several bottles of drinking water. Clean clothes and a dry erase marker are settled on the very top of the pile. Ryland had picked his loosest stuff. Under the other arm is the laptop.

“Face swollen,” is the first thing Rocky says when Ryland meets him just beyond the quarantined valley. “Grace was leaking, question?”

Ryland sighs, says, “Yep,” before going about setting up a table along the edge of the xenonite walls. Looking at the man, he hasn't moved an inch since Ryland left. His breathing has evened out and it's clear he's favoring his left arm. Through all the blood, Ryland suspects he's more injured than he’s acting. Adrenaline is probably the only thing keeping him on his feet. “What have the medics discovered?” He sets the laptop on the table and begins typing.

“Malnourished, dehydrated, decompression sickness, minor radiation sickness, minor injuries to flesh, indeterminate injury to arm. Liquid is iron-dense.”

How is he even standing?

“Blood,” Ryland concludes, spinning the laptop around to face inward. On the screen is the same sentence written in the top ten most common languages on Earth: Hello, do you speak this language? We are here to help you.

“Not blood,” counters Rocky. “Not not blood. Not human blood.”

“It's not human? So it's not his?” That eliminates the two possibilities Ryland was running with: the man was injured or the man injured someone else. He's not sure what to do with not-not-blood.

“Medics certain not his.”

Ryland's eyes haven't left the man. The blood on his face is streaked as if he’s been crying. A weird ugly feeling is growing in Ryland's chest again. Making exaggerated pointing motions to the laptop, he steps back and makes an effort to look away.

Only to finally notice what the shock blinded him to a few hours ago: a ship on the dune behind the enclosure. He quickly puts his glasses back on to get a better look. It’s crude, totally incapable of space exploration from the looks of it. Patchwork pieces of iron plating cover what Ryland can see of it from below. It’s impossible to tell from this distance if it’s rusted or coated with the same copper blood as the man. Ryland suspects both. A hole has been carved into one side of it.

“What the frick is that?”

“Human ship,” Rocky answers.

Ryland makes a baffled look at Rocky as if to say, Hardly!

“Found on moon in ocean.” Rocky pauses and clicks his claws. “Not-not-blood ocean.”

“A submarine then?” Ryland chooses to ignore blood ocean for now. He’s not sure how much else he can take in. 

“Need new word.”

“Submarine, a ship for traveling deep underwater–or typically for underwater. Looks like it was for underblood in his case.”

“Human male?” Of all the topics he and Rocky have talked through, reproduction, gender, and sexuality didn’t come up often. There was only one human on Erid and he didn’t care much for giving the birds and bees talk to a race that didn’t even give live birth or have physical relations in order to reproduce. Rocky would’ve been beside himself to learn that humans leak from even more places. That humans liked to make each other leak. Eridians are incredibly private people and Ryland took advantage of that when it came to talking about sex.

“I assume so,” Ryland shrugs.

“He looks like Grace.”

Ryland squints over at Rocky. “He looks nothing like me, Rock.” Glancing back at the man, he takes in the breadth of his shoulders, the stocky build, the thickness of his biceps and thinness of his waist. Ryland himself is maybe taller, but the man has a presence even from this distance. The dark, piercing eyes only add to the effect. Ryland always feels them on him.

“Both have peni –”

“Ugh–! Rocky, no, dude, why were you even looking?”

“Wasn’t looking!” Rocky chirps back defensively.

The entire conversation is saved as Adrian skitters over. “Chamber entrance done. Grace send supplies? Medics make medicine for radiation.”

“Yes, thank you, Adrian,” Ryland says back, grateful for both the interruption and the go-ahead to send in his supplies. He gives Rocky another look, shaking his head in mock-disappointment, before taking the crate of food around to the two-system entrance. 

The medics have made potassium iodide tablets, gauze, and filled a shallow tub of water for bathing. Ryland helps carry the tub into the first airlock chamber alongside the crate, careful not to slosh too much water. The Eridians run him through a quick decontamination cycle before opening the next door into the secondary chamber that will pressurize slightly to match the inner enclosure once Ryland leaves. Ryland places the supplies in the center of the room before going through a second wave of decontamination as he leaves. His skin feels both clammy and dry when he exits and rejoins Rocky.

They both watch as the second chamber pressurizes, slightly stirring the water, and the inner door slowly opens inward into the enclosure. The man doesn’t move. Ryland isn’t surprised. 

“Why he no take, question?” Rocky asks.

“Probably scared, bud. We need to give him space and time,” Ryland responds, prepping to do just that and go back to the house for his own breakfast. He glances at the laptop and spots a smear along the clear wall. When he approaches, glancing in front of the screen to the xenonite barrier, a line of red has been drawn to align with the English version. Ryland quickly spins the laptop, an unconscious baffled smile on his face, and a slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up.

“No frickin’ way,” awed.

“What, question?”

“He speaks English.” Ryland looks up again at the man, smile still spread. The man’s bangs have dried enough to cover his eyes slightly, but Ryland can still feel it when their eyes meet. His gaze flickers down to the laptop before meeting Ryland’s again. “When did he even move?”

“Rocky told Grace so,” Rocky brags. “Human is human. Grace translate.”

“You don’t even know what English is, Rock,” Ryland counters, jokingly exasperated. He clears the laptop document of the original statement before typing up a new one.

Hello! You have radiation and decompression sickness. There are tablets for the radiation and the enclosure will supply recompression therapy. The medic is estimating one more day of isolation. Is your arm injured? Use marker to respond.

It doesn’t sound like himself, but how does one sound when talking to a complete stranger that can’t talk back? He can’t overthink it right now; he's already overthinking too many other things. He spins the laptop back around before standing back up. 

“I’m going to go eat breakfast, Rocky. You coming?” Even if Rocky refuses to watch him eat, Ryland appreciates the company of Rocky puttering around the house while he does.

“We return later, question?” Two back legs of Rocky’s are pulling up and down in discomfort.

“Yeah, bud, we’ll come back right after. Adrian will let us know if anything happens, right?” Adrian nods their carapace back in affirmation.

Rocky bobs up and down, shuffles next to Adrian to press a claw to their mating mark. Adrian returns the gesture. He then sidles alongside Ryland as they make their way back over the dune.  

–

Ryland sets up his usual breakfast bowl of applesauce and pan-toasted sourdough bread. Rocky is off in the living room deciding his next turn in their continuous game of chess, small xenonite pieces on a sheet of engraved metal. He always takes too long in making his decision and walks Ryland through his thought process. Ryland’s resorted to letting him win one in every ten games out of pity. He still hasn’t figured out how Ryland’s able to “predict” his next move with so much accuracy. So smart, yet so dumb. Ryland laughs to himself over his next bite of applesauce.

“Grace will take pawn next. Rocky will –”

Another chair for the dining table. Ryland thinks there’s an extra one at the Hail Mary and he’d still have one over there for lab work.

Pieces clinks metal on metal in the living room. Rocky is jingling with laughter at himself. “Rocky trick Grace think take horse next –”

“Knight,” Ryland calls out. “Think I’m gonna cancel school for a little while.”

Rocky clicks his claws, “Day horse,” just to spite Ryland. “Pebbles will understand.”

Ryland hums, scraping the last bite out of the bowl.

Clean out the spare room. He could convince Rocky to set up a smaller outbuilding for his pottery, sewing, and the other various and random crafts he’s picked up. And he’ll pull out that spare cot he’s got somewhere around here. Adrian could start on a new synthesized bed. Those take a while.

“Done gross eating, question?”

“Almost,” Ryland responds, mouth full of his last bite of bread.

“Go see human now.”

