#binary stars orbiting one another until the end of time

[elians-terrarium]

the joy of fandoms you join as a child: you never really leave them

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Epilogue

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is heading to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: We made it. Thank you a million times over to every single one of you who has engaged with this story. It means a lot to have you along for the ride.

---

Something funny happens when you fly faster than the speed of sound, nothing but a hunk of metal separating you from the sky. Time doesn’t seem to work right anymore; everything can move slow and fast all at once. You take a breath. It feels peaceful, somehow. Sacred. 

Even when you pull so many Gs that it presses a stone to your chest and strangles your lungs until they burn, as long as you can push through the tunnel vision and the dizziness, suddenly everything becomes clearer. Perspective, some might say. Others just call it exhilaration. Freedom. The feeling of being alive.

Bucky Egan is seriously addicted to that feeling. For months now, he’s gone without it. He spends more time than he should standing out at JSC’s Ellington Field, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as other astronauts perform flight tests and training exercises overhead. He listens to the rumbling sounds of the jets, wondering if he’ll ever be up there again. Free.

A jet, a prop plane, a space capsule. He’d take any one of them, really, if he can’t have all of them anymore. 

Some things are written in stone. Bucky knew seemingly out of the womb that he wanted to fly. He wouldn’t settle for anything else, wouldn’t settle at all. He was going to become an Air Force pilot, and then – once he learned that there were real people flying aboard something called the Space Station, orbiting around the planet 16 times per day – he was going to become an astronaut. From the very second he even knew it was an option, he wanted his feet to be off of this Earth. He wanted to feel what it felt like. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to hear what it sounded like. 

He wanted all of it, and he never much minded the risk. Flight, after all, was his first love, and Bucky Egan will do just about anything for what he loves. A part of him always figured, if he had to die, he wanted it to be in the sky. If he had to die, it would be worth it, as long as flight was what claimed his life. Commit his soul to the stars, a supernova in the dark.

But then, of course, there was Gale. 

The night they met, two young boys standing awkwardly in a college dorm, Gale told Bucky that he didn’t intend to be an astronaut. He had Bucky wrapped around his finger from that very first smile, but he wanted to become an engineer for the Air Force. Maybe, if he got lucky, work his way into NASA’s space program. Someone back home to keep his feet on the ground may have done John Egan some good. But, in the end, it was him that looked at Gale and told him that all of that was bull. It was Bucky that pulled him along with strings tied to their hearts, convinced him to just give it all a shot – what’d he have to lose? And here he is, nearly two decades later, an everyday flyboy.

This life they’ve built, orbiting one another like a binary star system, is greater than any adventure Bucky ever could have imagined. The way he’s lived it, he figures he’s lucky he’s made it as far as he has. He’s lucky to be alive after that little stunt on the moon. He’s lucky to have the most amazing husband this side of the universe. He’s damn lucky for all of it. Maybe he’s a fool to ask for more.

But he’s not ready to keep his feet on the ground.

Not yet.

—

July 17, 2026 Houston, TX

Admittedly, this was maybe not Bucky’s brightest plan, taking a video call in the dimly lit Orion cabin, where he has to lay on his back, legs elevated, staring up at a brightly lit screen. He can feel a bit of a headache coming on, and he isn’t sure if the vague throbbing in his leg is real or just a figment of his haywire imagination. He might be losing feeling in his feet; he isn’t really sure. Is he setting himself up for failure? Maybe. This afternoon he needs to be in top form, or at least as close to it as he can get. But he’s committed now, and he’s too stubborn to move.

So here he is in the mock-up, like any other mission sim, tucked into his commander’s seat. Or, really, he supposes it’s Gale’s now. The Artemis 4 crew has been doing their fair share of sims in recent months, and Gale has been pulling longer and longer hours as they get closer to launch, as Bucky needs him at his side less and less.

Maybe that’s exactly why Bucky’s sitting here now. To feel close to his husband during a time when their careers, as usual, tend to pull them apart. Or maybe he’s sitting here because he needs the reminder, a silent dedication to who he is, what he’s meant to be doing, what he so badly needs to keep striving for.

Or maybe, he’s only sitting here because the seat of a cockpit is always where he’s felt the safest.

Safe isn’t the right word. 

In control, maybe. Most like himself. A cockpit is always where he’s best understood the world around him: sky above, Earth below, his heart strangled with a love for the unknown. The Orion capsule is another home to him. Things might go wrong – sometimes horribly, horribly wrong – but everything about it was constructed and tested with the singular goal of helping Bucky and his crew break boundaries, make history. Every single thing about it is so specific, so familiar, so carefully planned and crafted. John Egan knows this spacecraft better than he knows himself. In the chaos that is his life, it’s the capsule that carried him away from this planet that best keeps him grounded.

So he sits, laying on his back in the commander’s seat that once was his and is now Gale’s. He doesn’t really remember the process of getting here, but he remembers the intense need to be here, like he didn’t have a single other choice. When he first answered Gale’s video call, his husband stared at him for a long moment, then laughed and said something about “only John Egan has an emotional support spacecraft.” He didn’t say anything about how strange it is, considering Bucky almost died in this spacecraft. Maybe, in some weird, fucked up, convoluted way that he’ll have to talk to his therapist about later, that’s one reason he finds being in this tiny space so reassuring.

He’s not a psychologist. He’s hardly even an astronaut.

In any case, fully convinced that this was exactly where he needed to be to call his husband today – a day that has his nerves all shaken up like a can of soda – he duct taped his phone to the console above his head so that he can look at Gale without having to hold it up above his face the whole time. It fell and smacked him squarely on the nose once at the beginning of the call, but it’s been holding well enough since then. 

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been talking. Surely it’s been longer than they’d scheduled for, and someone’s gotta be looking for him by now, grabbing onto unassuming JSC employees and asking in a mild panic “Have you seen Major Egan?” Gale’s crew is no doubt waiting for him, too, perhaps just out of view of the camera, reminding him that they have to get started on some task or another. A part of Bucky feels guilty for holding Gale up for so long, but the rest of him needs this desperately.

This is the first time since Bucky splashed down in the Pacific last November that they’ve been apart for more than even a day. Scratch that, for more than 12 hours. Gale has stayed at his side, for better or worse, since the night he first laid eyes on Bucky again in the hospital. It feels like forever ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. Sometimes Bucky still wakes up convinced he’s dying, convinced that his hands don’t work, phantom pain burning through his leg, unable to speak. 

It was a long winter, and a long spring. Bucky has gaps admittedly, times when the brain fog whisked him away from reality, made it hard to stay in the moment, hard to figure out what was real. It all but disappeared with time, thankfully. He still has a moment here and there, especially when he first wakes up or if he’s stressed or nervous (not that he’ll admit to anyone but Gale that he’s even capable of being nervous), but they’re becoming less and less common.

Getting that leg to heal was a complete bitch. Turns out micro- and zero-gravity aren’t very kind to broken bones. Eventually the cast came off, and he progressed to a brace, walking with a cane, slowly, slowly working toward walking on his own again.

Gale was there the whole time. Holding him up, steadying him, cheering him on, taking the brunt of Bucky’s frustration and fear. No matter how many times Bucky lost his temper or wanted to give up or refused to get out of bed or go to PT or OT or his CT scans, Gale stayed. Gale didn’t give up on him. Gale loved him through it all.

It’s July now. Almost eight whole months since Bucky fell to this Earth, broken and barely breathing under a bright Pacific sky. It’s the dog days of summer, long and hot and busy as ever here at JSC. Gale has been gone for six whole days, training in Iceland with the Artemis 4 crew. Weirdly enough, the volcanic, rocky landscape of Iceland’s arctic desert is a perfect training ground for astronauts headed to the moon, and it has acted as such since the Apollo days. With Artemis in full swing, NASA has started sending the lunar crews out there again to conduct simulated missions that mimic what they’ll be faced with on the lunar surface.

Bucky misses those days, training and bonding with his crew – his best friends – as they bounded across the dark, eerie Icelandic rock in fake moon gear, out of their minds with excitement for what they were training to do. He’s spent much of this video call asking Gale about Iceland and their simulated missions, half wanting to relive it and half hoping maybe Gale would forget why Bucky wanted to call so bad in the first place. He can see on Gale’s face that he’s failing.

Sure enough, after indulging him for longer than Bucky honestly expected, Gale sighs and tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. “How do you feel?”

Bucky doesn’t quite know what Gale means when he asks this. The implications have changed so much over the years. 

In college, he’d ask Bucky How do you feel? when he woke up with a hangover after a night of drinking too much with their friends. Or that time he got terribly sick in the middle of midterm season and shoved through a Statics exam with a fever. When he pulled an all-nighter trying to finish a class project. When he passed Thermo by the skin of his teeth. From the first day of classes to the day they graduated.

How do you feel?

As young adults in the Air Force, or at NASA, he’d ask Bucky how he felt before going up for a mission or a training exercise. Or after survival training in the desert, wandering to the finish line dehydrated and sunburnt but alive and ahead of the rest of their astronaut class. He’d ask him after long training days or messy flights or after they’d been apart for days, weeks, months. He asked him when they both sat, shell-shocked, after losing a friend in the flames of a crash landing. How do you feel?

Before their wedding day, when Bucky was terrified of their future but knew without a doubt this was everything he ever wanted, Gale asked him, How do you feel?

During quarantine. Before the launch. On the pad. How do you feel?

Every day over CAPCOM or video call. Even when Bucky couldn’t hear him, couldn’t say anything back. How do you feel?

When Bucky came home, Gale would ask him that question several times a day. It was tough; there’s no use lying. There were times Bucky wanted to give up, couldn’t bring himself to leave the house or do much of anything. It was painful and it was confusing and it was messy, and sometimes all Bucky could do was stew in silence or, once or twice, tell Gale to fuck off. But every time his awareness drifted or he had to be moved with his bum leg, every time he woke up in pain or had to be left alone for any period of time, Gale, his voice gentle and concerned and so full of love, would ask him, How do you feel?

So what does he mean now?

Bucky doesn’t know how he feels. He should feel good. Excited. It’s about damn time this day came around. He’s John fucking Egan, not afraid of anything, born for the sky. He should feel as sure of himself as the day he climbed aboard the SLS.

So why doesn’t he?

He is excited. Don’t get him wrong. He’s been waiting for this since he woke up in a Houston hospital. But there’s a pit in his stomach and a weird, fluttery feeling in his chest and a weight settling over his shoulders that he can’t seem to shake.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He wants it to be the same as it was before. But it isn’t. It can’t be. 

Not anymore. 

“I’m fine.”

Gale frowns in that concerned, knowing way that he does. He looks so soft now, comfy in Bucky’s Yankees sweatshirt with his hair messy, no doubt fresh from debriefing after a ‘mission’ or about ready to get prepped for another. But Bucky squirms and looks away from his gaze; it sees right through him. It always has. 

“Try again,” Gale insists.

“I’m…” Bucky feels a weird phantom twinge in his leg. Blinks and it goes away. He rolls his eyes. At the question? At himself? Get it together. “I’m fuckin’ nervous,” he admits uncomfortably. “Of course I’m fuckin’ nervous, Buck. What if I get out there and…”

What if I get out there and I can’t do it anymore? What if I can’t handle it? Physically. Mentally. What if today just proves what we were all so worried about months ago: Bucky Egan is grounded. For good. 

“Fuck.” He can’t say any of it, can’t risk speaking the death of his career into existence. The melodramatic part of him thinks the bugler might as well start playing Taps right damn now if today doesn’t go his way. Fold up a flag and present it to Gale as the jets fly overhead.

He can only imagine the way Gale would frown and grit his teeth if Bucky said such a thing out loud.

His husband full well knows what Bucky means, though, and he’s quiet, thinking it over. Bucky can see half formed placations tumbling through his head like desperate dreams running on fumes. But eventually, he says, “it’s gonna be okay, John.” His voice is careful and easy, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s faking it. 

It makes Bucky’s heart clench.

“Gale,” he whispers, and he hates how vulnerable his voice sounds. It rings in his ears, echoing back and forth and back and forth as he roughly scrubs a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut tight. 

He’s always felt most in control inside of a cockpit. He knows the way an aircraft moves better than he knows anything or anyone on this Earth, except maybe his husband. Flight makes him know who he is, gives him his metaphorical wings. And yet he’s also never felt more out of control than he has in a cockpit. 

If he goes up there, he has no idea what’ll happen. He has no idea what his body will do when it gets crushed into the seat by several times the force of gravity. He has no idea if the thing that used to lift him up will carry him again, or if it’ll spit him onto the ground in a pathetic heap of has-been.

So how is he supposed to feel right now?

Starbursts of pain color Bucky’s vision. Skull-splitting. All-consuming. It’s burning him alive from the inside out like a physical force trying to rip him apart. He thinks falling into a black hole would hurt less.

He feels sick. The G forces are too much.

He can’t think a coherent thought that isn’t something along the lines of ‘please make it stop.’ Somewhere, deep in his brain that won’t work, he hates himself for that. Knows he should be better.

And out of all of that – this crushing, crunching, nausea-inducing pain that has Curt yelling at him not to throw up in his suit – the words that pop up into his head like a cartoon thought bubble are “the Big Crunch.” 

It’s Gale’s favorite theory for how the universe might end. Because Gale is a space physics nerd that has a favorite theory for how the universe might end.

It’s like the opposite of the Big Bang – an exploding outward from an infinitesimal point, 0 to 73.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec in about a trillionth of a second flat. The Big Crunch would be an imploding inward, a collapsing into a single infinitesimal point at a similarly impossible to comprehend rate. Theoretically, this point could be anywhere in the universe.

John wonders if that would feel something like how he feels – crunching, disconnecting, reconnecting, blinding, unbearable. He sort of wishes it would just happen right now, with that point somewhere in this spacecraft. He’ll take the whole universe down with him. He doesn’t really mind, if it’ll make this stop.

“Gale?” He finds himself crying out the only word he can get past his lips. The only word that matters. The only word that can come remotely close to making any of this better. 

“Gale?”

Why won’t it work? Why won’t Gale save him?

He’s getting more desperate. Please. 

“Gale?”

“John? You with me?”

Bucky blinks. He looks back at his phone, sees Gale’s face, all worried and shit. It makes his heart sink, because Gale’s been looking at him like that a lot in recent months. Today is a big day, and Bucky knows Gale is worrying he won’t be able to handle it. He also knows that Gale feels guilty for worrying he can’t handle it. 

But Bucky’s worried, too.

“I wish you were here.” He says these words so quietly he isn’t sure Gale will hear them. He isn’t sure he wants Gale to hear them. He looks away from the phone as he says it, feeling too vulnerable and too raw on this day when he’s supposed to be Major John Egan: cool, cocky, composed. 

He can pretend for everyone else. Everyone besides Gale. He’ll tell them that he’s ready, even if he isn’t.

He won’t ever be ready until he does it anyway.

The lights are dim around him. In the glow of the console in front of his face, he strokes his fingers gently over the tactile buttons beside the screen. They feel so familiar; he thinks he could press one with his eyes closed and know exactly what it would do.

“I wish I was, too.” Gale’s voice comes back soft and real, bringing Bucky’s attention back to his phone screen. The way Gale’s face is so open and genuine – so unlike what the rest of the world gets to see of him, with a crooked half-smile half-frown accentuating the mix of emotions in his eyes, wide and searching Bucky’s for some answer he doesn’t have – makes Bucky want to pull him through the screen and hug him tight.

He wants Gale to hug him tight. He wants Gale to pull his feet back down to this planet and tell him he’s safe and protect him from everything that has hurt him so badly. He wants Gale to make sure the stars keep burning at night and the world keeps turning and the darkness doesn’t swallow them whole. He wants Gale to quiet the buzzing in his brain and the ringing in his ears. The little voice that’s telling him he can’t do it, can’t do any of it. He wants Gale to come home right damn now and make all of it go away.

But Gale won’t do that. Because he knows that, right this very moment, Bucky needs to climb the rest of the way up this mountain. He needs to stand at the top himself in order to understand that he can do it, he can make it. Gale can’t do anything but stand beside him.

“Do you think I’m ready?” Bucky asks. He says it with a mindless air, looking away as he traces his thumb over the bottom of the console, but there’s a jagged edge to his voice that gives him away. He doesn’t know if he wants Gale’s reply. There was a time when it didn’t matter what anyone else thought – even Buck. Bucky Egan would do what Bucky Egan wanted to do, whatever he convinced himself he was capable of doing.

Some things change. Sometimes forever, and sometimes only for a moment.

He makes tentative eye contact with his husband through the screen. Gale nods – a curt, somewhat hesitant little thing. “Maybe,” he says honestly. “You’re ready to at least try. But if it doesn’t go the way you want it to, you just keep workin’, and you’ll try again. You’re Bucky Egan. Nothing can keep your feet on the ground forever.”

Bucky is about to say something snarky and maybe self-deprecating back, but before he can, there’s a voice in the background of Gale’s side of the call. His eyes widen and he looks off screen, putting a hand up to whoever was trying to get his attention. He looks back at Bucky and sighs. “I gotta go, darlin’. You’ll be alright, hear me?”

Bucky forces a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, obviously.”

“I love you,” Gale says, shoving every bit of adoration he has into those words, and Bucky wants to bottle it up somehow, hold onto it for when he needs a reminder. 

“I love you, too,” he says. 

The corner of Gale’s mouth lifts into a shy smile. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Alone again, Bucky reaches up to turn off his phone, and he lets his hand fall down to rest over his chest. He rubs his thumb over his wedding band, twists it around and around his finger. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he whispers to himself. 

When the master alarm starts blaring through the cabin seconds later, red lights flashing in Bucky’s eyes, his heart rate shoots up as he instinctively starts thinking through every single thing that could possibly be wrong. His eyes scan the console in front of him, searching for system statuses that aren’t there, and he blinks in confusion before he shakes his head, remembering that he isn’t in a training exercise. Someone’s tracked him down. 

He turns off the alarm and lets silence fill the cabin again. 

“You know, when you said you were gonna find somewhere quiet to flirt with your husband, we thought you meant your office or a shady tree or somethin’.” 

Bucky turns his head awkwardly to see Rosie outside, his head ducked down to peek through the hatch at him.  

“It was quiet before you came and scared me half to death,” Bucky retorts. He reaches up and rips his duct taped phone off the console, picking the tape off and rolling it into a ball. 

“If that scares you, you’re in the wrong place,” Rosie quips. He freezes, just for a second, his eyes going that little bit wider, and Bucky sees the moment he realizes what he said. A harmless joke. A truth, if nothing else. Something that would’ve made Bucky throw a meaningless little insult right back at him a year ago. 

Everyone’s been walking on eggshells for a while now. No one would dare even insinuate that John Egan doesn’t belong here, especially not while he’s working so hard to claw his way back. 

But he takes Rosie’s words for what they are, rolls his eyes, and brushes a hand back through his hair. “If you ain’t a little scared you’re doin’ it wrong. Or you’re crazy.”

Rosie lets himself smile, shaking his head, and he crawls in through the hatch. He pulls himself into the seat beside Bucky, where Curt would usually sit. Bucky sticks the tape ball to his shoulder, and Rosie grabs it, shoves it into his pocket before Bucky can bug him with it any more. 

“Man, can you believe we spent weeks cramped up in this thing?” he muses, his eyes skimming over the industrial walls of the tapered conical cabin. He’s talking about the real Orion capsule, not to mention the hundreds of hours logged in this very simulator. 

Bucky glances around. This glorified minivan of a spacecraft is the stuff of his childhood dreams, like something straight from science fiction. “We’re astronauts, Rosie,” he points out, as if he doesn’t wonder every day how he managed to make it this far. “I can’t believe we left the planet at all.” Rosie scoffs, and they share a look, like neither of them are certain anything that’s happened in the last year was real. 

Bucky shakes his head, adding, “not like we ain’t used to it.”

“At least on the station we got more than one cramped space.”

Bucky doesn’t ask the question that surges through his brain at the mention of the station: Do you think I’ll ever go back? He isn’t ready for the answer. And he doesn’t want to hear ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Of course you will’ or ‘You’re John Egan, you can do anything.’

John Egan couldn’t sign his own name with a pen a few months ago.

Instead he looks over at the fake window on the side of the fake capsule, assessing the distance from it to him. It’s so close. “Felt like that window was a world away during the return trip.” He remembers being led over to it. The feeling of Beary Egan’s fur between his fingers. The throbbing in his head. The unbearable burning in his leg. The nausea in his stomach. Everything spinning around him.

But out the window, stars. So many stars. And he was going to get to them one way or another.

Rosie looks at the window, then back at Bucky. The crew physician remembers all of it, all too well. Part of him wishes he could forget the worst parts, but another part of him feels a need to be the keeper of those memories. He thanks the universe everyday for guiding all of them home. “Everything seems further away when your body doesn’t know if it’ll make it to tomorrow.”

They’re quiet for a long time, just two crew members in a capsule mock-up. It has snapshot memories flashing through Bucky’s mind, and he rubs his thumb over his wedding ring again to ground himself. He thinks about Rosie’s words. “I made it,” he whispers. 

“Yeah,” Rosie agrees. “Yes you fuckin’ did.”

It’s a truth that John has been trying to remind himself of every single day for months. He made it; he’s alive. 

But is that enough?

What do you do when the best experience of your life was also your worst? What do you do when the thing you love nearly killed you? What do you do when all is said and done, when there’s nothing left to do but forgive, even though you will never, ever be able to forget?

What do you do when the universe tries to strip away your identity, leaving nothing but a trembling shell, the pieces strewn about for you to pick up one by one?

You rebuild yourself, step by step. And what do you do when the edges don’t fit anymore, rough corners scrubbing at wounds that won’t heal, nothing but sheer grit and determination gluing you together?

Is it enough? Do the pieces fit well enough for you to be whole again? Will time sand away the jagged edges, sew together the messy seams? Pieces lost and pieces gained, and all you can do is search in the dark for who you were and who you thought you were and who you still can be. 

And you wonder, is it enough?

Bucky holds his hand up in front of his face. Out in zero G, there’s no up or down. You’re weightless, every part of you. Holding your hand up in the air takes no more effort than holding it out to the side or down or back or forward. On Earth, though, there’s good old gravity. 9.8 meters per second squared. 32 feet per second per second. A reliable force keeping your heels on the ground so you don’t just float away. With the way Orion’s seats are oriented, Bucky and Rosie lay on their backs, staring up at the tapered ceiling of the capsule and the screens set up in front of their faces.

Here on Earth, holding his hand up in front of his face takes effort. He’s not weightless down here, and as he experimentally pinches his fingers together, he watches the way they shake.

He bites his lip, takes a breath, closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them.

Gale once told him about the conversations he had with Dr. Huston – the fear that even if Bucky even made it home, he may never be the same. Now he wonders if that fear came true. Is he the same? Will he be the same? He doesn’t know.

He wonders if Gale does. He wonders what Gale sees now, when he looks at him.

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter.

Ad lunam. Ad astra.

“You’re gonna be fine, John.” Rosie’s voice cuts through the ringing in Bucky’s ears, quieting it. “This is what you’re meant to do.”

Bucky swallows thickly, willing his voice not to come out a strangled mess. “What if… what if I’m not anymore? What if it doesn’t come back like it’s s’posed to?”

“You’ve been training.”

“What if I never...”

“Take a breath.”

Bucky does. There’s no room for panic. No room for doubt. Just him and the sky. 

“Open your eyes.”

When Bucky releases himself from the darkness, his hand is perfectly still in front of him. He straightens his fingers, bends them again, straightens them. They don’t shake.

“You’re ready, John.”

—

The sun is bright over Ellington Field late that afternoon, and Bucky pushes his aviators up the bridge of his nose. He tugs at the collar of his flight suit as he strides down the runway, adjusting it beneath the straps of his parachute pack, and he squares his shoulders, lifting his chin. He feels the hard pavement beneath his boots, hears the beat of his footsteps. The ground crew waits for him.

When he stops in front of the Northrop T-38 Talon, he squints against the light reflecting off its sleek white side, and he feels his breath catch in his throat at the sight of this beautifully engineered machine that will launch him into the blue. He curls his fingers into a fist, spreads them out wide, and slowly, steadily, he presses his hand to the nose of the jet standing in front of him, just waiting to come to life. The T-38 jet trainers are used by NASA for training exercises and keeping the astronaut corps’ flying skills up to par. He knows this aircraft as well as he knows Orion, but he hasn’t flown it since last July, a whole year ago now. 

“Hey there,” he whispers, letting his eyes roam over it – the fuselage, the engines, the wings, the tail, the wheels. A beautiful bird. It was designed long before Bucky was even born, but it doesn’t look it. “Long time no see.”

“Worried she won’t remember you?”

As Bucky’s eyes stay trained on the ground, studying the wheels, his hand still pressed to the nose, he feels someone else’s presence at his side. He looks up, pulling his hand away. Curt’s there, watching him with a teasing smile on his face. He’s wearing the same gear as Bucky: blue NASA flight suit, G-suit, parachute pack, a helmet tucked under his arm. His other hand grips the shoulder strap of his harness.

“Not one bit,” Bucky replies.

Curt chuckles and pulls Bucky into a tight one-armed hug, as if they haven’t seen each other in months even though Curt makes a point out of bugging him every day. “You ready?” he asks when he pulls away.

Bucky nods and grins in that wild, daring way, as if he hasn’t had a single doubt this whole time. As if he wasn’t just freaking out to Gale and Rosie over what he’s about to do. He brushes his hair back and gazes at the jet again. “Let’s see how well I remember her.”

After passing his sunglasses off to a ground crew member, he climbs the ladder leading to the Talon’s second seat, behind Curt’s. They each stow their procedure documents in the cockpit and hang their helmets on the rail before hopping back down for a walkaround inspection. This thing’s been checked at least twice over by ground crew already, but Curt and John don’t fly without giving their own seal of approval.

When Bucky climbs the ladder again and, at long last, settles into the tight cockpit of a real, flight-ready jet, adrenaline rises in his chest at the same time that a sense of belonging presses him into the seat. He sits back, and staring at the instrument panel just beyond his fingertips feels something like coming home. He can’t stop the grin that spreads over his face. The crew chief helps Curt and Bucky strap in and connect their G-suits, and then Bucky slides his helmet over his head so he can hook up to the oxygen supply and comms. He sighs deeply; for the duration of this test flight, this jet is a part of him, or he’s a part of it.

Ladders stowed and systems checks complete, Curt gives the signal for air, and the ground crewmen oblige, pumping life into the Talon’s engines. Once they’ve completed the last of their pre-flight checks, Bucky hears Curt’s voice buzzing in his ear. It crackles over the comms, a sound Bucky hasn’t heard coherently since he was bounding along the side of Shackleton crater.

“It feels damn good to fly with you again, Major.”

“Cut the crap, Biddick,” Bucky teases. “Without me around, you’re officially NASA’s best pilot.”

Curt scoffs at that, and Bucky imagines him rolling his eyes as he double checks the takeoff and landing data. “Should’ve left your ass on the moon… astrofag.”

Bucky rolls his eyes right back, but he can’t help but laugh. Whether he’ll admit it or not, the name is growing on him. He shrugs, reviewing the same numbers. “Only one way to get back there.”

Chick’s voice cuts in from the tower, and it makes Bucky feel something like relief to know Harding is here for this, rooting for him. “One step at a time, boys.”

As Curt starts taxiing, Bucky looks out over the side of the aircraft. The wings of the Talon and the still-open canopies shake as the tarmac rolls by beneath the wheels, bumping them along. He and Gale have taken their prop plane out a few times this month and last; Bucky even took over the controls for a while one time. But this, today, is his first time back in a supersonic jet trainer. He’s only flying second seat, leaving most of the piloting to Curt, but today is a major stepping stone toward feeling whole again: today he finds out if he can handle supersonic flight.

Since his neurologists cleared him for it a couple months ago, he’s been training for this day in earth-bound simulators. At first, the Gs were too much for him, leaving him feeling weak, pathetic, and discouraged as he passed out or started feeling sick at embarrassingly low G forces. But it’s been coming back to him in recent weeks. 

The Talon – capable of flying at Mach 1.3 and climbing 30,000 feet in just one minute – can easily pull 7 Gs. Bucky thinks he’s ready. He wants so badly to be ready. He wouldn’t be flying today if anyone thought he wasn’t ready.

They’re at the end of the runway, staring down the length of it as Curt pivots the Talon so its nose points straight ahead. When Chick clears them, they lower their canopies, and Bucky feels the cabin pressurize. He blinks in surprise as they lurch forward, and then they’re barrelling ahead, faster, faster, faster, until they lift up off the ground, ascending into the clear sky.

He breathes deeply as they climb, picking up speed as they shoot up into their airspace, approaching 16,000 feet. They coast there for a minute, making sure everything is still in order up at altitude. 

“Doin’ alright back there?” Curt asks as they both check their systems again.

“We’re go back here,” Bucky affirms. “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

“Your wish is my command, Major,” Curt says. He lowers the nose of the jet, and they pick up speed as they drop again, getting up to about 500 knots, three-quarters of the speed of sound. Curt brings the stick back then, sharply pulling the Talon’s nose up, and Bucky watches the G-meter gradually kick up to 5 as they shoot upwards. The force presses him back into his seat, making it hard to breathe, and he clenches his muscles as he feels his G-suit get to work trying to keep the blood from draining away from his head. The needle creeps toward 6, goes a little over it. He grits his teeth hard, feeling his heart start to beat harder, faster as his vision starts to tunnel. His head feels funnier than he wishes it would, but he forces himself to focus, strains to breathe, determined to keep going. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, tensing his lower body as he and his suit fight to prevent G-LOC.

Chick’s voice crackles in Bucky’s ears. “You’re doin’ fine, son.”

Curt keeps pulling back until they’re up around 20,000 feet and the nose passes vertical; they’re now flying inverted. The nose of the Talon is like an arrow, going wherever you point it, and currently it’s looping them over backward at Curt’s command, with the ground through the canopy where the sky should be. The G-meter starts to chill out, dropping again as they lose speed. Bucky’s vision clears as the blood returns to his head, and he breathes in deeply.

Through the canopy, he catches a glimpse of two lonely, fluffy clouds in the distant sky, and below, little buildings and invisible people and dark, sparkling bodies of water spread out across the Earth. Stardust, he thinks, smiling just a little bit as he watches the world around him, trying to see it through Gale’s eyes. Bucky’s always found it beautiful, but more than anything, he’s always cared about the flight, the adrenaline, the excitement. Gale cares about the beauty, the wonder, the imperfect perfection.

“You still with me, Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky assures Curt. “I’m here.”

Curt expertly flips them around and levels back out, upright once again and coasting along at a smooth 400 knot clip. “You ready?” he asks after giving Bucky some time to recover.

“I didn’t come all this way not to be.”

“I don’t need the sass,” Curt shoots back, but it’s light, like normal. “You have the controls.” Bucky’s pretty sure he hears the word ‘asshole’ muttered at the end of that sentence, and it makes him smile.

He shakes the stick in confirmation, and suddenly he has all the power of the Talon right there in his hands. His eyes flick down to where his fingers grip the stick, his heart skipping a beat, but his hand is perfectly still. “I have the aircraft,” he says, and he hopes Chick is still listening.

He sends them into a roll, feeling giddy as his head gets snapped to the side and his body seems to remember exactly what it’s supposed to do. Flying this thing is ingrained within him, like riding a bike – a bike that’s 46 feet long with a 25 foot wingspan, 3,000 pounds of thrust, a 55,000 foot altitude ceiling, and a top speed of 858 miles per hour. 

He asks the plane for a little more, a little more, pushing them higher, faster, forward. He hears Curt whoop loudly into the comms: “Come on baby! We’re fuckin’ back!” And Bucky hasn’t felt this alive since he was on the moon.

After a few minutes of unfiltered glee at the helm of his long-lost ship, feeling pieces of his soul sink back into him, he banks them around and hands the controls back over to Curt for the grand finale, their final test of the day. At about 32,000 feet, they enter a shallow dive, using it to increase their speed again. Bucky feels himself being pressed back, but with a more comfortable amount of force this time as the sky blurs by. He watches the airspeed indicator. Mach 0.92… 0.96… 0.98… 0.99. The indicator jumps, out of sync, as the bow shock passes.

Bucky nearly gasps as they hit Mach 1… 1.02… 1.06… 1.11. 

A strange feeling of calm descends on him. They’re flying faster than the speed of sound; they’re flying faster than anything else on Earth. There’s a certain beauty to it that Bucky’s missed in the last eight months, and he blinks away stubborn tears as the world starts to make sense again. He looks out the window, sees nothing but blue skies, and he lets oxygen fill his lungs as he grins beneath his mask. He laughs, and he hears Curt laugh with him.

—

Back on the ground, once the canopies are up and Curt’s parked them squarely in the Talon’s hangar, the crew chief secures the ladders to the side of the aircraft, giving the pilots their exit. He asks Bucky if he feels alright, and Bucky nods once his helmet is off, leaving dark, sweaty hair sticking up in all directions. “Never better,” he says.

In his head is a steady mantra: I am an astronaut. I am an Air Force officer. I am a pilot.

He just proved it to himself, even if he still has more work to do. He is a pilot. He is all of those things. Not was… he is. 

He climbs down slowly, gripping tight to the sides of the ladder in a way that has him second guessing how much brain power he needs to dedicate to his grip strength. Just a few months ago, his fingers wouldn’t listen well enough to do even this. But he studies his hands for just a split second, one foot on the rungs of the ladder and the other hanging mid-air, and he realizes that his fingers are working just fine right now. His legs feel a little weak as he steps down, down, down, and he holds his breath as he lowers himself the last big step to solid ground. His head goes just a little fuzzy, and for a nerve-wracking half second, he worries his knee might give out and send him crashing to the pavement, but his toes find contact, and he lets himself hop down. His head clears. He takes another deep breath.

His heart is beating fast; he still feels the adrenaline thrumming in his chest, and it makes him feel so goddamn alive. The world around him feels so unreal, the feeling of Curt clapping him on the shoulder so far away that it makes Bucky stumble to the side. He laughs and shakes his head before turning to press his hand to the jet one more time. 

“Next stop, flyin’ her yourself,” Curt says.

For the first time in months, Bucky actually believes it might happen. It’s not even a half-truth said to the media, a manifesto spoken to shove him through PT, a dream to get him out of bed in the morning. It’s right here in front of him, just inches away, and he’s so close. 

He doesn’t say any of it out loud, but he knows Curt can see it, too. They all can see it. Someday soon, John Egan won’t be grounded anymore.

He tucks his helmet under his arm and takes his aviators from the crew chief with a nod of thanks before putting them on. With a glance over at his best co-pilot as they walk away from the aircraft, out of the hangar, he ruffles Curt’s sweaty hair. “What the fuck?” Curt says, but he’s looking somewhere out ahead of them when he says it.

Bucky squints into the early evening summer sun at a small silhouette running fast toward them. After a second of confusion, he laughs and sinks down to his knees just in time for a wriggly husky to crash into his chest. “Pep!” A second one runs up to his side, licking at his ear before going after Curt. “And Meatball,” Bucky laughs. Pepper shoves her nose into his face, making him lean his head back, pushing her away even as he curls his fingers into her thick coat. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Flyin’ looks good on you major,” a voice calls out. Bucky’s heart skips a beat, and his head shoots up, his hands freezing in the middle of scratching Pepper’s ears. Meatball trots away, toward the group of people approaching them. 

There’s Benny and Marge – here for support and for media updates respectively – as Bucky expected. Then there’s Chick, fresh from the tower and looking something like a proud father, or maybe just a relieved boss.

And then there’s Gale.

Bucky’s husband – the same one that Bucky was supposedly video calling in Iceland just hours ago – is now also in a NASA flight suit with his hair gelled back. He’s walking across the tarmac to him, illuminated by the sun. 

“Holy shit, man!” Benny exclaims, giving Bucky a firm, excited side hug before slapping Curt on the shoulder. “Bucky Egan is back.”

“That’s right, you can’t get rid of me,” Bucky jokes as Marge comes forward to hug him. He knows she’ll want some pictures of him and Curt by the Talon in a minute, but for now she just whispers in his ear that she’s proud of him, and she squeezes him tight.

Chick pulls him into a rare hug, patting him on the back. “You did damn good,” he says. “Damn good.”

And then there’s Gale. He stands in front of Bucky, looking a little sheepish but tall and proud and beautiful. He raises an eyebrow, and Bucky can’t do anything but stare at him for a long moment. He stares, and stares some more, before finally he blinks and surges forward. Gale grunts at the force of Bucky’s body hitting his, but he firmly plants his feet and wraps his arms around him. “Hello to you, too.”

“Hey, angel,” Bucky whispers. He presses his nose into Gale’s hair, inhales the scent of his shampoo and product. He smells like Houston, like the gulf, like waking up to sunlight shining through the windows, like all the things Bucky loves. He smells like home. “All that about what you were doin’ in Iceland today was bullshit, huh?” 

Gale shrugs. “Surprise?”

Bucky grips the fabric of Gale’s flight suit, twisting it in his fingers. “Were you… did you see?”

Gale nods. “I saw all of it.”

Bucky bites back a grin, hiding it against the side of Gale’s head. He hears Marge take their picture. It’ll be framed and on his desk within the week.

—

By the time the sun’s gone down, the Talon tucked away in its hangar and the ground crew gone for the day, Bucky is back at Ellington Field, sitting on the hard pavement of the runway. There’s the lightest breeze drifting around him, carried in off the bay to relieve Houston from the oppressive heat of the daylight. Major Egan is still in his flight suit, adorned with patches – his name, John Egan, written in neat script beneath a set of wings; the NASA logo; the U.S. flag; his ISS mission patch; and finally, Artemis III.

There’s a crescent moon peeking out of the darkness, set against a backdrop of dark blue-black sky pockmarked with the stars that have guided Bucky his entire life. He stares up at them, the moon and the stars, his mind jumping from one thing to the next. Running through his flight today, everything good and bad about it; thinking through how much further he still has to go until his body is 100% ready to fly alone again; wondering if Gale is looking for him, if he knows Bucky well enough to know where to find him. He’s remembering walking on that moon – every day he works to reconcile it all in his brain, what went wrong and what went right. He’s thinking about what it will be like when Gale goes up there in just a short four or so months.

He can hear footsteps walking over the pavement, and he breathes out in a huff. His husband knows him like the back of his own hand after all.

He spares a glance over as Gale settles on the ground beside him, pulling his knees to his chest in a way that Bucky thinks can’t possibly be comfortable anymore at their age. They sit, close enough that their arms brush, and they look up at the sky that has laid the path for their entire existence.

“Everyone’s headin’ to the Hundred Proof,” Gale says. “Thought you’d wanna drink to being back in the cockpit.”

Bucky hums. “Guess that’s somethin’ I oughta do.” Since he was released from the hospital last December, the Hundred Proof has become a place of celebration and camaraderie again, rather than one of collective grief and worry. His Artemis portrait went up on the walls of the bar just before the new year, along with Curt’s, Rosie’s, and Alex’s. Soon enough, Gale’s ISS portrait will be switched out for his Artemis 4 one, too. Buck and Bucky; one is never far behind the other. 

Bucky crosses his legs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, still looking up as if he can see the entire universe if he only squints hard enough. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?”

“Have we?”

Bucky looks over at Gale again, scoffing in disbelief, but he finds Gale hiding a smirk as he presses his cheek to his knee, watching Bucky. His hair is messy again from running his hand through it, the gel never holding for long, and Bucky rolls his eyes, reaching a hand out to ruffle it some more. 

“It’s worth it,” he says matter of factly, letting his eyes drift back to the stars.

Gale scoots closer and lets his head fall against Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s our life,” he agrees. He doesn’t need to emphasize the our; it’s as if there was never any doubt in this universe that his life would be John’s and John’s would be his.

“Sometimes I can’t really believe I made it here.”

“You were never gonna take no for an answer.” Gale doesn’t know exactly which part of Bucky’s life they’re talking about. He wasn’t going to settle for less than the astronaut corps. And he wasn’t going to settle for less than Gale either. 

“I said sometimes,” Bucky mutters, but there comes a point, no matter how badly you’ve always wanted something, where it doesn’t feel real anyways. He doesn’t quite know what he did right to make it to this very spot, even if he can trace his exact path, every single step and crossroads and difficult decision. Sometimes, all he feels is fucking lucky.

Gale scoffs and turns his head, pressing his nose against Bucky’s neck, above the collar of his flight suit. He kisses the delicate skin there. “I never had a doubt,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you.”

Bucky leans back, pulling Gale with him until they’re both laying on the hard ground. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but Gale curls against Bucky’s body anyway, shifting so his head lays right over his heart. Bucky’s fingers curl into his hair. They don’t shake. They don’t even hesitate.

“It’s a damn good life,” Bucky breathes out, the words floating up to the heavens and wrapping around them both. He means it with everything he has. 

Gale hums in agreement. With his ear pressed to Bucky’s chest, he can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong. It’s a sound that he took for granted before, but he never, ever gets tired of it now. He squeezes his eyes shut and silently counts along. One. Two. Three. Four.

“You’ll come home, right?” Bucky asks. Few people in this world would be able to distinguish the slight tremble to his voice, the way it jumps almost imperceptibly, nerves twining through it. But Gale hears it loud and clear. With his cheek pressed to Bucky’s chest, he feels the rise and fall start to slow, feels the way Bucky is nearly holding his breath.

Gale closes his eyes, bites at his lower lip. He knows that Bucky knows better than to ask that question. Both of them know that their line of work has never, not once, come with guarantees. They know better than anyone that promises like that are as good as empty. And yet, without promises, what is there to keep them moving forward?

So Gale buries his face in Bucky’s chest and says the only thing he can say. “When have you ever known me not to come home?”

Bucky scoffs quietly at that, but Gale knows that’s all he wanted to hear. They both know that, technically, the odds of him making it home are high; the opposite outcome, statistically, has little to no standing. Bucky takes Gale’s hand, and he mindlessly fiddles with Gale’s fingers in a way that feels normal and domestic, like they’re just any other married couple in this funny little world. Like they’re just them – awkward teenagers and reckless young adults and newlyweds all at once.

Gale could count the days until he launches out of this planet’s orbit. The hours. The minutes. He could mentally tally them as they tick by, pulling them closer and closer to the next adventure, the next mission, the next dream. The clock is running.

But, despite it looming over them, with all of the excitement and adrenaline and worry that it entails, at this exact moment, beneath a sky full of stars, it feels far away. He could count down the seconds. He could feel the anticipation of it winding through his body with every beat of his heart. 

But instead, he focuses on Bucky. He counts his husband’s heartbeats, the purest sign that they are both alive, that they are both exactly where they need to be. One. Two. Three. Four.

“Ad lunam, ad astra,” Bucky whispers into the night.

Gale hides a smile against the fabric of Bucky’s flight suit. It smells like flight – fuel and sweat. He focuses on that, on the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, on the feeling of warmth between them, the sticky summer air drifting through their hair. 

“To the moon, to the stars,” he repeats back. And with a soft smile, he lets himself breathe.

[mimisempai]

You are the wind beneath my wings 2/?

Chapter Summary

Aziraphale and Jophiel become closer and closer, so much so that Aziraphale can't stand the sadness on the archangel's face and decides to ask some questions. 

Unfortunately, by the time he realizes his mistake, it's too late.

Notes

My nemesis, writing angst, here we go...

On Ao3

Rating G -  3472 words

Master post for this story here

"Oh, Aziraphale! You're just in time!"

Aziraphale flew toward Jophiel and raised an astonished eyebrow, "Why? Another crank to turn? Another star to heal?"

The red-haired angel shook his head and replied, "Something far more amazing!"

Aziraphale's first instinct was to tell him that what was amazing was that Jophiel was asking for his help, but he remained silent and listened to the one he now liked to call his friend. 

Amused at the archangel's excitement, he said, "Tell me?"

"Today we will create a binary star system."

As so often since his regular visits to Jophiel, Aziraphale didn't understand a word, and in a now well-honed routine, the red-haired angel explained with a flourish of gestures.

"It's a double star. If you prefer, the union of two stars that formed together. The two stars in these systems orbit around a common center of mass, which means they're tied together by gravity. It's a bit like a dance that goes on for millions of years and never ends because these stars can't exist without each other."

Aziraphale, who had been listening intently, murmured, "It's beautiful..."

"Oh yes, you'll see, they'll shine like -"

Aziraphale shook his head and interrupted, "I mean, it's beautiful that they can't exist without each other. To have such a deep and lasting and strong bond, it's incredible. I didn't know it could exist."

Jophiel hummed, then added in a whisper, "Just as I didn't know an angel like you could exist."

Aziraphale turned his head sharply toward him and asked, "What do you mean?"

Jophiel turned to the colorful sky before them and made a few gestures to move a star or two before answering without looking at Aziraphale, "I'm an archangel, but I'm not particularly respected among my peers. I mean, they don't tell me anything, but I feel it. The only one who listens to me a little bit is Saraqael. But I know that's only because they needed me to develop the Horsehead Nebula. Not exactly a common interest. But you... ever since I've known you, you listen to everything I say, ask me for explanations when you don't understand, compliment me on my job."

"Isn't that... quite normal?"

Jophiel shrugged self-deprecatingly.

"Not for me anyway."

Aziraphale was speechless. 

He had never imagined that someone like Jophiel, such a brilliant archangel, could feel as inadequate as he felt most of the time. 

He replied gently, "I have nothing to gain from this, so please know that when I listen to you, ask for explanations, or even compliment you, it's all from me and absolutely sincere."

"Thank you."

"So, this binary star system."

"Oh, I see you've picked up the vocabulary."

Aziraphale nudged the other angel with his shoulder and replied with a wink, "I have drunk your words, my dear."

"Cheeky angel."

Jophiel turned toward the sky and with a gesture sent two small particles flying toward them, so small that Aziraphale could not really see them until they landed in the palm of Jophiel's hand.

The archangel said softly, "Like last time, with the 'sick' star, but this time..."

He took Aziraphale's hand and placed it over his own, the two small particles between their palms, and continued, "Put your other hand underneath and I'll put mine on top."

Aziraphale immediately felt the same warm sensation as their hands touched.

Then Jophiel continued, "And now, like last time, infuse your power, just a little more, because it's about creation."

"Do you think I will be able to-"

The archangel gently stroked the back of Aziraphale's hand with his thumb and said kindly, "Absolutely. I have no doubt."

Then, squeezing his hand, he added, "Are you ready?"

Aziraphale nodded.

"Together."

Aziraphale closed his eyes to focus his power and directed it at the two particles between the palms of his and Jophiel's hands.

He heard a small gasp that caused him to open his eyes to see the same purple glow surrounding their joined hands. The glow was even more vivid and radiant than on the previous occasions, and Aziraphale couldn't help but gasp.

He and Jophiel bent their faces over their clasped hands and could feel the tiny particles transforming and growing beneath their palms.

The archangel said gently, "Let us open our hands now."

Aziraphale obeyed and removed his hands to see the two small particles in Jophiel's palms, now beautifully glowing. 

Jophiel lifted his hand upward and said softly, "Come, my little ones, come, fly together."

Then he sent his hand forward, and Aziraphale watched in amazement as the two particles flew off into a corner of the colorful sky. At first the two little stars appeared to be one, then they separated, as if each were taking a different path, before circling back to each other, and so on. Turning and turning in an endless dance.

He murmured, "Bound forever."

Then he looked down at his hand and continued, "I did that."

Suddenly, Jophiel's hand came to rest on his and his voice said softly, "We did that."

Instinctively, Aziraphale's fingers closed around the archangel's hand, and when he realized this, he wanted to pull it away, but Jophiel wouldn't let him and intertwined his fingers with Aziraphale's.

Just like that, hand in hand, they gazed at the two little stars circling each other, and Aziraphale once again felt that perfect sense of adequacy he felt every time he was in the archangel's presence.

Suddenly, the harmony of the moment was shattered by a sigh from Jophiel.

Aziraphale turned his head in concern and asked, "What is it?

Jophiel turned his head to look at him and said in a sad voice, "What's the point?"

"What?"

"What's the point of what I'm doing if it's doomed to disappear?"

Aziraphale didn't know how to answer, for what was there to answer? Even he now realized the absurdity of the situation. Even more so now that he had actively participated in the creation process. Creating stars so that men could worship the God who had created them, when God herself had done nothing. 

He asked Jophiel, "Do you still intend to ask questions?"

The archangel nodded.

"I just need to find the right time."

How Aziraphale hated the veil of sadness he saw in the other angel's gaze, and once again blamed himself for putting it there.

He murmured, "I'm sorry."

"Why should you be, you're not responsible. You were just telling me the truth."

"Yes, but..."

Jophiel, letting go of Aziraphale's hand, turned fully to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, saying gently, "No but, you didn't do anything wrong."

"But this isn't fair. "

"Where is that angel scrivener who so passionately told me not so long ago that the plans of the Almighty are not to be questioned?"

Aziraphale replied earnestly, "The scrivener opened his eyes, thanks to an handsome, slightly mad star maker, and realized that the universe is much more than inexplicable plans."

Seeing the archangel's eyes widen in surprise, he wondered what he'd said to make him react this way.

Handsome star maker

What an idiot.

Once again, his mouth was working faster than his brain.

"Do you think I'm handsome?"

The archangel leaned toward him, their faces now close enough that Aziraphale could feel his breath on his skin.

He swallowed and nodded slowly.

"Scrivener Aziraphale!"

Aziraphale and Jophiel jumped and parted just as an angel Aziraphale didn't recognize appeared.

The angel maintained a rigid posture and addressed Aziraphale.

"37th Degree Recording Angel Muriel. I have been asked by Archangel Michael to remind you that you must complete the reports for scrolls 200 through 235 immediately, and that they won't tolerate any further delay."

With these words, the angel Muriel disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, and Aziraphale looked sheepishly at Jophiel.

"It seems I must go."

The archangel grinned impishly as he replied, "Saved by duty, hm?"

Aziraphale replied, "Saved from what?"

Jophie answered cryptically, "Who knows?"

Then his expression softened as he added, "Thanks Aziraphale, I really had a lovely time with you."

Aziraphale shyly replied, "Me too."

"Go on, do your duty."

Aziraphale was about to leave when he couldn't resist.

"Can I come..."

"Do you want to come-"

They both laughed in embarrassment, then Aziraphale motioned for the archangel to speak first.

Jophiel asked him softly, "Do you want to come back when you've finished your reports?"

Aziraphale nodded eagerly and replied, "I was going to ask you if I could come back."

"It's a deal then."

Jophiel held out his hand and Aziraphale took it.

Again, the same warmth as their hands touched.

They let the handshake linger, then Jophiel let go before sweeping his hand away, "Come on, shoo! Or they'll scold you again."

Laughing lightly, Aziraphale flew away and couldn't help but look back before he left for good.

He saw that Jophiel was sighing again, the look of sadness back on his face.

As Aziraphale flew to the archives, he whispered to himself, a new determination in his eyes, "I will be the one asking the questions."

**********

And so, having done his duty, not without a reprimand or two from Michael, he found himself in the vestibule of Metatron's office, waiting to be met.

"How much trouble can I get into just for asking a few questions?"

Jophiel's words came back to Aziraphale and gave him courage. It was true, they weren't prying questions. They simply wanted to know why. If it was really necessary to stop everything.

"Aziraphale, 38th degree scrivener, you may enter."

Aziraphale rose and entered Metatron's office, who beckoned him to sit down with a benevolent smile on his lips.

"What can I do for you?"

"Uh... um... I wanted to know if it would be possible to have an audience with Her?"

"With Her?"

Aziraphale cleared his throat and replied, "The... the Almighty."

The Metatron leaned forward and said in a friendly tone, "And why do you want to meet Her?"

Aziraphale, encouraged by the Metatron's kind attitude, replied in a slightly more confident voice, "I would like to ask her some questions."

The Metatron rose and leaned against the desk next to Aziraphale before asking, "What kind of question?"

"Well, I was wondering... about shutting everything down, if it was mandatory, you know? I mean, what's the point of creating something so beautiful if it doesn't last? And I..."

Aziraphale had to stop because the Metatron had grabbed him by the collar and forced him to stand up. The face of the highest angel in heaven had lost all benevolence and his features were now distorted with anger as he almost spat in Aziraphale's face.

"How dare you! How dare you, you pathetic scrivener, question Her plans! What impudence!" 

He dropped Aziraphale, who barely caught himself on the chair where he'd been sitting just before, as Metatron resumed, hammering his finger on Aziraphale's chest as he continued, his anger seeming even stronger, "It's him! I'm sure he's the one who polluted your mind! That cheap archangel! That star-maker! Stars? Useless in my opinion! One of his whims! She's the one who wanted him to be an archangel! What a mistake! But I'll fix it, right away!"

He called, "37th degree angel scrivener Muriel! In my office!"

Aziraphale saw the angel appear and stand at attention, awaiting Metatron's orders.

"Get me Archangel Jophiel, immediately!"

"Yes, your reverence."

Muriel left as quickly as they had arrived and Aziraphale was filled with fear, wondering what Metatron's plans were.

Why had he spoken?

Why had he not followed the advice he had given Jophiel?

He had no time to wonder any further, for Jophiel entered the office, followed by Muriel.

"Helloooo, Your Reverence. You asked for me, it's annoying because you see the nebula I had to start for-"

"SILENCE!"

Jophiel realized that Aziraphale was also here and was about to approach him when Metatron continued, "So you're not happy with God's plans? Do you question her decisions?"

Aziraphale tried to intervene, "It's not him, it's me-"

"Aziraphale, what have you done?"

"I'm sorry, you were so sad after I told you what was going to happen. I tried to undo what I had done."

"Oh Aziraphale..."

"ENOUGH!"

The two angels turned to Metatron, who was addressing Muriel behind them, "Scrivener Muriel, take a scroll and please write down the following words."

Muriel grabbed a scroll and stood ready to write.

"Archangel Jophiel, Star Maker and Architect of Heaven, by this edict you are dethroned for the crime of high treason and rebellion against the Almighty. You are stripped of your flaming sword, your name, and everything that makes you an archangel... Your memory will be erased, and you will forget everything you've ever been and done. Everyone in heaven will forget that you ever existed.

Aziraphale cried out in despair, "No, no, I've asked the questions! Punish me, not him! He hasn't done anything. You can't..."

Metatron sarcastically replied, "Oh, yes, I can, and don't worry, you will be punished as well. You'll learn the cost of trying to thwart God's plans. Muriel,  give me the scroll.”

Muriel handed the parchment to Metatron with a trembling hand and resumed their seat, casting both frightened and desolate glances in the direction of Jophiel and Aziraphale.

Suddenly Metatron raised his hand and said, "Now Muriel, you are going to walk out of this office and by the time you are through the door you will forget you were there and what you saw and go back to your work. Saraqael will be notified and will assign you to a new place of work...more remote. " 

Muriel had no time to protest as the Metatron brought his hand down and Aziraphale and Jophiel felt the flow of power pass between them, reaching Muriel behind them.

Stunned, they saw the angel's expression turn blank before they left the office.

Then Metatron said in a cold voice, "Aziraphale, 38th degree scrivener, you are to remain in this position until further notice. Under no circumstances are you to discuss anything to do with Archangel Jophiel or his disappearance."

Metatron smirked and continued, "No one will believe you anyway. If you tell anyone, if you even question the Almighty's plans, Jophiel's name will be erased from the Book of Life. While the one for whom you did this will know nothing, you will remember everything. So you'll never forget that the plans of the Almighty are unfathomable and that you have no right to question them."

While Metatron was speaking, Aziraphale hadn't noticed that Jophiel had grabbed his hand, and it wasn't until he squeezed it that he realized.

Metatron added, "Since I am magnanimous, I will give you a few moments to say your goodbyes. Do not attempt to flee, this place is surrounded by a protective ward that prevents anyone but me from exercising power."

With these words, he disappeared, leaving Jophiel and Aziraphale alone.

Aziraphale immediately turned to the archangel and, ignoring the tears streaming down his cheeks, said, "I'm so sorry, I never should have done this."

He was interrupted by Jophiel's finger on his lips, "Shh, don't be. It was you or me. I'm the one who got you involved in the first place. Listen to me, we don't have much time and..."

Aziraphale gasped and saw that the archangel's lips didn't move, but heard his voice continuing in his head.

"There's so much I wanted to say to you. Can you hear me, Angel?"

Aziraphale whispered aloud, "Angel?"

Jophiel smiled, his voice echoing in Aziraphale's head.

"In your head."

Aziraphale tried to answer mentally.

"How can you do that?"

"It's in the archangel's starter pack. Aziraphale, let's not waste time, would you mind if I took you in my arms? That way we can communicate without arousing suspicion if we're being watched."

"Yes."

"Good."

A little stiff at first, it was the first time he'd done this, after all, Aziraphale let Jophiel wrap his arms around him before instinctively wrapping his own around the archangel's waist. 

"Is that okay?"

Aziraphale nodded against Jophiel.

"In your head."

"Ah... Um... Yes, that's good."

"Okay, now listen to me without reacting. I think there's something much bigger behind the old bastard's overreaction."

"But how..."

"Let me continue. I can feel it. Unfortunately, Angel, it's all up to you now. You're the only one who knows, and you'll have to keep it a secret. Probably for a long time. You'll have to show that you're obedient, regain his trust."

"But what about you?"

"I don't know, but what is certain is that I will be somewhere and alive, otherwise why use blackmail with the Book of Life?"

"It makes sense."

"Of course it does. Then you'll find me, tomorrow, in a thousand years, it doesn't matter, but you will, and then you'll have to wait again. Until you're sure you're safe from Metatron, don't tell me anything. It's far too dangerous. Do you understand?"

"I... I think so."

Jophiel's arms tightened around him as his voice echoed in his head again.

"You'll have to be brave, Angel."

"I don't know if I will be ab-"

"I do. You're special. Remember our magic. And when you doubt, when you falter, think of the two stars that have their own orbits and never stop circling each other. Kind of like us, except I'll be off course for a while and you'll have to bring me back into orbit. Do you think you'll be able to do that, Angel?"

Aziraphale pressed himself a little tighter against the archangel's chest, drawing all the strength he could.

"Yes. I will. I, Aziraphale, 38th degree angel scrivener, do solemnly swear that I will never give up."

"An official oath? Then I'll make one, too. Although I probably won't remember it until you give me my memories back. I, Archangel Jophiel, Star Maker and Architect of Heaven, solemnly swear to do everything in my power to protect Aziraphale, 38th degree angel scrivener."

"How will you do that if you can't remember?"

"You'll find a way to make me remember, I'm sure."

Suddenly, Jophiel held him even tighter.

"He's back. I can feel it."

They let go immediately.

"Remember our vows, Angel. I believe in you."

"I promise you, Jophiel, I'll do everything I can to find you. One day you'll remember me. You'll remember that I l-"

"Well, the goodbyes are over. I think I've given you enough time. Aziraphale, you may leave us."

"Your Reverence, I'd like to stay until the end."

"Angel, no!"

"I want your last memory of this moment to be my face and not his."

Metatron nodded, "As you wish."

He raised his hand and, as with Muriel, lowered it, and Aziraphale felt Metatron's power the moment he touched the archangel.

"Angel?"

For the first time since the beginning, he saw and felt the fear in Jophiel.

"Look at me. Just look at me."

"Never forget our promise."

"Never."

Aziraphale saw the moment when all memory vanished from Jophiel.

"Ang..."

"Who are you?"

Aziraphale's heart shattered into a thousand pieces as Jophiel continued, looking terrified, "Who am I?"

Metatron replied coldly, "Nobody," and Jophiel vanished from view.

The angel gasped and couldn't help but reach out into the void where Jophiel had just been.

"Jophiel?"

There was no voice in his head anymore. He really was gone.

Aziraphale turned to Metatron and whispered, "What have you done with him?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"But..."

"You have something to say?"

Aziraphale shook his head and Metatron added, "You can retire and go back to work."

"Be obedient. Regain his trust. "

With Jophiel's words echoing in his head, Aziraphale murmured, "Very well, Your Reverence," before turning and leaving the office.

Then, instead of going straight to the archives, he made a detour, a final transgression, and a few moments later he was looking at Jophiel's stars. The only physical proof of his existence. That he had not been a figment of Aziraphale's imagination.

Aziraphale, heavy-hearted but refusing to give in to despair, took one last look at Jophiel's work and, watching the movement of the two stars they had created together, murmured, "Wait for me, I'll find you again."

Then he turned and sank into the black web before flying back to the archives.

Present time

"Aziraphale, we're here."

Metatron's voice beside him in the elevator snapped him out of his thoughts and memories.

"I'll let you get settled at your desk, I need to see the other archangels and tell them we have a new supreme archangel..."

Aziraphale nodded affably, a smile on his lips, but as soon as Metatron was gone, his smile disappeared, giving way to a determined expression as he muttered silently, "Crowley, wait for me, it's time for me to fulfill my promise."

"In your head, Angel."

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story  🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Ineffable fan fictions Masterpost : here

[daisychainsandbowties]

actually (i’m not sorry) let’s talk about force-bonded jedi knights Shannon and Mary.

“A Force-bond was a powerful connection between two Force-sensitive individuals that bridged their minds, allowing them to communicate through the Force both visually and emotionally.

The range of the bond was vast; it could span the galaxy, keeping two beings united in a psychic link despite the physical distance between them. As a result, both parties would manifest in each other's location at the same time, making it possible for them to see, hear and feel each other through their bond.”

thinking of Shannon standing in the hallway watching death approach and reaching out, finding that familiar hand, half-memory and half-desire. clutching it even as she raises her saber in the last extreme defense of Ava.

burning her life because she used to dream of holding a blue saber, of going out in glory, but love taught her to long for balance, for harmony, for peace. for green.

and she would have lived in peace, with Mary on some far-flung planet. tinkering with ships and growing too old, too fast. fixing up droids and complaining about the weather and painting the shutters in spring.

but she’s a jedi, so what she has is only an instant of that peace as she feels Mary come awake in a distant place. one last prayer on her lips. “let it be safe. let it be safe and very far away.”

whispering, “i’m sorry. i couldn’t face this part alone.”

distance had never stopped them and it doesn’t stop Shannon from dying with Mary’s arms around her.

they grow up hand-in-hand, youngling Shannon missing a piece of herself until she finds Mary. this odd, thoughtful girl from incredibly far away, who knows about engine specs and torque but not the laws of physics.

telekinetically passing her notes in class, sending them adrift like little white birds. Mary initially dumps them all in the wastepaper bin at the end of their classes, head spinning with physics and math and chemistry and kinetics and protocol and all the myriad things a jedi must know.

but eventually she unfolds them, hiding her blush with her binder of notes. chickenscratch handwriting and little diagrams of a cartoon Shannon (labelled) bonking a cartoon Mary on the head with a saber.

back when Shannon thought hers would be blue.

Mary most at home with a practice blade in her hand, trying to get used to the airy spaces in the jedi temple, quiet courtyards and the soft shuffle of pages in the archives. she sneaks into the hanger bay (as Ava will, in another decade) to look at the ships, to touch them, remembering the desert and the podracers kicking up sand. storms sweeping in to eat the sun.

scowling when Shannon takes her lunch tray over to sit at the far end of Mary’s table, so she can wink at her.

and then, one day, looking up and finding her beautiful.

after that they sit next to each other. binary stars slipping into orbit, trading from tray-to-tray; blue milk for the strawberry one. Mary eating Shannon’s greens when the jedi look away.

Mary growing closer almost against her will to this whirlwind of a girl. how she spars in the early morning with the empty air. she wakes up early to watch, pretending it's the dawn that draws her down, peering around a pillar, stunned at the grace of Shannon pivoting through the air, flipping over imaginary opponents.

asking her, as they perch on a balcony to watch the sunset over the endless cityscape, “why did you bother with me?”

Shannon has her face pressed sleepily into Mary’s shoulder. she plays with the hem of her tank top, “what d’you mean?”

“it just… seemed like you wanted to know me before you even knew me.”

“i did.”

Mary, turns her head, looking at the profile of Shannon curled up against her. warm. “yeah, but why?”

“i don’t know. i just had a feeling.”

they go together to Ilum, to get their kyber crystals, running through the icy cave systems. Shannon helps Mary when they climb and Mary clutches a half-conscious Shannon to her chest when they fall into freezing water. “i got you.”

“i k-k-know.” through chattering teeth, Mary letting Shannon slip her cold hands under her shirt for warmth. a wicked smile in the ice-warped dimness. "s-s-score."

saber fights late at night with blue offshoots of light dancing around their bodies. green sparks shattering against the stars. laying there tangled in their exhaustion, always drawing even. Mary kissing Shannon’s forehead, looking at their lightsabers sitting side-by-side. blue and green.

“we should kiss.” Shannon says this out of nowhere with the air of someone who has been thinking about it for a long time.

she’s half-draped over Mary’s chest, head on her ribs. “i can hear your heart,” she adds, when Mary loses the ability to speak.

Shannon sits up, turns. she’s about to say something when Mary lurches up, takes her by the jaw.

they kiss, and nothing is ever the same again.

[silverwarewolf]

happy storyteller saturday! what can you tell me about the end of the world in Lugubrious Lullabies? :3 what kind of apocalypse are we dealing with here?

Happy storyteller definitely-still-saturday! I am still a bit of a mess!!!

ABSOLUTELY oh god this is one of my favorite parts about this work, SO-

A very long time ago, I posted information about this world and its astronomy, so to speak. Of how it's a donut-shaped planet, orbiting a binary star system, and with nigh-impossible dynamics with its moon.

I had posted about how the suns eclipsing each other had its own festivity. So did the day in which the moon went though the donut hole (which, there's a whole magical explanation about how that doesn't collapse gravity. dont worry about it).

However, when both of these events combine, there is an unmistakable omen of ill-fortune. As such, people cannot be born on that day.

The last time that happened, the world almost ended. A woman by the name of Aster, whom no one knew, who had no homeland, who had no past to be spoken of, nearly destroyed the world. She was powerful, enough that she could command an ancient leviathan with enough might to ravage through the kingdoms.

But the suns burnt through all of her strength and cast her away into the depths of despair from which she could never escape. Her leviathan was frozen underneath the glaciers of the Azure Kingdoms. And all traces of her were all but forcibly eliminated.

Still, she left one last curse - should there ever be someone born in that same fateful day, silver would rain down from the moon and melt away their binds, bringing forth a destruction unheard of until then.

Cue Isaak's birthday.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

That's an explanation that fits the in-universe knowledge. As an answer for the readers, I can say that yeah, the curse is very much active (hence why there's so many weird monsters in the deep sea of this planet, and why there's so much mercury on the moon). But another side of this curse is that the destruction isn't only the day of the apocalypse, it's all that leads up to it.

Both in the name of Andrea invading other kingdoms in her pursuit, and Isaak's own investigations heralding doom wherever he steps foot.

(And, well, as a little treat: Alexandro and Taylor's curses are also relevant. But that shall remain secret for now!)

Taglist (let me know to be added or removed): @/albatris (thanks for the ask!), @multi-lefaiye @vampiresdrinkfruitjuice @hazelgatoya

[yeehaw-in-magic-space]

Lore Dump 4: The Sovereign Hierarchy

The highest ranking noble in the universe is the Sovereign Among the Stars. This is an individual descended from the previous Sovereign, responsible for management of all the universe. They collaborate with nobles, the church, and loyal companies to establish a lasting order that will maintain peace and security across the universe.

Following the Sovereign in rank are their children. Princes and Princesses are considered nearly untouchable outside of war in regards to influence and power. They are often given commanding positions within the military or the church, or are sent to be mentored by powerful dukes and duchesses on manners of state until they are old enough to help the Sovereign manage palace affairs.

Dukes and Duchesses are next in order of power. They manage entire solar systems in the name of the Sovereign Among the Stars. They usually live within massive ships that follow the orbit of the star named after their families and control the movement of supplies and troops within their regions. They are directly in charge of every planet within a solar system, but rarely focus on a specific planet for more than a few months at a time. They prefer to leave the managing of planets to those next below them in the hierarchy.

Counts and Countesses are the nobles who rule over planets. At the behest of their duke or duchess, they manage the distribution of supplies and information across their own worlds. They are responsible for maintaining loyalty and steady streams of whatever resource their planet may be known for. They often live within a castle on or just above their planets. Most counts or countesses rule over only a single planet, though in rare cases, some have ended up managing two or three worlds within a particularly large solar system.

Barons and Baronesses are the lowest of the nobles. They manage countries and continents on specific planets, particularly they are in charge of matters of military and planetary security. They tend to be the hungriest of the nobles. They can often get away with conquering the nations ruled by neighboring nobles and expanding their own domains—if they can prove themselves more competent than the competition. Barons and Baronesses are pitted against one another frequently in a supposed effort to make sure only the best noble families are responsible for the armies of the Sovereign.

Though Barons have a reputation for being the hungriest and most warlike of the nobles, war between noble families is not uncommon. Everyone has dreams of expanding or ascending in the order, and everyone wants to prove that they are worthy of the Sovereign’s attention. The power struggle is neverending, and no noble ever feels completely safe, especially with the rise of non noble families and companies in the final years of The Long War.

(if this one seems particularly binary in its gendering, that is perhaps refelctive of the society these nobles operate. Acceptance of gender in all its variance and fluidity is only really seen in scattered pieces across the galaxy in places where people simply don't care about what they've been told is "proper", or where they're so distant from the nobility and the church that they would be baffled to hear that they had such strict ideas about these things to begin with.)

[isolan-landings]

I'solan Solar System - Planet Descriptions and System Diagrams, Visuals

Visual Description of First Landing

“Surrounded by black obsidian, lifeless, and a small river cuts through the rock on your right, leaving smooth edges on its banks. It’s the only sound. A ways off, you can see green plants of odd shapes and various sizes..(wind)(light).. It’s brighter than night should be and too dark for day; everything has an odd (stygian) blue cast to it. In the sky, a silver band is backlit by an endless number of stars.”

Additional Descriptors: Dusk, before sunrise/sunset, Antarctica autumn, Storms, Fog, Eclipse, Caves, Silver curtain

See the Google Doc with additional formatting Here.

The I’sola live on one of a set of rotating twin planets (a binary planet system). These planets have opposite and interlocking magnetic poles, which allow them to stay as close as they are without incident - gravity pulling them together, magnetism repelling them, and inertia helping to keep them apart. Hoset and Ma’al, or Hephaestus and Pan, share both an atmosphere composed of oxygen and carbon dioxide (percentages varying throughout the year) and a glass ring made of shattered meteors that orbits the twin system. The planets themselves are vastly different from one another.

Hoset/Hephaestus

Hoset is the planet that is unable to support life. Throughout the year (623 days), carbon and other material falls to Hoset in the way of meteors. These materials build up until the system gets close enough to the sun on its elliptical orbit and Hoset lights on fire for a fairly short burning season (44 days), burning out all of the oxygen in the atmosphere and replenishing the carbon dioxide necessary for the I’sola that live on Ma’al. Hoset constantly faces the sun and rotates at about the same speed as Ma’al.

Ma’al/Pan

Ma’al is a black planet with large, fast-moving rivers running to the poles. As the ash from Hoset floats over and coalesces into these rivers and fertilizes much of the planet, it ends up at the poles where enormous geysers shoot it up into space, sometimes temporarily creating dark clouds in the sky. There are two times of Ma’al’s rotation cycle: the Ring and the Eclipse. The Ring lasts for three quarters of the rotation and  refers to what we would think of as nighttime, with a silver band of light standing out against the night sky, no moon to speak of. The Eclipse refers to Hoset standing out as a black circle in the sky, covering the sun but leaving a surrounding fiery afterimage, the ring fading into black as it draws away. During burning seasons, Hoset simply looks like a large sun. Each rotation lasts 31.5 Earth hours though the I’sola speak of time in terms of rotational degrees - 0°/360° being the center of the eclipse “Ban” (meaning halfway) and 180° being Midring. “Planetfall” is when many I’sola go to rest, looking like an inverted sunset/sunrise. 

Image 1 (Left): A diagram of the I’solan Solar System, with its binary planets: Hoset and Ma’al. The gray planet is Ma’al, consistently the furthest from the sun - the I’sola live here. Hoset is depicted as white, in its burning seasons, and black when it sits as a dreary, dead lump of rock. Hoset’s burning seasons occur when the planetary orbit is closest to the sun; it lights on fire and burns for two seasons throughout the year. The oval around the two planets depicts the glass ring that Hoset and Ma’al share. It is made of melted bits of meteors and it refracts sunlight around to the back of Ma’al even during its ‘night’.

Image 2 (Right): A diagram of the day cycle of Ma’al, as it relates to Hoset. Ma’al (in gray) rotates clockwise as depicted above. Between 45°-90°, Hoset is hazy and slightly more distant in the sky, the sun more blinding than eclipsed by the dead planet, and the ring slowly fades in or out with the darkness. At 0°/Ban, the center of the eclipse, there is a complete solar eclipse, a void backlit by the sun. During the burning seasons, Hoset looks fiery red.

Image 3 (Above): A depiction of the I’solan written calendar. The ring rotates vertically around the binary planet system, and the days can be tracked by the angle of it in the sky.

[timberwind]

yeah that's the part where the extra sideways speed you get from the spinny isn't enough to compete with the extra gravity. i'm pretty sure there's a geometric explanation due to the non-euclideanality of space near there kinda similar to how there are no stable orbits in 4 or more (spatial) dimensions (because gravity falls off as 1/r^(dim-1) for a potential shaped like 1/r^(dim-2) but the spinny™ (angular momentum of your orbit) adds a fixed effective potential ∝L²/r² which can only make a local minimum for 2 ≤ dim < 4, so in 4 dimensions it ends up flat, so any orbit will just keep spiraling in whatever direction it's spiraling in, and for 5 and above, the spiraling gets worse) the unstable orbit i'm talking about is kinda like how it is in dimension > 4, where you can have a circular orbit, but any perturbation is amplified until you either get zooped up by the black hole or yeeted away. i think it's technically the infinitely long whirl phase of a zoom-whirl orbit with maximum whirl.

it's cool for spaceships because if you have a binary blackhole system, you can jump between these knife-edge orbits around each of them and steal the pair's spinny to get going inordinately fast (i think there was one paper on the topic that boasted a claim of unbounded kinetic energy in finite experienced time). then you can zoom off to another binary blackhole system in another galaxy and do the process in reverse (giving the pair more spinny to slow yourself down). don't miss though!

Oh yeah, zoom-whirl orbits! I do know about these actually. I didn't know you could get a sort of infinite (if perfectly unperturbed) whirl phase though, that's really interesting. I actually learned about the "no stable orbits exist in >4 spatial dimensions" from it being a plot point in Greg Egan novel Diaspora, lol.

Extremely swagged out multiple-black-hole gravity assists are a very fun idea! Ultrarelativistic travel made easy*. A shame (?) most star systems don't happen to have binary black holes in their vicinities. Would be a fun thing for a setting to have the conceit that mystery precursor aliens/retrocausal superintelligent AIs/wizards dropped a bunch of planet-mass binary black holes in the Sednian depths of star systems for fast interstellar travel purposes. Could be coy and say that's what Planet 9 is, too...

[imnotgoinganywhereok]

Are you also annoyed that all photo posts display as text posts ever since tumblr changed the post creator? I looked at my posts I've made since the start of Serafin's independent life and they horribly degraded in quality, at least in comparison to the older posts. That's so weird!! I researched and it's because of the new system's format, and there's no workaround for this issue. This low key sucks, ngl :^(

Welcome to another Owl update!! As I mentioned in my last post, it was time for Baltazar to create and procreate. Here are the results!! Firstly, I'd like to introduce a new Servo that Baltazar built: Mirage Owl. (Yeah, he's totally not named after the Transformer from Rise of the Beasts which was a total banger movie). His randomised traits are: Cheerful, Family-oriented, and Music Lover. At first, Bal made him only for Dominika so she can have someone to talk to when... Bal doesn't want to talk to her. (×-×) I wonder if him getting a Public Enemy aspiration will cause the household new troubles...

After a week or so, Mirage received a different job: being a 24/7 nanny for Baltazar's new children!! Four more beans in the house, making the current household's size 7 out of 8 now. Introducing generation 18: Izar, Kari, Jupiter, and Juno Owls!! They're technically the same age because all four are science babies. I finally got to use this impregnation method and I must say it's verrrrry convenient - especially for someone like Baltazar who doesn't like the whole pregnancy mumbo-jumbo. Here's info about the children, by age:

Izar Owl - his other father is Ramon Briscoe (a spellcaster), and the child is a spellcaster by birth. He's incredibly similar to Ramon in most aspects, but got pointy ears from Baltazar (can't help alien genes). His name means a "star," there's also a binary star in the northern constellation of Boötes named Izar!!

Kari Owl - her mother is Katy Boles (human), the child turned out half-alien. Of course she got green skin (´×ω×`). But the hair and eyes colours are clearly like Katy's, so it seems she mixed well. Her name comes from one of Saturn's moons of the same name. Also means "blessed" from Greek name Makários.

Jupiter Owl - his mother is Pearl Pink (another alien). His skin is purple like his mother's, ears are pointy. He's named after one of the planets in our Solar System of the same name. Also references Roman god of light, the sky, and the weather.

Juno Owl - her mother is Pearl Pink (another alien). Her skin is purple like her mother's, ears are pointy. She's named after a NASA space probe orbiting around Jupiter. Also references Roman goddess of marriage and the queen of heavens.

Phew, that was a long one!! Time flies and it doesn't stop, meanwhile I'm just trying to make it until the end of the week. Living is such a chore, I can feel my time slipping through my fingers!! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post. These children were actually born on 4th of September, and I didn't play Sims 4 too much lately. A lot has happened since that time. Wish me luck and strength so I don't go crazy over here!! (╥◡╥) Be safe and happy Simming!!

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT ARE BINARY BLACK HOLES??

Blog#96

Saturday, June 12th, 2021

Welcome back,

When Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves over one hundred years ago, nobody could foresee what the implications could possibly be – but, as they make the move from predicted theory to proven fact, researchers like Professor Zoltan Haiman, of Columbia University, are devising ways of using them to study binary systems of colliding black holes and the very early universe in completely new ways. As far back as we’ve been able to crane our necks, our civilization has been looking to the stars with a sense of wonder and awe. Our earliest ancestors worshipped the skies with a fierce superstition – and on the darkest of nights in the quiet of the countryside, away from the light pollution that plagues our towns and cities, it’s easy to see why: our heavens hold a beauty that is unparalleled anywhere else in the natural world.

It wasn’t long before our ancestors started applying the rigour of mathematics to the sky – astronomy is, in fact, the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to prehistoric times. The sun went down and everyone was at it: The Babylonians, the ancient Chinese, the Greek philosophers, the Egyptian Pharaohs – every civilization that was advanced enough to record what they were doing: all standing on the shore of an endless ocean of light, underneath dark skies with bright and starry eyes, meticulously studying the mechanics of celestial bodies far beyond their comprehension; watching with a sense of wonder as points of light danced above them in the night.

Today, our knowledge of the Universe has surpassed the wildest hopes and dreams of those who came before us. We know that some of those points of light are actually giant nuclear fusion reactors called stars, just like our own sun; and some of them are galaxies so far away that our eyes reduce them – a collection of billions of stars – to one single point. We know how stars are born – and how they die – and that if a star is big enough when that time comes, it will collapse in on itself to form a singularity: an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational pull. We call these objects black holes. We know that at the center of almost every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole and that galaxies often collide with each other to form even larger galaxies. One thing we’re not entirely clear on, however, is what happens when the black holes from two colliding galaxies meet and form binary systems.

The gravitational waves discovery sweeping through astronomy

For most of our history, astronomers have viewed the stars through the lens of Newtonian physics. Einstein’s theory of relativity changed that: time and space were no longer different entities but two sides of the same coin, interlinked in a system that is almost impossible for us to comprehend (the fact that Einstein did is why he is so famous). It replaces the force of gravity, proposed by Isaac Newton, with a seemingly abstract idea: space and time are a medium in which everything exists. Heavy objects, like planets, warp this medium and change its shape and that’s what we experience as a force pulling us towards the Earth (gravity). Space-time is a difficult idea to grasp but the beauty of Einstein’s theory is that it explains so much of the universe so fully that it is impossible to ignore. That and the mathematics stack up: scientists have been trying – and failing – to prove him wrong for over a hundred years.

An interesting prediction that comes out of Einstein’s theories is the existence of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time itself. Until recently, a prediction was all that they were but since 2016, scientists have been able to measure them and, as our technology advances, they will be able to further exploit gravitational waves to investigate what happens when two galaxies collide.

We know that black hole binary systems play a fundamental role in shaping the galaxies they belong to – and that their collision would likely be the most energetic phenomena in the known universe – but much like gravitational waves, direct evidence of black hole binary systems has so far been lacking. This is because the black holes are too close to each other to tell apart using our current telescopes. That could be about to change.

LISA

In 2034, the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch LISA, a Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which will be able to detect the gravitational waves resulting from the interaction between two colliding black holes. This will provide astronomers with a shiny, new set of tools to probe the farthest reaches of our universe. Until then, researchers like Professor Zoltan Haiman continue to study such binary black hole systems using theoretical calculations and advanced computational simulations.

An astronomical fingerprint for binary black hole systems

In a recent paper, released earlier this year, Professor Haiman predicted what happens when two black holes collide as their host galaxies merge. As the black holes become close to one another, they begin to orbit around a common center of mass – a point somewhere in space analogous to the pivot-point on a seesaw, around which the masses at either end rotate. They move slowly at first and, if the energy contained within their orbit was to remain the same, the system could continue like this forever, with the black holes caught in a never-ending dance. But energy is sucked from the orbit in the form of gravitational waves. They cause the orbit to shrink in size, and the black holes to spiral inward, colliding to form a single black hole.

SOURCE: https://researchoutreach.org

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, June 16th, 2021)

“WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS??”

[bornwantingmore]

Binary Stars

Summary: Castiel possesses Dean. 

(Yeah, I’m writing SPN fan fiction now. Mind ya business.)

Binary star system: Noun. Astronomy. A system of two stars in which one star revolves around the other or both revolve round a common center. Locked in the constant chase of hunter and hunted, the two stars spend their lifespans circling around the other’s orbit, never able to touch, always just out of reach. 

---

It started, much like everything else complicated in the lives of Dean and Castiel, with a hunt gone wrong. 

Read on AO3

The sunlight was filtering through the dingy hotel room’s curtains as Rowena examined Castiel with a series of powders, juices, and soft-spoken Latin chants. Dean watched as he leaned against the wall, subtly texting Sam an update on their hunt. Dean and Castiel had been trying to take out a witch just west of Lincoln when she blew a shimmering powder into Castiel’s face. He had spent the following few minutes coughing up a lung while Dean shot the witch between the eyebrows. Unsure what to do, they called Rowena when they returned to the hotel room. She was leaning over Castiel as he sat on the side of one of the beds. 