Ryland drops his dishes in the sink for later. Make more plates and bowls. “Let me get some stuff together first, then we’ll go.”

–

Cresting the familiar dune with the Eridian sun high in the sky now, Ryland feels more prepared. As much as Rocky and he joked, eating did always put him in a better mood.  Rocky immediately joins Adrian, leaving Ryland to walk up to the laptop table. He blinks at the sight inside the enclosure.

The man is clean. The tub of water is dragged to one side, a mix of dirty bloody water now. A pile of tattered clothing lies beside it. And there, in the same place as before, backed along the far wall, is the man. The blood had somehow made him look smaller than he truly was. The broad shoulders and muscled arms are stretching the t-shirt Ryland had left him. His skin is pale and dotted with small cuts and abrasions. A particularly deep cut spans one cheekbone, pink and scabbing over. A cutting jaw and dark eyes are covered by clean black hair. It dangles lightly, in need of soap, but better for the lack of blood. Gauze spans his entire left arm, held at an awkward angle next to him. And though not much changes, at the sight of Ryland, something shifts in his stance, in his presence. Ryland waves at him, self-conscious now that he looks more human.

With another glance, Ryland takes stock of the food. One water bottle is emptied, the carrots and jerky missing, the loaf of bread half gone. The applesauce is unopened. It’s all hoarded behind him, as if anyone would take it. Something content settles in Ryland’s stomach. He smiles softly up at the man who simply blinks at him.

The xenonite wall in front of the laptop is scrubbed of the blood from before. Instead, in dry erase marker, “no” is written backwards, plainly in answer to Ryland’s question. Raising his eyebrows, Ryland glances at the bandaged arm pointedly. The man surreptitiously tilts his body to guard it, a hard look in his eyes.

“Not injured, huh?” Ryland whispers to himself, shaking his head with that same soft smile. “Okay, not injured then.” He pulls the laptop back to him.

My name is Ryland Grace.

This time, when Ryland spins it back around, he purposefully doesn’t move. He nods down to it, a small challenge in his own eyes as he meets the man’s. Ryland can’t just leave every time he writes a message. He wants the man to trust him, wants to give him space to understand, but also he can’t keep calling him “the man” in his head like this. 

The man stands stockstill, arm still guarded with a twist of his body. He glances down at his food stock, then around at the Eridian scientists who haven’t left since he’d been brought down. He looks again to Ryland, gaze dark, questioning and suspicious. Ryland nods encouragingly, pushing the laptop closer to the wall. One cautious step after another, the man gets closer. Rocky skitters by behind Ryland and the man pauses, knees bent as if to spring back to where he started. Rocky stumbles back a moment later with an imagery tablet of his own, returning to Adrian's side. Ryland can hear them discussing something with the medics.

Once the movement has settled, the man keeps walking towards Ryland and the computer.

Ryland was right: he’s taller than him by a few inches. Beyond that, the man exceeds him. Ryland takes a steadying breath once he’s within a few feet of him, only the wall separating them. He’s imagining the warmth of him, the air shared between them. His own skin is buzzing. For a moment, the two just stand there, laptop ignored. He’s tapping that same pattern with his fingers. Ryland rehooks his glasses onto his ears. There’s long stubble growing, his lips are slightly chapped, and his eyes aren’t black; they’re a deep unending brown. It feels like a loss when they leave Ryland’s face to glance down at the laptop to read his name.

Ryland Grace, his mouth forms the words silently. Ryland hates the xenonite more now than ever. When the man looks at him again after a long moment, Ryland puts a hand to his own chest and says, “Ryland.” 

Ryland, he mouths again.

Is he saying it out loud? Ryland wishes he knew.

Ryland points at him and says, “You?”

The man pulls the marker from a pocket, uncaps it, and writes backwards, Simon. He mouths it afterwards.

Ryland can’t help the stupidly large smile that stretches across his mouth, “Simon.” He can’t stop that same hand from pressing against the wall where Simon’s chest hitches up and down unsteadily. “Simon,” he repeats.

Ryland. His adam's apple bobs when he says it; he's saying it outloud.

–

Ryland holds up a “wait” finger for Simon before racing the entire way back to the house. He grabs a monitor and all the cords it would need. The run back to the dune takes longer. 

Simon is waiting for him by the table.

Simon.

Ryland keeps smiling that dopey, happy smile. Simon keeps his face neutral, verging on curiosity based on the curve of his eyebrows. Highlighted by the way he tracks every move Ryland makes. He sets up the monitor to face the wall, mirroring the laptop screen with the document still up. He begins backspacing his last message, but Simon beats him to it.

From Eden?

Ryland shakes his head, unsure what or where Eden is, ducking to type quickly. California.

Simon just stares at that, blankly and without seemingly any understanding. His eyebrows draw close before he scrubs his message away. Ryland watches as Simon mulls over his next question. His brown eyes slowly move over Ryland's face, taking stock in his hair, his eyes, his mouth, his clothes, the table and laptop. They extend out to the landscape and the blue sky above them. To Rocky when he siddles up to Ryland’s side and asks, “What Grace doing? Talking to new human friend?”

“Yeah, bud, his name is Simon.”

“Need find Eridian word. ‘Moon human’, question?” Rocky trills. “‘Moon human’ Simon, question?”

“I like that, Rock,” Ryland says, placing a hand on Rocky’s suit before watching a bouncing Rocky meet back with Adrian.  

 A frown began to form between Simon's eyebrows at the exchange, dragging the corners of his lips down. Eventually Simon looks back to Ryland from where he followed Rocky, who offers another smile. It only seems to make him frown harder. He scrubs a hand roughly along his mouth, swaying in place, thinking hard about something.

COI? he writes.

Ryland squints at it, trying to catalog what the acronym might mean. Not a space institute he knows of, not a deep sea exploration company, nothing that would relate to Simon. He eventually shakes his head slowly.

With a flash, Ryland falls backwards onto the sand in shock. Startled but unhurt, he looks back up at Simon, who's glaring down at him with a sudden and bright anger in his eyes. He'd punched the xenonite. He'd punched at Ryland. Simon runs a hand roughly through his hair, agitation obvious. He writes again, words accented by choppy letters and an underline.

Don't fucken lie

Ryland blinks at the words. He meets Simon's eyes and reads his lips as he shouts the words at him again and again, mouth punctuating each word so Ryland can't misunderstand. Getting himself back up, Ryland hovers over the keyboard again. Simon only stops to watch him write,

I don't know what COI is

Simon’s chest is rocketing, fingers tapping that same rhythm around the uncapped marker. His hair falls into his eyes, which blaze at Ryland in confused anger. He pushes it back again just to have it fall back in his face. He's saying something else, clipped and strongly worded if Ryland is reading the “fuck yous” and “what the hells” on his mouth correctly. Ryland continues,

I don’t know what Eden is

That gets Simon to really pause, the words stopping immediately. Doubt twists at his mouth. And Ryland thinks a weird thought, a dumb, insane thought. Not even worth asking. But looking at Simon, thinking about the not-not-blood ocean and glancing up to see the edge of the submarine settled on the dune, Ryland can't rule out the biggest question that's been floating between them since he first saw Simon –

Are you from Earth?

Simon blinks and takes a deep, chest rattling breath, brown eyes so fricking lost as he reads the words again and again and again. When he looks at Ryland, it's like he's looking at him for the first time. 

He doesn't write it, as if not putting it down would avoid all of the other questions his answer brings to light.

Simon mouths, No. You?

Yes.

–

“Where’s the door?” Ryland finally asks, feeling slightly stupid for it. But that all flies out the window when Rocky says –

“No door.”