“It’s bad.” Rowena finally said, her eyes flicking between Dean and Castiel. “You boys tussled with the wrong witch.”

Dean sighed and kicked off the wall he was leaning on. “Awesome.”

“What did she do to me?” Castiel’s eyes calmly tracked Dean for a moment before they flicked to meet Rowena’s gaze. 

“You mean you can’t tell?” Rowena raised her eyebrows and looked away. “That’s not a good sign.”

“Cut the crap, Rowena,” Dean growled. “Can you fix it?”

Rowena sighed. “Aye, the spell’s not built for fixing.”

“Remind me why you’re here, then?” Dean took a half-step towards Rowena. 

“Dean,” Castiel said, stopping him in his tracks with just a word. He turned back to Rowena. “Explain. Please.”

“Well,” Rowena paused as she thought. She pursed her lips, choosing her words carefully. “It was a homemade spell designed to erase an angel’s grace. It starts slow, which must be why you can’t feel it yet. It will continue to get faster and faster as time goes on.”

Dean threw his hands up. “Awesome.”

“You said that already,” Castiel grumbled. 

The two men shared tense eye contact for a few charged moments. 

“You haven’t seen any hex bags today, correct?” Rowena asked, causing them both to look back at her. 

Castiel stood up and moved his eyes around the room before ending on Rowena. “I would be able to sense if there were any present.”

Rowena nodded and hummed her approval. “And the witch who cast the spell is now dead?”

“Yes,” Dean said, stepping forward. “I made sure of that.”

“Lovely,” she said, making it clear that she thought that it was anything but. “She must have been a powerful one then, if the spell is surviving past her.”

Castiel grimaced. “What can we do?”

“Do?” Rowena began to gather her supplies back into her large purse. “There isn’t much that can be done, I’m afraid.”

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Castiel beat him to the punch. “But there is something.”

Rowena sighed. “You’re not going to like it.”

Dean and Castiel both leveled Rowena with steady stares. She closed her eyes to center herself before speaking again, opening them to look at Castiel. 

“You’re going to need to leave your vessel,” she finally said.

Her statement hung in the air for a few moments before anyone else spoke, heavy in the crisp air-conditioned room. Castiel hardly reacted except to blink, but Dean was visibly agitated. 

“No way.” Dean shook his head. 

Rowena laughed drily. “Have you got a better idea, then?”

“Dean,” Castiel cut in, nipping their cat fight in the bud. “I’ve been without a vessel before.”

“So, what?” Dean turned his attention to Castiel. “You’re just gonna find some other holy trench coat to possess?”

Castiel turned his head slightly to look at Dean directly.

“Not necessarily,” Rowena interrupted. “The spell is only affecting Castiel’s physical form. If he were to” —she struggled to find the word for a moment— “exit, the spell would run its course and eventually fizzle out. I don’t see why he couldn’t return after that.”

“And how long’s that gonna take?” Dean asked. 

Rowena made a noncommittal sound as she examined Castiel lightly with her eyes. “Oh, a few days to be safe. These things move faster when the mind isn’t present.”

“So what, right before he starts to rot away?” 

Castiel lowered his chin slightly and looked at Dean. “My vessel, Dean. It’s not me.”

Rowena held up a finger and rooted through her purse as the men had an impromptu staring contest. After a moment, she pulled out a small hex bag. It fit snugly in the palm of her hand. She loosened the string tying it together slightly to create an opening. 

“This will help keep your vessel in working shape while you’re away,” she said, presenting the hex bag to Castiel. “I just need a drop of dear Mr. Novak’s blood.”

As Dean was rustling through his pockets to pass Castiel his knife, Castiel just bit the tip of his index finger with his front teeth. He held the finger over the bag as the blood welled up and finally dripped down. When the droplet of blood hit the bag, a barely-visible puff of blue smoke was created. Castiel ran his thumb over his index finger, healing the small nip. 

“Perfect,” Rowena said as she retied the string, nonplussed by Castiel’s behavior. She passed the completed hex bag to Castiel. “This will keep the lights on while you’re not home. Keep it in one of your pockets until you return.”

Castiel nodded and put the hex bag in the inside pocket of his trench coat. 

Rowena continued, “I suggest that you leave your vessel before you go to bed. There hasn’t been any damage done that you won’t recover from, but that won’t be the case when you wake up tomorrow.”

“I don’t sleep.”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Sometime before whatever it is you do at night, then.”

The group eventually made their way through saying farewells and Rowena left, leaving Dean and Castiel alone. Dean was tense. It was hard for him to think of Castiel’s body as just an empty husk to be filled. 

“Dean,” Castiel said, breaking the silence that fell when Rowena left. “This is a manageable problem. There is no need to worry.”

Dean scoffed. “What, me worry?” He sighed and grabbed his keys from where they were sitting on the nightstand. “Let’s get back to the bunker before you do anything crazy.”

Castiel nodded and followed Dean outside of the hotel room. 

The two men continued in silence as they pulled out of the hotel parking lot. Castiel had come to appreciate silence in his time on Earth, but this particular moment rang with unsaid words. He knew that Dean would voice what he needed to say before too long. This time, he only had to wait for three-and-a-half Metallica songs. 

“So.” Dean said, finally breaking the silence. “You’re leaving your vessel.”

“Yes.” Castiel straightened his back and watched the dotted yellow lines disappear beneath them. 

Dean snuck a peek at Castiel. He nervously bit the inside of his cheek. No one spoke for another few moments. 

“Well, are you gonna ask me or not?”

Castiel replied casually, “Ask you what?”

“To be your new vessel.” Dean snuck another peek in Castiel’s direction, taking time to rake his eyes across his face. “If I can handle Michael, then I can handle you. Right?”

“Dean. I couldn’t ask that of you.”

Dean reached over to turn the music down. “Humor me.”

Castiel gave an angel’s impression of an eye roll. “Dean Winchester, are you willing to give your body and mind over to my cause?”

“Yes,” Dean said. His response was immediate. He looked over at Castiel, lips not fully closed. 

“You can’t mean that.” Castiel didn’t seem to be impressed. 

“It’s better than spending a week as a holy cloud of gas and you know it.”

Castiel moved his gaze in Dean’s direction, not quite looking directly at him yet. He couldn’t disagree. “Your history with Michael—” 

“You’re not Michael.” Dean shook his head lightly, turning back to the road. “Come on, Cas. If everyone was the same as their older brothers, Sam would be blacklisted from about twenty more bars than he already is.”

Castiel didn’t seem to be persuaded. He looked anywhere except Dean’s face. 

“Dean. I do not wish to cross any boundaries here.” He finally raised his gaze to meet Dean’s. “You understand that saying yes will give me unfettered access to your body and soul.”

“Look at me. I get it.” Dean quirked his lips humorlessly into a smirk. “I’ve been a hunter my whole life, I know what possession is.” He paused and sighed, tearing his eyes from the road to look at Castiel, speaking clearly. “I trust you. I’m saying yes.”

Castiel still didn’t look convinced. Dean sighed. 

Dean let out a humorless laugh as he rubbed his thumb on the steering wheel nervously. “Listen, man,” he said, his voice an olive branch. “I could learn how to say it in Enochian if English ain’t enough.”

Castiel finally met his gaze again. “I can remain unobstructive while we share a vessel.”

“I’ve already said yes, no need to keep selling,” Dean said, then hesitated. “So long as I get to stay behind the wheel.”

“Of course, Dean.” Castiel leaned imperceptibly closer to him. “I would never strip you of your autonomy.”

Dean nodded. “Good.” He paused, then echoed, “Good.” He looked back to the road. 

---

The bunker door slammed loud enough to ring through the halls. Dean gave a holler to Sam anyway, in case he didn’t hear him and Castiel come in. 

Sam walked into the room from the direction of his bedroom. “What the hell, Dean?” he said. “You can’t just text me, ‘Cas got witched. Be back before midnight.’ and then not respond.”

“Aren’t you the one who gets on me about texting and driving?” Dean smirked at Sam. “Just being a safe driver. ‘Sides, you could have used Cas’ phone. We got him one for a reason.”

Sam rolled his eyes and shifted his focus to Castiel. “I tried calling Cas, but it went straight to voicemail.”

“My phone stopped working a while ago.” Castiel pulled it out of his pocket. “It no longer turns on.”

Dean grabbed the phone from Castiel and examined it, testing the power button a few times. “When’s the last time you plugged it in?”

“Plugged it into what?”

Dean dropped his hands and looked at Castiel. “The wall, Cas.” He looked over at Sam pleadingly. Sam chuckled. 

“You have to charge it for a few hours every day or two,” Sam said. “I’ll put a charger in your room later.”

Castiel took his phone back from Dean. “I see. I will be more mindful of that in the future.”

Dean walked down the stairs into the main room area, Castiel following closely behind. 

“I’m going to grab a beer, want one?” Dean called over his shoulder as he headed towards the kitchen. 

Sam sat at the table. “Sure.”

“You’re getting one too, Cas,” Dean said, not waiting for a response from him. 

Castiel nodded and sat across from Sam as Dean left the room. 

“I’m beginning to appreciate the taste of beer,” he said to Sam. “The creation process behind it is very compelling.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Sam chuckled airly. “So, what happened with the witch? You look totally normal to me.”

“I’m glad I look normal.” Castiel sighed. “The spell is one that targets my grace, so humans are unable to see what the witch has done.”

Sam frowned. “Are you okay?”

“The damage so far is minimal.” Castiel shrugged. “I hardly noticed until Rowena brought it up. She said that the rate at which the spell devours my grace would increase unless I left my vessel.” 

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “And you’re gonna do that? Leave your vessel, I mean.”

“I have no other choice,” Castiel said. “But my vessel will survive without me until the spell runs its course.” Anticipating Sam’s question, he added, “I’ll be able to return to this vessel in a few day’s time.”

“Huh.” Sam leaned back in his chair for a moment. “So will you just” —he waved his hand through the air nervously— “float around all day?”

“No, I—”

Castiel was cut off by Dean re-entering the room, holding three beers. “Brewski time!” he called, waggling the beers with one hand. He put a beer in front of Sam and Castiel, then took one of the open seats at the table and took a swig from his own bottle. 

“Dean, Cas was just telling me about what happened,” Sam said. He looked back over to Castiel. “Sorry, I’d offer to help, but I have a… history with angels using me as a vessel.” He gave an awkward half-smile. 

“I understand,” Castiel said, returning a small smile in Sam’s direction. 

“You don’t have to worry ‘bout a thing, Sammy.” Dean took another sip of his beer. For some reason, he felt nervous to tell Sam. He pushed it down. “Cas is gonna stay with me.”

Sam smirked and looked down at his beer bottle. “And you’re cool with that?”

“What? Lucifer didn’t wear me to the prom.”

“Dude.” Sam looked up to lazily glare at Dean. 

Dean was sufficiently cowed. “What, too soon?”

“Yeah, too soon.” Sam rolled his eyes and laughed under his breath. “Forever would be too soon.”

“I’m going to leave my vessel before morning,” Castiel noted, gracefully changing the subject. “Would you like to be in the room while it happens?”

Dean stiffened imperceptibly. 

“I’m sure you two can handle it,” Sam said, taking a sip from his beer. “I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.”

“Well,” Dean said, setting his beer on the table and moving to get out of his chair. “What do you say, Cas? No time like the present?”

Castiel’s eyebrows drew together. He looked up at Dean and then back down at his beer. “I’d like to finish this first. It’s pleasant to drink with you two.”

“Come on, Dean.” Sam laughed and lifted his beer in Dean’s direction. “Waste not, want not.”

Dean chuckled to cover his blooming blush. He relaxed back into his chair. “I’m just glad we corrupted an angel.”

---

Dean and Castiel ended up in one of the extra bedrooms, one which Dean liked to call Castiel’s room. Castiel hardly used it. He was sitting on top of the unwrinkled bed covers while Dean was pacing, trying to tamper his anxiety. 

“So, this possession thing.” Dean looked over carefully to Castiel. “Does it hurt?”

Castiel’s eyes tracked Dean’s movements. “What do you mean?”

“The whole...” Dean waved a hand around as he thought of how to word it. “Smoke-in-the-mouth thing. I mean, I smoked my fair share as a teen, but I’m no iron lung.”

The drug reference gave Castiel pause. “The process shouldn’t be painful. It may feel uncomfortable at times as your body attunes to housing a celestial being. You may experience sensations that the human body is not equipped to feel.”

“Lucky me,” Dean said breathlessly.

Castiel nodded. “Lucky you.”

Castiel swung his legs on top of his bed, shoes and all. He leaned against the headboard in a sitting position. Dean bit his tongue when he worried about the dirt tracking onto the sheets. 

“How would you like me?” Castiel asked once he settled. 

Dean tripped on his tongue for a moment. “Like you?”

“My vessel,” Castiel clarified. “How would you like it to be positioned while I’m away?”

A breath escaped Dean’s lungs. Castiel had to know what he was doing when he said things like that. 

“However you want, bud.” Dean flexed his jaw and swallowed. “It’s up to you, I won’t be coming in here until the spell times out.”

Castiel hummed and scooted forward so that he had the space to lie down completely, but he propped himself up on his elbows to keep Dean in his eyesight. He was lying on his back with his trenchcoat puddled around him like an aura. 

“Are you sure you’re willing to do this, Dean?”

Dean walked over to the side of Castiel’s bed. “My answer hasn’t changed since the last time you asked.”

“I’m serious.” Castiel’s voice compelled Dean to look him in the eyes. “I would not think any less of you for changing your mind in the eleventh hour.”

“You’re my friend, Cas.” Dean’s hand reached out to pat him on the shoulder before he realized that it was too far away to reach. For lack of a better location, he patted Castiel’s thigh where it was resting on the bed. “Friends help each other out.”

Castiel furrowed his brows as he watched Dean’s hand touch his thigh. Dean moved his hand back to its neutral position once he noticed Castiel looking. He felt a blush begin to heat his face without understanding why. 

“Besides,” Dean started, trying to distract from the building burning in his cheeks. “It’s a win-win. You get a vacation in Casa Winchester and I get to go a few days without seeing your ugly mug.”

Castiel’s eyebrows drew together even more. “You think I’m ugly?”

“Of course not,” Dean backtracked immediately. “I’m sure you’re, y’know, good looking. For a guy.” Dean would have to change the subject if he didn’t want Castiel to notice his blushing cheeks. “It’s just something people say.”

Dean wouldn’t know where to put Castiel on the traditional 1-10 scale of hotness. He lived on a different scale entirely. 

“I see.” Castiel relaxed his arms and allowed his gaze to trail up to the ceiling. “I never understood human beauty standards. I have a hard time evaluating my vessel.”

Great, Dean thought as he put a few feet of distance between him and the bed. I gave the angel a complex. 

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, man.” Dean tried to backtrack. “Chicks dig the whole dorky, just rolled out of bed look.”

Castiel hummed idly and then lifted himself to look Dean in the eye again. “Are you ready to be possessed?”

Dean had long since gotten used to Castiel’s abrupt non sequiturs. 

“Should I sit down?” Dean moved towards an empty chair a few feet away from the bed. 

“That would be smart.”

Dean carried the chair to the side of the bed and sat in it. It was strange to see Castiel laying down. The only other times that Dean had seen him in this position, he was bloodied from a fight. Castiel moved his arms to lie down completely, turning his head on the pillow to look at Dean. 

“Dean Winchester, will you let me in?”

“Castiel,” Dean breathed. He shivered in anticipation. “Yes.”

It wasn’t like the demon possessions he had seen, where the victim screamed as the demon’s black cloud rushed into their mouth. Castiel closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. A small, wavering tendril of bright smoke seeped out of his mouth. This was Castiel, more so than anything related to Jimmy Novak’s body. Dean’s adrenaline spiked as the tendril began to close the distance between them. It meandered through the air of Castiel’s bedroom like lazy cascading waves on a shoreline. Dean’s mouth opened and he tilted his chin towards the smoke without being aware he was doing so. 

The tendril of Castiel finally reached Dean’s lips. For a moment, it felt like he had used TV static as chapstick. The static feeling filled Dean’s throat. It spread over his head and spilled down his chest as more of Castiel flowed through him. It felt like the borders of his body were being erased, like he was expanding to fill the bedroom. His head was floaty and blurry, as if he was back to being seventeen and smoking Js with other nomads outside of run-down hotels. 

It was as if he had a whole new sense awakened in him. How could you explain sight to someone who was born blind? He felt his thoughts being pushed to the side to make space in his head for another entity. His body went blank for a moment before he scrambled to gain control. The feeling, which had to be Castiel, let him gather it up from the corners of his awareness. His limbs were left feeling like they fell asleep. He compressed Castiel to right at the base of his neck, behind his collarbones. He felt raw energy thrumming in the back of his mind. 

Dean opened his eyes. He hadn’t been aware that he closed them. Sam was banging on the other side of the door. They must have been making noise, even if he didn’t realize it. He stumbled up from his chair and almost instantly banged his shin against the bed frame. 

“Shit!” Dean yelped. The lightbulbs in the room popped in a sharp shatter of glass. He flinched at the noise. 

Sam yelled from behind the door, “Dean?”

“Yeah, give me a second!” Dean responded, traversing through the bedroom in the relative darkness. His adrenaline was still pumping, leaving him feeling tight and thready. He finally made it to the door and opened it for Sam. 

Sam looked different. It looked like someone had taken a long exposure photograph of him while he was moving. There was a glow to his body that made it look like he was radioactive. It made Dean feel like he was burning. He screwed his eyes shut. 

“Dean, are you okay?”

“Cas.” A growl came out of Dean’s throat and he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Whatever it is you’re doing, man, you need to pull up. This is too much.”

“Dean?”

Dean felt the fizzy numbness of his body recede even further. His body felt almost normal. His eyes opened hesitantly. 

“...Cas?” Sam asked, going out on a limb.

“Still me,” Dean said, shaking his head. He could finally look at Sam directly without feeling like his face was melting. He sighed. 

“Are you okay? Your eyes were...” Sam peeked around Dean to see Castiel’s empty vessel laying on the bed. “Is he…?”

Dean tapped the side of his head. “All up here. We’re good.”

Dean stepped aside so that Sam could enter the room. Sam flicked the lightswitch a few times but the room stayed dark. He looked at Dean accusingly. 

“What can I say? I got my go-go juice.”

Sam rolled his eyes and used his phone flashlight to examine the body of Jimmy Novak. Dean followed him and lingered by the bed. 

“He’s still breathing,” Sam said. He hesitated before adding, “Do you think he needs…”

Dean curled his upper lip. “Depends?”

Sam and Dean both stared blankly at Jimmy’s empty body. 

“I’m not opening that can of worms,” Dean finally said. He patted Sam’s shoulder as he moved past him to leave the room. “I’m starving.”

Dean stumbled as he walked down the hallway. He was in the kitchen for just long enough to grab bread, peanut butter, and jelly by the time Sam entered the room. 

“Do you feel any different?” Sam asked hesitantly, lingering by the doorway. 

Dean nodded while spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. “I feel like I ran a freakin’ marathon.” He ran his thumb on the side of the knife to gather the remaining peanut butter and stuck it in his mouth. “I’m gonna eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, eat another, down a beer, and then crash for the night.”

Sam smiled and huffed air out his nose. That was the Dean he knew. “Is Cas talking to you?”

Dean looked up to tell Sam no, but jolted when he wasn’t standing by the doorway anymore. He looked around the room and flinched again when he realized Sam was a few feet to his side. 

“Son of a bitch, when did Cas teach you to teleport?”

Sam looked confused for a second before realization dawned on him. “Cas took over for a few minutes. He told me that everything is going according to plan. It will take a few hours for you to get ‘attuned’ enough to communicate. Whatever that means.”

“Damnit Cas, I told you to let me stay behind the wheel.” Dean said with very little heat behind his words. 

“He said that would be the only time.” Sam motioned to the counter where Dean was making his sandwich earlier. “He apologized.”

Instead of the half-made peanut butter and jelly sandwich that Dean was making, there was now a plate of two completed sandwiches (cut into triangles) and an opened bottle of one of Dean’s favorite beers, fresh from the fridge. Dean’s stomach growled.

Dean picked up the plate of food and the beer. “He’s forgiven. This time.”

---

Dean woke up and headed to the bathroom on autopilot, his bladder sending alarm bells to his brain. He went through the motions as usual, yawning and scratching his tummy as he relieved himself. When he looked down to make sure that the tank was empty, he felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him. His eyebrows pulled together and he touched his cheeks with a free hand. There was no reason why he should be blushing as he takes a whizz. He would have to do some googling later. He filed the feeling away in his mind, and the embarrassment passed as he put himself away and moved to the sink to wash his hands. 

Dean jolted when he saw his reflection move without him in the mirror. He furrowed his brows and looked pointedly down at the faucet. 

“Am I hallucinating?” he asked the empty bathroom. 

His own voice answered him. “If Sam were to walk in right now, he would see you talking to yourself.” Dean’s eyes flicked back up to the mirror. His reflection’s voice was grittier than normal, as if he ate a bowl of gravel for breakfast. “But you are not hallucinating. This is one way I can communicate with you.”

Dean laughed dryly and shook his head, looking away again. “This is weird, man. I feel like Jamie Lee Curtis.”

He had almost forgotten what had happened the night before in his post-hunt adrenaline crash. The reflection, which must be Castiel, had better posture than he’d ever had in his life. It looked like he’d gained an inch in height. 

“I can remain completely dormant if you’d prefer.” Castiel kept Dean’s body still as he spoke, save for the slight tilt of his head. “I do not wish to make you uncomfortable.”

Seeing someone using his meatsuit would normally make his hand itch for a silver blade, but something about this felt different. 

Dean shook his head slightly. “No big deal. Anything else I should know about beside this whole” —he waved his hand half-heartedly at the mirror— “Mulan thing?”

“I am passively aware of the sensory input you receive,” Castiel said, lowering his eyes. “But I am able to focus my attention elsewhere when you require privacy.”

Dean felt the tips of his ears begin to burn as he remembered what he had just been doing. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “So what, you’ve been busy reading my thoughts?”

Dean’s reflection tilted his head and lowered his eyebrows slightly. Seeing Castiel’s mannerisms on his body made his hands twitch. He had to stop himself from touching the mirror. To shatter it or caress it, he didn’t know. 

“The mind of a shared vessel is difficult to describe in terms you can understand,” Cas shared after a pregnant pause. “There is no branch of human studies that can be used as an accurate reference.”

“You’re an angel,” Dean said, flexing his fingers. “I’m sure you can dumb it down for me.”

Castiel took a moment before speaking, no doubt firing a trillion of his and Dean’s currently shared synapses. “We share subconscious minds in this state, but our conscious minds remain our own. Instincts and emotions are shared before coherent thought.”

Something clicked in Dean’s mind. “Wait, was that…” Dean bit his tongue. He hesitated before speaking again, pointedly not looking Castiel in the face. “Were you embarrassed earlier?”

Dean’s reflection avoided eye contact. “I understand that humans are very protective of their genitalia. I apologize. I did not intend to—”

Dean cut him off. “Okay, we’re not going to talk about genitalia. New rule.” Dean worked furiously to think of a way to change the subject. Finally, “Why don’t I feel any different?”

Castiel looked thankful for the prompt. “Human senses aren’t accustomed to celestial intent. You felt that when I first entered your body. It will slowly become more comprehensible as we continue sharing the same vessel.”

Dean barked out a short laugh to distract from thinking about it too much. “Thanks for the fine print. Anything I should be on the lookout for?”

“Nothing major.” Dean kept expecting to see Castiel’s blue eyes when their gazes linked. Something about making eye contact with himself felt weird. “You were created to house the most powerful archangel in heaven, so there’s no chance of unintentional damage to your body on my behalf.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, bud.” Dean raised his eyebrows at his reflection. “You can be scrappy.”

Seeing his reflection give a small, easy smile was something that Dean hadn’t seen in a while. 

After a small pause, Dean swallowed and cleared his throat, speaking carefully. “Listen, can you—”

As if reading his thoughts, Dean’s reflection changed to Jimmy Novak, trenchcoat and all. 

“Is this better?” Castiel asked, back to his normal appearance. 

Dean’s lips quirked up. It was nice to hear his voice again. “Yeah.” His mouth was a little dry. He tried again. “Yeah, Cas. That’s better.”

Castiel smiled at him before dissolving into Dean’s reflection. Dean lifted his hand and rubbed his face, watching his reflection follow his movements exactly. Everything was back to normal. He nodded at the empty mirror and turned on his heel to start his day. 

---

After a cup of coffee for breakfast, Dean started to become aware of how dirty he was. He never actually had the chance to take a shower after the fight with the witch. Thankfully, she was staying in a classy apartment rather than a cabin in the woods, but still. He probably smelled like an entire gym locker room. He put it off for as long as he could, not knowing how to bring it up to Castiel. He almost made it to noon by reading lore in a storage room before Sam leaned over him to see what the book said and scrunched his nose. 

“Dude, come on. You stink so bad,” Sam said. 

Dean rolled his eyes and stood up from where he was sitting. He gave Sam a shit-eating grin. “I smell like a bed of roses.”

“Sure, maybe one that a dog just peed in.” Sam chuckled under his breath. “Maybe you can ask Cas to zap you clean.”

“I’ll just do it the old-fashioned way.” Dean scooted around Sam and made his way to exit the room. “Kids these days, always looking for the easy way out.”

“Dude, I’m 32!” Sam yelled after him as he entered the hallway. 

Dean chuckled at his own humor as he walked to his bedroom to grab a fresh set of clothes. Once he realized that he needed a shower, everything felt uncomfortable. It would be nice to get under the bunker’s perfect water pressure again. 

He spent a longer time than normal picking out clothes, still putting off having to deal with Castiel possessing him while he showers. Finally, he entered the bathroom he claimed as his own. There was just enough space for the basics: toilet, shower, sink, counter, mirrored medicine cabinet. 

He stood in front of the mirror awkwardly for a moment, unsure how to broach the subject. 

“Cas?” He said to the empty room. 

The mirror didn’t change. Dean wondered if maybe he imagined the entire possession. He clicked his tongue and turned away from the mirror, but jolted when he saw Castiel standing next to him. 

“Holy shit!”

“No,” Castiel answered. He tilted his head at Dean. “It’s me.”

Dean shook his head in shock. “How are you here?”

“I’m not, physically speaking.” Castiel lifted his arms to show off his form. “I’m a visual representation constructed by your mind.” He looked down at himself. “I’m surprised. It normally takes months for seraphim to harmonize with their vessel’s brainwaves enough to present themselves without the aid of a reflection like this.”

“Look at you go.” Dean checked the mirror quickly. Castiel had no reflection. 

Castiel seemed to realize where he was for the first time. “Are you about to take a shower?”

Dean nodded.

“I assume you wish to have privacy,” Castiel said.

Dean felt his cheeks heat up. “Please.”

“I will put my attention elsewhere.”

“How?”

Castiel thought for a moment. “If you’re willing to try, you may be able to create an illusion of something for me to distract myself with.”

Dean hummed an affirmation. He tried to think of something that Castiel would like. He closed his eyes shut and imagined Castiel holding it. 

After a few moments, he heard Castiel say, “The Bible?”

Dean opened his eyes to see Castiel holding a copy of the Bible. It was small and leather bound, with the title embossed in gold. It looked like an exact copy of the one that his dad used to keep in the trunk of the Impala. 

“Yeah, the Bible. You’re an angel, aren’t you?”

Castiel flipped through the pages. He smiled. “Have you ever read the Bible, Dean?”

“Uh, no. I never got around to it, surprisingly.”

Castiel turned the book around so that Dean could see the pages. They were all blank. “Your brain didn’t know what words to add. Try something that you know.”

Dean took a deep breath and closed his eyes, picturing what he wanted Castiel to have in his mind’s eye. 

He opened his eyes to see Castiel examining it in his hands. “What is this?”

“My old walkman,” Dean said. 

It was beat up, with countless chips in the plastic. The wire to the headphones had a kink or two in it, but Dean knew that it would still work. It was loaded with an AC/DC track that Dean stole from the Impala’s glove box when he was 17. 

“This is before I turned it into an EMF detector.” Dean wanted to reach for it, but hesitated. His hands would probably pass right through it. “It’s nice to see it again.”

Castiel looked at it fondly. “How do I use it?”

“Here, put these over your ears.” Dean grabbed the headphones on instinct. They felt solid in his hands. The feeling stopped him in his tracks. “I can touch this?”

“It’s all in your brain, Dean.” Castiel set the walkman body on the bathroom counter and took the headphones from Dean. Dean felt the soft brush of his fingers as he did. “The same brain that is letting you see and hear illusions can let you feel them too.”

Dean licked his lips. “Okay. Awesome. I can handle this.”

Despite feeling anxiety grow in his gut, Dean felt calmness attempting to wash over him. He looked at Castiel. 

“Pretend I’m here physically,” Castiel said, not mentioning the jedi mind tricks he was no-doubt pulling. “Show me how to use the walkman.”

What’s the big deal, Dean? Dean thought to himself. Never taught an illusion of an angel how to use a walkman in your bathroom before?

Dean forced himself to take a full breath. “Okay. Okay.” He shook his head slightly to shake off his anxiety. “Put the headphones on.”

Castiel did. He picked up the walkman from where he set it on the counter. “What button should I press?”

“It should be all rewinded and everything. Just press the play button.” After a moment, Dean added, “It’s the triangle.”

Castiel nodded and pressed it. He looked at Dean with a smile. “It’s working!” he said, a bit louder than normal. 

Dean gave him an awkward thumbs up. “Just close your eyes and listen for a few minutes.”

Castiel gave him a thumbs up back. “I’ll just… um…” He looked around for a place to be while Dean undressed. He pulled the headphones off for a second. “Where should I go?”

Dean suddenly realized that the bathroom didn’t have much room for privacy. He looked around for a moment before lowering the lid of the toilet. 

He pointed at the now-covered toilet. “Sit here. Turn the volume up.” “Okay.” Castiel sat. He put the headphones back on and fiddled with the buttons. He closed his eyes. “I’ll be here.”

Dean just looked at Castiel for a few seconds. This was so weird. He trusted that Castiel wouldn’t try to spy on him, but he was still sitting less than a foot away. He hesitantly took his shirt off. Castiel didn’t react. Socks were next. Pants followed soon after. 

He was standing in front of Castiel in his underwear. 

Right, he needed to turn the water on first. He had to awkwardly bend around Castiel’s knees to reach the faucet handle, but thankfully Castiel ignored the movement. He could almost feel the warmth of Castiel’s imaginary body heat on his torso. He adamantly ignored it, for Little Dean’s sake. 

The water was running. Moment of truth. Dean took a deep breath and pulled his briefs off. He didn’t dare to look at Castiel in this state. He had to bite back a hysterical laugh from the absurdity of it all. 

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. The thought ran circles around his mind. He’s in your head, don’t think about it. He can feel what you feel, don’t think about it. 

Dean hopped in the shower. He gave a sigh of relief when he finally pulled the curtain back, blocking Castiel from his line of sight. He could pretend like it was any other day. The water hit him like rain. 

He sang Shoot to Thrill under his breath as he washed himself clean. 

---

Thank God that Dean’s tastebuds were still working. If he started tasting molecules instead of flavors, he would have to kick Castiel out. He piled his plate up high with the chicken alfredo that he spent the past few hours cooking. Sam had already served himself a plate of the pasta before Dean added the chicken and was sitting at the kitchen table, reading something on his laptop with one hand while he ate with the other. Dean grabbed some silverware and sat down across from him. 

Without thinking, Dean wove his fingers together on his lap and lowered his head. He sat in relative silence, mouthing something inaudible under his breath. 

“Dean, what are you doing?”

Suddenly, Dean snapped back into reality. He unclasped his hands and moved them from his lap to above the table. He quickly picked up his silverware and started to spike pasta with his fork. “I’m eating dinner, Sammy.”

“No.” Sam laughed. “No, before that. Were you… saying grace?”

Dean felt a blush begin to rise in his cheeks and pointedly ignored Sam’s gaze. “That must have been Cas.”

“Or Jimmy.”

“What?”

Sam slid his laptop to the side so that he could look at Dean directly. “I’ve been doing some reading about angel vessels. There isn’t much out there, but we know that angels leave behind a trace of grace in the vessels they occupy.”

“Yeah, of course,” Dean said, having completely forgotten about that part. 

Sam took a bite of pasta and chewed quickly to continue speaking. “What if the opposite is also true? Cas has been inside Jimmy for years now. He could have picked up on some of his habits.”

“Dude,” Dean said. “Never say that again.”

Sam paused for a second, then rolled his eyes when he understood. “I’m just saying, Dean. This is uncharted territory. Who knows how angels and vessels affect each other? The Men of Letters’ research on them is all theoretical.”

“I’m not going to church anytime soon, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Dean paused. “Are you asking to research me?”

“No. Well, it would be helpful since you’re already here.” Sam looked up at Dean hopefully but shook his head when he saw the look on Dean’s face. “But no. Definitely not.”

Dean rolled his eyes. 

Sam changed the subject. “Good job on dinner, by the way. Thanks for making it.”

“Nesting has its perks.” Dean gave Sam a smile with cheeks filled with pasta. 

---

The nighttime was when it felt truly bizarre. Dean had to lay in bed and try to fall asleep, knowing that Castiel was just a sharp inhale away. He had been tossing and turning for almost an hour. Angels didn’t sleep, so Castiel must have been just watching this all happen. He couldn’t fall asleep if he thought about it. 

“Cas?” he finally voiced into the empty room.

Castiel appeared, sitting on the side of Dean’s bed. He turned his head to look down at him. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean sighed and relaxed into the pillow. “This is weird.”

“How are you feeling?” Castiel asked. Dean barked out a laugh on instinct. 

“Me? Peachy.” Dean pushed himself up into a sitting position. “How’s Hotel Dean? Do I need to call housekeeping?”

Castiel looked out into the darkness, giving Dean a view of his side profile. “You’re the strongest vessel known to man. I am… exceedingly comfortable.”

“Good. That’s… good.” Dean felt embarrassment in his gut from the compliment, unsure if it was his own or Castiel’s. “You aren’t bored?”

Castiel returned his focus to Dean. “I do not find being this close to you boring.”

Dean forgot what he was going to say. His mouth was suddenly dry. He licked his lips and broke eye contact. He could still feel the weight of Castiel’s gaze. 

“Um, what’ll happen when I fall asleep?” Dean had to clear his throat to get his words out clearly. 

“Nothing unusual. I will remain dormant.”

“Would it wake me up if you took over?”

Castiel furrowed his brows. Finally, he answered, “No. It would be less invasive than sleepwalking.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t take over while I’m getting my few hours,” Dean said carefully, looking back at Castiel. “If I can’t tell the difference.”

“Dean…” Dean could already tell from his tone that Castiel was going to decline the offer. 

He adjusted his position on the bed. “Come on, man. You’ve gotta take what I’m giving to you. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

Castiel looked into Dean’s eyes for a few seconds before responding. “I understand.”

“Just don’t do anything weird.” Dean relaxed back into laying down on the bed. “Take care of my body.”

“Of course, Dean.” Castiel looked away before blinking out of existence. 

Dean didn’t have trouble falling asleep after that. 

---

Sam was walking to the kitchen in the early hours of the morning when he heard sound coming from Dean’s lounge (which Sam refused to call The Dean Cave, no matter how many times Dean threatened to cut his hair off). He changed course to investigate, his socked feet making soft pat-pats in the morning silence. The door was slightly ajar, so he pushed through to see the TV on and Dean sitting on the couch. Sam could have sworn that he recognized the show, from some article or meme that he saw online. Finally it clicked. 

“Is that… Riverdale?” Sam asked incredulously. 

Movement came from the couch. “Don’t be too loud, you’ll wake up Dean.”

Sam was caught off guard for a second before he put the pieces together in his mind. This would take some getting used to. 

“That’s creepy,” Sam said, pointing at Dean’s body. “So, I’m talking to Cas now?”

“Yes.” Castiel turned his attention back to the show. “Claire recommended this show to me. She said that I would find it funny. I’m not sure I understand the joke.”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone does.” Sam chuckled breathlessly. “Does Dean know you’re making his eyes watch this?”

Castiel closed his eyes for a moment, opening them to meet Sam’s gaze. “He is currently dreaming about being in a high school musical theatre program. I assume that on some level, he is processing the show alongside me.”

“Um…” Sam floundered for words for a moment, suddenly struck by the strangeness of the situation. “Do you want any coffee? I’m starting a pot.”

“I don’t.” Castiel paused. “But bring a cup anyways. Dean’s about to wake up.”

Sam walked back to the kitchen, muttering, “So creepy…” under his breath. 

---

Maybe Dean shouldn’t have been so adamant about taking a case while Castiel and him were shacking up. 

Side note, Dean thought as he struggled to breathe. Find out whether shacking up is only about having sex.

It was easy to feel regret now, as he was being held against the back of a gravestone psychically by his neck. But hey, pobody’s nerfect. Maybe it was Sam’s fault for agreeing to come with him. 

The case was supposed to be a simple salt-and-burn for a ghost that had been spotted a few times in a Topeka graveyard. Just a quick day trip. Everything was going according to plan until… Well, Dean’s neck hurt. Thankfully, they had dug up the grave before the ghost showed up. Double thankfully, the ghost’s attention was entirely on Dean. 

He couldn’t help but smile a little as Sam dropped the lit pack of matches on the ghost’s salty and gasoline-drenched bones. Said smile turned into frightened eye contact with Sam when the ghost didn’t disappear. 

“Dean, something else’s keeping it here!”

“Y’think?” Dean gritted out his words through clenched teeth. He made a snap decision. “Cas, take the wheel!”

What Sam saw was Dean breaking out of the ghost’s psychic hold, thrusting his hand through its chest, and the ghost burning away from the inside out. 

What Dean saw was different. 

He felt brisk air as it hit his exposed forearms, cooler than the warm summer night he had just been in. He opened his eyes to see himself standing in the middle of the countryside in front of a barn. A familiar barn. 

The wind picked up as Dean walked closer to the barn’s doors. The roof started to stutter and creak. The doors began to shake. 

He knew this barn. 

He reached his hand out for the door handle, but the doors opened in a burst of sparks and splintering wood before he could even touch it. The inside of the barn was revealed. 

There were sigils and graffiti painted all over the walls. He knew those sigils. He painted them with Bobby. 

He could make out someone walking over to him from the shadows. 

“Are you gonna stab me with a knife?” Dean asked, holding his arms out. 

Castiel continued to walk closer to Dean. “I apologize for the abrupt change in scenery. This is the first location I could think of to take you.”

“This is fine, Cas.” Dean huffed out a laugh, still coming down from an adrenaline high from the hunt. “This is just fine.”

Castiel smiled contentedly. 

Dean suddenly remembered what situation he had just escaped from. “Wait a minute, if you’re here, who’s handling my body?”

“Still me,” Castiel said, somewhat smugly. “I’m able to multitask.”

“So what’re we doing right now?” Dean couldn’t help but circle around Castiel slightly, echoing his footsteps from years ago. 

Castiel noticed his repetition and watched him idly. “Sam and I are refilling the grave. Would you like to take back over?”

“Nah, I’ll let you handle the heavy lifting.” Dean finally planted himself by the table of various weapons and leaned against it. “How does it feel?”

Castiel tilted his head at Dean. “I don’t experience physical exhaustion like you do. It doesn’t feel like anything.”

“No, not the digging.” Dean’s thumb rubbed against the rough wood of the table. He lowered his gaze slightly, too embarrassed to say it while looking at Castiel. “Do I feel any different than Jimmy?”

Castiel tilted his chin up and inhaled as he thought. “You have a higher white blood cell count than Jimmy. Your cholesterol is higher than his as well.” He paused. “You also have more” —he squinted his eyes slightly as he decided on a word to use— “brightness to your vessel.”

“What, I’m blowing sunshine up your ass?”

“No,” Castiel responded, drawing his eyebrows together. “You’re the righteous man. You’re divine.”

He said it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. The sky was blue, two and two was four, and Dean Winchester was from the heavens. 

Dean scoffed and shook his head. “I’m not divine, Cas. I’m just a guy.”

He heard cracks of lightning. Castiel was no longer looking at him, deciding to move his gaze to something behind him. 

“Dean,” Castiel said, eyes twinkling in mirth. “Look behind you.”

Dean only had to turn his head slightly to see them. 

There were wings growing out of his back. Big and black, exactly like the ones he saw on Castiel. 

“No.” Dean shook his head. “This is all backwards.” He looked back at Castiel. “Am I dreaming?”

Castiel didn’t say anything, choosing instead to close the distance between Dean and him. For a second, Dean thought—

“Dude, you need to get a sleep apnea machine.” Sam laughed from where he was sitting behind the steering wheel. “You sound like an airplane.”

Dean tensed in his seat and checked his surroundings a few times to comfort himself. He was in the Impala with Sam. 

“I was sleeping?” he asked. 

Sam quickly glanced at him, keeping his attention on the road. “I don’t really know. Cas took over to kill the ghost and clean up, but then he just sat silently in the car. It was creepy.” Sam shrugged. “I just said something when you started to snore.”

“Gee, thanks.” Dean rubbed his hand over his face. It hadn’t felt like a dream. Castiel must have done his forehead-touch thing to send him back to the land of the living. “Remind me to stop crashing after hunts. I get the weirdest dreams.”

“Yeah, you love it when I tell you what to do.” Sam checked the mirrors dutifully. “How’s Cas?”

Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam. “Weren’t you the one who just talked to him?”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one he’s riding shotgun in.” Sam’s mouth quirked. “What’s that like?”

“It’s great.” Dean adjusted his position in the seat. “There, we talked about it. Can we stop by a store? I need to pick up some protein.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Sure thing.”

---

Dean was lying awake in his bed sometime between day two and day three when he finally asked it. 

The words rang in the silence of the night. “What’s it like needing a vessel?”

In the blink of an eye, Castiel appeared. This time, he was lying in the bed next to Dean, under the covers in three layers of clothing. Dean felt underdressed in his pajama pants and old band shirt. The two men were lying on their sides and looking right at each other. Dean thought about telling him to give him some space, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t physically there. 

Castiel was silent for long enough that Dean started to wonder if he was going to answer.

“It makes me feel demonic,” Castiel confessed. His eyes almost glowed in the dim light. “It should not be the will of heaven to ruin a life just to exist on the physical plane. Having to tear someone from their family, from their entire life. I admit, I feel some semblance of comfort knowing that Jimmy is in heaven.” He lowered his eyes in shame. “But Claire, Amelia. Even those in his life he wasn’t close to. Every human has such an intricate web of relationships and reasons to live. Using them as a vessel erases the beauty of humanity.”

Castiel paused. “Jimmy wasn’t my first vessel.”

Dean looked at him in silence, willing him to continue. 

“She was a young woman. Carlotta Richards.” Dean thought he could feel the phantom puffs of Castiel’s exhales on his cheek. “She left her family as a teenager. They didn’t approve of her.” Castiel looked at Dean meaningfully. “She saw me as a blessing. She didn’t realize she was cursed from the moment she let me in.”

Dean’s mouth was dry. “What happened?”

“The mission I used her for ended and I returned to the celestial plane.” Castiel continued to avoid Dean’s eyes. “Her heaven is beautiful. She spends her time in an eternal Saturday sunset on a picnic with her soulmate.” Castiel finally looked at him. “Dorothy.”

Dean held his breath. He was transfixed, completely and utterly. 

“What else?” 

“You,” Castiel said in a low voice. “This body is no closer to what I look like than yours is. I’m not a man with dark hair and blue eyes. I’m not a man at all. Angels’ true forms are their most personal expressions of the self. You deserve to see it.” Castiel’s voice was soft, so soft. He was nearly whispering when he spoke again, his eyes burning into Dean’s. “I wish that you could see who I truly am.”

Both of them wondered, in that moment, if this would be when it happened. Neither moved. 

Dean finally exhaled. “This is who you are.”

Dean blinked. Castiel was gone. 

He didn’t sleep a wink. 

---

It had been a few days. 

Dean could tell that Sam knew it was time for Castiel to go back. Dean knew too. He was eating breakfast when the man himself made an appearance. 

“It’s time for me to return to my rightful vessel,” Castiel said, sitting in the chair across from Dean that was empty a moment before. 

Dean nodded and finished the last bite of his cereal. “You sure?”

“I’ll do an examination of the vessel before I return.” Castiel watched Dean wipe the milk off his lip. “But I believe so.”

“Awesome,” Dean said. He stood up and brought his bowl to the sink. “Let’s get you back home.”

Castiel disappeared after that, leaving Dean to walk to his room alone. He knocked on Sam’s door as he walked by it. 

“Cas is going back to his vessel, you good?”

He heard a muffled, “Let me know how it goes!” from through the door and continued down the hall. Dean was vaguely grateful that Sam didn’t want to be in the room for it, but he didn’t care to examine why. 

Castiel blinked into existence again when he opened the door to his room. Dean turned on the light (thanking Sam for replacing the lightbulbs) to see him staring at his prone body from where he was standing at the foot of the bed. 

“What’s the verdict, Doc?”

Castiel hummed. “The spell seems to have run its course. It should be entirely safe for me to return to my vessel.”

“Good, good.” Dean went over to grab the chair he used before. “Sitting down again?”

Castiel nodded. 

Dean pulled the chair up to the same position, mind only spinning a little bit from seeing two Castiels in the same room. 

“So, what do I do?” Dean asked. “Just exhale really hard, or what?”

Castiel placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder, standing behind him. “I will take care of it. Close your eyes.”

Dean did. 

The reversal process was the same level of strange. It felt like someone was painlessly turning him inside-out. He could still feel the static over his lips as the white light trickled out of his mouth. He felt Castiel’s grace rubbing against the inside of his skin as it retreated up his body. Dean was glad he was sitting down, because his knees felt like they were made of Jell-O. 

Castiel began to rise into a sitting position as he returned to Jimmy Novak’s body. Dean subconsciously trailed after the white smoke as it left his mouth, closing the distance between him and Castiel’s true vessel. They both inched closer to contact as the cloud that was Castiel transferred between them. 

Dean wasn’t aware that he had been kissing Castiel until Castiel started kissing him back. 

It was like touching the surface of the sun. Dean leaned into Castiel’s body for a moment before pulling away. He felt like he was burning. 

“Woah, I—” Dean fought out a breath. 

Castiel was a deer caught in headlights. He scrambled off the bed and started moving away. 

Dean suddenly realized that he didn’t want him to go. He grabbed his forearm. 

“Don’t leave,” Dean pleaded. 

Dean didn’t let go of Castiel’s forearm. Castiel didn’t say anything. Dean kept not letting go. 

“Dean.” Castiel’s body was tense, like a rubber band about to snap.  

To Dean, It all made sense in that moment. Every hidden glance, choreographed touch, charged moment. Dean couldn’t imagine being content without him. He felt like a puzzle whose final piece had just clicked into place. 

Dean took a deep breath. “Cas, you’re my only happy ending. It’s you.” It was a revelation. “And I want a happy ending. I want a happy ending so bad it hurts.” Dean moved his hands to grip his trench coat by the lapels. “I’ve fought for it. I’ve died for it. I need the sun to set, Cas. I need you to be by my side when it does.”

“Dean,” Cas said. 

“So yes. Of course, yes.” Dean let go of Castiel’s now-crumpled trench coat, leaving his hands to slip and rest flat on Castiel’s chest. “Yes back then, yes today, yes tomorrow. Yes to you every day until I’m dead in the ground. Yes to every day after that.”

“Dean,” Cas prayed. He lifted a hand to cup Dean’s cheek. 

Dean’s eyes threatened to fill with tears, but his eyebrows were set sternly in place. “Please, Cas. I won’t ask you twice. Stay.”

“Yes.”

Castiel was the one who closed the space between them. It was electricity in motion. Their kisses were clumsy, awkward, but neither of them would change a thing as they fell onto Castiel’s bed and the kisses began to deepen. 

---

Dean would scratch the back of his neck as he stood next to Castiel, looking at Sam sitting at the table. 

“Hiya, Sammy,” he would say, getting his attention. “Cas and I are... Well…”

Castiel would interrupt. “Your brother and I are having sex now. We don’t plan on stopping.”

Sam would be caught off guard for a moment, but he would smile and laugh kindly with them at the absurdity of it all. 

“It’s about time,” he would finally say. “You two have been circling each other for a while now. It was either killing each other or…”

Dean would smile and say, “Falling in love.”

“Well.” Sam would laugh again. “I was gonna say making out. But that’s good too.”

Dean would feel embarrassed and lower his gaze to the floor for a moment. But Castiel would grab his hand, squeeze it, and everything would turn out alright. 

[graffitibible]

zero my beloved, i would LOVE director’s commentary on a work of your chosing

juno my beloved thank you for indulging me

i'm going to choose a very early passage from the first chapter of starry-eyed, just cause there was a lot there that i had to rework before i was happy with it and there are some things that i think i made TOO subtle lol

CUT BECAUSE IT GOT LONG. i'm rambling about doublestar (oc) and her relationship to a very young jet star, since she essentially raised him in my canon!

You don't get to know your mother but you do get to know Doublestar, and she says that she knew your mother enough to know it was her job to take care of you. The ochre trunk of her arm rattles with the circles of beads, wood-carved things that she kisses, sometimes, or whispers things to, too quiet for you to hear.

The day you ask her what they're for is the day that she takes your hand in hers and slowly slides one of her strands of beads over her thick wrist and her knuckles that have become so worn that the calluses have become scar tissue, and onto yours.

It's too big. It hangs from the skinny stem of your arm. Up close, you can see the little figures carved into them - letters made up of squares and lines that you know because Doublestar knows. Black cat, says one, and thirteen says another.

"They're my bad luck beads," says Doublestar. Her smile is strained, but you can feel her eyes on you as you roll the worn, carved beads between your fingertips, carefully inspecting each one. The words have a slight lisp from the dulled-down nubs of her teeth, which she once told you were the result of the pills and chemicals from the City and how they caused her to grind them into grit. "You keep all the bad luck on your wrist, it'll never find you. You always know exactly where it is."

She looks out into the horizon, at the spiky silhouettes of cacti against the fiery pink cast of the setting sun. The pollution-rich atmosphere always ignites the clouds like the ends of flare guns, brilliant and poison-bright.

"People used to say they came from the Witch."

You know the Witch. She's told you about Her, though you've never seen Her for yourself. She's a specter of death, and Doublestar and her crew belong to the mechanical sprawl of Destroya. You're satellite chasers, watching the shooting stars from the dark velvet of the night sky and tracking them until they hit the sand, lighting up the horizon with a blitz of white-hot incandescence. It's a hard job to get there before the exterminators do, but the parts and scrap that used to belong to the service droids built into the pieces can fetch a high price on the right market. That, and it keeps BLi from tracking anyone down using the signals that shoot out into the desert sky.

Doublestar always makes you leave something of your findings to Destroya - buried under the sand, and marked with its name so that the pieces can find their way back. It's a cruel and low sort of person, she says, that doesn't thank their patron for its sacrifice. The Witch guides the dead, but Destroya is a deity for the living.

So she doesn't talk about the Witch very often.

She taps the ridges of the beads hanging loose around your wrist.

"Those ones were your mom's."

She talks about your mother even less.

You look up at her with a new tightness in your lungs that you can't identify.

Doublestar's smile becomes a right-angled thing, a more familiar beast, as she stands and puts a hand to your head as she leaves. The contact is a five-point star of warmth, and it's too brief before it's gone.

It's the only time she ever implies the extent to which she knew your mother.

when i was building jet's backstory i knew several things going in: that he'd have multiple crews that he'd lost was one of the most important things, since jet's wardrobe is very heavy on the death imagery and so i felt it would be truest to the character to ensure he had a close relationship with death. the rest kind of fell into accordance as it came along and i decided to more or less flesh out all the side characters by reverse engineering them from some aspect of jet star that needed to be brought into prominence.

doublestar's character was essential for laying the groundwork in regards to how jet got to be the way he was. she was genuinely well-intentioned and did her best with him and the others in the crew, but she really wasn't cut out to be the parental figure she kinda should've been. i've talked a bit about this before with regards to what she was meant to represent - she was instrumental in developing jet's relationship with his own assertiveness and lack thereof. she meant the best, but it was her way of praising certain things like jet's keen eye or his steady hands that led him to heavily associate his own value to a crew with what he could physically do to support them, and consequently heavily devalue himself, or at least prioritize himself much lower than others.

i was a little worried people might assume doublestar was secretly jet's mother or something, which is not what i meant to imply. her backstory never gets disclosed but the main thing i wanted to come through here was that she really really hated the analog wars, which is why she was so determined to stay out of them and to keep her crew out of them. combine that with a level of professed closeness to jet's unnamed mother, and the takeaway that i wanted people to walk away with was that jet's mother fought in the analog wars and died, and doublestar had to pick up the pieces left behind. she suggests to jet that she was very close with his mother but doesn't say how or why. then you take her name into account - a "double star" can be another name for a binary star, which in many cases consists of a pair of stars that essentially orbit each other.

i didn't mean for the name to be a deliberate thing that synced up with jet star's own eventual name, but once i landed on it, it was too perfect to pass up. i think doublestar's original name was something like "superflare" or something, definitely astronomy-based (because everyone in jet's first crew had that theme going on, which is why he chose the suffix of "star" for himself later) but the word was too unwieldy (it's important to me that killjoy names sound good to say aloud first and foremost, since they're seldom written down and mostly shouted or spoken on airwaves, and "doublestar" just has way more of a compact punch).

so doublestar indicates that she knew jet's mom well enough to have a set of her bad luck beads and to have agreed to look after her kid, hates the analog wars, and titled herself after a star system that exists solely as a pair, and i'd hoped that this would be enough to imply what i meant for it to imply - the implication being, of course, that she was in love with jet star's mother. i'm not sure how many people caught that though.

doublestar is not an innately nurturing character, but she has her reasons for doing the things she does. she would not have taken care of this kid if there wasn't a good reason for it, and that reason is that she felt she owed it to someone she loved and then lost. she's not biologically related to jet in any way and it's never really addressed if her love for his mother was requited or not, but ultimately that doesn't matter. she loved this person enough to decide that she would raise this kid as best as she could and ensure he would not die the same way his mother did. which kind of makes his eventual fate that much more fucked up.

[alchemist-shizun]

Seirios

Read on Ao3!

Check out the wonderful artwork by @jajathelivingmeme !! She’s a delight and a talented friend 💜

Word Count: 22,331

Characters: Roman, Virgil, Deceit, Remus, Logan, Patton, Emile, Remy, Thomas

Pairing(s): Prinxiety, Loceit, Remile

Warning(s): minor character death and death mentions, implied bad parenting (minor), slight violence, not physical, unrequited romance, kissing, crying, panic attack, ptsd, blood, face and eye injury, scar mention, knives mention, hospital mention, very slight gore (just in an emotional description), insomnia mention, Passing out, apparent major characters death (tell me if I missed anything!)

Summary: It's hard for kids to fall asleep. It's especially hard for Remus when he can't help but stare at the night sky, mesmerized. That's why his guardian and uncle Janus decided to tell him a bed time story about two stars' lives and adventures along with the Sun and the Moon. Janus surely didn't expect for the storytelling to lead them to meet the local astronomer, Logan, not to mention develop a stronger bond with him. The best bit? All of his stories were true. Meet Janus Hydra, a fallen shooting star become human, and come listen to the events he witnessed while in space.

A/N: This is my entry for @ts-storytime ! A big thank you to @i-am-overly-complicated for the moral support and some suggestions, and to @crazydemigod666 for beta reading the fic, love ya bud. I worked super hard on this, I hope you all enjoy! Taglist will be added in a reblog.

✾

❝ It's you, it's you, it's all for you,

Everything I do.

I tell you all the time,

Heaven is a place on earth with you. ❞

He knew nothing of the sky.

He would look out of the window at night and glance up at the starry empyrean, wondering how it was possible that his mother had been part of those celestial entities.

And maybe, now that she was gone, he hoped she was part of them again, the stardust she had left behind now scattered across the universe.

« Remus? » his uncle Janus knocked on the door to his room and peeked inside. « Ready to settle down for the night? »

The kid sighed and stepped away from the window he was resting his arms and head on; sleeping was the part of the day he hated the most, there were so many things awaiting him, ideas in his head he wanted to get out in the real world, how could he simply lay dead doing absolutely nothing for eight hours straight?

Resting was too boring and Remus could think of more than a few things to do in its place.

Janus took a couple of steps in his nephew's direction and held out a hand to him like he was doing a grand gesture.

« Is the little duke in the mood for his sleeping duty? »

« Don't think so. » Remus shrugged and glanced at his bed with disinterest.

He pretended he didn't notice his uncle's small sigh and that expression that always seemed to show veiled compassion whenever the kid wouldn't comply.

Janus thought that Remus was a wonderful child, probably the strongest one he'd ever met, there was nothing he was not grateful for when it came to him: only a couple of years had passed from Angy's death, along with his father leaving him behind right after, and there wasn't a day in which he had let himself feel defeated.

After all, Janus had realized that he was the one to really need the other during that period.

Yet there was that one little detail Remus couldn't get himself behind, which was the need to lie your body down and prepare yourself for the following day. He could struggle all he wanted, but there was no way for either of them to find a solution.

Until Janus posed that fateful question in his mind: what would Angy do in this situation?

He raised his eyebrows as the best option surfaced.

Remus watched him tap his finger on his chin, looking around the room for a seat until he brought one in himself, placing it next to the bed the eight-year-old was now sitting on.

Anguis Hydra had been a shooting star in the sky and a writer on Earth when she fell along with her brother, and if there was something her brother knew best was that the finest solution to any problem she had found was storytelling.

Her readers had given her the nickname of “Angst Hydra”, for how much pain they felt thanks to her books.

Little did they know the stories were real: stories based off of other stars encounters they had had during their travels, her memory her sharpest tool.

« Did Angy ever tell you about the most luminous star you can see from the Earth's sky? »

Janus saw Remus's little eyebrows furrow, sign of a notion that was new to him. He brought his legs to his chest as he leaned on his pillow.

« It's actually a binary system, which is composed of two stars orbiting around each other. »

« Is it the … Sirius system? » Remus seemed to recall, his eyes narrowed in uncertainty.

Janus nodded. « Good job. So, all earthlings know about them is astronomical details, the usual research stuff, right? »

The kid made an agreement noise, curious to where that was gonna land.

« They call them Sirius A and B, but as you may expect there's a lot more into it. » he leaned in, his voice barely above a whisper. « Your mum and I had the occasion to meet them and witness their life events. » he could already notice the excitement growing in Remus's eyes. « So, want to listen to their fairytale? »

« Will there be chaos? »

« You have no idea. » both of them grinned as the kid settled in the only right way he knew: wrapping himself up in a blanket burrito and using his pillow as a seat.

« I'm ready! »

« Keep in mind that it's a long story, so we won't be able to cover all of it tonight, alright? »

Remus nodded despite defeated; Janus, on the other hand, knew that if he managed to get him hooked on the tale, he could have made his nephew look forward to bedtime and made things relatively easier.

A win-win situation.

The man turned off the room's lights only to switch on the bedside lamp with green LEDs.

« Alright little duke. » he moved in a comfortable position. « It's time for you to learn of the dance of the stars during the sunset, the moment the sun and the moon meet to leave each other's place to one another. »

Remus had never heard of such a thing, it was a simple tradition his mother and his uncle never took part of as their star selves happened to be constantly moving around with no time for grand events.

« But let's start from the beginning: let me introduce you to our beloved protagonists. »

✾✾✾✾

There were two notions stars were born with: the concept of the moon and the one of the sun.

They were aware there were multiple ones depending on which solar system they were close to, which planet they were taking into account.

But if there was a third piece of knowledge Virgil was certain of, it was that ever since he'd seen him from his little spot, he had been in love with the sun.

Such a titanic star shielding his own much smaller one.

When he was little, he'd look up at the sun and find a hero, a role model he had always been eager to follow: now, whenever he did that, he longed for contact and the revelation of his gorgeous self he wasn't yet able to meet from afar.

Casual passerby stars or nebulae narrated their encounters with the sun, encounters of which Virgil only grew jealous.

His admiration could only grow as much as he couldn't even fathom the grandiosity of those meetings, as he still wondered what was the intensity with which the sun's eyes glowed, the warmth of his protection and his benevolence.

« You want me to tell you about Emile, little one? » Patton was one of those nebulae that had been already circulating for a while and were old enough to attend a very important event that a myriad of stars took part in.

He hadn't quite realized why Virgil was so eager to meet the sun, but hadn't questioned it once since he'd met him.

« Well there are quite a few tales I can tell you about him! »

And so he did and Virgil found himself hanging onto every single word that escaped the other's mouth.

The little star could do nothing but wait for more stories as he grew along the space around him, hoping that maybe one day his orbit would find him.

Everything was going to change once he'd reached stability and joined the

Sunset's Ball.

✾✾✾✾

« The what? » Remus's sleepy eyes questioned Janus.

« One thing at a time, Rem. » the adult brushed some locks from Remus's forehead. « I'll get there later. But first, there's someone else you need to acknowledge. »

✾✾✾✾

Roman had always been aware of his star title: Sirius A. Thanks to that, he had also always known how he was part of a binary system.

Ever since then, he had been more than eager to meet the other star of his system, dreaming of one day finally finding a friend in them, like he had found in Patton, who would always bring news of Virgil.

He had learnt his name thanks to the nebula and mentioned it in his thoughts and conversations like he was a lifelong friend.

Roman's star was bigger and brighter than Sirius B, greatly shielding its vision.

He felt lonely during his growth and stabilization, anyone would have been intimidated by his star dimensions, therefore the visits paid to him were far less than the ones reserved for Virgil.

Yet he would spend his days trying to get someone's attention and, eventually, he'd stop to look down at the other star and wonder when their meeting would come.

Would it come at all?

Star dances were commonly known, but many happened during the day, so one wouldn't be sure of who they were going to end up with until their very first Ball.

That type of dance was the only one performed by stars, it occurred daily and it was a celebration of either sunset or sunrise, the moments in which the Sun and the Moon met and exchanged greetings, only to swap places with each other.

Only the most important stars could participate, once  stability was reached and they were certain that they would've caused no harm to others: the floating palace in which they took place had been the same for millennia and not a single wrong move had been done to endanger it, it had now become a pillar in their history.

Reaching that place was kind of a rite of passage for the stars and proof of respectability for Roman since, compared to the Sun, he and some other stars were far bigger.

Yet, humans had praised the Moon and his partner as actual gods in various religions and cultures, along with other planets they had acknowledged.

So the bigger celestial objects resonated that their importance still varied and wasn't related to how they presented, but rather to who they were, thus they learnt to stand their ground.

And even so, Roman's true goal had always been a different one.

He was going to meet Virgil, one way or another.

✾✾✾✾

Remus's head hit his uncle's arm lightly, a tiny bump against Janus's sleeve; the man took a break from his storytelling after noticing that the boy's eyes were closed, having finally resigned to the heaviness of sleep, smiled to himself and tucked his nephew in bed.

He followed his nightly routine as well which consisted of watching tv until he passed out and woke up way too early for his schedule, only to go back to sleep in his room for a couple more hours.

If only that night had gone exactly like that.

Janus had touched his mattress at around the same indecent time he did normally and fallen asleep minutes after.

Flashes happened and now hands were on his face, twisted and disappeared, turning into a pair of green eyes that were looking fondly at another woman. They laughed and held hands and he had a knot in his stomach as he hugged him a little too tightly. And Janus was breathing, then not, then sobbing, then he knew her happiness came first because the world was so cruel to him. Then Janus smiled, then he didn't, he held his breath as she stopped altogether and then the green-eyed man left. And he?

He woke up.

Barely three hours had passed and he was already sitting up, hugging himself and resting his face on his knees, his expression contorted in a multitude of unpleasantries.

That was not possible.

He was over that, he was over him, there was no need for his subconscious to resurface the majority of his life's regrets so far.

There was definitely no need to remember, to say the least.

What he was gonna do now was going back to sleep and never think about that dream ever again.

Of course, he actually laid awake to stare at the ceiling blankly until his alarm went off, which he turned off automatically, solely moving his arm.

He had looked into the mirror once he had gotten to his bathroom and forced a smile on, but the usual sparkles stars emanated when happy didn't surround his skin.

When he had gotten Remus to school, the kid had pointed out how darker his eye-bags had become lately.

« Can I get matching ones? »

« No, lil duke, better not. » you're gonna end up like this eventually as an adult.

Janus was sick of the constant pitiful glances he got from his co-workers when he had a bad day, the whispers they passed between each other, the fake respectability they kept when he was in a low mood.

None of them personally knew Janus on a close level.

So, as he thought, none of them could have felt entitled to initiate a conversation on a low-key personal topic.

Yet, there a man was, sliding a card on his desk.

« He's a good therapist, I've heard. If you … you know, have any troubles or if your nephew- »

Not even a glance at the name and Janus's insides were revolting. « We don't need it. » a tight-lipped smile set on his face. « Thank you anyway. »

The man almost ran away at that, embarrassed and frantically looking back at his own work position.

Janus took the card in his hands.

Those same innocent and achingly beautiful green eyes stared back at him; Clyde Davis had been his brother in law for as long as Anguis had been alive, once on Earth.

He didn't mean for his memories to overcome him yet again, but here he was, almost blinded near the day of the death's anniversary.

His eyes fixated on the nothingness right above the floor as thoughts flew by his mind: Angy and him had just fallen on Earth, somehow adjusting to the humans' costumes in no time.

They had some slip-ups when it came to ethics and morality, that was why when it came to the realization of feelings the two brothers had different experiences.

Who would've thought humans were so idiotic to banish certain natural forms of love such as the ones not stereotypically between a man and a woman? (the issues on gender identity and sex were also introduced to them on that planet, as stars lacked the concept despite their anthropomorphic forms)

Who would've thought Janus had to find out from the news right after realizing he had gotten a crush for the same man his sister had fallen in love with?

Sure, it was easier to let her happiness come first that way, but it didn't mean his feelings were hurting any less.

If anything, he was constantly mixing joy and guilt, some sort of bittersweet ending that didn't sit right with his emotions, but it did with his conscience.

Wrong wasn't how he felt at Anguis and Clyde's wedding, but maybe more relieved as he was sure that way his love could've dissipated.

At least he hoped so, especially since he was going to live alone from then on.

He thought distance had worked, but then Remus happened and he visited more often than ever, especially since the boy resembles the two people he loved the most.

The circumstances didn't help him, but he had learnt to disguise how he felt better.

Janus thought nothing could've shattered that nice picture.

And then Anguis fell ill.

Some kind of immunodeficiency, a state that saw her body shut down as a star that slowly died and stopped lighting up the night sky.

He had seen her eyes turn black, he had known all along what it meant, but he did not want to accept it. Only deny it to himself as he was now living at her place, helping out when he could.

When the fatal day occurred, Janus, Clyde and Remus were standing by her as her skin got almost colder than the bed she was in.

It hadn't sparkled in too long.

She knew what was going on, she had intimated them to say goodbye as much as they didn't want to; she looked unfairly defeated.

As the time struck, her body stiffened and everything left of her was stardust that emanated its final glow.

Janus's memory had blocked out everything that came after, especially the funeral.

Of course, he couldn't have forgotten the day Clyde came to him, his eyes now dull and distant, He wanted to leave, start a new life and leave behind everything else because he could not bear to look at Remus or him and be reminded of Anguis.

Clyde asked him to take Remus's custody and for the first time Janus had wanted to punch his face rather than kiss him.

But he had instead accepted, not out of empathy, but because he had become so lost that he wasn't sure his reality was so truthful anymore.

Remus had been a blessing, saving him from negativity more than he could with himself. He was a wonder, that kid.

Janus had zoned out for so long that he came back to Earth only as he was sitting on an armchair at home, while his nephew played with some toys right behind him.

« Hey. Did you know you're a wonderful kid? »

« I thought that was obvious. Also, gross, I'd rather be called stinky! » he hadn't even looked up from his creation.

Janus snorted. « Of course. » he made to get up and make dinner.

Later in the evening, Remus had climbed onto the counter and stared at Janus, who was leaning against the furniture while drinking some warm tea.

« I'm going to the astronomy museum tomorrow! »

« I know. »

« Don't you think it's time for a story then? »

The man giggled. « Are you bribing me? »

« You've been brooding all day, uncle! » he jumped back down, and hugged his waist only to pull him out of the kitchen.

Janus did his best not to stumble. « Alright, alright, we need some time-out time. » he picked his nephew up and in a minute they were settled for their storytelling.

« So- »

« Did dad show up? »

He fell silent, baffled by the sudden question. He gave Remus a puzzled look.

« You always act absent when something related to him happens. » the kid explained.

Who gave an eight-year-old the right to be that smart?

Janus opened and closed his mouth several times. « Well- Not exactly. » he scratched the back of his neck. « They talked about him. I think I might have gotten … triggered? » he wasn't sure whether or not that was the right term to use. But he did feel numb for the majority of the day, despite the flashbacks.

« Well, fuck him. »

« Rem- »

« No, fuck that guy. » Remus raised his voice more, but Janus didn't find it in himself to stop him. « he just dropped his burdens on you and left like a coward! Fuck that bullshit! » his face was red with anger.

« I know. But dear, you're not a burden. »

« I don't even care if I am for him. »

« Let me finish. » Janus used the calmest tone possible to balance out the other's upset. « As much as you don't agree with what he's done, you have to remember everyone's got their own way to cope. »

He sighed, eyes fixed to the floor. « In his case, he could've probably been a bad parent for you and decided to trust you with me rather than himself. He knows I love you just as much, so he wanted you to be in a certainly safe environment. »

Remus wasn't still entirely convinced.

« The thing is, he feared not being able to raise you the way you deserve. You still have all the right to be angry at him, of course. But you need to know that you didn't do anything bad for this all to happen, okay? »

The kid bit the inside of his mouth. « Yeah, I know. You've told me plenty of times. »

« Repetita iuvant. And honestly you've been of help more than he would imagine, so … yeah fuck him. »

The duo snickered and gave each other a matching mischievous glance.

« But seriously, no swearing like a sailor until you're older, okay? At least not in front of other adults, you know how they get easily impressed. »

« Ugh, they never let me do anything fun. »

« Capitalism. »

« What? »

« Nothing, let's carry on with the story. Tonight, Virgil and Roman are going to finally meet. »

✾✾✾✾

Roman was ecstatic.

He had been accompanied by Patton and they had now made their entrance in the ballroom.

The space looked fancy and highly decorated, white, gold and blue themes coloured every object, glistening with a bit of purple here and there. It felt like being in the gods' lair, high columns sustained a roof for a space much bigger than its guests.

A pompous environment that suggested any trait related to space and stars.

Everyone was dressed up for the occasion, he felt like he was in the middle of one of those royal dances humans had to entertain themselves.

They all had a mask covering part of their face; it was a way of respecting the Sun and Moon as they had yet to arrive and would wear it as well until they took it off alongside everyone.

Clothes and masks were pretty much the same for everyone, changing based on the type of star you were, only the colours changed for everybody.

Roman was wearing crimson items; they often recalled the color of a star's eyes, like his case.

« Feeling nervous? » Patton was leading him toward their designated spot, he had previously offered his arm to Roman after showing off his sky-blue outfit.

« Kind of. Don't wanna mess up. But also what if they're not here? » Roman was already pulling at the hem of his sleeve.

« I'm sure they are. Normally binary systems are put together. I'll help you search! » Patton gave a warming smile that ushered the other not to worry too much.

« Should I go find a dance partner? » there was literally no etiquette to follow until the two main protagonists arrived.

The nebula noticed the initial discomfort in him. « That, or you can stay with me for now. »

Roman was about to reply in gratitude when he saw everyone move to the centre of the room, where he got by taking Patton's hand.

Alright, here we go.

The first part of the dance had the stars already dancing around the room while waiting; none told Roman there would have been partner changes.

He and Patton had just turned, their backs facing, when suddenly his hand touched another one and there he was spinning slowly with a stranger.

Roman had a pair of purple irises fixed in his own, on a stoic face they were decorating, his head slightly tilted.

« Hi. » he had tried, but he only saw the star's eyes look down, ignoring his greeting.

That made Roman feel defeated, little did he know the stranger's goal was another and that he couldn't lose time on uneventful conversation.

One of each star's hand was intertwined with the others'.

Should have Roman been stoic as well? Could they talk during the event? Was he being judged by the other guy?

Still, after seemingly searching into Roman for some sort of hint, the other star kept looking behind his shoulders, especially on the front door, which was decorated with complicated bass-relief motives.

Was he more interested into the room's details than meeting new people?

Roman glanced around for clues and his eyes met smiling and chatting couples, giving him the impression that he had been doing something wrong.

Until he met Patton's look again and he noticed the signals he was giving him.

“It's him”, his lips mouthed and it finally hit Roman when Patton motioned towards the other with his eyes.

Roman blinked in bewilderment and turned back to his partner only to see him let go of his hand, his back already facing him, without a single chance for him to speak some last words.

His focus shifted again when a different light glowed into the room, he heard the door starting to open and everyone was pushed at both opposite sides of the room.

A path was now created, like a little temporary corridor.

Finally, from either door, two figures started walking down the path, making it very clear on their identity: the Sun and Moon had made their entrance.

Gold and silver shining like they were the only things in existence, the two met halfway and joined hands, making the whole audience restart their own dance.

Roman's companion had changed and it was now a lady part of a system, her name was Zeta, but he couldn't help but think back at how close he had been to his discovery.

Everytime he caught a glimpse of him, he lost it, happening so often that Roman had been closer to interact with the Moon instead.

Patton had told him his name was Remy, while the Sun's was Emile and they were part of a particular solar system which contained planets such as Jupiter, Mars, or his favourite, Saturn.

He had also been told there were rumors behind the two's different clothing; Emile was rumored to wear gloves so he could protect others from his burning touch, while Remy was never seen without his sunglasses, probably because he would have gone severely injured if he had directly looked at the Sun.

Busying himself with the search for his system's second star, he almost didn't notice it when people started scattering and some went back to chatting.

Emile and Remy took off their masks alongside everyone and respectively put on glasses and sunglasses.

« Hey there! »

Roman turned. « Holy stars, Patton! I can't believe I almost had him. »

« Well, at least you know he's here now, right? » the nebula started looking around from his spot to search for Virgil again.

« Yeah, I hope it'll be easier to- »

« Found him. » Patton pointed at a few feet next to them, where their object of interest was sitting, attentively staring at something or someone.

Roman felt something in his chest click as soon as he was able to see his face clearly: he didn't know how to describe it, but he loved and absolutely loathed it at the same time.

He realized he had been holding his breath only after he deeply exhaled, making Patton raise an eyebrow.

« Are you going to say hello, or …? »

That was not ideal.

That was actually utterly terrible, how he felt drawn to the other and yet terrified at the same time, the intensity making it a seemingly impossible goal.

Despite the other being the infinitely smaller star, Roman was in awe, like he couldn't compare to him in any sort of way; the aura he gave off was too strong, so much that he seemed to know the secrets of the universe before anyone else.

Roman couldn't explain it, but he had to talk to him or else he would've probably combusted.

What had gotten into him? Did the realization of actually having the possibility of making friends with the other half of his binary system just hit him? … Would the other really agree to such a friendship?

He was afraid to answer that. They barely knew each other, anyway.

Roman started approaching him and felt his legs as heavy as lead, his tongue tied and all the conversations that he had prepared basically gone from his mind.

So many years of longing for this meeting only for it to go into shambles.

Yet, there he was, at last standing next to him.

« Greetings, the name's Roman. » he achieved a single apparently annoyed glance. He looked still … in search of something. « I was wondering whether you were the star entitled as Sirius B. »

Roman finally got a reaction out of him, a slick turn of the head in an impressed expression. « How would you know that? »

Roman grinned and moved one hand from behind his back. « Well, you see, » he started, theatrically bowing down just that necessary to still look him in the eyes. « It just so happens that I am Sirius A. »

✾✾✾✾

Janus was mimicking Roman's gesture as Remus watched in awe.

« Who knows what Virgil will say? »

« Hold it- What do you mean? » Remus sluggishly said with his cheek pressed against the pillow.

« I mean that it's late and you should rest before your little school trip, alright? »

The kid didn't look very convinced.

Janus tried again. « Also, I'm going to give you a mission for tomorrow. »

Remus's eyes lit up again. « What is it? »

« You're going to have to find the stars I've been telling you about. There's going to be a dark room full of projections; it's gonna be fun. »

His nephew let out a “Ooh” of understanding and admiration, already picturing what it could have looked like.

« Come on now, » Janus helped him set into bed and kissed his forehead, at which, like any other night, Remus commented with a “gross” and wiped at his skin.

It was their little routine before Janus himself started preparing for the night.

He was pacing around the living room when he could have sworn he had heard something moving right outside of his apartment's door; he stood there for a second, simply staring at the doorknob, expecting it to twist at any second.

Nothing came through and thus he went to sleep.

He really needed a relaxing bath first.

Janus knew something had been off as soon as he had woken up; the uneasiness from the night before still lingered, pressing down on his stomach.

He could not deal with this.

It was six a.m. again and he was staring at the cupboard in the bathroom.

No, it was fine. He was fine, he could do it on his own.

He breathed deeply and exited the room only to find a perky Remus already up and excited for his trip.

The kid smiled up at him. « Is breakfast ready yet? »

Janus forgot all about how he had woken up.

Merely an hour and a half later, Remus had been dropped off at the school bus after making sure he had everything he needed and that he was under the supervision of all the class' teachers.

He was still going up the stairs of the condominium, when he noticed a figure fidgeting and standing by his door.

Brown curls, green eyes and still impossibly gorgeous.

Janus's stomach did a triple flip and he didn't know if it was for delight or bitterness. Of course, his mind blanked as soon as Clyde acknowledged him.

« Hey, J. » the tone was unsure.

None had been allowed to call him that in years.

« It's been a while … »

« Indeed. » he responded sternly, almost petrified as he waited for the other to state the reason for his visit.

« Uhm, I … needed to get a thing I left here. »

« Here. »

« Yeah. »

Clyde was trying his best not to make everything awkward, but Janus was making it godawfully impossible.

The star didn't talk any further and simply turned the keys to unlock the door, stepping in and aside to let the other enter.

« Get what you need and leave. » he didn't make eye contact, or else he would have been fucked.

A distraction.

Janus went into the kitchen, busying himself with getting things ready for lunch, while Clyde headed for Remus's room; there was a photo album he needed to get after all, there was no way Remus would have wanted to keep pictures of a dad that had given up on him.

He picked up the album and turned the first couple of pages. Then more and more.

Remus had cut out Clyde's face from any picture in which he had appeared.

It was a hit to his heart, a well deserved one, but a hit nonetheless; he put the album back and headed for the door, but something pulled him back to Janus.

The star eyed him warily.

« Did you get it? »

« Not really, but- I figured it doesn't matter anymore. »

Janus made an uninterested noise without looking back up at him.

« If there's anything- »

« We don't need your help. »

Clyde's eyes fell to the floor, but he insisted and came closer to the other, standing at his side.

« I know it's kind of hypocritical but were you to find yourself in a difficult situation- »

« Hypocritical? » Janus scoffed, finally turning to him and glaring at him.

He wanted to drown.

« The only time my situation becomes difficult is when you are around. » he could feel his insides heating up.

« Listen I know you hate me now- »

Oh, was that guilt tripping? That was guilt tripping.

« That's the issue. Everytime I see you, I get reminded of the fact that I just … I don't actually hate you and it sucks, so please leave. » he felt like he was on the verge of either tears or a crisis out of exasperation.

« Janus … » Clyde dared to lift a hand as the other tried to focus back on cooking.

« Don't touch me. »

« Listen. » the man took Janus's wrist anyway with the sole purpose of trying to put some sense into him.

Janus tried to wiggle free from his grip. « I said- » until … « Ugh! » he did.

But his hand had jerked back right onto his cheek, causing the knife he was holding to leave a deep cut through his eye and cheek.

He dropped everything and held his head as a luminous substance flowed out of his cut.

Star's blood.

« Oh my- Oh god, I- »

« Get out! » he yelled one last time and could only hear Clyde's steps as he hurried away from him.

Now there was something interesting about stars: they had a really peculiar way of healing, so much that hospitals wouldn't understand their ways. So Janus ought to help himself.

He quickly washed the blood out of his hands and ran into his room before he could pass out, closed the windows and turned every light off.

By memory he found the little box he had hidden in the bedside table, a secret drawer.

He opened it and a blinding light illuminated the room. That was the light that belonged to him as a star; once you disguise yourself as a human you get to keep it in case of emergencies.

Janus felt heat coming back to his body and pain retreating from his brain.

When he closed it everything felt normal again, despite the tiredness from what had just happened.

Then he looked in the mirror.

A terrible scar ran from above his eyebrow, down his eye and onto his cheek, still so fresh and yet … It looked like a childhood one. And he could still perfectly see.

He didn't want to deal with that right then: he went back to work on his meal and decided on a relaxation day as he didn't have work and really needed a rest.

All he wanted to do was scream and probably cry, but he decided on staring at the ceiling from the living room's couch.

By the time he woke up, he had to go pick up Remus from the school trip, which now required him to put on concealer on his face.

His nephew didn't mention anything about it around others.

But he wasn't certainly stupid.

Once in the car, he spoke up. « What happened to your face? »

« Can't a man wear make-up? »

« Yes, but you've never done It before. And you're not in love so there's none to make yourself pretty for. »

« Ouch, now I'm not pretty? » Janus chuckled.

Remus pointed a finger at him. « You're insecure! »

When will children stop being so brutally honest?

Once home, Janus went straight for the bathroom to wipe the concealer away. « You see, little duke, » he called from there. « Sometimes you don't want to explain things. Sometimes you can't. » he then went back to him and showed his scar.

« What happened? »

« An accident. I recovered quickly with some remaining starry powers. »

The kid seemed to accept it, despite being skeptical.

« Can I get one too? I want to be like a dragon! »

« Dragons don't have scars, kid. » Janus tilted his head.

« They do! It's written in books, they have them all over their bodies. »

« Sweetie, those are scales. »

Remus considered for a second, his eyes fixated on a random spot.

« Uncle, I think my life is a lie. »

Janus finally laughed for real and they decided to leave the corridor for the more important conversation to happen in the living room; the kid started going on about the astronomy museum and all its wonders.