Ryland blinks. “No door? What, did they weld him in?” 

He looks closely at the patchwork of plating. He’d been right about the mixture of rust and blood that covers every inch of the main body of the ship. Did they build this thing blindly? How long was it meant to last? Ryland notices SM-13 is printed in faded white paint on one side. There were twelve others like this thing? The submarine is a disgusting amalgamation and the thought of going inside has Ryland’s hands shaking. 

Why would you put anyone in this thing?

“No door,” Rocky confirms.

“Frick.”

Ryland dons the PPE suit slowly, taping up his shoes to his pants, his wrists where the gloves meet, zips the head into place along the neckline. He tapes along the zipper just to be sure. The landing crew had done extensive scans of the submarine but better safe than sorry. Once the gear is on, Ryland turns back and looks down the short hill into the isolation chamber one last time. Below, Simon has moved forward to the closest wall and stares upwards at him. There's a look of raw terror on his face that makes Ryland pause.

Ryland waves uncertainly down at him. Before he can see what his response is, Ryland turns back to the submarine, steps up onto one of the airtanks, and climbs through the crude cut the Eridians had made to pull Simon out.

–

He can’t get the suit off quickly enough. There’s too much tape. Why did he tape it so gosh darn much? His breath is fogging up the plastic screen of his helmet. Stumbling across the threshold of the submarine, all his limbs feel ten times heavier. He can’t breathe. Get it off. Get it off! 

Both hands grip behind his neck and pull to the point of tearing. The neckline is torn through to the front of his shoulders; the helmet still zipped to it and pooling at his stomach now. Ryland blindly stumbles to the edge of the hill. The night air feels frigid on his face. He can’t see. Still his eyes take in the dark sky, the enclosure below with a man that they found in that thing, the feeling of the sand on his knees as he finally crumbles. He gags up acid into the beach grass. Sobs rip from his throat and brown eyes watch it all from below.

–

A few hours later, filled with Rocky's clumsy and blunt support – re: judgement – and with a new PPE suit, Ryland looks once again down at the enclosure from the upper dune. Simon is back against the far wall, sitting and facing away from him. Ryland feels a little listless and scared, like the submarine will consume him if Simon isn’t looking.

Shaking his head, he steps up onto the same airtank and ducks in. With a quick twist, he illuminates his flashlight.

One calming breath in, and another staccatoed one out. 

“You’re okay, just look around and then you can leave.”

“Who Grace talking to, question?” Rocky’s judgemental voice asks from beyond the iron walls. It settles something in Ryland to know he’s there, but not enough to drop his shoulders from where they’re tucked against his ears.

“Myself, Rock, stupid human stuff,” Ryland calls back out, even if Rocky could hear him whisper. 

It’s a submarine, Ryland knows that. Obviously. But still his only comparison is that it looks like what a submarine would look like if there were no walls to hide all the guts of the beast. Pipework covers every wall, with dials and knobs and cranks and cloth patches wrapped around joints. It’s clear the blood filled the capsule, even though the Eridians had also clearly drained it and discontaminated it.

“Radiation?” Ryland asks loudly.

“Scientists fix,” Rocky answers, somewhere to the left of the entrance. “Safe.”

There’s a control panel at the front of the ship, rudimentary and basic. A navigation dial, pointing purposelessly northeast; three numeric screens, all defaulted to zeros; a few buttons and levers, some missing their plastic covers. On the wall above is a porthole, a scale for depth, and an oxygen meter. All the crevices of the metal panel are stained red and the porthole glass is cracked. A single encaged lightbulb hovers above the makeshift desk.

Ryland exhales a nearly silent, “Jeez.”

How did this thing even work?

He digs into his workbelt and gets to collecting samples from the dash, tucking the flashlight into his armpit. He can practically hear Rocky's judgement on how few workable arms humans have. Scraping along the edges, swabbing the glass, collecting small shards from the floor into plastic cups. He commits to memory the layout of the controls.

Turning around to survey the rest, Ryland’s shoe kicks something that skitters and clinks against a far wall. Ryland finally spots it after swinging the flashlight around the small space: a pendant. A small gold ring with a leather strap, with what looks like a seedling encased in resin. Just a sprout, the shell of its seed still covering its roots. It is completely at odds with the rest of the brutal interior.

The PPE suit doesn’t have pockets and it doesn't seem right to put it with the samples of blood and glass, so Ryland holds onto it while surveying the rest of the submarine. There’s not much else; more pipework, no bed, no bathroom, nothing that could be comforting or used for survival. Ryland doesn’t even find any evidence of food.

“Jeez,” he whispers again to himself. “What was even the point of the mission?”

Still, he takes samples of water dripping from a pipe, some of the red stained cloth, swabs along the vent ducts from the air tanks.

Once he’s had enough, and scanned what was left of Simon’s ship, Ryland exits the ship, swearing he’ll never step foot in it again.

“Grace find something, question?” Rocky asks once Ryland has stripped of the PPE properly and sanitized the pendant thoroughly. 

“I think it’s a bracelet, Rock.” He rolls it around in his hand. In the sunlight, the seedling is green with delicate white roots. “Something people wear around their wrist for decoration.”

“Give back to Simon, statement.”

“Yeah, I’ll put it in with the next crate of food. It was the only thing I found in there. What was he even doing down there? I didn’t even see any food – or water! It’s like they didn’t even want him to –” Ryland cuts himself, all too familiar with the hole that statement would open in his chest.

“Bad bad bad,” Rocky says, shrinking his body to half its size.

“Bad bad bad,” Ryland nods.

– 

Before heading out for the night, Ryland puts together another crate of food and water. The pendant is set on top, tucked into a Hail Mary sweatshirt. On the laptop, he writes,

Simon, I'll see you tomorrow!

Adrian helps with the airlocks, and Ryland waits outside for the inner door to swing open. 

Simon immediately walks towards it this time, nervous but surely recognizing the white plastic of the crate, identical to the one already in the enclosure. Ryland watches as he pauses, a ripple of muscle spanning across his shoulders in the too-tight shirt. Surprised eyes meet Ryland's through the glass as he picks up the pendant from the top of the pile. Quickly, carefully, he knots the leather strap on his uninjured wrist. Once secured, he looks back up to Ryland, whose face has somehow morphed into an easy smile.

Ryland waves and heads home.

–

The next morning is a slower start. Ryland wakes up late, showers too long, and realizes in a panic that the kitchen sink is still full of dirty dishes. He's just drying the last mug when Rocky shoves the front door open.

“Grace late!”

“I know, I know!” The mug clanks heavily down into the upper cabinet. “I'm coming!”

“Grace look bad.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, bud.” Ryland can't even deny it. He'd been up most of the night, heart beating erratically, thoughts flying. Rinsing his hands, he takes a second to splash cold water on his face. 

“Get yourself together, Grace,” he mutters to himself.

The nerves are building as they head out together across dunes. Clouds speed quickly across the sky. Wind picks up the ocean and the waves can be heard even as they move deeper inland. As they crest that last hill, the tension in Ryland's stomach eases. And even more when he looks down and sees Simon there. He's not at the back wall, but hovering near the laptop, closest he can be to where Ryland would come from. 

Ryland ducks his head in embarrassment, a smile pulling at his lips. He shuffles down the hill until he's across the wall from Simon.

Adrian, Rocky, a few medics, and an engineer all standby as the two-system entrance cycles through. The inner chamber had repressurized to normal atmosphere sometime in the night and Simon had held stable.

Simon had collected what remained of his food into one crate. He's wearing the sweatshirt Ryland had left and the bracelet is hidden somewhere in a sleeve. He looks better – exhausted – but better. There's a healthier redness to his skin, and the cut on his cheek has scabbed over nicely. 