« And then there was that big constellations projector like you mentioned and it was beautiful. » Remus mimicked how he would've showed him in the room, as if the projections were in their apartment. « The scientist knew everything about them, he answered every question, uncle Jee I want to go back! »

Janus smiled the entire time, especially at how his nephew was now looking at him with literal sparkles in his eyes.

« Your birthday is around, isn't it? We could go back then. »

The kid started jumping around in excitement. « I want to visit everyday! I could sell lemonade like they do in cartoons and pay my ticket everyday! »

He giggled, while Remus kept coming up with different ways to assist himself. « I don't think that's likely, but we could visit often if that's what you'd like. »

« But Logan … » the other murmured sadly. « The star man ... »

Janus theatrically scoffed. « Excuse you, am I not enough of a star human myself? »

Remus stuck his tongue out at him and started running around the room only to flee from his uncle's vision in order for him to try and chase him; Janus sighed in a “not this again” manner and walked towards his general direction.

The scar had already been long forgotten.

✾✾✾✾

After days of non stop talking about that one astronomer and the museum, Remus's birthday finally came around.

It didn't seem such a peculiar or important day for that same one astronomer the kid kept talking about, the intelligent and cool one that he wanted to celebrate with.

Logan was walking up the stairs to the museum, his beloved workplace he wouldn't have traded for any kind of amount of gold.

Thankfully, its location had been accessible to a great number of tourists and curious citizens ever since it had been founded, so that every worker could be easily secured in their position.

He waved at his colleagues as he headed to his little office where he often stayed late to do research along side other devoted astronomers; his afternoon shift was about to start, right on time to run through a couple of papers of the previous night before meeting his first group of the day.

Being a tour guide around a museum whilst assisting in astronomy research all the while had its perks and downsides.

Mostly for Logan, it was his insatiable need to let every single thought that ran in his mind directly out for others to hear and obtain as information. It had always been hard as a teenager, especially during high-school.

It wasn't that he studied irregularly – well, maybe sometimes – but he, unlike the majority of his classmates, had to do extra work on training his speech method. The bits of info that stuck to his head while he studied were far too many and growing with each passing test, which made it harder to form connected sentences.

Talking was even worse than writing, he had no time to re-formulate what he had said a minute earlier, he couldn't go back to check what was his initial point, making his oral tests a complete mess.

Despite this, knowing what he wanted to do in his life in the long run, he kept practicing, finding great treasure in info-dumping people about his special interests.

Getting to discuss this kind of matter with university colleagues was a far better help than feeling like you were talking to a wall when your interlocutor kept nodding and smiling, clearly ignorant of whatever you were talking about.

It had also helped to understand how exactly you should modulate your speech depending on the audience, making it all a perfect experience for a soon-to-be guide.

Logan left the room and finally met his momentary students, ready to prepare their minds for the bliss of knowledge.

He briefly glanced through them, multiple people all different from one another, proving the world that education could be for anybody; he moved through different topics with ease, basically dancing between different rooms as he caught glimpses of other interested visitors, such as curious middle schoolers, or a man with bright yellow gloves talking softly to a small excited kid next to him.

It was his place, he felt at home, that strange and rare belonging sentiment.

The satisfaction of leaving the last group of people whose minds wandered in the deepest parts of space, now devoid of questions.

Who he didn't expect to still be wandering around the various exhibits hours after their entrance was that same man with yellow gloves and … supposedly his kid?

Logan leaned on the wall of the room's entrance, still out of sight, trying to catch what kind of conversation might have kept them around for so long.

Not much to his surprise, he heard the man talk of stars with an impressive accuracy, pointing up at the big white and blue projector.

It felt like he had met them personally and conversed with them.

He found himself smiling involuntary as he recognized his own enthusiasm in the boy.

And then …

« It's almost closing time, so, are you ready to hear what Virgil had to say? »

Remus's eyes lit up impossibly more and yelled a convinced “yeah!” before sitting on his uncle's lap and pointing up towards the binary-star Sirius.

« There. »

… he was brought elsewhere.

✾✾✾✾

Virgil always thought they'd have looked the same.

Either some sort of twins or really similar, differently aged bodies, something as weird as that.

Now a gleaming figure stood before him, completely different from how he had imagined him, so much that he almost distrusted that information.

« Patton told me about you. » Roman added later, as if he had just read his mind.

After the initial awkwardness, noticing the blunt disinterest, he tried again.

« So, what would be the name of my system companion? »

The other star raised an eyebrow at the unusual title and looked away before he could respond, making his answer muffled by the music echoing in the room.

« Virgil. »

« Well then, a pleasure being your friend then, Virgil. »

That finally got a reaction out of him, as the smaller star snorted sarcastically. « I don't really think meeting one time is what it takes to be someone's friend, Roman. »

He laughed lightly. « My apologies, I don't actually know how it works, » still with a smile on, he looked down. « I don't really have friends. »

And there it was, something Roman had never seen before, but that he could've caught on Patton's expression sometimes, briefly.

The pitiful glance he would've learnt to recognize.

« Oh. » was all Virgil mustered to say. He had never faced that kind of situation.

« It's the big and terrifying thing, or some envy of sorts, I'm not sure … But I still have Patton! » Roman concluded, bright as before. « And it's also why I've been eager to meet you since I got to know about you. »

Virgil tilted his head as he quickly glanced between him and the dancing couples.

« Did he tell you about me? »

« A little. He wanted it to be more of a surprise for both of us, he was as excited as I was! »

Unlike you, it seems.

Roman frowned and brushed off the clear indifference of the other, instead trying to find common ground.

« Would you like to dance? »

Virgil finally looked at him properly, but it was as though he was trying to make a tough choice, whether that was a useful option to his goal, the same way he did the first time they met. His hand moved and almost reached Roman's, but hesitation got the best of him, his eyebrows furrowed, arm almost shaking.

Roman didn't understand; what was the issue? They had danced earlier. What was so different about it now?

« I- »

They were interrupted by a swarm of people coming their way, clearing up a path for the Sun and Moon to return back to their respective places, outside of the palace.

Which meant it was time for everyone to part ways.

« … I will go. »

And just like that, he was gone.

Roman repeated the events in his mind once he got back, immediately requesting Patton's presence. Just what in the planets had he just witnessed? There was nothing of the sweetness he'd fantasized about, nothing about introducing each other like old friends, nothing of that electric buzz in your chest, the one that makes you so sure that you do belong exactly where you are.

All he felt was dread, awkwardness and uncomfortable silence, loss of words. Stupidity.

That's what he was, so ingenuous to think both of them would've been happy to find each other at last.

Had Virgil ever even cared about all of this? Did Roman simply impose his dreams on the other?

« So that I'm sure I did not hallucinate, » the star huffed, an arm over his eyes as he laid down. « I did meet him. »

« That you did. » Patton said, sounding more certain than Roman himself.

« And … »

« And? »

« It sucked. » he got up. « We barely even talked! My mind was racing and going blank from agitation and he didn't even try to interact with me, Patton. He obviously doesn't want to be my friend! He definitely thinks I'm annoying at this rate. »

« Hey there, little sparkle, slow down with the all too quick affirmations now. » Patton's form outside of the palace made him almost look like he had wings for arms. « You see, we're not all the same. You met me, and I'm very energetic and mostly aligning with your extravagant character- »

« You think I'm extravagant? » Roman let in some fake disbelief.

Patton chuckled. « In the best way possible! What I mean is, it's easy for us to get along, but Virgil is pretty much the opposite of you, which makes it a bit difficult to immediately get along. You only need to give it some more time. »

The binary-star did feel reassured with his words.

Not completely, though they made sense, yet there was always something in the back  of his mind that made him doubt those kind of words. The nebula could tell everytime Roman grimaced for seemingly no reason.

« Are you … » Roman calculated his words. Surely he didn't want to appear more doubtful than he was after his “defeat” at the ball earlier. « Are you sure it's not … »

« Roman, believe me, he'd be the last to care about the fact that you're … » he scrambled for examples. « A bigger star than the sun itself! Star systems share a deep intrinsic bond. Just go at his pace, he might only be distraught. »

« I heard someone talk about big stars. » a voice called over their shoulders. « So I couldn't help but stop by. »

A feminine body loomed before them, familiar almost spirited eyes checked Roman out from afar, until she was close enough to inspect both of them.

« Zeta. » Sirio-A called out unenthusiastically. « What brings you here? »

« Didn't see you dancing. Was wondering what kind of unforeseen event kept you from shining your true beauty upon those little kids. » they grinned. « But I see you're already hooked up. »

« Patton's always been a friend. » he replied in annoyance.

« I don't really do romances, thank you! » Patton offered right after with a bright smile.

« Oh. I apologize for assuming. » she said, before composing herself « Anyway,  I'd appreciate it if you came to chat with me and Canopus instead of running around in search of a random dude. »

Zeta Ophiuchi had always been … an eccentric type of star, basking under the knowledge that she, Roman and Canopus were the brightest ones of the night sky.

She managed to enthrall Canopus in her own thinking, since the latter showed a less strong character than her friend; Roman, though? He'd never really been eager to feed the fire of greatness.

He had come to terms with the fact that all those acts of superiority didn't matter, since nothing really changed in their hierarchy.

« Why do you guys insist on keeping your title as names instead of choosing your own? » he derailed from the conversation.

« A little nosy, aren't we today? »

« Says the one who barged in uninvited. »

Zeta chuckled. « Touché. » she sighed afterwards. « It's because we want to stay true to our origin, partly because it also gives you a grip on your essence, your reality. It's empowering, Sirius. » she put much more emphasis on Roman's title.

He hated it with a burning passion.

Zeta lowered down at his eye-level. « Don't you think? » he wanted to wipe her grin away with a single death glare.

Patton muttered a “not again” under his breath; that occasion happened at least once a month, Zeta would pick at Roman's most sensitive spots and try to get past the thick walls he placed between himself and his insecurities.

« Well it's been a nice sunset! Why don't we go before it gets too dangerous for you to stay away from Ophiuchus, Zeta? »

She stared intently at Roman for a while longer before turning to the nebula and offering a fake smile and a nod. « Of course, Seagull. »

He breathed deeply, then waved sadly at his friend as Zeta followed quickly behind.

Roman understood how she and Canopus had been admitted to the same group as his, yet at the same time he couldn't believe how he had to deal with Zeta's teasing even in the palace.

Working towards his goal was going to be harder than he thought.

✾✾✾✾

« Zeta's a bitch! » Remus abruptly commented, causing his uncle's sudden laughter. « I like her. »

Janus tried to gain his breath back. « Yeah- » he chuckled. « She's going to be rather interesting in the future. »

« Well that was quite the story. »

His eyes widened and he turned towards the entrance of the projector room: there stood a man, probably around his age, with the usual formal outfits and the museum worker plate stuck to his shirt.

« I'm so sorry I- »

« Logan! » Remus sprinted to his feet and ran up the stranger like he was an old relative he loved and hadn't seen in ages.

So that was who Remus would always mention.

Janus walked up to them, trying to hide the embarrassment behind a polite smile. « Come on duke, we should get going now. »

« But he's the star man! »

Star man? Logan thought, low-key impressed.

« There's no need to rush actually. We'll be closing the exhibit rooms in an hour, but most of us tend to stay the night. » he smiled back, then looked down at the young boy. « How do you know my name? »

« I came here two weeks ago! » Remus excitedly said. « With school! There were two of you, you were the cool one. »

Logan recalled a school class and a co-worker helping out with timing.

« We came back for my birthday, but I thought you weren't here today. Can we celebrate together now? »

Janus let out a laugh between exasperation and amusement, then looked up at the astronomer. « He's grown fond of you. » he tried to explain.

« I can see that. » Logan crouched down to converse with Remus easily. « What would you want me to do? »

Never before an occasion like that one had occurred to him, plus an offer to spend time with people with his same interests other than his colleagues, thus less programmed to spit out information in any given situation, would have definitely been a breath of fresh air.

« Let's get ice cream. » Remus turned to his uncle. « Can we? »

Janus nodded. « If Logan is able to, I don't see why not. »

And Logan could afford leaving early every once in a while, so …

« Alright then, » he stepped aside from the entrance to let them exit. « I will let them know I'll be going out. » he pointed towards the offices and left.

About half an hour later, Remus was walking around the park, doing his best not to make the ice cream fall from his cone as he inspected all the bugs and insects he could find.

« I hope we're not wasting precious time. » Janus was walking alongside Logan not too far behind from Remus.

« Not at all. I have been actually told I could have used some free time every now and then. »

« Ah, are you the stay-in-late type? »

Logan moved his head from side to side in half agreement. « Sort of. It is mostly part of our job to carry on with research. You could say my work could be divided into day and night jobs. I do not mind it a single bit, to be fair. »

« Oh! » the star stopped dead in his tracks, realization hitting him, while the astronomer looked back at him, blinking in confusion. « How rude of me. » he extended his arm to the other. « My name is Janus Hydra. »

Logan gladly shook it. « Pleasure to be here then, Janus. »

The star smiled, then they went back to walking. « And the one who's trying to catch a butterfly is my nephew Remus. » he giggled as he watched the kid almost stick his cone into a tree.

« It was very thoughtful of you to bring him to the museum for his birthday. »

« Yes, well, he wouldn't stop mentioning it day and night. It would've been rude of me not to do so. »

Logan caught an odd detail in that sentence. « You live with him? » he asked, trying to be as cautious and considerate as possible.

Janus nodded and, for the first time, he wasn't asked why. He was silently grateful for, objectively, a stranger not trying to peer into his personal life as much as others would do.

« So, what about you? I haven't seen you around my workplace, yet you seem to be knowledgeable about stars. » he thought back at the moments in which he pointed up at the constellations with impeccable precision. « Is it a simple personal passion? »

« You could say that. It's something like a family thing. As you may have noticed, my surname comes from a constellation, by which I could deduce that probably one of my ancestors decided it was going to be our legacy. »

Logan could … honestly see that.

« Very peculiar. I can imagine the- »

« L, look! » Remus ran up to them with a butterfly in his hand. « Which one is this? »

Logan cupped one hand under his. « I suggest not to take it by the wings, » with the other, he instructed Remus to drop it gently on his palm. « Touching them damages them as it removes the material on them which permits butterflies to distinguish and disguise themselves. Furthermore, your risk to damage or even completely break the wings. They're pretty fragile. » the little insect walked up to his fingertip. « Here. » he offered as he gestured for Remus to carefully let the butterfly walk on from Logan's to his hand.

« This one is a Morpho Menelaus, also known as blue morpho. »

« I read they can drink from puddles. » the kid said as he lowered the insect next to one on the ground.

« That's true, they have a varied diet. Did you know some can drink blood as well? »

Remus jumped to his feet, a wide grin on his face. « They can?! »

Logan made a diverted expression at the difference between Remus's reaction and Janus's unpleasant disbelief.

« There's a moth species in Asia with this ability, if it pleases the butterfly of course, it's rare but not undone. »

Time seemed to dilate as Remus kept asking for more facts to the “cool man who seemed to know everything”, the small talk between the latter and Janus to slowly get to know each other more and the general pleasant aura made them forget it was almost time for dinner.

« Wait. » Remus, once again, caught everyone's attention. « What about my birthday gift from Logan? »

Janus wanted to intervene, but Logan seemed way ahead of him already.

« How inconsiderate of me, you are absolutely correct, I should have prepared for this important event. » he pretended to think about it. « How about you can come to the museum whenever you want without the need of a ticket? »

Remus beamed, that was the best t-

« No. »

And his heart skipped a beat for a moment. He turned to look at his uncle with disappointment, but Janus's glance was fixed on Logan's.

« I refuse to not support your job. We will pay, like any other visitor. »

« Let's make a deal, then. You can come whenever you'd like and stay later than closing time, while I get to hear the story you were telling earlier as well. »

That was entirely unexpected. What was so charming about events he had witnessed? It didn't sit completely right with him, but who was he to deny saving money for the sake of his nephew's happiness?

Janus looked down at Remus who had assumed the “cat with the boots” adorable pleading face.

« Alright, you win this one, but I still owe you. » he warned Logan.

« Completely fine with me. »

« Are you sure it's okay to do, still? »

The astronomer had no doubts. « I will find a way, no need to worry. I'll be expecting you two tomorrow? » he asked, tilting his head almost imperceptibly to the side.

The other two agreed to come say hi after Remus had been done with school and thus they parted ways.

As Janus drove home, he realized he hadn't felt the all too familiar dawning of anguish a single moment of the day.

Was that going to be the eagerly awaited turning point?

Ever since they started visiting the museum, Remus and Janus took their time to explore every room and all the documents the exhibit had to offer, which made it really effective to tire Remus out in anticipation of bedtime.

Thus, the storytelling would often get postponed, especially since they wanted Logan to also be present, though he had to run important experiments during the first few weeks. They so decided to change it from a bedtime story to “their thing”, under the faint light of a constellations projector.

A month had now passed since their first encounter, and they finally managed to all sit down together in the almost dark room.

« Here's an apology gift. » Logan pushed a box in front of Remus who immediately wrapped off the paper encasing it.

« Apology for what exactly? » Janus asked with an eyebrow raised. « You're already letting us stay here for free. » it had become like a second home at that point.

« I know, but I have been around very briefly and I had to sneak you in late to cut out some time for you. »

« We aren't expecting you to be here every single time, Logan, you work here … »

« And you're also forgiven! » Remus exclaimed showing the little glow-in-the-dark stars stickers he already couldn't wait to put up in his room.

Janus chuckled under his breath. « You still didn't have to. » he made himself comfortable against the room's wall.

« If everyone's ready, I shall begin. »

✾✾✾✾

Roman felt like Virgil had been missing for most of the sunset dances.

He hadn't caught a glimpse of him in weeks, he felt as if he had been playing hide and seek all this time; Patton told him not coming wasn't possible, like stars were literally just teleported fully dressed to the ballroom the second it begun.

He had also been pretty busy avoiding Zeta and Canopus – not that the latter was any threat to him, actually she would've been easily persuaded to not tell on his location – that time ran out before he could meet up with Virgil.

All hope had been lost as he laid against a column and turned away from the dancing couples.

And he saw Virgil, a few meters away, sitting on a marble sort of parapet like he was ready to jump on his feet and leave. He was surrounded by a lack of other stars.

« Hey there. » Roman waved from his spot and his system's partner turned to him with the quickest neck movement he'd ever seen.

He looked as tired as someone who'd been dancing around all night.

… trying to … avoid someone …

Okay, they were both tired as hell.

Virgil gave the most effortless wave he could muster.

« Haven't seen you lately. » Roman pointed out. « Still, would you sit down with me? I don't think I can handle standing a minute longer. »

« I concur. » Virgil responded, grateful.

They slid down to the floor in almost perfect synchrony, simply watching what was going on before them: Roman was able to catch Patton's eyes and smile at him.

« Remember when you said I'm not a good judge of what is and isn't a friendship? »

« Didn't phrase it like that, but sure. »

« Does someone who's constantly bothering you and generally poke at your limits seem like a friend? »

Virgil took a silent but deeper look at the other and noted in his mind how exasperated he sounded.

« That sounds more like someone's been annoying you non-stop. That's … not exactly friendship either. »

Roman sighed, trying not to spiral into hysteria by the end of the night; he could hear Zeta's imposing voice in every corner he tried to escape.

How to break into silence?

« What do you think about going to the balcony? »

Virgil didn't hate the idea, but worry got the best of him. « Isn't that section of the palace reserved to the Sun and Moon only? »

His acquaintance displayed a mischievous smile. « Not if we get back before anyone notices. » he pulled himself to his feet, offering his hand to the other confidently.

Virgil couldn't help but take it and venture into unexplored areas; the hallways decorations were pretty much the same, if not less sumptuous, of the ballroom. He watched as Roman pushed glass doors open and revealed a terrace with a view of the Earth's sunrise on the sky above them.

They must have been on the Sun's wing. He felt suddenly more agitated about his presence there.

« Finally, » Roman took large steps to the parapet and leaned on it, closing his eyes to the gentle breeze caressing his hair. « A moment of silence. »

Virgil mimicked him. « I hadn't felt this peaceful nothingness in a long while. »

The other opened one eye to give him a sideways look. « You have visitors? »

« People have been fussing over me for some reason ever since we made our debut here. »

That explained the ever tired look, the staying behind as stars danced and had fun, and especially the unwanted attention.

« They say they find me cute or whatever, only because I'm the smaller star in the binary system. It's … really annoying. Kind of offensive, if I can say. »

« Here we are, » Roman chuckled to himself. « Both socially exhausted because everybody's patronizing you, while I'm being picked at constantly. »

« It's our system's fatal flaw. » Virgil confessed dramatically, which made the other snort, surprised by the sudden burst of confidence with joking around him.

They spent some more minutes in silence, the music from the ballroom was barely audible, like they were slowly being taken away.

Neither of their situations were desirable, but Roman really could've used some positive attention every once in a while, instead of laying in the dreadful awaiting of being ridiculed, as whoever else passed by him tried not to make eye contact.

He didn't realize he had progressively lowered his head to rest on the parapet's rail, his eyes half-lidded. He dared to take a quick glance at Virgil, standing tall as he observed the morning sky: every movement of his purple irises looked like a stroke of a brush on an expensive painting.

There, he looked much bigger than the universe they were in, some sort of irony against his usual small perception, which caused other stars to nickname him as “the pup”.

Roman's face portrayed an amused smile as he imagined Virgil being one of Earth's small dogs he had been told about.

It quickly faltered though, as soon as he shook the thought away, the sorrowful reality of his loneliness hit him and he couldn't stop himself from murmuring his belief to the sunrise.

« I really have only one friend, huh? »

The quiet around made it possible for Virgil to hear clearly, so he turned and looked at him from above, pondering whether or not it was appropriate of him to console Roman in some way.

At the end of the day, they really were alike, as distinct as they still could appear.

« You can have me? Two isn't much higher than one, but it isn't as bad. »

Roman averted the sky to disperse his bewilderment directly into Virgil's eyes, all fluttery eyelids and raised eyebrows.

« That would be so much better. » Virgil was glad to be the cause of his smile for once. « Thank you, Virgil. »

« You can call me Virge. »

Roman started cooing mockingly. « Aw, you're opening up to me. »

« And already regretting it, thank you very much. »

The other genuinely laughed and his expression softened, letting silence set one more veil above them.

« I wish I could visit you. » Roman then said after admiring the landscape. « We'd make sleepovers along with Patton- »

« Stars don't sleep. »

Oh, damn it. They had gotten so lost in their conversation that they hadn't noticed the music fading out completely.

As they turned, they noticed Emile at the entrance of the terrace, a warm expression set on his face, some sort of understanding as he had his arms folded over himself and sparkles of light all around.

He wasn't hostile, yet he knew they didn't belong there. Still, he wasn't one to reprimand.

« You should hurry back, friends. » he suggested, leaving one of the two doors free for them to pass through.

The two quickly made their way towards the hallway, but for Virgil it felt like an eternity: the moment he locked eyes with the Sun, it was as though his body refused to acknowledge its own movements. He didn't realize Roman had been tugging him by the sleeve as Virgil walked right past Emile, never leaving his glance.

Roman turned back to him as they half-ran towards the ballroom, noticing Virgil still hadn't turned his head from the balcony's entrance.

« Are you alright? »

« Huh? » Virgil quickly moved to look forward and find Roman's curious face.

The bigger star noticed the glimmering lights on his cheeks: a common feature which meant a star was happy or feeling intense emotions.

He saw Roman furrow his eyes, like he was trying to connect the dots, but rapidly ignoring it as they had made their way through the ballroom.

This time, Roman had a different tale to tell Patton.

✾✾✾✾

« So- uh? »

As Janus had been stroking Remus's hair absentmindedly, he hadn't realized the kid's breath had been slowing down to an evenly repeated movement: as he looked down, he saw his nephew biting through his glove in his sleep.

« It really sounds like an effective bedtime story. » Logan commented as Janus carefully placed Remus's head on his shoulder. He helped him stand up without losing balance and they quietly made their way towards the exit and, subsequently, Janus's car as, like Logan said, “it was the least he could do for them that night”.

« Are you going to go back in? » Janus whispered as he kept an eye on the backseat of his car.

Logan checked his watch, noticing time had flown by rather quickly, no wonder the kid had already fallen asleep. « I think so, yes. »

« Okay. » the other nodded. « Don't stay too late, Remus is not the only one who needs sleep. »

« I am fully aware of what a healthy circadian rhythm consists of. » he threw in a slight, non-harmful piece of sarcasm in his voice.

« Oh, I know you do. I was just making sure you knew you aren't elected to ignore it either way. »

Logan was delighted by the atmosphere: it was always pleasant to realize the exact moment in which you got closer to someone, the caring feeling hidden under friendly banter.

He was glad someone was looking out for him in that way.

« I'll theorize about what's going to happen next in your tale to help myself, then. »

« Hey, » Janus pointed towards him. « Don't you dare use that excuse to stay up later, though. »

« Will not do. » Logan chuckled. « Seriously, though, you needn't worry. »

« Fine. » he said, realizing that maybe his “mother-hen” senses had been activated the moment his nephew had fallen asleep.

He looked back at his little duke, and took a step backward, moving to his car.

« Well- »

Janus raised his arm to wave, but was interrupted by his friend's sudden words.

« I was thinking, » Logan was tapping his fingertips together before stopping altogether and making eye contact, like he had forgotten what he was doing. « If you'd like to and if you have time, we could hang out? It doesn't always have to be my workplace, or be a rushed thing. »

« That would be lovely! I can't really leave Remus alone nowadays and I always work when he's at school, as I imagine you do as well, but you could definitely come visit when you're off. »

Both of them were thrilled of the thought of spending quality time with each other for once.

« Oh, right. I could pick you up from work and you could have dinner with us! »

« Sounds excellent. » Logan moved slightly and a speck of street light hit part of his face, lighting up one of his eyes.

It was there that it was clear how the dark of the night made everything seem more mysterious and grim.

They waved each other goodbye, deciding to agree upon the day of their meeting via text.

Janus heard Remus shuffle in his seat, he was gripping tightly at the door's handle.

The moment he looked back ahead of himself he noticed an unusual glimmering under his eyes: he quickly checked on the rear-view mirror, finding the same sparkles he had described in his story.

He in-took a deep breath and braced himself for whatever was going to come in the future, while all he could think about were sharp looks and a poised personality.

That sure as the sky was going to be interesting to witness.

For example, it was deeply interesting when he received a call from Logan, the latter insisting he couldn't be able to sleep; the sound of the phone ringing had also woken Remus up, whom unceremoniously plopped onto his uncle's bed right beside him as soon as he heard Logan's voice.

Now he had two restless kids to put to sleep.

« This isn't an excuse for both of you to stay up later is it? »

« I wanted to talk to Logan too! »

« And I forgot to get melatonin on my way to work. »

After arguing to get him to make a physical note to leave on his table for the morning after, Janus allowed the man to stay on the line and Remus to get comfortable under the covers, while only the bedside table lamp was on.

✾✾✾✾

The terrace scene had replayed in Virgil's head for weeks.

Ever since the start, his goal had been the one to be able to reach the Sun, the one childhood hero he had grown to love, now he had him at his fingertips and yet, he was still so distant.

He danced with strangers to gain courage to get as close as possible to him, but he couldn't find it to touch his hand, let alone when he had to speak a single word to him.

The Sun seemed kind-hearted, he was for sure as well, he knew he wouldn't have been the target of insults for his deep admiration.

Despite all of this, he was still scared.

He was going to explode if he didn't speak up about it anytime soon.

« Are you alright? »

That question again, while the same thoughts circled in his mind, ones he couldn't keep in anymore.

« I think I'm in love with him. »

Roman battered his eyes. He had been spending most of the dance time with him, venting to each other about whoever came to visit or simply relaxing in the quietest spot they were allowed to reach.

They hadn't danced together once yet.

« Care to explain further? »

How could he when he couldn't even say his name?

« The sun. » Virgil hardly let out any voice. « I just- » he felt all the tension wash away as he looked into Roman's red irises, willing to gather more knowledge on the situation. « I'm happy to come here only because I have a chance to see him, but every single time someone else sweeps him away before I can even reach him. »

That would've been Remy, Roman thought.

« And even if I had the opportunity … I couldn't take it. It's stronger than me and it's eating me alive at the same time. » his breath was heavy with emotion.

Roman made space to a new feeling as well. There was only one way he could explain it.

Daggers.

Daggers piercing through your chest and stomach, multiple of them slowly and attentively burning holes in every vital organ, becoming sharper the longer Roman breathed through it.

It was because of empathy, right? He felt awful for Virgil's incapacity to interacting with the one he loved.

So why would the thought of helping him deepen the sharpness of those knives?

« I just … need to at least talk about it with someone. I only ever really have this opportunity with you and then again, staying alone with my thoughts- »

« It makes you want to scream. »

Roman wanted to yell the pain away.

« Like your organs are contorting … »

And twisting and looking for a way out of your body.

« … And your heart is in your throat, trying its best to escape. »

Virgil nodded, an aching expression displayed on his face.

« Why don't you just go? Next time, you just throw yourself in. Be yourself. It's always what they tell you to do. Let it happen, be natural and respect his boundaries. A path will slowly be open to you. »

What was he doing?

Virgil let the information sink in and, slowly, that pained face transformed into a warm smile.

That. That's what I'm doing. That's what I always want to do.

It was also how they tended to spend the sunset and sunrise dances ever since; Roman would sit down with Virgil in the corner and psych him up for him to be able to, eventually, open up to the opportunity of meeting Emile for real.

And, at the same time, he watched himself struggle and fall down, masking himself for the sake of the other.

On a particular night, he was walking away from the room alone, a myriad of thoughts surrounding his mind.

He didn't even have what he wanted.

« No, I do. » he retorted to himself, stopping dead in his tracks.

Virgil was his friend, that's all he had ever wanted ever since he found out about his existence, so why was it just not enough yet? Why was it so doleful, the idea of the friend he craved being so happy with someone else?

Why couldn't it just admit his emotions to himself? Why was there always a wall between him and how he felt?

« Would you please like to get moving? » he felt a hand push him from his back and the sight of Zeta and Canopus at her side obscured his mind from whatever he was thinking.

He didn't react much other than get to walking again, everything would've been fine, to some extent, if he didn't hear her whisper to her friend about how she was going to stop at Sirius's star before.

Anxiety surged in his stomach, up to his stomach, pumping his heart more than needed.

« You've been distraught. » she announced as they landed on his star. « What's up? »

« You think I'd tell you? »

« Why do you have anyone else to say that to? »

Roman looked down: as much as he hated to admit it, she was right.

« That still doesn't mean I suddenly want to open up to you. »

« Sirius, come on, you think you'll ever get the chance to do so with that little kid? »

« His name is Virgil. » he growled.

She tilted her head, mouth open. « Protective aren't we? » he clicked her tongue three times. « Not good, Sirius, not good. As I was saying, you'll never have the chance to talk with anyone but me and Canopus. »

Shut up.

« Patton won't be able to be here for you forever. »

Shut up.

« And everybody knows how Sirius B's star is slowly dying- »

« Can you stop for once in your life?! »

Zeta watched as Roman put his hands on his ears, eyes wide with panic, his entire body was trembling as he sat down, his sadness finally hitting him. Tears welled in his ruby eyes as too many concerns formed inside him.

« Don't talk about him. » he managed to say through the sobs. « Don't mention him, in any way, I don't want you to even think about him. »

Zeta arched an eyebrow and stepped closer, offended by the sudden burst. « You really need to own up to your true title and stop hanging around the pathetic ones. »

She walked away from him, until yelling took her by surprise.

« I love him! » Roman admitted, pulling his arms away from his eyes, his face reddened and wet with sorrow. « Are you happy?! I love him and he definitely doesn't. »

He looked down and all he saw was opaque misery.

« Well of course he doesn't. » she spat, turning back to give him one last disgusted glance. « Look at yourself. »

The last dagger.

Roman collapsed and let out all his anguish.

Yet again, he was going to find himself left behind, alone in his shuddersome melancholy.

And no one else had to know.

✾✾✾✾

There was a beat of silence.

« Uncle, how am I going to sleep after all of that? »

Janus grinned mischievously. « I like to torture my readers. » then he picked up the phone again and whispered. « But listen. »

Nothing more than a slow breathing came from the other end.

« Want to say goodnight? »

Remus nodded vigorously. « Night Lol! » he then watched as Janus hung up. « Is Roman going to be okay? »

Janus shrugged. « Maybe. »

« I'm going to kick you off the bed. »

« I'd tease you more but I recognize you're actually able to do that. »

« Good. » Remus smiled and eventually tucked himself further in bed, ready for a good night's sleep. And maybe some chaos in the middle of it, but it wasn't like his uncle had to know.

On a fortunate weekend, Janus and Remus were finally driving back to their apartment with a new component of their little group. Logan was contentedly sitting in the passenger seat, ready for another one of the peculiar nights around who became in no time two of his favorite people.

As he made his way through the porch, he noticed how Remus had wanted to stick the glow-in-the-dark stars on every single apartment wall. In fact, he had told the astronomer how sometimes he would convince his uncle to have a sleepover in different rooms.

« Imagine sleeping in the kitchen and waking up to breakfast ready! »

« That literally already happens, I always cook you something before you wake up. And don't think I don't notice those midnight snacks. »

The dinner went by nicely, Logan had settled in quickly, like he had always belonged there: he helped with food and to hinder Remus whenever it was extremely needed, or at least keep him company while he played as Janus was busy in the kitchen.

Having Logan around felt like the most normal thing ever and Janus was grateful to have a friendship like his.

Before he knew it, the sparkles were back. He fought them away as he called the other two, trying to keep himself through the entire meal, but it was absolutely impossible as he kept laughing and smiling thanks to someone so dashingly-

Hold up. Back on track.

You're supposed to fight it back, not welcome it, you dumbass.

Remus lost interest in the TV show he was following and left the room to go play with his toys once he had finished eating, taking some ice cream with him.

In the middle of a conversation, Janus absentmindedly rubbed at his cheek, not noticing he had taken off some of the makeup he meticulously had put on before he left home.

Someone else noticed, of course.

« Oh- You have- Hang on. » Logan bent over the table, thinking an eyelash had fallen on Janus's cheek, though when he noticed it didn't fall off, rather it expanded, he arched his eyebrows and sat back, looking at the makeup residue on his fingertips.

Janus's heart had skipped multiple beats since then. What was he supposed to say now?

« I would never pry, but, is everything alright? »

Seeing the genuine concern and care behind Logan's glasses, he convinced himself it was time for him to learn the story behind him.

Not every single detail … as he would've never believed him.

« It's … kind of a long story. » he began, folding his hands together on the table. « Remus's mother, she was my sister. She had married this man, Clyde Davis. »

« The therapist? »

« You know him? » the world surely was very little.

« Not personally. » his doctor had suggested him as he was also a psychiatrist, to help with his sleep issues.

« Well, they were together for a few years, then they had Remus and everything was going splendidly. » his glance moved from his hands to Remus playing in the other room. « Until my sister fell ill. It didn't take too long for it to consume her … I was already staying by their side pretty much daily, supporting them. » he sighed deeply and passed a hand on his face. « When she passed away, it also didn't take long before Clyde decided to start a new life … without Remus. »

« He … passed him onto you? Just like that? » Logan was bewildered negatively.

« Yes. He said we reminded him too much of her and he couldn't stay in that kind of environment anymore. »

« I understand the decision, but, and pardon my french, that is what they call a “dick move”. »

Janus couldn't help but giggle at that. « Yeah, I can't believe I used to be in love with him. »

Wait.

Wait.

Earthlings, Janus, you fool!

That was it, he ruined automatically whatever he had created with Logan with a single sentence because he forgot the humans' moral compass.

Right before he could spiral, he felt a hand on his and, when he looked up, he saw his friend's reassuring expression.

« It's okay. Sometimes we love people who hurt us, it can happen and we cannot control what our heart dictates. »

Janus blinked multiple times, then couldn't bare his stare anymore and looked down again. Then at their joined hands.

He took another breath. « Remus and I were perfectly fine by ourselves, dare I say Remus's presence lit up my days more than I did his. Then one day he appeared on my doorstep and it took all I had in myself to not slam the door right on his face. He insisted he had left something behind and decided to retrieve it after two years. Needless to say … he made me very upset. »

He scrunched his face for a second.

« I had a knife in my hand … and, well, I accidentally injured myself while trying to prove a point. » he wiped further at his cheek and part of his eyebrow and forehead. « Thankfully it wasn't as deep as it seemed. »

« I'm really sorry all of that happened. » Logan grimaced. « I would gladly teach him a lesson if he ever comes in my sight. »

Janus snorted. « Will you tell him about Runaway stars? »

« I hate and love that sentence at the same time, but as much as it would be the most intently ironic topic ever, I do have mediocre experience in explaining about how to raise a child in an healthy environment. »

He nodded. « Yes, that would be an incredibly helpful topic. »

« For future reference, of course. »

« Ah yes, not like he ever needed that in the past. » Janus had waited for this kind of conversation to happen with someone for ages.

« I'm glad you told me when you didn't have to. » Logan eventually confessed. « I imagined something like this had happened, but I preferred you were the one to brush the subject first. »

Janus had always been grateful for that. « You're the first and only one so far. » they both smiled at that. « But yes, I just didn't want you to worry about this. » he said, pointing to his scar.

Logan didn't exactly control his next words. « Not that I can not worry for you nonetheless. »

No, don't do that to me.

« Sometimes it's like … I wished I could stay longer. I suppose it has to do with the fact that I like being around to help the two of you, be it with chores or having fun. Instead I keep rushing back and forth from home to work lately. »

Janus bit the inside of his cheek. « You're always welcome here if you want to distract yourself. Just be sure to take care properly. »

« I know I should. I never seem to have enough time in a day. »

« Then let us. » Janus started grinning and laid back against his seat. « Remus makes a killer combination of ice cream and we know all the best TV shows, I'm fairly sure you have a similar taste to mine. Oh my, I can't imagine you with a face mask- »

« Please spare me. » Logan pretended to be scared for his life as the other couldn't contain his laughter anymore.

« It's too late. The plan is already in motion. »

Their conversation derailed until wine settled in to make everything more light hearted.

Remus ventured in the room around 10, announcing he was tired by letting half of his body rest on top of his uncle's legs. He carried him towards his bed and, that time, both Logan and Janus had sat down next to him for the night's storytelling.

✾✾✾✾

« Gosh, this really is harder than it originally sounded like. » Patton had been rubbing Roman's back for the past minutes as he had lost all the energy to dance after the previous week's realization.

Dare he say, he was actually trying to avoid Virgil in any kind of way. His absence would've probably helped him far more to finally approach Emile, anyway. He was just helping him further, wasn't he?

« I feel awful. » the nebula admitted, a sour taste in his mouth. « One-sided feelings are difficult to accept, though not impossible to overcome. It may sound stupid, but you'll feel better with time, Ro. I assure you. »

« You're right, it sounds stupid. » he had never heard his voice so low.

Patton smiled sadly. « I know. But I do feel like, instead of inconveniencing yourself further, you should spend as much time as you are allowed to with him. » he looked back at him. «  And none says Emile automatically reciprocates. »

« Don't get my hopes up. »

« I was just saying. » Patton used his sing-song voice, the one that never failed to make Roman smile. « Either way, I'll always be here to be your moral support. »

« Believe me, you'll also always be a far better moral support than Zeta. »

« She isn't the best in that department. »

Both Patton and Roman looked up and the latter found Canopus sitting next to him.

« She thinks she looks out for people. She has good intentions, but she's still a little confused on her methods. » it was usual of her to defend Zeta, but Roman was glad she shared nothing of Ophiuchus' star's attitude.

« I think she should understand not every single one of us is under her supervision. »

Canopus nodded, lying against the column which was lining up perfectly with her back.

« Why has she left you alone? » Roman didn't mind her, she was actually one of the kindest stars he knew, but seeing her by herself made him skeptical.

« Did she hurt you? We would stand by your side in case! »

Canopus giggled and put up her hands. « It's okay. No, she's … talking to someone. » she pointed to Roman. « Your co-star? Virgil? »

That was the last straw-

« Don't you dare. » Patton pulled Roman back down on his seat, though the other was fuming with rage already. « Canopus, dear, why would Zeta converse with Virgil without you? »

« She said she needs to ask him a question. A rather personal question, something she didn't want me to know, I guess. » she looked into Roman's eyes with determination. « She vowed to never lie to me many, many years back. I'm sure she isn't saying anything about you. You know how she's all for honor, I don't think she would tell on you like that. »

As much as Zeta's ways had always been pretty drastic, Roman believed her, though the curiosity of what she might have been asking was eating him away.

More than being curious, for Virgil the experience was dreadful.

You suddenly saw one of the biggest stars in the room come up to you and ask about your feelings, like everyone in the room could've read you easily.

« This is going to sound weird. » she declared as she took Virgil's hand when they exchanged dancing partners. « But I need to know this out of you. Do you by any chance nurture any kind of romantic feelings towards Sirius A? »

Virgil felt dumbfounded. « No. » he quickly said, quicker than needed. « I do not. » he added, trying to mimic her poised nature.

« So, if there ever was another potential lover, you'd think the path would be clear for them? »

Was that hope in her voice? The tiniest tremble in a heated room.

« I definitely think so. » she glanced back in a direction unknown to Virgil.

« Thank you. » she whispered before disappearing back in the crowd; he stepped away from it, finding easily Emile's bright figure dancing and smiling like it was the first time with some stars unknown to him.

« Isn't he beautiful? »

Damn. That really was the richest night he had, huh?