With a hiss, the inner doors pressurize together, decontaminate as much as they need, and a steady beeping sounds as the remaining doors unlock. The medics all fiddle with their imagery tablets. The beeping ceases after the doors fully open. 

Simon is standing on the other side, real and whole and the most beautiful thing Ryland has maybe ever seen. He picks up the crate and steps through all doors until he's standing three feet from Ryland.

Ryland can't help the smile that pulls at his lips. He sets his glasses back on his face, rubs gently at his mouth, and smiles more. “Hi Simon,” soft and pleased.

“‘lo, Ryland,” is echoed back to him in a graveled voice that matches Simon perfectly. It vibrates in Ryland's head and –

Oh wow. He didn't realize he missed hearing his name. His hands start shaking for another reason. 

Idiot, it's just a name. But no, it's not. It's his name. Spoken out loud by another human being. A malnourished, frightened man who was found floating in not-not-blood, but still another human being. He says it so the last letter is softened, incomplete but gentle.

“Hello Friend Simon!” Rocky sings as he trundles over from beside Adrian. 

“He can't understand you, bud.”

Rocky presses up against Ryland's legs, chastising, “Turn translator on now, statement.”

Ryland flips the translator on.

“Hello Friend Moon Human – Grace! Wrong!”

“Shoot, uh – one second,” Ryland says, inputting the new word into the laptop. “That'll probably happen, been a while since I've needed it – Okay, Rock, try again.”

“Hello Friend Simon! Am Rocky!”

Simon blinks down at Rocky, in his xenonite suit and exuding excitement despite the monotonous nature of the simulated voice.

“lo, Rocky,” in the same uncertain voice.

Rocky trills.

Ryland smiles again, places his hand on hips, and says, “Are you ready?”

–

Ryland shows him the living room, with its floor cushions, a myriad of trinkets from the Hail Mary crew, the collection of figurines from his Eridian students. For once there’s no clothing strewn about, no dishes scattered across every surface. He shows him the kitchen, small but serviceable. A second chair has been added to the dining table and every inch of the counter is spotless. Simon is silent through all of it and Ryland finds himself rambling, unable to stop himself.

“And this is your room. It's a little small, but Adrian's working with the synthesizing crew to get a bigger bed and a mattress. The cot is fine, but hell on the back after a while, trust me.” Ryland gives a weak laugh that Simon doesn't return. Ryland powers ahead, “Wasn't sure what else you'd want, so I just filled the dresser with the basics: shirts, shorts, extra blankets. We can –”

“My room?”

Ryland turns back to the doorway, hands hovering over the cabinet he'd repurposed as a dresser. There's a xenonite comb, a few bars of soap, a white Hail Mary toothbrush still in the thin plastic on the top. The window is cracked open a bit and the floors were recently scrubbed in a fit of insomnia the night before. The room is gleaming and fresh in the ocean breeze. Simon looks petrified.

Oh.

“Yeah – I mean, I just figured you'd want to –” Ryland sees the confusion building in those brown eyes and keeps going, “Oh. Oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed. Of course you want your own place –”

“My own plac –”

“Duh, I'm an idiot, ignore me.” Placing hands on his hips, Ryland surveys the cot and the dresser and thinks, Rocky can probably get another house up pretty quick, day or two max. He studiously ignores the way his lungs aren't taking in enough oxygen anymore. That glowing, nervous happiness has seeped out in an instant. Idiot, why would he want to stay with him? He knows he's still rambling, the words are coming out and he can't stop them, but he also has no idea what he's saying. Of course Simon doesn’t want to be here.

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“Uh,” Ryland's brain stops. Simon's looking at him like he's grown a second head. “you don’t want to stay here, right?” With him.

“I didn't say that.” And he's right, he didn't say that. Ryland takes in the firm stance, the confused defensive look Simon is making as he stands in his new room. The quilt Ryland had made months ago, the bedside light, the extra laptop from the lab set on the nightstand.

“Oh, right –”

“This is just for me?”

“Yeah, my room is here.” Ryland points to the closed door kiddie corner to Simon's door.

Simon nods and Ryland's sees the tight way he's holding himself together.

“I'll leave you to it, okay?” Ryland says, gently. Simon's still looking down at the bed when he nods.

Ryland closes the door softly behind him and pretends to not hear anything for the next hour.

–

Living with someone is a learning curve. Ryland hadn't lived with Rocky for a long time and hasn't had to since moving into the biodome. There was a time early on, when Ryland was too weak and food was still scarce, that Rocky hadn't left Ryland's side. Had watched over him sleep with a worried trill, both of them unsure if Ryland would wake up. It took a long time after that to feel comfortable without each other. Like if they looked away too long, the other would disappear. Ryland's grown to appreciate his privacy since.

Simon seemingly doesn't sleep and when he does, it's not for long. Ryland doesn't ask about it, his own nightmares increasing for a short time after Simon moves in. But he learns to keep his bedroom door open, content to know that Simon is somewhere in the house and that nothing feels empty anymore.

Simon hoards food for a while. A small stash in the bottom drawer of his dresser that he thinks Ryland doesn’t know about. As days turn to weeks, the stash stays but doesn’t grow. Ryland shows Simon the cold storage under the house, shelves of jars, containers of carrots and potatoes and wheat berries. He does it like he just wants to show Simon where to grab the odd snack or food for breakfast, but admits that the weight that seems to dissipate from Simon's frame is worth everything.

Simon is quiet too. And at first Ryland attempts to fill the space between them with chatter. He doesn't talk about himself and there's a lot Ryland doesn't talk about either. But they settle into a routine. Breakfast together, teaching Simon how to use the laptop, and eventually, comfort in each other's silence.

–

With a jaw cracking yawn, Ryland rolls out of bed. A small light in the kitchen is his only guidance as he stumbles through the doorframe of his bedroom, door always wide open now, into the living room. Eyes barely open, no glasses, and a hand tucked under his shirt to scratch at his stomach, he shuffles his way across the room.

“What are you –”

A high-pitched yelp is instinctively pulled from Ryland's throat. When he turns abruptly to the voice, his foot catches on a discarded t-shirt. Like a sack of bricks he goes down, partially saved by a floor cushion that breaks the fall of his upper body.

“Holy shit –”

Ryland groans.

“What the fuck didya do that for –”

“Oh excuse me,” Ryland rolls over onto his back and looks up at the silhouette of Simon above him. His hair is floating around his downturned face and the soft kitchen lamp is glowing along his shirtless torso. Ryland groans for another reason. “I didn't realize we were hiding in the living room tonight. Sorry I'm late.”

Simon huffs down at him and as Ryland picks himself off the floor, he catches a glimpse of a dimple on Simon's cheek. Simon doesn't apologize, but Ryland doesn't ask him to.

“Couldn't sleep?” Because so far they've both ignored each other's occasional – nightly in Simon's case – nightmares.

Simon continues the routine and ignores the question with one of his own, “Why’re you awake?”

Ryland sighs and herds Simon into the kitchen with him, flicking on another lamp. The planes of Simon's skin are even more obvious, the angle of his jaw, and deep bags under his tired eyes. His left arm is still bandaged. Recently changed but still – still bleeding through. Simon's hair is such an absolute disaster that Ryland can't up but duck a smile into his collar.

“Because I'm a horrible planner, that's why. And bread, while delicious, is annoying.” Before Simon can respond, Ryland pulls out a wonky ceramic mixing bowl, pulling the towel off to reveal a risen mound of dough. “You'd think after nearly a year of making these stupid things I'd get better at the timing,” he continues to ramble tiredly. Mindlessly he scoops a handful of pre-milled flour onto the counter and dumps the dough over. Habit takes over from there, so Ryland glances up at Simon through squinted tired eyes.