Right next to him stood the Moon themselves; Remy was holding their glasses, letting their gleaming silver eyes rest for a while.

« Truly. » he agreed, letting the softness take him away.

« I couldn't ask for a more amazing dance partner every night. » Virgil wished he could share a piece of their happiness.

« I can only imagine. » he looked down, gaze fixed onto the Sun.

Remy titled their head. « You haven't danced with him yet? »

Virgil shook his head no and bite his lip. He so wished to do so.

« Then fear not, sweetie, I got your back. » they put back their sunglasses and carefully led Virgil to dance in swirls around the room, so that his next partner would have been Emile for sure.

« It's an experience to try. He's like, the most magnificent star I've ever met. »

« I know. » Virgil's tone was now more dreamy. « I've seen him everyday in front of me, I've been hoping to interact with him ever since I was little. »

« That sounds adorable, darling. Your wish is my command, humans use to wish upon stars, but it's truly only the Moon that hears them and guides them through their path. »

Remy noticed they were close to the partner change.

« One last question. What's your title? »

« Sirius B. I'm part of a binary star-system. » Virgil felt Remy's grip loosen on his hand and, slowly, he was let to someone else.

« Good luck, Virgil. »

Remy's nod was the last thing he saw before turning and finding Emile smiling down at him.

As for the Moon, he found himself dancing with Patton. « Ah! My favorite Nebula! »

« Hello Remy. » Patton giggled at Remy's extra antics. « I see you were talking to Virgil. »

« Yeah, the guy was totally scared. Like, girl, I know I'm a big deal, but you're starting to make me feel like royalty, that's going to feed my ego. » they let out a laugh, but composed themselves rather rapidly. « Say, he told me something that kind of left me perplexed. »

Oh, no.

Patton feared Virgil had disclosed his feelings, but he was pretty sure he wouldn't have been so ingenuous to reveal them to the Moon, of all presents.

« He seemed to express deep admiration for Emile. » was it really what he was thinking? « But he said he's in front of him? Like a childhood kind of admiration, you know? Someone you look up to ever since you're born. Weird, because last time I checked, Sirius B is in front of Sirius A. »

« Hold on. » Patton's eyes widened and the couple stopped in the middle of the room. « Are you telling me he hasn't been praising the Sun just because of all the stories about him, but because he has mistaken it for Roman? »

« Seems so. I wanted to let you know, in case there had been a misunderstanding. »

« Oh my gosh, Remy! » Patton pulled both of them out of the crowd. « That is fantastic news! »

« It is? Did I do a good job? Have I earned a gold star? » Remy smirked as the nebula laughed his heart out between his excitement and the pun.

They reached Roman in no time, who had decided to sit by himself during the entire night.

« You're not going to believe this, Ro! »

Patton took Roman's hands in his and smiled brightly as he narrated everything that had just happened with Remy's assistance when it came to what exactly happened between him and Virgil.

Despite now realizing that Virgil's feelings should have been directed at him, Roman's expression didn't differ.

« You do know that changes nothing, right? »

Patton's face fell. « Wh- »

« Pat, listen. Even if he'd mistaken his feelings for the wrong person, Virgil has still developed feelings for Emile, not for me. He isn't going to direct them towards me only because of a tiny mistake, it isn't how they work. »

Remy leaned over Patton. « Uh, I'm going to let you guys work this out, not because I'm jealous or whatever, promise. I don't wanna intrude. Hope you figure it out. » then they spared one last look for Roman. « But dude, why not tell him? He's still your friend, and he has only just met Emile, after feeding off of a false image of him. » then, the Moon shrugged. « But you do you, sir. Have a nice rest of the night. » with that, they disappeared.

« I won't force you, Ro. But do know that I support you. »

Roman didn't feel like having the same sharp daggers through his stomach again, yet a huge part of him was pulling him to his feet. With no other word, he let himself between the dancing couples.

And, of course, in no time he clasped hands with Zeta.

« Here for another lecture? »

« No, not tonight. »

Roman scoffed. « I thank you for blessing me. »

Silence fell between them as Roman caught sight of Virgil and the Sun. And their happiness. And how he had never made him smile so wide, how he had never made his eyes glimmer like that, how he hadn't gotten a single sparkle out of his cheeks the way he had had it on for the entirety of his dance with Emile.

Feeling under motivated, he looked away, deciding against intervening. Who was he to break his little dream?

Virgil really had been living his dream.

But everybody knows sometimes dreams tend to turn into nightmares.

« I'm glad I get to inspire the younger ones. » Emile made dancing feel natural. « Though I must ask you something as well, after seeing such adoration. » he looked in Virgil's eyes deeply. « Are you being true to yourself and honest with your feelings, Virgil? »

Agitation grew into him. « W-what would that mean? » he stuttered, his cover already blown.

« You don't have to lie about what you feel only because you fear the outcome. You already know that star in front of you is not me but it's Roman, you've known all along but you've masked it with me so Roman would have backed away thinking his interest was one sided. »

Virgil had never felt more read through in his entire life, like he had had the truth plastered on his face the entire time.

The guilt in his eyes told Emile he was spot on.

« Why is that so, little one? »

« Everybody knows what happens when two stars of a system collide they either become a single bigger star, or produce a black hole. » Virgil looked down. « I … I feared the outcome of our relationship. I figured if I made him step away, nothing like that would've happened. I didn't want to risk it. »

The Sun frowned. « You were ready to give up both of your happiness? »

« For the sake of potentially every star in this room? Yes. » he could taste his own sour words. « Nothing else matters. »

« Let me tell you something, Virgil. » Emile pulled them away from the crowd of dancers. « Usually, a black hole happens when there's a series of star collisions. A single star collision tends to merge the two stars into a supernova explosion. And yes, it is said that only one of the two will survive ultimately, but actually what survives is a mixture of the two. We call this a luminous red nova. This will only happen if your binary system ever experiences orbital decay. » Emil put a hand on Virgil's shoulder. « If you are careful about how you move and only meet during the sunrise and sunset dances, you're absolutely safe. Believe me. Okay? »

Virgil blinked a few times before stopping to bit his cheek and finally let a genuine smile creep on his face. « I do. I believe you. » he took a deep shaky breath, finally devoid of all the concerns in his mind. « Thank you. »

« Don't mention it, little one. Now, make me proud and go t- »

The Sun got interrupted by a loud crashing sound, like the sky had just broken up and started falling from the ceiling.

The two immediately looked behind themselves to find the most terrifying picture: every single star but one had been blown away, fallen to their feet as the only standing one started having a red aura around them. The luminous shade seemed to only grow wider and … warmer.

« Oh, Jupiter. This is not good. » Emile said as Virgil noticed Roman a few feet away from the standing star, staring wide eyed at them.

« What? What's going on? »

« It's Zeta Ophiuchi. » Emile slowly turned to Virgil, terror in his eyes. « It's turning into a Runaway star. »

✾✾✾✾

« So, what astronomers hypothesized up until now is that Zeta Ophiuchi had been previously part of a binary system itself, but its partner had exploded into a supernova, hurling Zeta at a very high speed through space. This is why they're called runaway stars. » Logan explained to Remus as he had been confused by the dramatic cliffhanger; he then turned to Janus. « That is fairly a very interesting way of portraying the beginning of a runaway star. I wonder what Roman had said to cause her to have that reaction. »

« Oh! I know! He rejected her. »

« Damn, » Janus furrowed his eyes at Remus. « You really don't like leaving some suspense here and there. »

« This is repay for when you told me you didn't know whether Roman was going to be okay. And he sure as hell doesn't sound okay now. »

Janus tucked his nephew into bed. « How about you sleep, you stinky little rat king? »

Remus whined. « You know that's my favorite nickname! I can't help but comply. » he suddenly lifted his hands. « Take me, arms of Orpheus. »

« It's Morpheus. » Logan pointed out.

« You're all boring. » he turned to the other side and, after half an hour, he gave out to his tiredness.

Ever since then, Logan started visiting whenever he could between shifts and free work days, sometimes he would stay for dinner, other times they would all watch movies together. Mostly Logan realized how he much had caught them in his heart and wanted to help around as much as it was possible for him.

Especially since that one other rather emotional night – again, in vino veritas – in which Janus had told him how hard it was to do everything on his own.

He obviously hadn't meant to ask Logan to do everything for him, but it was also a pretty important call for assistance and the astronomer was more than happy to fulfill the position.

« I apologize, » Janus had called from the hallway one evening. « Remus is having some trouble tonight, I'll be back in a minute, you can start watching anything if you'd like. »

It had been fairly twenty minutes since Janus had disappeared behind Remus's door: Logan couldn't help but be concerned, thus he got up, intending on asking whether some help was needed.

His purpose hadn't been to eavesdrop initially, really.

« Virgil had told Anguis that her stories were delightful, » Janus had told Remus as he stroked his hair. Remus's eyes were red and puffy. « He told her she should've pursued her dream and come to Earth to tell humans our adventures around space. He was the one to finally convince her, you know? She shined brighter than I had ever seen her. I was so happy she had made that choice. »

« I still am. I'm very glad we came to Earth. Even after everything that has happened, I couldn't imagine living million of years running through space without you. Without Logan. I'm happy to have fallen down here rather than be up there. »

« I still miss some stars, I miss Roman and Virgil very dearly … I had barely a chance to meet the others, but … I don't regret leaving them behind for this. »

Remus only stared at him, but seemed to nod and ultimately hug Janus tightly.

Logan couldn't make out what they murmured to each other, especially as he got lost in his thoughts.

So there were others?

« Oh- » he didn't notice Janus coming out of the room right after. « Oh f- Uh, how much did you hear? »

« Enough, I think. » Logan was still zoned out, which made him seem like he was completely uncaring.

« Well, uhm, you know how … stories you tell kids am I right? You pretend- »

« I'm an astronomer, Janus, » Logan begun, focusing on the other's eyes. « I know a lot about stars. I've seen you and Remus's faces literally light up. I also know stars can be people, you don't have to lie to me. » his tone was soothing, he still couldn't believe he had met another one. « I met one of you before, his name is Thomas. Thomas Sanders, to be specific. »

Janus's eyes widened. « The- The actor? »

« Exactly. I helped him out when he fell – right behind my house, to his luck – and as of now, we grew apart since he has been profoundly busy. We are still in contact, though. We actually meet up from time to time. »

« That … » Janus's expression was priceless, a mixture of disbelief and amazement. « I have no idea how to describe how I'm feeling right now.

Logan loved it so much.

« Thomas is writing a movie script as of now. He's given one of the characters my name. »

« You. » Janus pulled Logan away from the hallway. « Are, as of now, the coolest human being of my knowledge. »

They sat down on the couch, letting the TV show be their background noise.

« Why, I'm rather flattered. »

« Okay. » Janus took the glass of wine he had left on the table earlier, before taking a small sip out of it. « I'm ready. »

« For? »

« My actual life story. »

Logan tilted his head and laid back, ready to let the other talk. It had already been a stressful night, why not stay on theme?

« My sister and I were formerly two shooting stars. We used to travel through space and meet a wide range of stars, galaxies and planets. It was wonderful. Then we fell on Earth by choice. We quickly adapted to its customs somehow. Anguis and I met Clyde, they fell in love and I put my feelings aside in their favor, since … I heard my love isn't exactly condoned here. » he took another sip.

« When I told you she fell ill, it was actually her star self shutting down. She ultimately became stardust under our very own eyes. Clyde feared Remus and I would end up the same way, since even my nephew's part star. And then we were left alone. » he opened his arms. « I hope this tale entertained you as well. »

Logan didn't say anything before surging forward and taking Janus in a tight embrace. He wasn't intending on letting go anytime soon, especially when he felt his friend's sobs on his shoulder.

« What if it really happens? W-what if I lose Remus in the span of a week? I couldn't bear it. »

« What if you don't? What if he spends a wonderful fulfilling life thanks to the possibilities you're offering him? What if you get to see him grow old and spend all your last moments knowledgeable that he is happy thanks to you? Because never in your life the thought of abandoning him ever crossed your mind. »

Logan tightened his hug. « You are a spectacular guardian, Janus. Take it from someone who knows how it feels to be neglected. You have nothing to fear, and it's normal to feel doubtful every now and then. » he loosened it after, so he could look him in the eyes. « Whatever happens, you can face it like you have always done. Okay? »

Janus nodded and muttered a low okay, right after he almost didn't register Logan giving him a forehead kiss.

« I hope you will feel more free to tell me anything that bothers you, now that I know. »

« You're the only one I can turn to. » Janus smiled sadly, averting his eyes.

« Well then, » he took his hands and guided him on his feet. « I am honored to be at your service. Come, now. »

Logan took him to his bedroom so he could rest sooner, but as he helped him lay down, he felt something tug at his shirt. He turned and saw Janus's fingers laced on the fabric.

« Could you stay? » he drowsily asked, his voice barely audible like he was afraid to talk any louder, or at all.

Logan smiled softly and nodded; he proceeded to close the front door and turn off the lights for him. Afterwards, he laid next to the other and stroked his hair until he fell asleep.

He was confused.

Had he always felt attracted by him because of the star's pull, or were his feelings lying to him? Why did he care so much? Why did he want to do anything in his power to ease their lives?

Why hadn't he stopped to caress Janus's face and look at him as soon as he'd fallen asleep? Why would he rather have him in his arms like before?

He wanted to hold his hand longer, let him know he was there in case he had a nightmare.

Still, Janus had simply asked him to stay.

That he was going to do.

After that night, Logan had chosen to give Janus some more space. A few days had passed when he received a very welcome message from one of his acquaintances.

He was quick to text Janus about it as well: Thomas had just asked him if they could meet up that week, which would've been the perfect time for them to meet as well.

They could have also shared their experiences and get other stuff off of their chests, stuff only both of them would understand. Plus he was sure it would've been nice to have someone like you to talk to for instance.

Not even a minute after, Janus wrote back to him, talking about how excited he would've been to meet up with them as well.

It all led to one particular afternoon at a café, Logan had just introduced Janus and Remus to Thomas, who they found out used to be a very small galaxy on the brink of  crashing and becoming a black hole. He lost all of his stars, but at least he saved himself.

He confessed he had a freckled pattern of them on his back.

It didn't surprise him how they clicked immediately.

Thomas talked about his project, this movie where he would talk to different aspects of his personality and work through issues about himself and grow as a person.

« The funniest bit about this is that I'm not human, thus I experienced the most childish dilemmas at an old age. » as Thomas chuckled, Janus was sure he had seen the galaxy's stars in his eyes twinkle as well.

« But enough about me, Logan told me you tell wonderful stories! » Thomas's eyes lit up immediately. « I also asked him a bit about you in general, and honestly dude. You give me major Disney villain vibes. »

Janus put a hand on his chest. « Why, thank you. »

Thomas chuckled. « I was thinking, would you like to contribute to a character I have in mind? He's pretty complex and I have a feeling your thinking would suit him amazingly. »

« Oh. » Janus's mouth hung open. « I … I don't know what to say- »

« Yes! Say yes, I want my character too! Can I have one? » Remus jumped out from his seat and leaned over Thomas as the other man giggled. « I want something gross! »

« I like your unusual thinking, kiddo. » Thomas rested his chin on his hand. « I do have an idea for a character correlated to intrusive thoughts … What's your favorite color, Remus? »

« Green! »

The former galaxy pulled out a notebook from his bag, taking down everything he had just learnt. « I can work with that. »

« Hey uncle, you think we could add Roman and Virgil too? Maybe even Patton? »

Janus cleared his throat, ready to say something similar to the fact that they shouldn't impose anything on Thomas, but was promptly cut off by the man himself as Logan told Remus he had had a wonderful idea.

« Oh? » a sly smile appeared on his lips. « Do tell me more about them? »

Janus scratched his neck and let his hand rest on his shoulder. « Uhm, it's kind of a long story, but it's about these two stars my sister and I met before falling on Earth. »

The former galaxy couldn't have seemed more intrigued: Remus came to the rescue, providing an insightful summary of the previous events, with Logan's assistance, justifying some space facts Thomas had forgotten during his life on Earth.

« You absolutely have to tell me more, dude. »

« As you wish, » Janus assumed his usual storytelling position on the café's seat, looking then both at his nephew and Logan. « Are you guys ready for the great finale? »

✾✾✾✾

In an instant, Virgil had found himself on the ground; Emile had thrown him down so the second blow of Zeta wouldn't have hit him as much, but the Sun kept running, aiming to protect the Moon with everything he had in his potential.

Virgil's every limb was trembling as he pulled himself up by the elbows, sliding forward until he reached something to sustain himself up: he looked around and saw the stupidest star in the galaxy doing the stupidest thing in the universe.

Roman was already standing, trying to coax whatever had caused Zeta to explode, without success.

« You! » she roared, as Emile and Remy started gathering stars around to let them out as fast as they could. « You are an hypocrite! After everything I've done for you! » there was another blow, to which Virgil reacted by doubling over again.

Roman stood still, which was permitted by his star's strength. « I'm sorry I can't reciprocate your feelings Zeta! I can't fake them either! »

« Shut up! »

As another blow hit the room, Virgil tried to slither on the floor the closest he could to the couple: it was then that he understood Roman was numbing down Zeta's crashing energy by taking all the blows on himself.

That idiot.

Roman made a false move by averting his gaze to Virgil on his right, rather than focusing on the soon-to-be runaway star. Zeta followed it, feeling the burning of her insides even stronger than before.

In that single second of haziness, chaos was unleashed.

They all had less than a second to react: Roman ducked to his right, using himself as a shield to protect Virgil, still disoriented by the previous blow.

A single hit from her curve and Virgil would've been detached from their binary system and become a runaway star as well.

Emile rapidly pushed Remy out of the palace along with the other stars, fearing for their well-being as he already knew the consequences Zeta was going to cause.

When he turned back, hearing the Moon's “wait!” before closing the entrance, she had already been violently circulating in the room, everything she hit crumbled to pieces, her final goal being the two stars that had caused her infinite dolence.

She had spiraled out of control.

« Roman! » Emile tried to avoid the falling bricks of marble in every direction, shielding his eyes from the dust. « We cannot withstand her power any longer, we have to leave! »

Virgil looked rapidly between the two, shortly glanced at where Zeta was heading and ran in her opposite direction, taking Roman's hand in his as the Sun went along them.

The entrance had already been blocked, thus there was a single emergency exit remaining: the balcony.

The three ran down the hallways, scrambling to their feet here and there everytime Zeta crashed into the walls and the ceiling, the lights already out.

Everything went wrong when Roman let go of Virgil's hand and locked him and Emile out of the hallway, free to run to their salvation.

They immediately turned to him.

« What the fuck do you think you're doing? » Virgil punched the glass door, while Roman's expression displayed determination and slight regret.

« I'm the strongest star between all of us. I can keep her at bay as you guys get to a safe location- Please, just let me do this. »

« Are you out of your mind?! And leave you in this crumbling place where you'd never get out alive? » Virgil powered up, his eyes and fists becoming pure light and fire. He punched the glassed entrance further, breaking it instantly this time.

Roman's eyes widened and he watched Virgil tug him down by the shirt.

« Don't you get it? It's you, you fool. It's always been you. » Virgil's voice sounded between desperate and on the verge of crying, in need to let out all of the words he'd never been able to before. « I had a hard time admitting it to myself because I was scared but it's always been you I loved. »

Roman couldn't quite believe the words he was hearing, thinking he had to be hallucinating after all the hits taken by Zeta. Tears welled up in his eyes before he could register them, he then raised a hand to cup Virgil's cheek.

« And now I don't care anymore. I don't care, either we die because of a black hole or for a runaway star, it doesn't matter! » he breathed in, hiccuping in the middle of it, before looking back up at Roman. « I will be with you, because I love you. I love you and I'm not scared. »

Roman felt hysterical, letting out a muffled laugh between his sobs. « I love you too. » he took Virgil's face in both his hands and pressed their lips together almost desperately. And there he knew there hadn't been a collision he would've wanted more than that one.

As they parted, Virgil turned to Emile, who had been trying to reduce the blows for as long as they could have some more minutes.

« Go. You're way too important. »

Roman nodded. « We will handle it. »

The Sun spared them one last look, one of those that meant everything from gratitude to the deepest admiration.

When he was gone, Virgil took Roman's hand yet again, maybe for the last time, he thought, and they ventured back in the halls together.

They tightened their grips the more the crashes became unsustainable.

Looking at the ceiling and up ahead, the two understood there was no way for them to progress any further. Roman placed them in front of a window, then he called Zeta to them.

As she inverted her course to reach them, the two embraced each other.

« Scared? » Roman murmured, looking in his eyes.

« Not one bit. » Virgil's soft and imperceptible smile was exactly what Roman would've wished to see last of him.

A blinding light surrounded them, both powering themselves up to take in Zeta's hit and protect each other as best as they could.

Then, the final blow came.

And everything turned dark as a black hole.

It didn't take much for the Sun and the Moon to reconstruct a palace for the sunset dance of the same day, apart from a small eclipse to be formed as the two worked together.

For the first time in forever, they took much longer to show up.

Remy and Emile kept each other's balance as they checked their previous half destroyed palace; the remains kept perfectly gravitating in the same place as before, as though the signs left by Zeta hadn't mattered or damaged them at all.

There was hope, they couldn't deny it, the kind of hope that set yourself up for disappointment.

It was on their third time of jumping around bits of pavement that they decided to give up, sure that there wasn't anything they had left behind.

On the Sun's hallway, where everything was unusually almost untouched, compared to the rest of the building, Remy held Emile's hands as he helped him down a pile of debris.

Something glowed from under their feet, reflecting its light on Remy's sunglasses for a brief moment: they immediately looked down and crouched as their partner curiously asked what he had noticed.

Remy inspected the marble rocks, until he felt some that had definitely a warmer temperature.

Either that was where Zeta had last gone, or …

« Help me take these away. » the Moon's resolute voice made Emile immediately comply.

There it was.

There they were.

Surrounded by a faint purple light, Virgil and Roman laid on the floor in each other's arms, unconscious.

Remy and Emile exchanged looks before lifting a star each and walking away from the desolate place.

Virgil's eyes opened as Emile and Remy parted in each other's new wings, his foggy vision permitted him to make out barely Roman's blacked out face in the distance.

« Ro- » Remy noticed him shifting in their arms. « Did I? No- » he whined, but the Moon shushed him kindly and, just like that he nodded off to sleep again.

Roman didn't comprehend why he had woken up in the Sun's room.

He pulled himself up from the bed, noticing how the room's seemed to have been re-decorated.

Like they had completely changed places.

It hit him in that exact moment, when he saw his ballroom clothes completely different, the pounding headache barely healed.

He made it?

Did that mean …?

Before he knew it, he was running in the hallway.

And someone was running towards him, hugging him on sight.

« For all the galaxies, Roman! » Patton squeezed him tight like he hadn't seen him in a billion eons. « That was not the right time to play the hero! » Patton pulled away that much to look him in the eyes. « I am so glad you're alive. » he then said, his voice as broken as the window he last remembered.

Canopus was right along him, but, differently from him or the Sun and Moon's warm expressions, she looked melancholy.

Roman had always suspected she had feelings for Zeta.

He approached her and took her hand in his. « I'm sorry. It's m- »

« She did it to herself. » she admitted, before looking up. « It would've been worse if you lied to her only to please her. » she displayed a sad smile. « I would've hated you only on that occasion. It's okay, Roman. I'm going to be alright. »

Roman realized he had underestimated Canopus's strength, but he was grateful he did.

And now, the big moment.

« Where …? »

« Where you already know. »

Emile and Remy parted to let a path behind them, which was leading to two massive golden doors.

Roman paced towards them, wasting no time in fiddling with the handles as he pushed them open.

If he ever had to imagine what happened to stars when they died, he wished it was exactly like that.

That palace's terrace was much bigger than the one they last saw Emile on; Virgil was waiting, looking at the sunset take place in front of him in the distance, unaware of his system partner.

He only turned around as he heard Roman sigh in relief at his sight.

As much as he wanted to run to him instantly, he kept one hand on the parapet and simply looked fondly at him as Roman stepped towards him.

Roman took his free hand and leaned on the rails as well, taking one quick glance at the beauty of nature.

He made slow movements, trying to realize whether or not Virgil was real, before circling him with his arms around Virgil's waist.

« Still not scared? » he whispered it like a secret between them.

Virgil's cheeks had already lit up as soon as he exited the ballroom. « I won't ever be anymore. » he confessed, resting his forehead against Roman's.

And it was true.

At last, he wasn't scared to touch him anymore.

At last, there were no more secrets to be uncovered.

At last, they could dance together.

✾✾✾✾

Silence followed Janus's last words: he waited for reactions, but all he saw were the three's gazes fixed on the table, Thomas's mouth ajar, like he had just made the deepest revelation.

« I- » Thomas looked back at the storyteller. « I loved everything you said. I loved every single word you pronounced, holy stars! » he tried to compose himself. « This is incredible. Just- Listen, this is going to sound very sudden, but- Would you ever consider being a script-writer with me? We could work on this movie together, your way of talking- I'm sure it would be just as wonderful if you wrote all of that down. Your words are magnificent! »

Janus had met him to be able to talk to someone like him, and there he was, being offered one of the most astounding jobs in his life.

He was stunned.

Remus hit his hands on the table. « Absolutely! » he answered in his uncle's stead. « Please, join my uncle! »

« I- » Janus's face broke into a wide smile. « It can be arranged, yes. » he laughed slightly. « I would love to! » he almost didn't notice Logan's hand in his.

He didn't definitely notice the astronomer's affectionate gaze, feeling not only butterflies but an entire species of animals running in his stomach at the sight of Janus's excitement.

Oh, how he loved the way his face lit up, how his eyes glimmered bright even on a sunny day.

« Wonderful cause I have plenty of new ideas! I might even consider Remy and Emile somewhere … »

The conversation went on, but Logan wasn't able to hear anything else other than how melodious Janus's voice sounded all of a sudden.

Janus couldn't stop talking about it even after they arrived back at the apartment, barely able to exit his car while Remus had already gone up the stairs and opened the door to let himself in.

« I just- For the Moon, Logan! A scriptwriter! Beside a famous actor who used to reside in space! » he had taken Logan's hand in his own. « I'm simply blown away! »

They stopped at the beginning of the stairs.

« Gosh, this is all thanks to you. » Janus looked up at him, sparkles all around him as he smiled fondly.

Logan's heart couldn't have possibly been happier, finding the sight extremely endearing.

When had they started hugging? He was so lost in his gaze …

« Your eyes are always so bright and glowy and beautiful. »

Janus blinked twice, his expression shifting slightly.

« It's like I could recognize every single constellation in them. »

He raised his hands to rest them on Logan's cheeks and brush them with his thumbs. « I love you. »

Janus leaned in and kissed him. « I love you so much. » he whispered before the other kissed him back, slowly.

They exchanged more, resonating they could never have enough, until they heard someone call from above.

« Is Logan going to be my new uncle?! »

They parted and looked up, seeing an excited Remus run around in excitement.

« Holy sh- »

« I knew it. »

✾✾✾✾

It was the day of the premiere of Thomas and Janus's movie.

The two were sitting next to Logan and Remus on the front seats, delightfully waiting for it to finally air for everybody else in the world.

Remus watched Thomas unable to stay silent one minute, his uncles holding hands, as their engagement rings glimmered in the semi-dark room.

He thought back of what life was before Logan came around, before Janus had started telling him stories of the people he and his mother had encountered.

Never would he have thought he would have been sitting in front of a soon-to-be bestseller movie's first airing, nearly two years after, with a new relative he deeply loved and new friends like him.

He hadn't known nothing of the sky.

But now he did.

Remus took Logan's hand and both he and Janus looked down at him, a genuine and caring smile on their faces as Thomas's voice echoed with the opening of the movie.

« What is up everybody?! »

He finally knew everything he needed to know.

[thevioletcaptain]

THE LORD TESTS THE HEART

alternate s15 | 2.1k | also posted on twitter & ao3

A second-person POV exploration of Chuck's "very weird, very pervy obsession" with Dean Winchester.

You build him from nothing, and he fascinates you.

He’s made from flesh and bone, blood and pain—just like all the others—but his soul is as bright and beautiful as sunlit sycamore, and you can’t look away.

He’s beautiful. He fascinates you.

You want to destroy him.

Countless times, since the first breath of life sprung forth from the rupture inside you, you’ve tested your creations.

You’ve thrown them to the flames.

Pushed them, just enough that they'd draw themselves into the heat like moths drunk on the promise of flickering light.

But this one...

You burn his world, and it galvanizes him.

He pushes up through charred earth like new growth after a forest fire; stretching long limbs to the sky until he becomes a forest himself, sheltering others from the storms you send to weaken him.

You move the Earth around him.

Force him to take root in a faultline. Wait for him to topple, to crash to the ground & crush those he protects.

Still he defies you. Adapts. Transforms.

No longer a forest, but metamorphic rock that only grows more captivating under pressure.

Again, and again, and again, you try—but in time, even his fractures turn to veins of gold, and you don't know why.

You don't like not knowing.

You are knowing. You are the source of all knowledge. You are everything, and he is yours, and you should know.

You should know.

But he escapes you. Occupies your every thought, this hero you’ve created.

Becomes the focus you can’t shake, despite the endless hum of existence that expands outward from your fingertips.

Around him, the universe hurtles into entropy, but still all you see is him.

His flaws and his perfection. His bravery. His fear. His rage. His rage.

His rage.

You zero in on it.

But you don’t pay enough attention to the place it grows from.

Don’t realize that it’s an echo of the hole in your own being, torn wide by the absence of your other half, your sister, your self.

Don’t realize that it’s born of something else. Something greater.

It's a mistake, that oversight. But you don't realize it yet.

You're too intent on this new knowledge that you think you have. Too busy pulling at the threads of his life that finally seem to make him unravel.

You see him suffer, and you smile.

From a distance, you shift your unseen hand and watch fury rip through him as he struggles against it.

You watch the inferno of his rage consume him.

You watch as he turns desperate and fearful to his family for help, and sets them alight in the process.

It's now, when he's at his worst, that you plant a seed. An idea. A lie. A way to get out from under your own watchful eye.

A trap fit for a God.

He's at the end of his tether, and he falls for it. He falls for it.

Years ago, you wrote yourself into his story.

At first, it was just a way to try to understand what kept going wrong. To see him up close.

To look him in the eye and know him as more than just a collection of blood vessels and synapses and metaphysical vapor.

Now though... Now, you've made yourself the center of his focus. His thoughts are as trained on you as yours are on him.

You orbit one another like binary stars.

For the first time, you feel alive. Exhilarated. Certain that you've finally figured him out.

In the face of your power, his anger is ineffectual, but his contempt, his terror at realizing that he’s not strong enough--it’s better than anything you could have written.

You’re transfixed.

But here’s the trouble:

Your focus is so set on him that you fail to see the others.

His friends. His brother. His son. The angel you’ve been underestimating for millennia.

They all slip under the radar.

You’re so focused on him that you don’t realize their part in all of this. That they’re sustaining him. Making him who he is.

Their existence. Their love. His love for them.

Having them in his life is what makes him your most gripping creation, but you don’t see it.

You’re so focused on him that you start taking them away, one by one, just to see if this is the key to making him crack open.

Just to see if this will destroy him in that breathless, exquisite way that you've longed for.

Just to see if this will finally, finally allow you to peer inside his splintered chest and learn the secret reason why his soul is so radiant.

Just to see. You start with his friends.

His soul gets brighter.

You tell yourself that it’s just the first flash of a dying star on it’s way to going supernova. A necessary final burst of energy before the inevitable end.

But he sustains it, somehow. As though he's carrying them with him; within him.

Fueling himself with memories.

You take it as a challenge. Taunt him with a string of almosts.

You give him battles to fight and people to save and set it up to be just punishing enough that he's a moment too late every time, and then, when that proves inefficacious--

You take the nephilim.

You make it hurt.

Make sure that he sees it happen. Make sure that it's pointless, and artless, and utterly avoidable.

He carries the body to the car, and his soul flares again, spreading outward in its agony toward the few people he has left.

But you still don't understand.

When you take the angel, you don't leave a body, and he knows it was you.

You hear him in your head, and you can taste his rage.

You know its shape, its weight, its toxic bite. It’s a perfect likeness of your own. Made in your image.

You think this might be enough.

You can see him shimmering at the edges, like he might explode at any moment, and you settle back into yourself to watch from a distance. To wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It’s been days, and he spends every one of them trying to hunt you down.

You spend them plucking people from the Earth and dropping them into the shapeless void between realities, just for something to do.

Just to pass the time.

After a week, there's nobody else left.

After a week, it's only him and his brother, criss-crossing the lower forty-eight, searching for a plan as their hope dwindles to nothing.

He’s been behind the wheel for eight straight hours, and his brother is snoring in the passenger seat.

You’re waiting. Impatient. Restless.

You reach through the ether and stir the air behind him, just enough to make a quiet sound, to shift the hairs on the back of his neck.

It brings you a twisted sense of joy to do it.

To force a surge of reckless hope in him; to trick him into seeking something he can no longer have.

He swerves off the road, and his brother wakes with the sudden motion. Slams a hand against the door in panic.

Dust billows like smoke against the windshield.

Twisting, he scans the back seat. When he finds it empty, he presses his eyes closed.

His throat bobs as he swallows.

It's still not enough.

You follow them to an overgrown roadside in South Dakota where they've pulled over to stretch their legs, and you take his brother.

You do it with your hands; sinking a knife into his throat before he even knows you're there.

After, you wait just long enough for him to see you smile before you leave between one blink and the next.

The sound of his shout follows you.

You think this will be it. You'll finally see. You'll finally know.

You’re wrong.

He’s standing in the dark, back turned to the tree line with dirt on his hands and a shovel at his feet.

Smoke billows thick from the hole in the ground. A breeze shifts a branch in the woods, and on instinct, he turns to his side to ask, "Did you hear that?"

There's no-one left to answer, but the light in him is still there. Still burning.

Burnished gold and verdant jade and blinding, glittering warmth. Bigger than ever.

It flares again. Every pound of his heart sends it wider. Brighter. More beautiful.

He’s beautiful. He fascinates you, still.

That's why it comes as such a shock when he tries to destroy himself.

When the fire has died, he stands over the grave and takes a deep breath, and with a pearl-gripped revolver in hand he tries to make it his last.

You don't let him.

With a thought, you pull the gun from existence, and empty-handed, he screams.

He falls to his knees and keeps screaming, sobbing with great, wrenching breaths.

You can no longer see a line between his rage and his fear and his pain, because they're the same.

They're the same.

It's a single piece of the infinite puzzle revealed.

You take this knowledge, and you hold it carefully in your hands. Examine it from every angle.

They're the same, but you still don't know why. Still don't know how something like this can come from something like him.

It doesn't take long after that for him to realize that you won't allow him to check out.

If anything, you're more focused than ever, and he's alone. Completely. The sole survivor for a hundred and ninety-six million square miles.

He goes through the motions. You keep watching.

Slowly, he drives back to Kansas.

Leave me alone, his eyes seem to say. Let me die in peace.

But he doesn’t speak aloud. Hasn’t made a sound since he left South Dakota. Hasn't spoken in days.

At the bunker, you watch him as he picks his way through the dark halls and touches every surface.

He spends entire days doing absolutely nothing. Spends others cleaning with an intensity that makes no sense to you at all.

And within him, the light grows and grows and grows.

His brother is in the ground. The son he claimed has been scattered to the wind. The angel, the one he’d have chosen with just a little more time, lost to the endless dark that still screams its impotent rage at being awake.

The world is empty. He has nothing.

He’s wasting away in front of you, a brittle shell, too damaged to hold the spirit within, but somehow it’s still there. Still holding on. Still blinding and brilliant.

Stretching out far beyond the limits of his body.

It's been almost a month when it happens.

You're still watching, waiting for the truth of him to present itself, for his soul to crack open and make itself plain for you to see, and he's on the floor, cleaning under a shelf in the library, and he laughs.

He laughs.

Falling back to sit, he lifts a square of yellow paper from the ground and stares at it and laughs. It's nothing. You look at it, and try to understand the joke, and it's nothing.

A tiny yellow square, with the words I AM TALL scrawled across it in black marker.

But he laughs. He keeps laughing, and you--

You feel something.

In that space, the rupture, the wound where you tore yourself asunder--you feel something.

It takes far too long for you to realize that it's envy. Longer still for you to realize that it's more than that.

It's loneliness, and longing, and regret, and shame, and worst of all, it's utter foolish love.

Because you want that laugh, you realize. You want that light.

You want to inspire it. Want it inspired in yourself.

But it's been so long since you felt anything other than righteous entitlement that you'd forgotten what it was to truly earn something. To deserve it.

And you know you don't deserve it. Not from this man.

So you blamed him for the beauty you saw, for his flaws and his perfection. His bravery. His fear. The love that drives him.

Blamed him for your own lack of self control, even as you blinded yourself to what you were doing.

You built him from nothing.

You made him from flesh and bone, blood and pain—just like all the others—but his soul was as bright and beautiful as sunlit sycamore, and you've never been able to look away.

He’s beautiful. He terrifies you.

You want to save him.

You start with his family.

When he sees them, his soul opens like a flower in the sun.

[hanadolphieron]

stars; an introduction~

a/n- this is literally just some notes that i’ve taken from the book “astronomy” by mark garlick

WHAT IS A STAR?

stars- glowing, ionized orbs of gas (mainly helium and hydrogen)

gravitational contraction- process where stars shrink under their own weight and mass

protostar- dense blob of gas inside a nebula, the star before nuclear reactions begin

OVERVIEW

stars form in nebulae, large cocoons of cloud filled with planet/star building materials. the protostars are made from stolen gas from other nebulae, and slowly build their mass until nucleic reactions begin in the core, thus creating a star.

these nucleic reactions fuse hydrogen nuclei and create helium.

they push pressure out of the core, which goes to the outer edges of the star, thus creating a balance between the star and the crushing gravity surrounding it.

STAR SIZE, TEMPERATURE, AND TYPES

star color depends on size- the bigger the star, the more heat capable of being stored.

the sun, despite being the center of our solar system, is not the brightest nor largest star in our galaxy.

one blue star, rigel, is as bright as 150,000 suns.

antares, a red supergiant, the biggest type of star makes rigel seem like a bouncy ball, measuring up at 700 times the sun’s diameter. however, antares is less than one-millionth of the sun’s density.

red dwarfs are smaller and cooler than the sun and are the most common star.

white dwarfs are even smaller, however, all are still larger than earth.

LIFECYCLE OF A STAR

DEFINITIONS

main sequence- long period in a star’s life where the nucleic reactions are converting hydrogen to helium

AGING PROCESS

nucleic reaction fuel grows low

core becomes unbalanced and contracts

core heats up and manages to come back to normal

the energy creating in this process pushes the outer layers farther outward

star becomes a subgiant

this process repeats itself, and the star goes from subgiant > red/supergiant > white dwarf > neutron star/black hole

BINARIES, MULTIPLES, AND VARIABLES

DEFINITIONS

binaries- two stars orbiting a common center of mass

double stars- two stars close to each other

novae- stellar eruptions, sometimes caused by a star in a binary drawing too much energy from the other star and collapsing in on itself

multiple (systems)- binaries with 3+ stars

variable- star that changes brightness

eclipsing variables- stars that change brightness by moving behind or in front of another star

intrinsic variables- stars that change brightness by pulsing and erupting

binaries/multiple are extremely common, considering that the interstellar gas cloud (nebula) that stars form from has so much mass it can create more than one star.

binaries draw mass from each other. 

brightness depends on surface area- the bigger the star, the more heat it can produce, therefore the more vibrant it becomes.

ALGOL SYSTEM

this chart shows how the brightness in eclipsing variables change.

*lb is less bright star, mb is more bright star (amazing labels i know.)

**the filled in/empty graph panels at the bottom are the brightness meters. the more shaded-in each one is, the more bright the binary is.

STAR CLUSTERS

globular clusters- big (like as big as a small galaxy), spherical star clusters filled with old and red stars

open clusters- a disconnected, small amount of young stars bound by gravity inside of a gas cloud

globular clusters normally form near galaxies or they themselves host galaxies.

globular clusters are elliptical.

the milky way has over 140 globular clusters.

STAR DEATH: PLANETARY NEBULAE

planetary nebulae- death of smaller stars that forms a gas cloud

white dwarf- exposed core of a dead star

black dwarf- dead white dwarf

as a star’s core grows hotter at the end of its life, colorful energy puffs up the star like a big nuclear balloon.

then, (if the star is a red giant) the star will let go of its outer layers, (the energy puff) creating a big cloud of energetic dust filled with planet-making materials.

this dust cloud is called a planetary nebulae.

the remaining core is called a white dwarf, and shines by releasing the left-over energy in the core.

once that dies out, it becomes a black dwarf.

STAR DEATH: SUPERNOVAE

supernovae- explosive death of a big boi star

stellar corpse- neutron star or black hole, what’s left of a dead star

neutron stars- the densest large-scale objects in the universe, have as much mass as an entire solar system

pulsars- neutron stars the rotate at a vicious rate and send out radio waves

SUPERNOVAE: TYPE I

these supernovae come from binary systems.

they happen when a white dwarf draws too much matter from the other star in the system and collapses from the weight of the stolen matter, thus rebounding and destroying itself.

nothing remains of this star death. :(

SUPERNOVAE: TYPE II

this supernovae never involves a white dwarf, only huge stars at least 8x greater than the sun.

it’s just a big explosion after the star runs out of fuel for its core.

supernovae type twos always leave a stellar corpse.