“Just ask,” Simon mutters, clawing a hand through his hair, snagging and pulling through the knots.

“You can say no.”

Simon just glares weakly at him, exhaustion obvious in every part of him. Too tired – or in too much pain – to fight.

“How's your arm?”

“Fine,” reflexive and defensive. Simon curls his body away from Ryland's gaze.

Ryland just continues working the dough with practiced hands. This early in the morning, even his thoughts are slow to move. “It hasn't healed.”

“How would you fucken –” Simon cuts himself off. In a frustrated huff, he sits in one of the dining chairs. He glares down at the red patched gauze. Starting again, tone quieter and tight, “It's fine – I'm fine.”

Ryland hums, “I could take a look though. Just to check.”

That’s how they find themselves in the bathroom, Simon perched on the closed toilet seat and Ryland fussing around the counter. The wound is – Ryland winces as it’s unwrapped – it’s better than he thought. A jagged tear across the entire forearm, uneven and partially healed in some places. The scab is tentative like every day it pulls open and sews itself back together. 

“It’s fine,” Simon mutters after Ryland is quiet for too long. And when Ryland looks back up at him, he’s looking away, into the shower stall where their bars of soap sit side by side and their razors line the wall together. Where their shared existence is obvious.

“We have different definitions of fine, I think.”

Simon’s eyes flick back over, roaming Ryland’s face as he smiles gently and without judgement back at him. There’s fear there, while the ointment is applied. But also trust, tentative and small. Simon’s brown eyes are fluid and warm, and Ryland flushes under their attention. Simon’s fingers tap that constant pattern, his knee bounces up and down between them. Ryland talks his way through every step. His glasses slide down his nose and kneeling there beside Simon feels like a small bubble of silence. He keeps his touches quick and efficient, soon taping off the new gauze and stepping back to lean against the counter. 

He hands out a small pot to Simon.

“Adrian worked with the medics on this. Helps stop infection, speeds up the healing time.” Simon takes it gently, fingers carefully avoiding Ryland’s. “Magic, really.”

Simon’s throat works, a muscle in his jaw ticks, and he hasn’t looked fully away from Ryland. “Thanks,” he finally settles on.

“Yeah, of course.”

Ryland goes back to bed, restless.

–

Simon had woken up quieter than normal, a tension along his shoulders and contained simmer to his entire being. Ryland had picked up on it immediately, and made himself scarce. He's been working at the Hail Mary poking at the not-not-blood samples he still hadn't told Simon he'd collected. Rocky was a welcome presence.

“How are the pebbles doing?” Ryland asks, eyes peering down into the microscope. He writes the findings down. Honestly, the not-not-blood is turning out to be a lot like regular blood. Shocker.

Rocky lights up, carapace bouncing in happiness. “Pebbles hatch soon! Rocky Adrian ready!” His voice is up an octave or two to reflect his excitement.

Ryland was trying not to let Simon’s mood infect his own. But there’s a pacing feeling in his gut, even as he talks with Rocky about the pebbles, the nest he and Adrian had worked hard to build, the slow dwindling of their eggs until only the final five in the cluster remained. Natural selection at work even on those that are so young and helpless. 

They depart planning to play chess in a few nights, if the pebbles still haven’t started hatching. Ryland had learned nothing new while at the lab, dissatisfied and anxious to return home. A question starts forming in his head, and with each step closer to the house, Ryland convinces himself he’s going to ask tonight.

What is Eden?

A topic they’ve avoided like the plague that has consumed Ryland’s thoughts most nights. 

Where are you from?

The idea keeps building and building as he makes his way back. As he takes in the tension of Simon’s shoulders as he washes an apple at the sink. A cutting board and knife sit waiting for him on the counter. The dishes from breakfast are done and put away, a pile of laundry sits controlled in the corner of the living room, Simon’s bedroom door has been closed. Ryland catalogs it all as he warms up a mug of water for tea. They hadn’t even said hello to one another when Ryland had gotten home. Simon’s eyes haven’t even looked at him. 

With a breath, Ryland starts, “You can say no.”

Simon’s anger is sharp, sudden and consuming. “Why do you keep fucken sayin that?” he shouts. The mug Ryland was holding slams noisily onto the counter in shock.

“Because you can!” Ryland defends automatically, voice spiking to match Simon's volume. The dam of emotions that had been stewing in his gut all day overflows. “I just want you to know you can!”

“Why do you even fucken care?” Simon turns bodily away from Ryland, shoulders taunt, arms and hands choppily cutting the apple into slices. His eyes flash black like the first day they’d met.

“Because –”

“No! No no no! Are you happy now?” Simon shoves the cutting board away from himself, apple tumbling to the floor, knife clattering against the wall. There's a tick in his jaw and he's tapping his fingers. His voice is spiking in the small space. It echoes across the metal of the cabinets. “What's it matter, Ryland? What does it fucken ma –?”

“It matters!” Ryland takes a sharp breath of his own, stance open and he stands his ground when Simon fills his vision. His hands don’t know what to do. Anger and hurt are both fighting within him, bringing a frustrated flush to his face and a sting to his throat. He looks at Simon breathing heavily in their kitchen, eyes piercing. Why does this matter? Why does he feel like –  “To me, Simon! It matters to me.” Punctuated by a firm palm on his own chest. “That you know you can say no to me and I'll listen! Because when I said no –!” He cuts himself off with a shallow breath through his nose, all the fight leaking out of him in an instant. He turns back to his mug, scooping the mint leaves out. His heart feels like it’ll beat out of his chest. He doesn’t want to think about –

They stand breathing unsteadily together. Ryland can't feel the mug in his hands anymore.

“When you said no what, Ryland?”

“When I said no, they stuck me with a needle, made me forget who I was, and sent me into space to die. So it fucking matters, to me, that you know.”

He can't breathe. His vision is pinholing into a corner of the kitchen, the edge of the window where the crease between the metal meets in a smooth precise line. Sweat is gathering in his shaking palms and, “I'm sorry I'm sorry” is spilling from his mouth unmonitored. When a hand presses to his arm, he pulls back so hard his hip crashes into the corner of the counter with a gasp of pain. The mug shatters to the floor.

“–land?”

“I didn’t wanna go, Simon. I didn't want to – I just wanted to live – just wanted –” He thinks maybe he's crying. Or that tears are dripping down his blank face. A numb feeling is sweeping across his chest, his hand rubbing at his chest. “So don't say it doesn't fucking matter. I'll listen.”

“Okay,” Simon's voice is quiet and he's close but not touching. Ryland smells their soap on his skin. He inhales deeply, blinking rapidly to bring the room back together in his vision. “Alright, Rylan’,” gentle on his name, “I'll tell you, okay? When it's too much, I'll tell you.”

“Good – good, please. I'll listen.”

Later, after he finds himself seated on a floor cushion, a new mug of tea in his palms, he blinks suddenly and finds Simon quietly reading across from him.

“Can you tell me about Eden?”

Simon looks up. Brown eyes and understanding. “Yeah,” the low reply, “‘course.”

–

Ryland is pacing in the kitchen when Simon finally emerges for the day. Rocky had never shown up for their chess game a few nights earlier, and Ryland can only assume the means the pebbles have started hatching. There’s a jittery anxiety in Ryland’s chest, an excitement tinged with nerves. He’d spent the night laying flat on his back, eyes glued to the ceiling in thought. 

It was overwhelming some days: being concerned with the wellbeing of another person again. With Simon’s wellbeing. This tentative man with a rage burning beneath the surface. A fight building up in him with no war to wage it on. There’s just a bumbling Ryland who tends to say the wrong thing at the very worst time. And Simon accepts it with that same, silent confusion of a man not used to so much kindness.

Simon takes in the panicked look of Ryland with an even expression of his own. “Okay?” he says in that lilting gruff voice of his, deeper from sleep. His hair is a tangled mess on his head. Ryland has to look away.

“Who, me? Yeah, never been better,” Ryland lies, running a shaking hand through his hair and attempting to lean against the counter nonchalantly. An unconvincing laugh bubbles up.

Simon simply raises an eyebrow. A flush rises to Ryland’s cheeks.

Ryland gives up the facade immediately. He sighs explosively, arms dropping, turning around to finish his bowl of applesauce. “Theoretically –” he trails. The applesauce is sweet on his tongue. He falls silent.

A wall of warmth hovers at his elbow when he doesn’t continue.

“You can say no,” Ryland continues with no context.

Simon huffs a breath on Ryland’s neck. A hesitant hand moves into Ryland’s peripheral, stealing the bowl from him. Simon is so careful not to touch. Leaving just enough room to have Ryland feeling the change in the air instead. There’s scars along his inner wrist that they’ve both silently agreed not to talk about. The clank of the spoon is loud as he turns and watches Simon finish the applesauce off for him. It was such a sign of improvement in Simon’s comfort with both food and Ryland, that Ryland can’t even be mad at him.

Simon’s so close Ryland can smell the scent of the sheets on him, the soft cotton and soapy smell of their shared barsoap and shampoo. It somehow smells musky on him, the scent of his skin mixing with it differently than Ryland’s. It calms that loud feeling in his stomach. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with Simon’s smell. Sand, sun, soap, and Simon. He looks meaningfully down at his own hands that are clenched into loose fists, holding something back. Something gentle and stupid.

Simon doesn’t even say anything, but the question is still in the air. Ryland takes a deep breath, braving a glance up.

“Can I show you something?”

“Yeah,” Simon grumbles and he can’t – he’s an idiot – but Ryland swears he feels it rumble through their chests together. “‘course.”  

–

The walk across the biodome seems to take no time at all. The weather is mild, but the wind catches their hair and throws it around their faces. Ryland has to speak a little loudly to say, “It’s just over this dune.”

Simon doesn’t respond, just waits to see what Ryland is talking about: an airlock door in the side of the biodome. A hallway leading outward from it visible through the xenonite. It’s unassuming and still Simon glances Ryland's way to gauge what reaction he should be having. To see if there’s any danger in this. He’s met with that same small nervous smile.

The airlock whirls around them when they enter, beeping when finished with its processing. The lights click on automatically as Ryland leads them down the hallway and click off as they leave each section. There’s a tunnel of darkness behind them. It’s about a mile walk all together, through secondary airlocks and security systems to ensure every failsafe is accounted for.

Ryland can tell Simon wants to ask and he’s getting close to working up the nerve for it when they reach the final door.

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much,” he insists in a low voice, only meant for Simon even if no one else is around. 

“Sure,” Simon agrees readily. The trust is hard-earned and with that warmth keeping him going, Ryland reaches for the final airlock door. It clicks easily open.

And Simon was quiet before, he’s always so quiet. But when the door finally opens fully to reveal the expanse of the room, it’s like every silent thing about Simon gets quieter. The tapping of his fingers ceases, the hum of his body halts, the step he was blindly taking through the door hangs untaken. Ryland’s certain he’s holding his breath. He only seems to take that breath when Ryland walks into the room, beckoning him to join him. His breath stutters in noisily and he steps beyond Ryland into the brightness of the room. 

Before them is sunlight, a sea of wheat, an ocean of gold. It’s swaying gently in a lighter breeze than was blowing in their biodome. It looks endless, but only spans four acres all together. Above them the sunlight is warm and high, balanced just right with a perfected weather system to maximize the crops. If this were Earth, birds would be chirping and flying overhead. But it’s not, and instead everything is silent. A small winding path drags down the left side of it, clunky Eridian machinery is visible on the far right end. 

Quietly, taking in the confused, guarded joy of Simon’s face, Ryland says, “The Eridians care for the wheat these days. I finally let them take over the orchard too.” He points off to the middle right, where lines of trees stand scraggly but healthy. It’s nearly harvest and they’ll have a lot of processing to do. He huffs a small laugh, “Honestly there’s not much they let me care for anymore. Stupid clumsy human and all.”

“There’s more?” small and overwhelmed. Simon’s started tapping the rhythm with his fingers again. One two three, one two three, grounding him. 

Ryland nods, takes another step closer to him, ducking his head to Simon’s level and pointing to the back of the garden. “There’s more back there.” A punched out sound cuts out of Simon’s chest. Ryland can feel the space between them like a weight.

Logistically Simon must have wondered where their food came from. Where the carrots, the potatoes, the apples came from. How they had bread and jam and pickles. There was a lot the synthesizer could make, but fresh foods weren't among them.  

“All this is just for you?”

“For us,” Ryland corrects.

“Us,” Simon repeats, deeply and with feeling. A hitched breath, shoulders curling around his ears. Like he doesn’t quite believe it yet but is starting to. Like he’s starting to realize there’s space for him here.

“If you want –” Ryland begins. The wind continues to ruffle their hair and the air smells of soil and wheat and apples beginning to ripen. “If you want,” he continues after Simon stays silent, “we can plant your tree here.”

“Yes.”

–

“You can say no,” Ryland says one morning after Simon finds him on the beach. He'd been staring across the ocean thinking about how it's been nearly three months now and he doesn't even know how old Simon is. But he knows he'll add sugar on top of his jammed toast, that his hair is wavy when it air dries, and that he hates sleeping with his bedroom door closed.

Simon blinks at him and bluntly but not unkindly responds, “To what, Ryland?” in that way he says his name like the last letter is soft. 

“Can I cut your hair?”

Simon runs a hand through it in thought. It hangs past his ears, over and into his eyes.

“Sure.”

Ryland sets up a chair just outside the house, a small pair of scissors and Simon's comb. Before starting, Ryland runs his fingers through it, pulling the length of down to the nape of Simon's pinkening neck. 

“Just a couple inches, I think. It –” Ryland clears his throat. “It looks good long.”

Simon just nods, so Ryland starts. The scissors glide easily, the metallic sound of cutting loud between them. The small curls float away down the beach in the wind.  The silence is comfortable as Ryland works his way across to Simon's front.

“Rocky calls you ‘Grace’,” It's not a question.

Ryland looks down into Simon's face, perfectly blank as he's been combing out his bangs to check the length.

“Uh – yeah, he does.”

Simon doesn't say anything for a long moment. Ryland continues trimming, combing out, and trimming. Slowly he can start to see the expanse of Simon's face without brushing it back. There are small freckles along the bridge of his nose, one tucked against his left eye. His brown eyes never stray from Ryland's face.

Finally, “Should I call you that?”

“No,” immediate and on the edge of desperate. Ryland's body tenses at the thought. He stops cutting and looks out at the ocean. His heart is beating in his throat. The comb’s tines dig into his palm where he holds it. “No –”

Simon stays silent. When Ryland looks back at him, he can see the full of him again. After looking so detailed at each cut he's made, he looks at Simon and sees – he sees something that makes a flush pull at his cheeks. He sees someone that he wants – needs – to say his name. In the low, graveled way. In that soft way where the last letter is lost. Simon. The way Simon says it.

“I like that you call me Ryland.”

“Okay,” and Ryland thinks that's it, it's been settled, except, “I like saying your name.”