NEUTRON STARS

these stars are self-explanatory- they are made almost completely of neutrons.

the matter (atoms, made with protons, electrons, and neutrons) of a star is broken down by the gravity around it.

this causes the electrons and protons to combine, forming more neutrons, and creating a bunch of fused subatomic particles.

the compression of the matter creates a large magnetic field formed by the energy being pushed out, thus creating pulsars, which can be measured and recorded by scientists, giving them the opportunity to locate neutron stars (they are invisible otherwise.)

STAR DEATH: BLACK HOLES

black hole- place where gravity is so magnified it sucks in everything. imagine this- the world’s gravity becomes too much, so it’s core collapses, sucking everything into one big sink hole.

accretion disk- the remains of star systems eaten by black holes that sit on a supermassive black hole’s rim.

singularity- point of undefined mathematical size where all the matter in a black hole has been compressed into.

black holes are created when a big star dies, leaving a neutron star that is so big and has a magnetic field so large it can not stay balanced and shatters, leaving a single point, the singularity.

all laws of physics have left the chat, only infinite gravity remains.

as you move away from a black hole, the escape velocity drops below that of light, which means nothing can get out- not sound, not light, nothing.

there is a boundary however, which is called the event horizon.

[jediryssabean]

honey if you stay, i’ll be forgiven

and we are back on ryssa brand with a star wars au, non-linear storytelling, and naruto. truly, the twelve-year-old versions of ourselves that we’ve kept under lock and key are never really dead and gone, are they?

-

Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke Rating: T Summary: (“don’t go,” the only thing that Naruto had been able to say to that was a completely unrelated statement, coughed up from deep within his chest, “i love you.”

If heartbreak had a face, Sasuke would’ve been wearing it. Something split into the air between them, throwing shards and debris into the Force. Naruto had to lift his hands to his face to check for broken skin, as though he would’ve found blood on his fingertips. 

The darkness had eaten him up in that moment, wrapped around him, pulling him under. He’d vanished from the Force, leaving behind the texture of ozone, static scattering itself across his skin. 

Naruto waited there, the sunrise creeping its way across the floor some hours later.

The shadows hadn’t opened back up again.)

[Read on AO3]!

-

(The first time Sasuke had stood before the Jedi Council, he’d been eight years old and his ears had still felt stuffed with the steel-edged cotton aftershocks of his family’s death, still echoing through the Force every so often. Or maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe they’d just been in his head, bouncing across the space inside his skull. 

Either way, he’d been standing there in the center of a wide space with the city-planet of Coruscant glittering behind the Masters there, framed in sections by the floor-to-ceiling transparisteel windows. The Force had been moving with ripples of intent, back and forth across the room, mingling together, moving elsewhere entirely, making noise around him that was in competition with the city and all its two trillion people. All of the Masters had waves moving out from them that were narrow in scope, edged dangerously with sharp ambition, or direction, or purpose. The thing about seeing the paths people could take was that it was always in motion and difficult to decipher. 

It had probably been why the Jedi were looking at him like that—something about seeing the possible futures, moving in and out of his sight. The Council chamber shimmered with it, even if Sasuke hadn’t been focusing his best in that moment, or the moments after.

“he’s sensitive,” one of the Masters had said as if Sasuke hadn’t been there at all, the only acknowledgement given hiding in the Master’s pale eyes as they moved up and down, from the top of Sasuke’s head to the tips of his toes. “that much is certainly apparent.”

The floor had been cold under the soles of his feet. In all the mayhem back home, he’d left his shoes behind. He hadn’t noticed until then.

“obviously,” another Master had spoken up with a voice like cracked permacrete, his hair shorter than the last one. His right eye had been patched over by a metal surface, hidden further by the shadows of the corner in which he sat. When he spoke, ambition or direction or purpose pulsed out from his body and into the Force itself, paths streaking around the room and through the walls with neon intensity. Many of them had brushed by Sasuke close enough to split his hair. “but at his age, that hardly matters. he’d be impossible to manage. it would be foolish to take him.”

Something hot and angry had boiled in his chest for a split-second—just long enough to cut through the fabric of despair that had been pressing against the sides of his face. It’d almost carried a wind with it, ruffling the edges of his clothes. If he’d opened his mouth, he might’ve spit fire. It had burned the roof of his mouth so thoroughly that the Masters had probably felt it as it had crawled its way up his throat.

But then the Force had glowed softly, warmly, and suddenly behind him, and the waves inside the room had widened in their scope, their futures more vague in the presence of—whoever this was, making his way into the room as the doors to the chamber whispered open, accompanied by the barely-there sigh of robes.

“i didn’t bring him here to discuss his merit,” an old man had said. Sasuke had been able to feel his hand as it had hovered by his shoulder, careful not to touch. “i brought him here to notify you of his admittance and to introduce him to the council as a new pupil.”

On the surface, the Masters had remained silent. In the Force, Sasuke had been able to taste their discontent against the back of his tongue, in the roots of his teeth, at the back of his head. His knuckles had almost cracked with the urge to clench his fingers into fists. He’d seen protests forming on most of their mouths and mouthparts, in the thinning of their lips and the twitch of their long ears, in the way they hid their hands in their sleeves and crossed their legs.

The floor became colder beneath his feet.

There was another conversation there that had tried to begin—many of the Masters had taken breaths to speak, changing the pressure in the chamber more than a hair but not enough to raise bumps along the skin on the back of Sasuke’s neck.

That had come moments later in a flash of noise and purpose, an undeniable thing with wide-and-narrow strokes, scattering about the chamber and through the walls and into the ceiling and out the windows around the edges of the room. The chamber door had whispered open, but that had been lost in the noise of someone struggling, yelling, swearing to the stars and back at the in-justice of the situation— 

Sasuke had turned around and had noticed two things.

First, the man in the doorway looked very tired, his hair disheveled as though he’d just been woken, and some of the hair above his right ear had looked newly-cut, as though it hadn’t grown back from something-or-other. There had been a scar across his nose.

And second, that looking at the boy held in his arms was like looking at a binary star system, casting the space around him in light too bright to see by—the kind that can only be soaked in with eyes shut.)

Bars are the same on every world with local variations that still blur together when one has been to enough of them. Some have tapestries, some don’t. Some are covered in a thin layer of dirt or dust or whatever, some are covered in a thin layer of grease. Some have expensive drinks and some have the cheap stuff. Effectively speaking, though, all bars are the same. Even the cantinas. Even the military bars. Even the ones built of palm fronds and local lumber. 

At this point in his life, Sasuke’s pretty sure he’s been to every bar in and between the Core and the Outer Rim. 

Even so, it’s not the location or the drinks or the décor that makes a bar a bar. It’s the patterns inside them. 

The bartender’s most probable movements spread out from their body in small-and-tight ripples—the hand toward the next patron’s glass, the shape of their mouth around a laugh or a greeting or a joke that’s more than likely toeing the line of funny and into crass. Sasuke sees the future of the shrug before it happens, because gestures and body language like this is probably the bartender’s bread-and-butter. Their future is concrete. They’re predictable.

Vaguer things happen in bars than that, with wider paths scattering around in the Force behind him. Conversations start out in circular questions and answers, bumping against ceilings and walls in their size. They twist and narrow as plans become more clear, as their possible actions become more tenable and understandable. Even vagueness can have a pattern in it if he sees it enough, and every single bar in every single system in the galaxy is nothing if not routine. Some curl around one another in the standard shape of a business venture, where others serrate their edges in the common argument that indicates the end of a relationship of some form or another. 

One conversation in particular crawls its way along the floor, beneath stylish tables and within the shadows of the dim-but-warm lighting. It widens and tightens in the typical rhythm of a sales pitch, the sales pitch that had brought Sasuke here in the first place. It’s subtle, because illegal transactions almost always are, but everything can be seen if you look for it. 

He drags his thumb along the rim of his own glass, a half-carbonated, half-bourbon beverage native to Corellia but popular everywhere else. It’s classy to drink something rougher around the edges, though he can’t speak to the quality of it. It’s so far remained untested, leaking condensation onto the surface of the bar, soaking the napkin underneath it. His thumb’s been drawing circles as he’s watched and listened and hummed to himself. The analog chronometer perched above the liquor shelves gives the local time on Kuat, with the digital readout behind the ticking hands giving Coruscant’s standard time readout—a single timezone for an entire planet, aided and abetted by the orbital mirror system that shifts daytime to nighttime and back again.

It’s early afternoon there. Reflected sunlight is probably raining through the windows of the Jedi Temple, scattering itself around in the air, waiting to catch in blonde hair, on golden-brown skin, within the scope of blue irises. He’s feeling just poetic enough that, if he quiets the inside of his head just so, he thinks he can feel almost too-loud laughter tickling at the back of his skull. 

The urge to reach out rises up from the palms of his hands, itches against the pads of his fingers. It’s a waiting game—between patience and efficiency, between work and appointments he has to keep on his off-time.

When he breathes in, he can almost taste the barely-there warmth of the sun on his tongue. A binary sunrise from across the stars. 

“You’ve got a lot on your mind,” the bartender says, coming into view as they button and rebutton the middle of their waistcoat, their smile jovial and only half-performative. Sasuke can see the conflict between a long day and their work ethic reflected in the disturbances echoing into the Force around the corners of their mouth. But their presence sounds a lot like windchimes when Sasuke looks over it, and if there’s any suspicion there, he can’t feel it against his teeth. “You’ve got that look,” the bartender continues when Sasuke says nothing. 

He runs his tongue along the backs of his teeth. The servomotors of his mechanical left arm whir as he flexes his fingers against the fabric of robes, its shape hidden inside his sleeve.

More often than not, silence is a choice he often makes, his eyebrows usually balanced very specifically, and for a significant portion of his life so far, it’s either been relatively successful, or there’s been someone else to do the talking for him. But he’s in a bar that doesn’t know him yet, even though he knows its feeling pretty well, and he decides to let his thumb rest against the lip of his glass and meets the bartender’s eyes.

“I’ve got an appointment to make, and I’m trying to control for travel time,” Sasuke tells them. He can feel the creak of his leather body armor as he shifts in his seat, flicking the edges of his wide sleeves away from his wrists with the ease learned from years of practice. “Work keeps getting in the way.” Another pause, careful. “For the both of us, actually.”

Understanding flits across the bridge of the bartender’s nose in a wrinkle, before smoothing out into the composed attention of customer service. “That’s the nature of work, yeah?” The bartender was probably born on-world with an accent like that, their hair braided through with purple ribbon. “Shipyard? Or—” Their eyes move over Sasuke’s shoulders, across the embossed threading against the high collar pressed to his throat, “not.”

“Not,” Sasuke confirms. The conversation that has his attention stops, dying against the floorboards, and purpose moves out from the epicenter of illicit dealings in tight lines, crawling up the back of Sasuke’s neck. He watches the chronometer on the wall, counting the moments until he can follow his targets, stolen goods in hand. It’s about three kilometers out, and depending on if the targets are walking, or using a speeder— “I’m a contractor.”

The bartender’s face relaxes, as if the concerns about Sasuke’s definitively not Kuati accent makes sense, even though their talk hasn’t been quite long enough to rise into concern or, worse, a call to law enforcement. Then again, bars rarely get to a peak like that, even on planets as pretentious as this one where anyone could be escorted elsewhere for so much as a sneeze.

“So I’m guessing you work long hours, no benefits. High reward?” Sasuke knows this is small talk, but it makes the hands on the chronometer move with just a hair’s more urgency, even though he keeps lingering on them. If the sensation on the soles of his feet is any indication, the target and the seller are walking home. Okay, so maybe five more minutes, and then he can follow. 

“Moderate reward.” The leftovers of the ice cubes in Sasuke’s glass move against the surface of the beverage as he rotates it between his hands. “We have a union, more-or-less. An accountability structure. Support. That sort of thing.”

This laugh is louder, but it doesn’t grab anyone else’s attention at the bar. It just hides the ambient string music in long stretches, hitting their teeth like marbles and popping against the countertop. “A union? For contractors! Incredible. You’re definitely not from here, are you?” 

“Definitely not from here.” Sasuke pushes his glass forward, its base still pressed to the drowned napkin, dropping a mild denomination credit chit from the cover of his sleeve. When he rolls his wrists, his body armor feels just a touch looser, the holster against his ribcage negligible in its weight. The adrenaline was hitting his system. “But it’s been my privilege for a visit. Thanks for the drink.”

The bartender’s smile eases back into something benign and disinterested as they sweep the credit chit and Sasuke’s glass of the counter, clearing the surface of water and fingerprints. Their immediate future ripples outward toward a patron taking a seat at the far end of the room, a human positioned closer to the back door. His hands are shaking, and there’s the thin material of a body suit peeking through the top of his Kuati robes. Positioned for a quick getaway, has complete sight of the room—prime real estate for a bounty hunter, but painfully obvious in its execution. Amateurish, even.

The bartender’s polite curiosity tastes different as they look at the other bounty hunter, its flavor turning sour against Sauske’s tongue. 

Every good hunter knows that a bar isn’t the primary battleground, no matter what finish it had on the inside, and good seating is less than a quarter of any good pursuit. The really seedy chitchats happen in far nicer places, with a lot more shine to catch against the back of the eye, like senator’s offices, or corporate suites, or council chambers. Bars are all performance, and money never changes hands there. Whatever that hunter is looking for, he’s likely already given himself away.

But a colleague’s failings aren’t Sasuke’s problem at this time of day, with the star of the Kuat system lumbering toward the curve of the horizon, split in half by the orbiting shipyards, knocking sunlight aside to turn the bright green foliage of the planet’s surface a burnt orange, though there’s still a solid three hours before the sun begins to set. 

The sidewalks on Kuat are designed to look like aged brick, deep reds and browns and oranges, that look like something out of a daytime holodrama and are stable beneath the soles of Sasuke’s boots. The grass to either side is meticulously kept, not even a ghost of its former life as a lush forest of deciduous trees, still alive where the sun is kissing the curve of the planet’s surface. At that distance, it’s more than likely that those woods are some aristocrat’s campground, but it’s hard to say. All the life on this planet was determined a long, long time ago when terraformers decided that predator animals would be a waste of resources. The Force hums softly with the unassuming presences of the local drebin, though there are needles underneath all that, all politics and conversations about wine—the hot topics of the wealthy. 

The Force sighs and trembles like water with the murmurs that Sasuke isn’t close enough to see clearly, the future foggy and limited in impact, the distant conversations so irrelevant and insular that it doesn’t even matter if he can hear them or not. 

Inside all of this unheard and unseen noise, the past and the future intermingle within the scope of his sight, echoes of times past and barely-there ripples of future plans. His feet move forward in the steps of moments that have been and moments that will happen. Laughter coughs against the walkway from invisible mouths. The pasts of other planets, of planets Sasuke’s seen, superimpose themselves over this moment and the next one.

It’s been happening more often lately—the past and the future clinging to one another like half-melted sweets. 

A Naruto that’s now long-aged, but wasn’t then, looks over his shoulder at him, his Padawan braid brushing against his cheek and kissing scars left behind when his body had been too small to hold whatever energy the Force had been trying to shove into it. His face is still round and childish, his robes bordering on the edge of haphazardly bound over one another. His lightsaber is filthy and clipped to his belt. Despite all of this—or maybe within the context of it—his eyes had been bright with determination, unsupervised for recon and absolutely loving it.

He says something that makes no noise, but Sasuke can hear it anyway, can see the shape of his name curved in his lips. Grasses, tipped with blue and pink flowers, wave against Naruto’s legs, halfway up to his calves. His face is a mess—and the Sasuke with him, also long-aged, with his own Padawan braid more tightly wound, his robes more cleanly placed, wearing an exasperated expression that he’s only perfected over time.

The Sasuke who wore the title of Padawan far better than he’d worn the title of Knight opens his mouth to say something, and the Sasuke who doesn’t wear any title at all anymore can almost taste the smell of rain on the back of his tongue—

(There had been a completely disorienting moment where Sasuke wondered if he even knew the man in front of him. 

Naruto had gotten so tall, his shoulders so broad, and the ideas of laugh-lines had started to take shape beside his mouth, even when he’d been looking at Sasuke like that, which his jaw set and his eyes on fire and scars along his cheeks because the Force wanted to peel him back only as far as it needed to let the light shine out from under his skin. 

Sasuke had spent so much time orbiting him that he hadn’t really thought about what would happen to Naruto after he’d left. It’d been ego, or hubris, or idiocy that had let him think that nothing would change when he’d said what are you gonna do, hero?, as if that’d been a phrase that would stop time and let Sasuke do whatever he wanted, to figure shit out, all while the galaxy itself was waiting with bated breath for his return, while Naruto waited for their final altercation, or whatever dramatic idea had been on his mind.

Or—it hadn’t been any of those things. For some reason, he’d expected everything else to stay exactly as stuck as he had been. Sasuke had been juvenile, petulant, and had used any excuse available not to feel anything that he’d been feeling. Especially the feelings all boiling up right there under Naruto’s gaze, his intentions unclear, the known entity in front of him very suddenly unknown.

“i thought i’d find you here,” Naruto had told him, and the remnants of Sasuke’s homeworld had moved against the atmosphere of the only asteroid big enough to be called a planetoid, grinding themselves into burnt chunks every so often. The window of the abandoned military base tinted against the watery sunlight that peeked out from behind the rest of the planetary graveyard. The Force trembled around Naruto’s wrists as if it wasn’t sure what he would’ve done with them.

“what gave it away?” Sasuke had replied, his voice tight and thin, as though Naruto’s cheekbones and his shoulders and his hands weren’t making his chest feel too small, as though the Force around him wasn’t tense enough to shatter at the lightest touch. “the fact that my birthplace exploded, or the fact that madara was the one who did it? the S.O.S. transponder that i haven’t turned off? what, does the order have you doing their sleuthing now, or is it that you still can’t mind your own fucking business?”

It’d reminded him of the slaughter of his family all over again, the anger that scalded the back of his throat, the feeling of cotton in his ears, the way his skin felt like it was going to split over the surface of his skull, the way that Naruto kept on shining, leaving afterimages of his face on the underside of Sasuke’s eyelids when he’d blinked. 

For a moment, Sasuke had been unable to breathe. And Naruto had been looking at him, and he hadn’t been speaking, and the maturity of it all had made Sasuke want to puke.

Because what Naruto had done next had been so like him, to the point where it had taken Sasuke’s stomach and squeezed. Naruto hadn’t asked where Karin was, and maybe he’d already known that too. He hasn’t asked where Suigetsu and Jugo had been sent off to. Instead, all he’d said was—

“you just felt—” an unnamed feeling had moved across Naruto’s face in a heartbeat of time, and Sasuke had remembered a second kiss, a lot softer than their first, and his bones rattled with a fear a lot like that memory, “ —sad.”

Sasuke hadn’t known what to say to that, sitting in the dust-covered conference room of a military shithole, surrounded by the stardust of his homeworld, maybe breathing in the ashes of his family, looking at a person too bright to behold properly, even in the piss-poor lighting of glowstrips fixed to the ceiling. There was screaming in the Force—maybe his own, maybe the echoes of echoes of a dead world—that filled the silence that, for once, he couldn’t use to his advantage.

And, for once, Naruto hadn’t said anything either. He’d kicked a turned-over chair upright, scraping it along the floor with an unforgettable noise, and had sat down, watching the yellow-gray sky flicker with patches of space debris. 

“i thought you said that the next time you saw me, both of us would end up dead.” Sasuke’s voice had been almost lost under the rumble of the planetoid’s surface as it wobbled on its axis. “or something like that.”

“nah.” Naruto had looked at him, a binary sunrise, and the smile on his face had been small, like a hint of the smiles that would turn into dimples in virtually any other circumstance. “i’m pretty sure you’re the one that said that.” Sasuke could feel the ghost of fingertips along the side of his face, even as Naruto’s hands were hidden inside the sleeves of his dirt-covered robe.

He hadn't known what to say to that, either.

Sasuke had glanced around them both, had watched the ebb and flow of the galaxy shiver between them—and within all that noise, Naruto had been unpredictable for the first time. The atmosphere shifted outside, howling and groaning and knocking itself against the outside of the old base’s skeleton.

In a moment like that, silence had done all the talking for them.)

And the image shatters into pieces, punched through by the conversation he’d been following, knocking against the past-present-future with sharp knuckles, the tension of it warming the air around him, drying out his throat, stopping his feet in their tracks, the soles of his boots rooted to the brickwork of the sidewalk. Dealings like this always pull tighter together the closer they get to being finalized. It makes them easier to feel, hairline fractures reaching toward him with spindly fingers from the epicenter of his targets, tucked away inside a Kuati villa.

It’s all smooth stone and curved roof, bright colors made from stylized tile, completely at odds with the landscaping. On Coruscant, in some of the richer neighborhoods that can afford this kind of space, it’d be eccentric. Here, it’s typical. Anywhere else, it’s tacky. Its backyard is entirely obscured by clipped hedges, high enough to give a short Wookiee difficulties, but a tall one no trouble. The hedges’ leaves are full and green, interspersed with dull yellow flowers, open wide in the afternoon sun. 

Eccentric, or typical, or tacky, or whatever, it makes for excellent Kuati security. On planets with less restrictive landing procedures, it’s piss-poor. With valuables like theirs, it’s lazy.

A hovershaw hums by, its pilot and passengers paying Sasuke exactly zero attention, casting shadows along the hedge-fence in little more than a breath’s time. They round a corner down the street before they’re hidden again by manicured bushes, just as hard on the eyes as the hedges with their wide-petaled flowers, their bright green leaves waxy enough to be blinding.

Lazy, certainly. Perfect cover, absolutely.

Sasuke crosses the street, flexing his fingers and reaching out with his senses, people moving in and out of his awareness at long distances, the hovershaw winding its way through expensive subdivisions, multiples of its kind doing different routes on different streets. 

Nobody’s watching him. Not even the two—no, three—people inside the villa, buzzing into the Force with the intensity of a Killik nest, all elaborate dance and limited substance, like sales often were.

The future narrows in Sasuke’s sight and he jumps, propped up and over the hedges with the Force, bending his knees against the impact on the other side. The gardens in the back are immaculately kept, the grass soft beneath his feet, the ground still spongy from a sprinkler treatment less than an hour before, give or take some minutes here or there. Drops of water still cling to the marble benches, tucked close to the hedges for extra shade during midday.

With the surface as soft as it is, Sasuke’s footsteps make no noise as he crosses the gardens, but he keeps his body low anyway, the hem of his robes going damp with his posture, brushing the grass with less than a sigh. If there are cameras anywhere, they’re not trained on him, and the individuals in the villa haven’t changed in intensity. Sasuke feels his skin itch anyway, his body armor stretching as he crouches beneath an outdated window made of double-paned glass, reaching into his robes, to pull a vibroblade from its sheath against his left hip. 

He flicks the switch on its handle, its rhythm thin in his palm, and presses the tip of the blade into the middle seam of the window, wiggling it just enough to inch closer to the lock. It’s stained to look like Worshyr wood, as though it’d been brought here from Kashyyyk for this sole purpose, but it pops like Kuati pine, the latch falling loose without a place to snap to. The window tutts softly as he pushes it open, swinging through the frame feet first, the toes of his boots hitting tiled floor with a sound no louder than the flutter of his robes. 

The ceiling creaks above him as the seller leans against an object in whatever room he’s in, the buyer pacing across the floor. His gait’s uneven, but that could mean anything—he hadn’t been limping on his way out of the bar, so this could be excitement, it could be deterioration of their sale, it could’ve been bantha milk, long-spoiled, sitting poorly in his stomach.

It doesn’t really matter to him.

The interior decor is ornate, almost archaic, with artfully cracked pottery tucked into alcoves, chandeliers pieced together to look like the Vors’ Cathedral of Winds, and oil paintings of past wars that happened so long ago that accuracy has bowed under the weight of propaganda. There are lightsabers in some of them, casting glows against swamp gas or early morning mist.

The ghosts of fingers brush against the picture frames, childhood calluses catching against the wood.

Sasuke ignores it.

The villa’s stairs are also stained like the inner threads of Worshyr wood but, like the windowpane, it creaks like pine in the center. Sasuke sticks to the edges of the stairs, shifting his weight to the front most part of his instep, and the future shifts in and out of his line of sight, shimmering like the surface of a pond in early morning. Intent drips its way down the guard rails on the stairs as someone in one of the possible futures takes their time leaving. Someone’s future actions bounce down the center of the stairs, silent. 

He rounds a corner on his left, taking long steps lowering his center of gravity to spread his weight, reaching out into the Force with his senses. Despite how close the three presences are, no conversation makes its way to him—no murmurs, no low humming, no shouting. Even the squeak of the ceiling’s supports has gone silent on this floor, which is inherently suspicious. It means soundproofing, or a secret room, or something. It means the caution is not in the lack of security around the home—it’s in the structure inside the home.

A wooden door in the middle of the hall, stained the same deep brown as every other exposed-wood fixture, is warm beneath Sasuke’s touch. The Force comes and goes in waves here, with wide strokes and tight ones, the possible futures changing and shifting as the deal continues. He presses himself to the wall on the opposite side of the door’s hinges, twisting the knob and pushing it open gently. 

The hinges don’t protest.

The room itself is empty, curtains pulled out far enough to let light in from a window behind a desk, polished and looking virtually unused. Heavy shelves line almost every wall, each shelf stacked with traveler’s trophies and datapads. Behind one of them, Sasuke feels the three individuals, can see the shapes of their ambition swirling around the room. The shelving sticks out half a centimeter farther than the others. 

A secret room behind some shelves. Tacky. 

The people behind the shelf have gone still, their attention fixed in Sasuke’s direction. So he tripped something—probably when he opened the door. It’s not electronic, or if it is, it’s not wired to the villa, or it hasn’t been touched, or Sasuke had just overlooked it. Whichever way, it’s sloppy, now, and subtlety is no longer a priority. Or at least, it’s not a priority to the same degree.

Sasuke rolls his shoulders and takes a breath, takes two steps forward, takes in the dimensions of the shelving. The curtains tremble in response to the climate control humming to life. Somewhere, Naruto would smile, and his eyes would get brighter, and he’d open his mouth to say something just a little bit stupid and a little bit charming—

He pushes out, hard, into the Force.

The shelving buckles under the pressure, dumping its contents onto the immaculate floor, covered in imported rugs. The blast-door behind it is already bending inward, the three presences scattering, their essences defining themselves with bold lines and wide strokes. One of them, maybe a bodyguard, pulls out a blaster as Sasuke shoves against the door in the Force for the second time. The metal is flimsy, affordable, and nothing at all like the stuff used to reinforce the hulls of ships made in the rotating shipyards far above the planet’s surface. The way it completely caves after the third, targeted push means that it’s probably desh—excellent for droids, terrible for doorways. 

If everything else had been just a little bit less ostentatious, this would be the giveaway that he was dealing with an aristocrat.

Blasterfire screams from the torn doorway, clean, straight, and uninterrupted. Definitely a bodyguard, then. One person has pressed themself underneath a table. Probably the buyer, completely thrown off by the directness of an assault. To the other side of the ruined blast door, the last individual has pressed their back to the wall, waiting for something. Likely the seller, and therefore the thief. Prepared for conflict, but cautious. In their behavior, they’ve labeled themselves, and now they’re predictable. The Force splits into different pathways, most of them in narrow lines, shifting from place, to place, to place.

Sasuke reacts to the near future.

He ducks underneath another stream of blasterfire, using broken shelving as cover to move closer—two more steps, three more steps, slide forward, one more step—, the Force clearing out left-behind smoke from blaster shots with images and shapes and the targets’ next moves. He vaults over the remnants of the blast door, using the half-a-breath that it takes for the bodyguard to jam another energy cell into the blaster’s chamber. His boots hit the bodyguard in the chest at average height, beneath solid collarbones, and the fluorescent lights through the doorway cast the room into sharp, instant relief. 

The bodyguard rolls backward with blaster in hand, a practiced movement, and the seller changes position, a vibroblade at the ready, their futures coming together where Sasuke has come to stand his arms loose at his side. There’s not a lot that can be said for spending most of his life fighting in robes, but at least he knows his limits, here, knows how to move without getting himself tangled together.

Sasuke leans his body forward when blasterfire and a vibroblade meet at the place where his head had been, and he sweeps the seller’s legs out from underneath him. Not Kuati, more than likely with average clothing and denym pants, but hard to identify anything else of note. He grabs the seller by one ankle and swings his body into the bodyguard’s knees in the same motion he uses to stand upright.

It’s refreshing, in some kind of way, that there hasn’t been a monologue yet. It saves time.

He moves forward in a combat-ready stance, prepared to roll himself back into the bodyguard and restrict the use of a blaster at all. It lends itself to chaos, all noise and light, entirely too distracting, and the discharge smoke left behind reduces visibility, blends with the present-and-future, obscures useful data to make his next move, wrap this up quickly, get off-world and back to his client, so that he can get back to—

The world tilts sharply before he can even drop into a roll, the room itself flickering in and out of existence. The ripples of the future get chewed, swallowed, and returned in mangled pieces, crushed underneath the weight of the past that tears through the villa, howling past his ears and casting images on every surface.

Naruto stands before him, two years younger but effectively the same, stunningly beautiful, and there’s unseen wind carding itself through his hair, pulling at the sleeves of his well-worn robes, the sun-kissed glow of his face muted underneath what had been an icy cavern on Rhen Var, a long-abandoned iceplanet, left behind by a galactic natural disaster and abandoned by the Jedi, just like Anaxes. He’s speaking, and he looks so sad, and Sasuke knows exactly what’s coming out of his mouth, even as he flickers in and out of view while the present tries to reassert itself.

(Sasuke’s cheeks had gone numb with the cold by then, wind howling through the caverns of Rhen Var and dragging its claws against the smoothed-out walls. There had been water running through those cave systems once, just like the atmosphere had been thicker and more breathable, just like there had been people living on that world, both Force-sensitive and dead to the whole thing. Ice chips that had tried to pass for snow had been clinging to Sasuke’s eyelashes, but something terrifying and almost-ugly had been trying to push its way up Sasuke’s throat, clinging to his teeth and tonsils in thin webs. 

“sasuke,” Naruto had said to him, with his sad face and his flushed cheeks and his damnably breathtaking everything. His legs had been trembling as he’d pushed himself to stand upright after the punch that Sasuke had landed, but his shoulders had still been rolled back with Naruto’s killer combination of determination and confidence. Sasuke’d felt nauseous, the pull of Naruto-the-binary-star-system tugging on his stomach. There had been blood oozing from a cut in his eyebrow that Sasuke had left him with. Sasuke’s jaw had ached with a matching hit. If it hadn’t been so cold, it probably would’ve started to swell. “are we done talking?”

It’d hurt to breathe in the cold like that. Even so, Sasuke had replied, “i wish you’d just fucking stay down when i hit you.”

Naruto had just continued to look at him, his reflection distorted in the ice walls around them. “you said you wanted our fists to do the talking. are we done talking?”

Sasuke had snorted, freezing the inside of his nose. He’d told himself that he’d be sneering if his face had feeling in it, but that had been a lie. “what, do you have someplace to be?”

“yeah,” Naruto had thrown out the word with all the force of a moon in freefall, crashing toward its planet’s surface. “i’m taking you home this time.”

It’d been a conversation they’d had countless times, probably hundreds of times. And every single time Sasuke had felt his heart tremble, thin cracks working their way out from the center of his chest, as though his ribcage would split open and show off all the things he’d been keeping underneath his lungs until his blood had gone toxic with it. 

“that’s getting a little old.” The chill had taken the vision of their breath away some time before, leaving only the echo of words to reverberate against the ice around them. “isn’t it about time you got some new material?”

Naruto’s face had become complicated, but that determination had begun to outweigh the confidence in the shape of his shoulders. Even his jaw had been set. “that’s what everybody says. did you know that? everybody goes ‘naruto, you know that you can’t have it both ways. naruto, you never pay attention and you’re a dumbass and you think you can do anything if you want it bad enough.’” The wind screamed and Naruto had let it happen, filling the pause he’d left with painful, serrated air. “but nobody gets how bad i want to take you back. not even you.”

It’d been an incredible skill when they were children, the way Naruto could rock him back as if he’d struck him without moving at all. Even past the deadness of his cheeks, he’d felt a mark there, like he’d been slapped with an open palm. 

“then i guess we’re not done talking.” His words clattered to the floor, like stones.

Naruto had reached for his lightsaber, clipped to his belt. The intensity of the wind around them swallowed the whisper-flutter his robes would’ve made when he’d unclipped it. “guess not.”

Chaos had eaten them both, then, two lightsabers coming to life with a single snap-hiss, coordinated in unison for the better part of a decade. It rumbled through the tunnel walls, tossed light against the ceiling, refracted it against the floor. The Force bent and twisted and arced around them, the taste of ozone sitting on Sasuke’s tongue with featherlight touches, stinging against the surfaces of his teeth. His saber had warmed the back of his wrist almost like a sunburn from where he’d held it in a reverse-grip, swinging his body into the arc of Naruto’s own saber with all his weight.

The Force had sung, or had it screamed, or it had done neither as they’d collided together within it. Sasuke’s skin had felt as though it was being sheared from his bones, almost, and he’d been wrapped up so tightly that it had felt like an embrace, or a cocoon, or something like that. He’d felt overwhelmed by the intensity of it, or the intensity of them. It’d been impossible to notice the sting of anything—of sabers on skin, of ice against his cheek, of Naruto’s nose pressed to his forehead as they’d slumped together.

The wind still howled on the iceplanet that had died centuries or millennia before. Deep-but-thin fissures had opened up in the cavern around them. Icemelt had been re-feezing to the cavern floor. And yet it had been the warmest Sasuke had felt in a long  time, in what had felt like a starsystem far, far away.

All it had cost them was one arm each—but their almost-hysterical laughter had given birth to clouds of steam.)

He’s blinded by visions of the past, and the butt of a blaster being knocked into the side of his head. Sasuke had been stunned, in that moment where he’d been watching too much happen too quickly, and now he has stars scattering over the surface of corneas. They block his sight, jam his brain, and make it easy enough for the seller to take a foot to Sasuke’s knee—or it would’ve if Sasuke hadn’t had the foresight to twist backward so that the kick caught him on the thigh instead. 

He can feel the heat of a palm-sized blaster aimed at the back of his skull, positioned from a downward angle, just underneath the table in the center of the secret room. 

The Force rattles and his head spins—and so Sasuke shuts his eyes, blocking out the past and future and reaches into his Kuati robe, his fingers brushing against the crossed holster buckled across his chest. The hilt of his lightsaber tingles against his fingertips, then his palm, and then it’s alive in his hand. Even with eyes closed, the bright white-purple of the blade turns the backs of his eyelids red-orange, casting the afterimage of Naruto’s face in white lines. 

The blaster bolt gets reflected toward the back of the room, its impact punctuated by a swear, or a screech, or some kind of noise that might carry the hint of a Kuati accent, but might not. Either way, the buyer’s palms are scrambling against the floor, and his presence in the Force starts to flutter like tossed-away flimsiplast, collecting dirt in the underlevels of Coruscant.

“This is a fucking Jedi—” the buyer says, because the buyer is painfully unaware of the minutae of Jedi politics. Most of the galaxy is. The Jedi are there, but a mystery. Entities with laws unto themselves.

“No,” the seller and the bodyguard say at the same time, but only the seller continues, “that’s a fucking bounty hunter. He’s not a Jedi anymore.” It’s not surprising that the seller knows this, or that it’s the first sentence anyone has said since he’s been here. The Force pulls tight around him, and it might’ve reminded him of a noose if this wasn’t his element. He’s been upgraded from a nuisance to a problem, but it’s far too late for that. “He’s off his leash—”

Sasuke doesn’t know what the seller would’ve said after that, and neither does anyone else. The elbow of his metal arm takes the seller in the jaw, and by the pause-shift of his shoulder, it breaks under the force of it. Pain slams outward and spreads across the room as Sasuke twists the lightsaber in his hand and slams the hilt of it up into the seller’s chin, shifting his own body out of the blade’s path. 

The seller hits the floor, unconscious. Definitely a human, if the shape of his chin had been anything to go by.

Sasuke hears the bodyguard’s blaster hit the floor, hears their boots squeak against the floor as their posture changes into an aggressive stance, probably hand-to-hand. It’ll limit the range of a bladed weapon, regardless of if it’s effectively a laser or not. A wise choice, if it’d been someone else—but it isn’t, and Sasuke moves forward, thumbing the saber off and rolling the hilt over his wrist, catching the bodyguard’s punch against his mechanical palm, pulling them forward with far more momentum than they’d had in their swing.

He can feel the way their stomach drops, the Force loosening its grip on the room.

Sasuke brings the hilt of his lightsaber up with his flesh-and-bone hand, slamming it hard against the bodyguard’s temple. They sway, a little, just enough for Sasuke to throw them to the floor, their breath knocked out of their body, just like they’d been knocked into unconsciousness.

He doesn’t open his eyes when he turns his lightsaber back on. He doesn’t open them when he points the blade at the buyer’s throat. And he doesn’t open them when he says, “the Chiss hired me to take back the books your associate brought for you.”

The buyer swallows. The dryness of his throat makes the Force feel like sandpaper against the back of Sasuke’s neck.

“I can—I can pay you—if they want me dead, I can pay you n-not to—” the buyer’s clothes rustle against the floor as he lifts one arm. Sasuke tips the blade of his saber toward his palm, and the hand drops. The buyer sounds more Kuati when he talks like that.

“I’m not here to kill you. I’m here for the books.” A pause. The buyer sounds close to hyperventilating, his breath coming in nearly-panicked gasps. “And for you, and anyone who aided you. Their justice is very particular.” Sasuke tilts his head toward the table where the books are still stacked, the topography of the room clear in his memory. 

The buyer’s voice is shrill when he says, “it’s for a business venture—we just—we invest in artillery warfare, for now, but the—the information in those journals is—”

“—to facilitate biological warfare,” Sasuke finishes for him, lowering the tip of the lightsaber toward the center of the man’s chest. “That’s an issue I’m very sensitive about.” The lightsaber hums in his hand, steady. The buyer’s breath stutters. 

hold your breath, Itachi’s voice whispers in his ear, thin and all-knowing, though Sasuke had been in the dark then. don’t let it out until i tell you.

“Oh,” the buyer’s voice has become very small, as though the picture has cleared itself up with that statement, limited in detail and just a little bit frosty in tone. “I should have—the lightsaber, without a Jedi. You’re the—”

“Yes,” Sasuke replies. “Now, do I have to repeat myself, or what?”

Clothing whispers again as the buyer shifts to standing, his trembling hands sending the Force vibrating. The murmur of wrist on wrist tells Sasuke that he’s holding his hands together. There’s a pattern to this too, just like there’s a pattern to every bar on every world—there’s always one person who’s wildly underprepared to deal with the consequences of whatever they’d gotten themselves into. It’s almost always the one with money, the buyers of services or goods that they don’t know how to handle. 

When Sasuke opens his eyes, the Force has settled around him like a second set of robes. The future hums softly, its immediacy muted by the lack of control that any of the three leftover people have over this situation. The past is back behind its curtain.

Sasuke turns his lightsaber off, tucking it back in its holster, using his mechanical hand to pull a set of bantha-leather wrist-ties, looping them over one another to make it impossible to undo—and impossible to disrupt, unlike the magnetic clamps of the police forces across the galaxy. The buyer’s head is bowed, and he’s certainly Kuati. There are no calluses on his hands. 

Sasuke taps the comm-cuff on his left ear with his fingertip, static bursting into his ear, the shortwave radio hard to pick up by interlopers, but just as hard to use.

“Oh-ho, boss, is that you?” Suigetsu’s voice almost gets swallowed by his own unintelligible nonsense just as much as the white noise between them. “That was quick! You’re ahead of schedule. The docking cops haven’t even gotten suspicious yet—”

“When can Karin have the ship ready to go?” Sasuke speaks, because if he doesn’t, Suigetsu will get very attached to speaking. 

A pause, the white noise cut off as Suigetsu pauses the connection. And then, “twenty minutes, no sweat. You need a pick-up?”

“As soon as possible,” Sasuke confirms, taking two steps back to keep the room within his visual space. The two unconscious individuals stay where they are, and the buyer keeps to himself, eyes fixed to the floor. The books, bound in tanned beast-hide and refined cellulose paper, sit atop the table in careful stacks, undisturbed by the conflict around them. “A speeder with enough space for a couple of deadweights.”

“Sounds fun,” Suigetsu’s laughter is turned into a hiss by the audio interference. “Be there, quick as rain.”

The buyer says nothing when Sasuke ends the communication, beginning to gather up the books, sealing them in vacuumed packaging, binding the seller and the bodyguard at their wrists and ankles. The digital chronometer glowing steady, showing general Coruscanti time and local Kuati time. He’s ahead of schedule—they hadn’t put him too far behind.

The Force whispers around him, the future going in and out like waves on a beach, brushing against his ankles. He reaches out, then in, and brushes his senses across the stars and between planets. Warmth touches his cheeks, the Coruscanti afternoon still turning hair gold and making the hollows of cheeks glow softly.

A binary star system, tucked away in the Core, bright, and white, and blinding.

On Kuat, the future weaves stories.

(There is a possible future that is more likely than not, tied together in multiple threads, attached to many potential decisions in many potential situations. There are junctures where these decisions will mean more, but it’s a durable future, somewhere. It connects itself like a web, made stronger by thoughts and feelings and conversations that have been had, are being had, will be had.