Another long pause.

“I like when you say my name.”

And it feels like Simon is saying something else. But Ryland can't – Simon can't – 

“Okay,” Ryland echoes. He starts cutting again.

–

The touches start up without Ryland even trying after that afternoon. 

They visit the garden together most afternoons, to the distress of the Eridians maintaining the crops. Simon always visits his sapling first. He mutters about pH balancing and soil health and watering and Ryland never interrupts. The tree flourishes. A small maple with two thin leaves. Simon’s smile is worth it every morning, mostly visible in the corners of his eyes and small, barely there dimple in his cheek. Ryland waits for it every morning. 

Their hands will brush as Ryland passes over a glass bottle of water. Dirty fingerprints left in the condensation. Simon will strip off his shirt and Ryland won’t look. Sweat will stick to Simon’s brow and Ryland won’t twitch to brush it out of his face. Simon will look at him with a confused sort of happiness and Ryland will smile back unabashedly and won’t think about it too hard.

There’s a lot Ryland doesn’t do these days.

– 

“Can you hand me that jar right there?” Ryland asks one night while cooking them dinner. Simon looks up from the laptop, deep in whatever he’s been researching blindly for the past two nights. Evergreen trees or honeybees or irrigation methods, Ryland’s not sure what he’s moved on to now. There’s an ever-growing list written up on the whiteboard in Simon’s bedroom.

Simon gets up silently and when he hands the small jar off to Ryland, their fingers tangle around it and stay there. Together and touching and Ryland would – his gut instinct is to apologize – but Simon's skin is warm and he looks up at Ryland from under his bangs, quiet and contemplative and staring first at Ryland's mouth and then up into his eyes. Ryland pauses on the words, staring blankly and dumbly at him while he turns back to settle at the table. Somehow Simon took all the warmth from the room with him.

“Right,” Ryland says softly to himself, “right, yeah – uh, thanks.”

“‘Course,” Simon whispers back.

–

Simon reads most nights and mornings, consistent and routine. The whiteboard in his room cycles through topics on the daily. Simon is quiet and Ryland tries to match that, but some nights, when Ryland is sitting in the living room, a cup of mint tea steaming on the coffee table, doing – gosh, anything, everything, who knows – Simon will sit down close to him, on the neighboring cushion. The length of his thigh sears against Ryland’s. The soft fuzz of his leg hair tickingly, the sleepy set of his mouth as he asks something about dogs, about rainbows, about autumn. Ryland will stutter his way through, rambling and reminiscent. Whatever he can’t remember, they look up, flicking through photo after photo of types of flowers.

–

It builds and builds; days to weeks to months. Ryland lets himself settle his palm on Simon’s waist in the kitchen. Simon standing close to him in the lab. Brushing an eyelash from a cheek. Holding a fresh green bean up from the garden for the other to eat. Simon’s always watching and looking and – Ryland doesn’t know what. Or won't let himself. But a heat is building in him as every day passes. They’re working their way towards something, together.

–

Ryland wakes up early. The house around him is quiet and he's lies there trying to figure out what woke him up. The moon is glowing through one window. His bedroom door is open, a habit he'd picked up from Simon. The blankets have been kicked to the edge of the bed; his shirt hiked up to his armpits, sweat slick along his stomach. The house is silent.

Groaning, Ryland stretches, body shaking with the force of it. A fitful groan is pulled out of him. Smacking his lips, he resituates his sleep shirt. He feels –

His entire body freezes.

Oh. 

Oh shoot.

Ryland sits up to his elbows in bed, the mattress loud in the quiet of the house. There's a tent in his boxers; a cool, wet spot at the head of his dick.

When was the last time?

A hot flush spills across his body and his erection twitches. The lamp left on in the living room glows across the house. Ryland can see the dinner dishes stacked by the sink. Simon will do them before Ryland even gets up.

Simon.

The heat on his skin increases tenfold. Sweat builds on the back of his neck, behind his knees, in his palms. His dick strains and twitches again. 

He could ignore it. He could tuck it into his waistband, pull the blankets back up, and pretend it's not happening. It would be easy.

Instead a hand rucks up the shirt again, back up so his chest is exposed. The band of his boxers gets tucked under his balls. Just enough light illuminates the room to see the sticky, smooth skin of his erection. The heavy weight of want is almost foreign to Ryland, but it feels right and familiar to wrap a hand around himself. A hiss slides out of him at the contact and he sinks back onto his pillow.

He has to keep the pace slow, already so close that his hand is wet from precum. A small whimper works its way up his throat. It's so loud in the silence of the house. But something dangerous reminds Ryland that Simon could hear him. That his bedroom door is open too. The slick sound of his hand feels obscene. Ryland breathes tightly through his nose, his other hand pressed against his mouth.

He can’t help it – he can't help the thoughts that flash across his mind as the pressure builds and the edges of his brain blurs. Calloused hands, wider than his own. The warmth of him when they touch. The buzzing on his skin every time. He pictures them twisting around the head of his cock, fingers pressing against his tongue.

Broad shoulders with arms to match. How, sometimes, if Ryland lets himself, he feels smaller than he is. And how, yes, sometimes, he lets himself like it. They'd fill his vision; all Ryland would see is that expanse of sun-gold flesh, the minutiae of thin scars paler than the rest. The kisses he would leave against them.

Unending brown eyes that he can't stop looking into. Has memorized their color, their shape, the way they look back at him. The rumbled, low voice that he can swear that he feels. The presence Simon has over him.

Ryland's hand has quickened and his breath alongside it. His eyes shutter closed, a foot hooks upward on the mattress. His vision whites out as his cum splatters up on his stomach, seeping down into his belly button, riveting into the panes of his muscles. Ryland's thoughts take a moment to start back up, his hand milking the last few drops out as he twitches all over. Oversatiation, but left wanting for more.

Stripping his shirt, Ryland cleans off his chest and tosses it into the corner. He pulls the blankets up and dreams of Simon.

–

It happens again a few nights later. And again a week after that. Simon still hasn’t seemed to notice, or at the very least has chosen not to say anything. The touches continue though, and for that, Ryland is grateful. It fuels something in him: a kindling of warmth that burns away the doubts Ryland is having. 

He asks to join Simon one morning on his routine visit to the garden.

“Can I try something?” Ryland asks, heart in his throat, after they spend an hour weeding, watering, and pruning. They’re standing beneath a line of apple trees, shaded from the warmth of the artificial sun.

“Yeah,” Simon says, like he always does, eyes taking in Ryland’s nerves. He takes a sip of water, throat bobbing, before setting the bottle back on the ground.

“You have to tell me if you don’t like it.”

Simon huffs, like he always does. “Yeah, ‘course.”

Simon’s lips are warm against his. A hand cups one of his cheeks, presses a thumb into that soft spot above his stubble where the skin is smooth. The others curl up behind an ear, slot at the roots of his hairline. The heat of his skin warms Ryland’s chilled fingertips. The other hand rests gently at Simon’s hip, fingers hooked into a belt loop. Ryland has to tilt Simon’s jaw up a little with a vulnerable stretch of his neck.

With a sigh, Ryland draws back but stays sharing Simon’s breath. His eyes are pools of swirling brown, dark and deep and reflecting. Ryland’s heart is in his throat, taking in the way Simon's eyes look in the sun.

His breath catches when a hand brushes around his ear, tucking in his own too-long hair. Rough calloused fingertips and palm that glides along his cheekbone and traces the growing smile on his lips. Simon is looking at him like – like Ryland doesn't know what. Something with blown pupils and heat. Ryland knows his own face is one of hope, of happiness, of a nervousness he feels down to his bones.

“Ryland?” Simon says into the air between them.

“Yeah?” awed and small and hopeful.

“I like it,” rough and heavy as Simon slots his lips back to Ryland's. 

Where the first kiss was soft, hesitant, this one is firm, exploring. There's no questions in this kiss. Simon presses in close with an inhale, hands coming up to Ryland's jaw and crowding him against the nearest tree one slow step at a time. Ryland lets him; a small part of him is glad to give Simon the control. The bark is rough and grounding against Ryland's back. His next breath stumbles out of his chest.

With a tilt of his head, Simon deepens their kiss, groaning against the feeling of their tongues sliding against teeth, against each other, biting down into Ryland's lower lip and dragging. Their eyes meet across lowered lids, a flushing staining Simon's cheeks, stubble rough on Ryland's lips when they reconnect in urgency. 

There's too much – 

“Off,” Ryland mutters once the thought forms. His hands drag along the bottom hem of Simon's shirt, the heat of his chest a furnace against him. Together their arms lift the shirt, revealing the landscape of scars and skin. Ryland pauses, noting how different they are from one another. Simon tanned easily, dark and sun-golden compared to Ryland's flushed, pale skin. As he splays a palm along Simon's stomach, the difference is so obvious.

Ryland flips their positions, pressing Simon up against the tree. Leaning bodily, hips canting to keep contact with Ryland's.

“Ryland – what –?”

“You can say no,” Ryland repeats.

Please don't say no.

Simon huffs that same silent affirmation he always does. He shuts him up by putting their lips back together, pressing in to slide his tongue with Ryland's. With a click they separate and Simon follows him, stealing one more small kiss before seeing the tentative look on Ryland's face. Understanding dawns in those deep, brown eyes.

Ryland kisses down Simon's stomach, looking up at his reddened face haloed by scattered black waves and cropped stubble. His lips are bruised red and wet, slightly open. Kiss drunk. He already wants to kiss him again. How can you miss something you've only just gotten?

Simon's eyes are all pupil, black like the day they first met. Ryland feels a buzzing heat down his spine as he trails wet open mouth kisses to Simon's thin waist. Simon's hands curl into the hair at the base of Ryland's skull, pressing and pulling but not forceful. He wants him to. Ryland groans as he scrapes his teeth along Simon's hip bone. His skin is soft beneath the pressure, warm and giving and Ryland maybe thinks Simon would let him. Would let him bite until he breaks skin. Would leave a scar along the lines of his body, one of many, but this one from Ryland.  He presses his teeth down hard, just to hear Simon's groan stutter, chest heaving. The hands in his hair tug.

He's all Simon is seeing, all that he's looking at. Ryland feels like the sun is pooling out of him.

“Jesus fucken Christ,” raw and graveled as Ryland slowly works down Simon shorts, kneeling into the sun-hot soil. The hand in his hair tightens and yes – Ryland takes Simon's dick in his hand. Smooth and firm. He's hot and hard on Ryland's palm, precum dribbling enough to ease the friction of his slow up and down pumping as he leaves kisses around the thatch of hair. 

Breathing deeply, Ryland takes in the musky, clean smell of Simon. The smell of soil coats the air. It mixes lightly with everything and Ryland can taste the earth on his tongue.

“Ryland –”

Simon makes a small punched out sound when Ryland finally takes his dick in his mouth and roves his tongue along the slit in the head. One of Simon's hands drags forward on Ryland's neck to his cheek and Ryland can't help but rub into his palm humming approval, keeping the pace as Simon's dick slides easily to the back of his throat and out again halfway. One of Ryland's hands holds steady at Simon's hip, the other helps guide the base of Simon's dick in and out, slick and dripping with Ryland's saliva. 

The rhythm stays as Simon takes Ryland's jaw and presses a thumb to his bottom lip. Ryland moans as Simon's eyes focus on the wet glide of skin against lips and the fluid friction as it passes from mouth to thumb. He drags back the corner, revealing teeth and gums. His other fingers press into the hinge of Ryland's jaw, easing his mouth further open. Wet, strangled gasps as air pockets in with each thrust. Ryland's eyes roll back, a spike of pleasure singing down his spine. Simon groans with him with a sharp rock of his hips.

“Rylan’ –”

Water coats his eyelashes as he strains to keep his eyes up, taking in Simon's slack jaw, the sheen of sweat on his toned chest and the way his hair sticks to the side of his neck, curling more in the heat. A few loose tears drop. Simon's thumb trails them to Ryland's lips, rubs them in there.

“Fuck – yes –”

Blindly, Ryland drags his own pants down low enough to get a hand around his own dick, hand pumping quickly once, then twice, before tightening around the base. The sounds coming out of him would be embarassing, weak and wanting and loud in the open air, but Simon's matching them. Mumbling to himself while petting into Ryland's hair, tucked against his jaw still. So good and fucken please and look at you. Ryland feels loose in his skin, hums around Simon's dick.

With his other hand, Ryland urges at Simon's hip, helping him rock back and forth, fucking Ryland's mouth. Impossibly, Ryland's mouth opens wider, tongue cupping the underside of Simon's dick on every stroke, coaxing him to the back of his throat.

Simon's eyes light up, questioning. A soft sound wanting an answer. Ryland gives another encouraging pull on Simon's hip, rubbing a gentle circle on the skin of his hip. Their eyes meet, brown to blue and Ryland's –

Please. It's okay. He wants it too.

Simon brushes Ryland's hand off his waist and Ryland tucks it behind his back. There's trust in his eyes and tears building in the lashes as Simon curves forward like a bow. He runs his hands through Ryland's hair until he's cupping the back of his skull. Gently, with careful movement, Simon begins fucking Ryland's mouth. Guttural wet noises fill the air.

“Shit –” barely a word. Ryland's own hand syncs up with the pace Simon sets. Everything is slick and warm. Ryland's eyes roll back as the twist of his hand matches the pressure in his throat. “I'm not gonna – shit –” Every thrust cuts the air from Ryland's lungs. It sounds base and human and Simon's breaths are loud and close and Ryland is so close. The hands in Ryland's hair tighten, but there's still that cautious nature to everything Simon does. He begins whimpering. “Are you – Rylan’ I'm gonna –”

Simon begins pushing Ryland away, urgent. But Ryland stays, ducks his head in close. With a shuddering gasp, and shallow stuttering thrusts, Simon comes down his throat, bitter and salty.

“C'mere, lemme –” Simon whispers, throat wet and voice half mumbled. It's hardly even words. Ryland lets himself be dragged to his feet, swaying into Simon so their mouths clumsily meet. Messy and uncoordinated, no one dominating the kiss so much as following the other around. Tongues roving and teeth clicking, soft huffs and moans.

Simon takes Ryland’s dick in a tight fist, causing a harsh, pleased gasp to erupt.

Everything whites out. Static. Friction that keeps pulling. His body feels ten times heavier and he leans into that warm and slick heat as Simon keeps twisting his fist, slowing. He looks down, blinking the spots from his vision. His lungs are expanding but all he feels is the breathless pleasure stuttering out of him. Cum drips down Simon's knuckles and with each upward motion more pearls at the top. Ryland tucks a soft whimper into Simon's cheek.

“Look at you,” Ryland finally hears, his ears clicking back into existence. Whispers that Simon might not even know he's saying. “So beautiful. Look.” His thumb drags across the last beads and Ryland can't stop the full body shudder that rips through him. He does a smiling laugh and begins peppering small and simple kisses around Simon's face. Ears, cheeks, eyelids, nose, corner of his bruised lips. The smile that blooms is unlike any Ryland has seen until now: radiant, dimpled, and happy.

He smiles back.