When Sasuke next stands before the Jedi Council, he will be seventeen years older than he was the first time, and the city-planet of Coruscant will still be throwing lights in the background through the transparisteel windows behind the Masters sitting there. They will be of a different mixture, with some of them long-gone and others much older than they had been. The Grandmaster that will be looking at him then will not have the same bird’s-feet wrinkles at the corner of her eyes that the first one had, but Sasuke will make do. 

He will be standing at Naruto’s left, their hands at their sides, resisting the pull of one another. His eyes will be open, taking in everything, and he will be basking. His feet will be bare, because he is a man attached to themes, and this will be a rebirth. Naruto will say nothing, because he will already have laughed himself to tears about it.

The ground will be cold, but the soles of his feet will warm them.

Naruto will open his mouth, and he will not ask for permission for what they will be doing. He will be keeping them informed of his actions, because he still strives to lead the Jedi Order, but he will do so with the bull-headedness that he’s always had. His soul will be loud between them, but he will be speaking in that aggressively passionate-but-low tone.

Their hands will not be able to resist much longer. Naruto’s fingertips will brush against Sasuke’s knuckles. Their fingers will lace together. The Force will tremble around them with intent and energy and something that bubbles on the back of Sasuke’s tongue.

It’s what love would feel like, if the Force had the capacity for that. It will feel like love to Sasuke, overwhelmed as he will be by the weight of it all.

Naruto’s grip will tighten, and the Masters will look at them.

Sasuke will lift his chin, and the future will open wide like a Naboo lotus, underneath the sun.) 

-

(Sasuke had turned to look at him almost as soon as he’d walked in, the wrinkle in the bacta patch adhered to the side of his face the only indication that he’d been trying to smile.

The medcenter’s lighting had washed Sasuke out to the point where Naruto had almost been able to see the veins glow underneath his skin. It almost hurt to look at him in the not-romantic sense, like looking at Sai in the midday sun on a planet with almost no cloud-cover. The front of his head ached, just above his sinuses. There were shadows under Sasuke’s eyes that threatened to leak down his cheeks. While fragile hadn’t been the word to best describe him ever, it did kind of look like his eyelashes were going to bruise his face whenever he blinked.

For all that Sasuke was absolutely beautiful exactly all of the time, he sure had looked indescribably awful with the same sort of fervor.

In particular, the skin above where his elbow would’ve been was bright red and angry, reacting to the brand new and very shiny metal arm that had been attached in the place of the arm he’d lost. With the eye-numbingly white-and-blue theme of the room around them, the dark sheen of the new limb made Sasuke look three times paler, like he was going to sink into the sheets and disappear.

“nice arm,” Naruto had told him, taking a seat in the suspended chair, jutting out from the wall, attached there with an articulated arm of its own. 

Sasuke continued to look at him, something in his eyes flickering in and out of existence. Even under light like that, they’d still burned like coals if Naruto’d looked closely enough. “it’s cooler than yours. you kept skin and everything. it’s like you don’t understand drama.” He’d paused, his voice rasping against the walls, the medical equipment, Naruto’s hair. Naruto had flexed the fingers of his right hand. He almost hadn’t noticed the hum of the motors vibrating where they were attached to his palm. The synthflesh even pulled like his old hand had. “what a stupid way to lose an arm.”

Regret laid itself heavy on Naruto’s tongue, all uneven edges and dry as dirt. Bitterness followed close behind it, and shame after that. A palate cleanser that had been strong enough to twist his stomach and clamp down on his ears. He’d wanted to reach out and touch him. “not the worst way, though, right? it’s more like a fated meeting between hearts and fists, like what lee said or something.”

Sasuke’s eyebrows had risen up on his forehead, like a dwarf star peeking above the horizon on some backwater world. “lee didn’t say that,” Sasuke had told him, and the wrinkle in his bacta patch had deepened with something that felt like humor, crawling up the sides of Naruto’s face. “i said that.”

“oh,” and Naruto had grinned right back, because how could he not? It’d felt like ages since Sasuke had given him a glance like that, a smile like that, and years of on-again, off-again, fighting-again died right there on the sterile floor, curling up like a too-large insect. “sorry. i remember thinking that it sounded like shit lee would say.” 

Sasuke had scoffed, closing his eyes, and his metallic hand twitched against the sheets. He’d reached out, palm up, and the muscles in his upper arm strained with the effort. It was an offer that Naruto could feel all the way down to his toenails, and he’d felt stupidly emotional, and there was probably poetry writing itself about this moment deep, deep within the stars. 

“are you trying not to predict what i’ll do, mr. clairvoyance?” Naruto asked him, taking Sasuke’s left hand in his right one. The synthflesh could even process how cold the metal was. “so it’s a surprise?”

“shut up. i’m soaking.” A pause, long and almost-sweet, long enough to the point where Naruto had almost been certain that Sasuke had fallen asleep—except his eyes had opened, and they’d glittered their burning black-red even under the ugly, horrific, basically-blinding white light, and he’d said, “i’m leaving the order when i’m not bedridden.” The Force had shimmered, a curtain caught in the breeze of what Sasuke had been saying. “for real, i mean. properly.”

Naruto’s hand had almost slipped from Sasuke’s grip. Almost. But instead, he’d gone and opened his mouth like, “so, what, you’re going to do that whole thing again, where you go ‘augh, you make me vulnerable, which is dangerous and ruins my life, because i care too much and—”

“dude,” and it had sounded both entirely like and entirely unlike Sasuke, a verbal tick he’d picked up from Naruto, or maybe Suigetsu, or maybe anyone else that he’d encountered while Naruto hadn’t been watching, “are you going to let me explain, or what?”

The Force became brittle, but didn’t crack. Naruto had looked at him and the metal of Sasuke’s hand was starting to warm underneath Naruto’s synthflesh fingers. “you can explain.”

“i’ve been staring at the ceiling and thinking, because that hasn’t ever gotten me into trouble.” Sarcasm dripped form between his lips and behind his teeth a little bit like bile. The imagery was decidedly not awesome, but it was accurate. “and i was thinking that i’m tired of people telling me what to do. how to feel and not feel, what shit to dwell on or not think about. and i don’t think that i can stay here in this temple and not think about—everything. my family. orochimaru. master danzo. madara. all of it.” This pause was icier, thickening the Force between them, reinforcing it against Sasuke’s exhalations. “so i want to figure it out myself, what i want to do and why.”

“okay,” Naruto had said, and even though it really wasn’t chilly in that hospital room, he still thought he’d seen his breath for a moment. “that makes sense.”

Sasuke’s eyes had been gorgeous, even with his face all wan and tired and, you know, like that. “but i don’t want to have to come back to you. between jobs. between your jobs. i want to be with you the whole time. not, like, steal moments. i don’t know. maybe i want to go out on dates. maybe work together. maybe—i don’t know.” He’d traced a shape on Naruto’s face with his pupils. Naruto hadn’t known what it was. “but i’m telling you this because i don’t want to leave you.” A smile, small and thin and stuff, but there and oh the things it did to his cheekbones. “it’s not like that’s effective. i—” Oh—oh shit, that had been a blush. Sasuke’s cheeks had gone colorful. “i want to keep soaking you in. eyes open, or whatever.”

Full transparency, Naruto hadn’t quite known what that meant. There had been something deeper there that rippled under Sasuke’s carefully crafted expression, the color in his cheeks fading against the tension in his jaw. It had probably been a metaphor that Sasuke had had on his mind sometime before, but he never talked about stuff like that, so it’d be impossible to know how long something like that had been stewing around in his brain.

But, of course, that hadn’t mattered, really.

“that’s super sentimental,” Naruto had replied, and his chest had felt so tight, and a little bit painful, and oof, he’d been leaking it into the Force. He could see it on Sasuke’s face. “and really touching. and i’m feeling all of the emotions that you think are gross right now, and i’ll need to process it later. but before i process it, can i, like, kiss you, or is a hospital bed the wrong—”

“kiss me, dumbass,” Sasuke said, and it had been kinda hot, despite the setting. 

Naruto had levered himself up, squeezing Sasuke’s recently-replaced hand that didn’t give underneath the force of his grip, and he’d pressed their lips together in something sweet, toeing the line of not-very-chaste. Sasuke’s lips had been chapped, and he’d tasted a little bit like that bacta patch on the side of his face, and the angle could’ve been better, but it’d been the best kiss they’d shared to date, or at least the most romantic kiss they’d shared to date. 

It’d been beautiful.

Oh—it hadn’t been bacta, really, that taste on his tongue in the kiss they’d shared. It’d actually tasted like the future.)

Coruscant is busy, because it’s always busy. It’s been busy for Naruto’s entire life, and for countless millennia before that. It’s been busy-ness built on top of busy-ness forever and ever, as far as Naruto can tell, and he can feel all that busy-ness chattering his teeth together on bad days, or just vibrating in the roots of his teeth on the good days. That sense of energy infects everything here, from the people, to the speeders, to the businesses. Even data entry feels energetic here, to the point where a combination of  office-based labor and Jedi lesson-planning sits on Naruto’s shoulders and pinches every single nerve from the base of his skull to the tail of his spine. The Force squirms beneath his skin, pushing against it, threatening to tear it from his bones. 

Or, alternatively, that could be the grip that Lee has on the back of his neck, his mechanical wrist twisted and held up to just under his shoulder blades.

The city’s noise is definitely rattling around inside his skull, and the Force is also definitely needling at his skin and bones and clothes, but it is also very likely that the pain in Naruto’s upper-back-and-chest is contributing to the whole problem. 

The younglings are watching the both of them, many of them in awe, some of them in sympathetic discomfort, and Lee sounds like he’s smiling, like always, when he says, “and this is a method on how to disarm an individual without needing to use the Force. There will be instances where stealth will be imperative for the success of a mission, and if you were observed to be a person who could wield the Force, it could put you, your teammates, and the local population in jeopardy, which cannot occur!”

There are oohs and aahs at the appropriate volume and frequency. It ripples around the room from cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder, and it creates some warm and fuzzy feelings in Naruto’s guts. Lee’s presence in the Force flickers at his back like a candle, pride settling comfortably between his shoulder blades, beneath the synthetic skin of his wrist.

“I’m really happy for you,” Naruto wheezes when he speaks, just a little, “but could you let up a little? It hurts to breathe.” 

“Ah!” Surprise and then laughter, one from Lee and the other from the younglings. “My deepest apologies! I was absorbed in the lecture and I forgot that I still had you unarmed!” 

The soreness in Naruto’s muscles radiates out from his right shoulder, down his spine, through his chest before it fades out into the completely average ache of a completely average spar. He calls his lightsaber back to his hand before he clips it to his belt as he stands, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. Sweat itches where it’s dried at his temples, and there’s a complaint forming at the back of his head about how he hasn’t been allowed to break a sweat in weeks, stuck instead documenting reports from Jedi Knights and Padawans, looking over lesson plans for younglings—

When he breathes out, the air tastes icy, like the aftertaste of mint in hot cocoa, the sensation of it curling down his spine.

“To make amends,” Lee says from far away, still smiling, because he’s always smiling, “what say we spar with no lesson in mind, a real meeting of the fists?”

Naruto blinks. He can feel the padded mats beneath his boots, can see the high marble walls and the arched ceiling of the sparring atrium, a mural depicting the origin of the Jedi Order sweeping its way across the marble above. It’s a little disorienting, when Sasuke shows up anywhere, like Naruto gets whirled through some other place before being dropped right where he’d been standing minutes ago, seconds ago, now. 

“No can do, Bushy Brow,” his voice sounds clearer than it did in his head half-a-heartbeat before, like his ears had been cleaned out or something. He smacks Lee between the shoulder blades, in the exact place where Lee had held his wrist at the end of their duel. Anticipation is tightening his stomach. “I’ve got an appointment I gotta keep, and he’s a little bit early. I’d hate to keep him waiting too long.”

“Oh! A different sparring partner then. I see! How vivacious and noble of you! You never cease to amaze me!” Lee takes a breath, determined to continue and trap him in a conversational loop for the next ten minutes, but he’s cut off, Sakura’s voice coming from across the atrium where she’d been standing in the corner, arms crossed loosely over her chest.

“He’s got a hot date,” she tells him, almost-smug and just a hair too-amused as she pushes herself off the wall, touching younglings gently to move them aside. “I’d be happy to get some work in, if you want, Lee. That’ll free Naruto up, since his appointment is waiting out front.” She arches an eyebrow, tilts her head, grins. If she’s tense, it’s hidden somewhere that not even the Force can touch. 

“Sakura you are a life-saver! There are these skills that I’ve been wanting to try, you see, so—” Sakura waves Naruto around Lee’s body before she knocks her fists together, her Force-gauntlets tightening around her fingers and her palms, and Naruto slips between the younglings who’re settling down for another show, the whole room on-edge with the enthusiasm of it all.

Naruto breathes out another wave of mint, the feeling of electricity scattering over the backs of his teeth. Coruscant has muted itself, holding its breath as he makes his way down the polished corridor, as it opens wide into the Temple’s primary entrance, as the redirected light from the orbital mirrors mimic a sunset and almost blind him—

Through the adjustment to the glare of reflected sunlight off of the cloudcutters and starscrapers, Naruto can see Sasuke, leaning against the base of one of the countless Jedi statues, the Order’s predecessors castling long shadows in the handmade sunset. There’s a breeze, pushed between the buildings and cast aside by speeders changing hoverlanes, that’s toying with Sasuke’s hair, the gray fabric of his tunic, the loose fit of his matching pants, tucked neatly into his boots.

The sight of it closes Naruto’s throat, a little. The image carves itself into a place on his bones, somewhere, with every other memory he has.

Sasuke’s head is leaned back against the statue, his eyes shut against the noise of Coruscant. There’s a green-and-healing bruise on the side of his face, its shape no longer distinct enough to determine what had hit him, only that it had been maybe a couple days ago, and it’s a little bit bigger than a human fist.

“Didn’t want a bacta patch for that shiner?” Naruto asks from behind him, dragging his fingertips along the clean-hewn stone of the statue’s base, still at least a meter short of the long-dead Jedi’s feet. “Do you have someone that you’re showing off for, sir?”

Sasuke opens his eyes and turns his head, shifting the one crossed holster looped from his left shoulder to his right hip as he stands more upright. It’d look out-of-place on anyone else, especially without any body armor to justify it, but Sasuke wears it like he’s prepared for anything, his lightsaber tucked away into the pocket under his arm, looking like the butt of a blaster from this angle at first glance, second glance, third glance—

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me how dashing I look with this mess on my face? I’m pretty sure that’s how this is supposed to go.” Humor touches the corners of Sasuke’s mouth, even though it’s not quite a smile. His eyes are shifting between Naruto’s face and the Jedi around them, coming and going from the Temple, their own attention split against whatever errands they’re running and the fact that there’s an almost-anarchist standing atop the stairs. His gaze loses focus, his split attention going solo in a direction that Naruto can’t quite follow, like the past is creeping up on him.

it’s been happening more often, lately, Sasuke’s voice says from a week-old recording, half-eaten by the distance across the galaxy. He’d sounded tired, quiet against Naruto’s ear. The memory is clear, overlaid against Sasuke’s face, stuck somewhen else. 

(Sasuke shouldn’t’ve been in the Archive in the middle of the night—not after everything that had happened. The swearing and the shouting and the storming out of the Council chamber. The defecting and the running and the broken-edged wordplay that cut like a vibroblade. Something about breaking bonds and i’m too safe with you. He’d left to seek out more powerful pastures, trying to figure out just what it was that had made his family a target of powerful people. Naruto had missed the breadth of it, at the time, because a hole had yawned itself deep and wide beneath his ribs, swallowing sight and sound and taste and memory and—everything.

But, regardless, their sudden meeting there had been weird and clandestine and a little bit sexy in the way that Sasuke had stared at him from across the marble-and-steel table between them, his face half-cast in shadow, his eyes glowing a little bit like embers in the middle of a newly-born firepit.

It had felt like a metaphor for something, the image that Naruto had recorded and re-recorded into his brain.

Above the table, projected into the darkness, was the face of Jedi Master Danzo Shimura, glistening a cold silver-blue. On the table’s touch-screen surface was Danzo’s biography—mission reports, student records, fighting style, lightsaber design, each tucked away into their own tabs and files, ready for perusal. A memory card had been protruding from a data port in the table’s surface. 

Any sleepiness that Naruto might’ve felt had died when he’d met Sasuke’s eyes. In that moment, it felt as though sleep hadn’t ever lived inside his body.

“did you miss the kitchen?” Naruto had said, trying to smooth out the moment’s edges, trying to get Sasuke’s face a little bit less—distant. “here for a midnight snack?”

Sasuke had only watched, his face unresponsive. In the Force, there’d been only boiling emptiness there, like a storm system about to break, but not yet. From where Naruto had been standing, his face had looked wan and worn thin—but it could’ve been the lighting.  

“i came to borrow some information, but i left my library card in my other robes,” Sasuke had said, his eyes following the future beside Naruto’s face. Despite the way his words rolled off his tongue, there hadn’t been any humor there. “but since you’re here, i should let you know that the next time you see me, i’ll have killed master danzo.”

The climate unit in the Archive had hummed to life, breathing warmth into the space from corners to center. The whir of it had been the loudest thing in the room, in the Temple, on the planet. What Sasuke’d said had been so forthright, his eyes so steady, that Naruto had felt a rod slam underneath his armpits, straightening out his shoulders.

“what?” His throat had been dry. Information like this was risky to know, risky to share, but Sasuke’s face told him nothing about that risk. “you’re going to what?”

Something in Sasuke’s expression shifted with the grinding of permacrete against each other, leaning down a slope toward something that reached into Naruto’s chest, grabbed his heart, and squeezed. The curve of Sasuke’s mouth had become complicated when he’d said, “do you know why my family was killed?” The Archive climate control whirred in response. There wasn’t a response that would’ve been adequate anyway. Besides, Sasuke had held his eyes in a tightly controlled lock as he’d continued, “because they were going to break with the order. they were going to start a different school of thought. like gaara. like pain. and what do you do to a family that can see the future?”

Naruto had swallowed. It’d felt like swallowing dirt. “sasuke—”

“you have someone poison them, because a poison is hard to see coming, even harder when it’s someone from the inside. it’s disorienting. you can see something, but not what. it touches every life you see, dissolves it, makes it unclear.” For a moment, Naruto had felt something soft touch the side of his cheek. It feels like a far-off lightning strike, sends ringing in his ears. “danzo gave that order. itachi carried it out.” Despair echoed like thunder within the arms of Sasuke’s voice, and there’d been no more emptiness hanging from his features.

The memory card chimed from its place in the data port, indicating that it had finished grabbing the information it wanted. Sasuke had tugged it free, palming it into the cover of his robes. The holoprojector went dark, Sasuke’s eyes glowing low and heavy, suspended, half-lit.

“i wanted to let you know, since next time we see each other,” the achingly sad curve of Sasuke’s mouth had said, the part of it that Naruto could see, “you’re gonna have to figure out if you can kill me or not.” 

There are a lot of things that Naruto could’ve said to that, a lot of things that would’ve been more impactful, would’ve had more meaning. He probably would’ve been able to stop Sasuke right there if he’d just been able to put everything in the right order, with the right sentiment. Naruto could’ve brought up how hard everyone had worked to try and get him back, or mentioned that, now that Orochimaru was dead, there wasn’t anything else to fight over. He could’ve said something funny, if not clever, about how Danzo had one foot in the grave anyway, how, if Sasuke would let him, he really would be able to help.

“don’t go,” but the only thing that Naruto had been able to say to that was a completely unrelated statement, coughed up from deep within his chest, “i love you.”

If heartbreak had a face, Sasuke would’ve been wearing it. Something split into the air between them, throwing shards and debris into the Force. Naruto had to lift his hands to his face to check for broken skin, as though he would’ve found blood on his fingertips. 

The darkness had eaten him up in that moment, wrapped around him, pulling him under. He’d vanished from the Force, leaving behind the texture of ozone, static scattering itself across his skin. 

Naruto waited there, the sunrise creeping its way across the floor some hours later.

The shadows hadn’t opened back up again.)

“You’re always dashing.” Sasuke blinks, his attention right back where it ought to be, his eyelashes painted silver as the display light underneath the statue comes to life beside them. “Don’t I tell you that you’re dashing? I send you voice messages that tell you how sexy you are, and how much I miss you when we’re working, and—”

Sasuke’s hand comes up to his mouth, the bruise on his cheek going pink-and-green as he rolls his eyes. Anything that was left of the mint that tastes like Sasuke is swallowed up by something warmer settling in Naruto’s chest. “Shut up. I was kidding.”

Naruto mumbles something against Sasuke’s palm, says it again when Sasuke drops his hand away with both his eyebrows raised high, “I wasn’t.” Sasuke opens his mouth to say something else, his eyes following patterns that Naruto can’t see somewhere over his shoulder, the Force buzzing around them with what could be suspicion, but Naruto speaks instead. “Can I kiss you?”

Surprise, and it pops like zoochberry gum. “What?”

“Can I kiss you?” Naruto’s fingers find Sasuke’s and they twine together. It feels reflexive. 

“You smell like sweat,” Sasuke says, but his nose isn’t scrunching up, and his mouth isn’t turning into a thin line. The pause stretches out, though, and it threatens to turn into something embarrassed, but then Sasuke continues, “yeah. Kiss me.”

If Coruscant was muted before, it’s silent now as Naruto draws his knuckles over the side of Sasuke’s face, as Sasuke circles his own fingertips over Naruto’s cheek, his thumb pulling itself over the topmost scar there. Sasuke’s lips are chapped, as usual, when Naruto kisses him, but there’s absolutely a smile there now, and it’s sweet against his mouth. The kiss opens up, goes soft, and when Naruto pulls away, his face almost hurts with the joy of it. Sasuke pinches Naruto’s cheek between his thumb and forefinger, tugging gently, and his eyes are the thing of fairytales—dark and molten, something burning in their background, the sunset catching fire around his irises.

“I missed you,” Sasuke tells him. That’ll never stop making Naruto’s stomach drop, probably. “Dumbass.”

“I missed you,” Naruto replies, knowing that he definitely looks like his stomach just dropped out of his body. Their hands are back together again. “Asshole.” Sasuke breathes a laugh, soft and easily missed, carried away by the breeze, touching the tip of Naruto’s nose as he brings their foreheads together. “You’re early, you know that? You made it back in time for a reasonable dinner.”

“Ha, ha,” Sasuke’s nose does wrinkle at that. “I had another appointment on-world, and that finished early, so I thought that I’d head over to you before the night settled in.” Naruto can almost feel the kiss of Sasuke’s eyelashes as he lowers them into a look that brings to mind mischief, almost. His mouth quirks up. “You know how sunlight looks on you.”

Naruto scoffs, bumping their noses together before he pulls away. “Okay. So does that mean that you’ll let me take you to dinner? There’s a dive in the undercity that makes the best menar noodles in the galaxy, and—”

Sasuke interrupts him, the decorative lighting haloing his head, because light always does that with him. It’s always like looking at twin moons, rising above the horizon, casting the world in softness, dulling the edges of the things in their sight. “That’s what you said about the place on Corellia.

“Okay, but—”

“And the cantina on Tatooine.”

“Right, I get that—”

The quirk in Sasuke’s mouth lifts higher. Laugh-lines think about forming beside his eyes. “And the place on Chalacta, which didn’t even have noodles, and the place on Ryloth, which tasted like speeder exhaust.”

“Okay, so I get your point! I’m not picky. But,” Naruto tugs on Sasuke’s hands, taking one step back, bringing Sasuke one step forward, “this is literally the best place to eat I’ve ever been. It’s cramped, it’s dingy, and at this time of day, we’ll be some of the only people there. Let me treat you to dinner.”

Sasuke squeezes his fingers once before letting them go, shifting his holster across his body a second time. “I’ll let you treat me to dinner. Do we need to get an air taxi, or—”

“I can do better than that.” Naruto turns, moving behind the statue’s base, listening to Sasuke’s footsteps as he follows him, no questions or hesitation. If anything, Naruto can feel a tickle of exasperation against the underside of his nose. “I found this speederbike in one of the undercity junkyards, and Sai’s been helping me put it together between, you know, babysitting and data-entry.”

There’s the hesitation. Sasuke’s bootsteps don’t stutter, but they slow, and he says, “I don’t want to go into the Temple.” 

Naruto glances over his shoulder and holds Sasuke’s eyes for three heartbeats, keeping himself in step. “We’re not going into the Temple. We’re going around it.” 

Relief sets Sasuke’s jaw, a contradiction, like a lot of the things that Sasuke has done over the course of his life. It’s the grind-his-teeth relief of not having to explain himself, of not having to speak false shame at the death of a Jedi Master that had cost Sasuke more than anybody else in the galaxy, almost, followed only by Madara and Orochimaru both. 

Sasuke picks his pace up again, falling into Naruto’s heartbeat steps with practice, even when they haven’t been side-by-side in the last couple of weeks. It’s an easy rhythm, like running around the Temple, breathless and young, like wandering the undercity and sharing half-remembered stories of older lives, toeing the line of talking about family but not quite making it far enough to get there. 

The sky has gone purple with the mirrors’ rotation as they come upon the Temple’s landing pad, lined with magnetic clamps to hold ships in place, landing lights moving their in slow motion across the edge of the pad itself. Naruto’s speeder-bike is tucked underneath a plastyk tarp, leaned gently against the side of the Temple’s face. Naruto tugs the tarp into his arms, rolling it into an almost-neat wad, jamming it behind a metal crate of landing cables. 

Sasuke watches him, hip cocked, arms crossed, and Naruto wants to kiss him again.

But he doesn’t, though, not yet. He pulls the speeder-bike into the open, turning its engine and letting it idle, until the aged coughs smooth out into something a little closer to a purr.

Naruto swings himself onto the speeder-bike, feels it shift under his weight only slightly, and turns to Sasuke. “You ready to ride?”

Sasuke rolls his eyes, swinging himself onto the space at Naruto’s back, propping his feet at the stirrups’ sides. His arms loop around Naruto’s waist, his chest to Naruto’s back, and he leans his head over Naruto’s shoulder to say, “sir, are you going to be driving without a helmet?”

“Didn’t think that far,” Naruto admits, but revs the speeder-bike’s engine anyway, driving it forward and off the landing pad, letting it level into a stable thrum before he weaves his way through the starscrapers, down into the undercity’s territory. The hoverlanes have always been dubious the farther down a person travels into Coruscant’s depths, but the bike has no difficulties slipping between arched alleyways and under pedestrian walkways. The nighttime has settled in by now, and even if it hadn’t the orbital mirrors don’t reflect enough light down here.

Everything’s bright and neon the lower they get, advertising dance clubs, strip clubs, and brothels, barsm convenience stores, and payday lenders—and between all of this, Naruto settles his bike, looping a security lock through its struts and the restaurant’s runoff gutter, right beneath its brightly-colored sign. It’s matte enough that it blends into the wastebins around them, revealed only by the way it contrasts to tossed-away flimsiplast that litters the streets. 

If Naruto thinks about it, he can almost catch echoes of his mother here, peeking out from behind buildings and dumpsters, giving orders and advice, running the streets of the undercity with loud demands and louder laughter, catching the eye of a Jedi Knight, so many levels above all of this—or at least that’s what Naruto had been told, years and years and years ago.

Sasuke tweaks Naruto’s ear like he knows what he’s thinking, like he can read Naruto’s mind, and it pulls his brain forward, back into the driver’s seat of his body.

Sasuke slides off the bike first, shaking out his hair, tugging on his tunic, adjusting the holster across his chest. The lightsaber underneath his arm looks different in lighting like this, the shape of its hilt a little thicker, a little more difficult to mistake as anything else—ah. That lightsaber isn’t Sasuke’s at all.

Naruto slips off the bike next, smoothing out his robes with one hand and leaving his hair alone. The lightsaber on his belt has a hilt familiar enough to use, an extension of Naruto’s arm all on its own, but it’s not his. Sasuke’s lightsaber has found itself a place on Naruto’s belt like it always does after long jobs. It’s a ritual that Sasuke has never bothered to explain and that Naruto’s never bothered to ask about, lest he spook Sasuke to the point where he stops, and that would be the worst. It’s endearing, the little things that Sasuke does, the way he shows Naruto the impact he has.

Sasuke has thrived on subtlety when it comes to feelings like that. Naruto has thrived on audacity. 

“You coming?” Sasuke says from the restaurant’s open doorway, the door itself held open with a block of solid permacrete that looks like it was pulled up from the pavement somewhere, or like it fell from the upper levels during construction. It’s got a lot of character, this place.

“Right behind you,” Naruto replies, his outer robe whipping against his boots. 

The restaurant is almost empty, most of its patronage secured long after the chronometers reset for the day, and Sasuke has chosen a table in the corner, his back to the wall, his eyes on the doorway they’d entered from. Even with the vantage point on the rest of the dining room, Sasuke’s eyes stay fixed to Naruto’s face, before they move to his collarbones, his chest, settling on the lightsaber that Sasuke had clipped there. 

“You were right,” Sasuke tells him, lifting his eyes again so that they can lock them as Naruto sits down, his fingers pressed to the middle of the menu, his thumbnail picking at its edges. “This place is a dive.”

“But it’s delicious.” Ayame-the-waitress steps out from behind the curtain to the kitchen, a datapad in her hand after the sets down the glasses of water she’d been carrying, her fingertip poised with a purpose, her eyebrows positioned in a way that indicates that Naruto doesn’t need to bother speaking, so her attention is going to be paid to Sauske instead.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Ayame asks, her free hand already working on Naruto’s order, her customer-service voice impeccably practiced, even this early in their business day. 

Sasuke glances between her and the menu, his thumb pausing its rhythm against the menu’s edge. “I’ll take your stewed otamot curry with Bellassan peppers and Ghoba rice, thanks.” He slides the menu back in place behind the dubious condiments, rubbing his fingers to get rid of the ever-present grease feel of the undercity’s food establishments.

Ayame nods, her face serious, and she leaves them with a bow, tucking her datapad into her apron.

The restaurant’s space is then filled with the noise of clattering dishware and the vibration of fluorescent lights. 

There’s no excuse like a date to stare at Sasuke’s face, tracing the jut of his cheekbones, the line of his nose, the shape of his eyes, the arch of his brows. Even with his hair windswept and a little scattered, he’s unreal. It’s like he can feel the touch of moonlight against his skin, washing him clean, or something like that, one of those far-flung metaphors that only ever seem to scratch the surface of all this shit that Sasuke makes him feel all the time. Even with a greenish bruise still healing on his face.

“Can I help you?” Sasuke says, resting his chin on his knuckles, his mouth curved and awesome and kissable. 

“Nah.” Naruto blinks, threading his fingers together and resting his own chin atop them. “I was just looking. I have to commit your face to memory for when I finally get poetic skill to talk about about how hot I think you are—”

A laugh, also a surprise. He can see if on Sasuke’s face by the widening of his eyes. “Shut up. Fuck.” Persistent laughter, like a carbonated liquid, hits the table in droplets. “How do you just say whatever you want like that?”

“Years of practice.” Naruto speaks with affected grace, shifting the position of his chin on his fingers to give the impression of looking down his nose. “It’s a skill borne of great trial and immense suffering, because I will say things that others keep in their heart, or whatever.”

Sasuke snorts. It takes some of the time off of his features, rubs away some of the darkness under his eyes. “Or whatever.”

“For example,” Naruto continues as though Sasuke hadn’t spoken at all, “I’m also going to tell you that I think that you should teach at the Temple.” 

Sasuke chokes on the water that he’d brought to his mouth, his shoulders lurching forward, and he coughs water from his nose. “Excuse me?” Naruto can tell that he’d spoken louder than he thought he would, and he tries again, his voice softer, lower, and closer to the surface of the table. “Excuse me?”

Naruto meets Sasuke’s eyes with no shame, focused, his chin still poised on his fingers. He thinks of all the other things he wants to say but doesn’t, the things that he’d wanted to say but hadn’t, and figures that Sasuke doesn’t need to know about all of those possible pasts and futures that Naruto grinds under his teeth, chews on and spits out. Instead, Naruto repeats himself, because if there’s anything that he’s practiced at, it’s being a broken record. 

(i love you, come back, i’m taking you back with me, i love you)

“I think you should teach at the Temple.” Naruto drops his hands from his chin, resting them on the table, keeping his fingers carefully loose and as non-threatening as possible. The two of them are different now, but it’s still hard to tell when Sasuke’s trying to bolt. There are the quiet giveaways, these days—the glancing at the door, the floor, the table, the way he watches Naruto’s face to see if he’s joking or not before he starts the pattern all over again. “Lee teaches there now, and he’s not even Force-sensitive.”

When Sasuke blinks, it’s slow, contemplative, and unsettled. The skin beside his eyes is tight. “I’m not going to be on the Order’s payroll,” Sasuke tells him, clenching and unclenching his flesh-and-bone hand. “And we’re still not on good terms probably. I killed a Master. I said I’d kill more. I’m a flunkie. Where’s this coming from?”

Naruto chews the inside of his cheek before he responds with, “the work you do is important to you. You’re expensive, and we hear about all the shit you get up to even as uninvolved as the Order likes to be in ‘minor issues’, or whatever it is we call it. And Gaara’s already started a kind of school thing in the Outer Rim for other people who are Force-sensitive but don’t like Jedi. I just think that having different ways of doing things will keep less terrible things from happening.”

Sasuke pauses, presses one thumb to his lips. And then, “like Madara.”

“Like Madara, like Orochimaru, like Danzo.” They’re on the same page, in this moment, and Naruto has the split-second impulse to say that they’d see each other more, that Naruto would get to see him more, but he doesn’t. “I just think that it’d be easier for people to figure out what they want to do with this power and these things, and it’d be easier to see when people are losing their shit.”

Sasuke looks at him like he can’t figure out how they got into this conversation, like he’s trying to trace the path from i love you to please teach children. Or, alternatively, he’s tracing the possible futures that stem from this moment. 

“I’ll think about it,” Sasuke finally says, the curtain into the kitchen rising and falling and rising again as Ayame leaves their food on the table and leaves them to their conversation and to themselves. Naruto is still ninety percent sure she’s eavesdropping. “But I’m not interested in working for the Order. I’m not a Jedi anymore, Naruto.”

“I know.” Naruto hesitates, then, even as he splits his chopsticks, stirring the noodles in their broth. “I think sometimes that’s what people need to hear. Not everyone has to be a Jedi.”

The sound Sasuke makes could be a laugh, but it’s too soft to be sure. It’s like a sigh with a half-smile, unclear in direction or intent. The only evidence that it happened at all was the way it stirred the steam coming off of his curry. “The Grandmaster Grandma probably has her hands full with you, doesn’t she? Does she know how persuasive you are?”

Naruto thinks about the conversations they’d had over the last eight years or so, about the yelling matches that they’d shared in the Grandmaster’s office, about Sasuke, and Madara, and Itachi, and Sasuke again. But he doesn’t talk about those either. All he says is, “I think she might have a hunch.”

Sasuke licks his lips around a bite of food, and there’s a look on his face that presses itself against Naruto’s sternum, pushes against his skin, makes it hard to breathe. “‘Nobody gets how bad I want to take you back. Not even you.’” His voice is different when he says that, like it’s brittle, like it’ll break if he breathes too hard, like it’ll shake apart if Naruto were to reach for his hand. “Who could say no to that?”

Naruto can feel the cold of Rhen Var freezing his breath even before it left his mouth. The nemar noodles soothe that, a little. “Sasuke,” Naruto says, and there’s a hair's-breadth of time where he thinks he might cry, “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Yeah,” and the way Sasuke says that is almost like a kiss all on its own. “Home’s where the heart is, right?”

Naruto’s eyes sting, flood, spill over. It’s a rollercoaster in this restaurant tonight, conversations are unpredictable and emotions have no roadmap. He feels his chest get tight with the urge to breathe, feels his throat get hot with the pressure of everything happening inside his stomach and heart and head. He can hear Sasuke’s chair scrape against the meticulously-clean-but-still-greasy floor, can hear the whisper of his tunic as he reaches across the table, can feel the tremor of Sasuke’s hand as he wipes at Naruto’s face.

“I’m sorry.” It’s an apology, wrapped around something else. There are a lot of things that Sasuke’s not sorry for, and he’d said as much to the Order and to Kakashi and to Naruto himself. But this feels different, feels sharper, feels brighter. It’s reflecting something back at him. “I’m so sorry.” 

“I love you,” Naruto tells him, and there are a lot of other things wrapped up in that, too. 

“I know,” Sasuke replies. Naruto doesn’t know what kind of expression he’s wearing. “I love you.” A pause, fogged over by the smell of food and steam. “Let’s eat so that I can show you something. I want to tell you what I’ve been up to today.”

Naruto clears his throat before he flicks the tip of Sasuke’s nose. “A surprise? For l’il ol’ me?”

“Are you going to eat, or not?” Sasuke drops down into his seat, wiping away any leftover snot from Naruto’s nose, drying his hand on one of the napkins in a bin on the table. “Otherwise, no surprise for you, dumbass.”

“Okay, asshole.” He sniffles, clearing his throat for the second time.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sasuke watching him, resuming his meal only after Naruto takes another bite of his own.

(Naruto had spent four months thinking about their second kiss, a thing that had been less surprising than their first and mostly teeth, filled with all the uncontrolled clumsiness that two teenagers can shove at each other. It’d been on his mind when he’d been awake or asleep, on missions or at the Temple. He’d think of Sasuke’s mouth and Sasuke’s eyes and the way Sasuke had pulled him forward by his collar, his cheeks flushed high and pink and bright.

By the time he’d found out that Sasuke had been thinking about their kiss just as much, holding his feelings so far down inside his chest that they’d carved their teeth into serrated edges, digging into the underside of his bones, the meat of his windpipe, leaving the taste of blood on his tongue.

He hadn’t known that it hurt him so much, not until they’d ended up on a ledge with Coruscant as their backdrop, its skyline limitless and breathtaking and horrible in a moment like that one had been.

“do you know what safe even means?” Sasuke’s voice had been painful and frenzied, torn from his mouth as though lined with hooks. Even at a low volume like that, it still seemed so loud. “it means that itachi killing our family was the best decision. it means that everything before this was okay, because now i feel safe.” Sasuke’s nose had wrinkled in a snarl. 

Naruto had felt absolutely out of his depth, like he was drowning, reaching for the sky far, far above him. When he’d breathed, it’d left the tang of saltwater on his tongue. “how is that what it means? what do you even mean? bad actions are bad actions” Naruto had gestured out at the city-planet, stretched out across the whole surface of the world, the undercity buried in shadow beneath them, the Jedi Temple squarely at their backs, still looming, even this distance away. “all that safety means is that you’re making the best out of a shit situation. how is that a bad thing?”

Sasuke had looked at him like he was ten screws short of an airlock, like there’d been atmosphere leaking out into the vacuum of space from his brain, but it’d been different than the other looks he’d gotten like that. “what do you fucking know anyway?”

Speeders had moved in their hoverlanes, completely unconcerned with the topic of their conversation. They’d been effectively alone on a planet with one trillion people. Around them, the Force had pulled itself taut.

“i know that for a person who’s always talking about the future, you sure are obsessed with the past.” The words had come out of Naruto’s mouth before he could’ve stopped them, as though they’d been pulled out of his chest by something that had more than two hands. They’d left torn skin along his windpipe, the roof of his mouth. 

The lights of Coruscant had haloed the back of Sasuke’s head, turning the tips of his hair silver-pink-gold-silver again. He’d been the image of a metaphor, because that’s the only way that he’d ever be described properly, and in that moment, a darkness had crawled out from underneath the fabric of his robes, had washed his skin into something grey and undead, and the burning coals of his eyes had glimmered something acidic. 

Naruto had swallowed, like that would do anything about what he’d said, and he’d reached out for Sasuke—for his hand, his cheek, the sleeve of his robe. Anything.

Sasuke’s left arm had come up in a swipe, a full-body flinch, and the hairs on Naruto’s arms had risen, just like the hairs on the back of his neck. Sasuke’s robes had whipped around them, yanked by wind that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“don’t touch me!” Sasuke said, his tone emptied out by a void deep and wide and unfathomable. It could’ve broken through the hull of a warship—through the core of a supermassive black hole. A stormcloud was building, rubbing atoms against atoms with the energy that had been rolling itself around in Sasuke’s gut, in the air between them both.

Lightning had leapt from Sasuke’s palm in an unclean arc, fear or anger or something else entirely pulling the skin at the corners of his eyes tightly enough to split.

Even then, Naruto had found that their kiss was still on his mind.)

Naruto wonders if he’s ever eaten that fast in his life.

“You know,” Naruto shouts over his shoulder as they leave the restaurant behind, the wind whipping at his cheeks, pulling at his clothes as they move between hyperlanes, Sasuke’s directions indicated by nudges and taps in the Force, “you might make me into a curry convert at some point. Do you think they make nemar noodles with stewed otamots?”

“Don’t see why not,” Sasuke tells him, pushing downward in the Force, leading Naruto down a side alleyway, suspended kilometers and kilometers above the undercity, a residential cloudcutter rising high above them, its transparisteel windows holding onto the glare of speeders’ headlights like stars. “It’s food, so I assume you can do whatever you want with it.” His flesh-and-bone hand is warm on the back of Naruto’s neck when he says, “pull onto the landing pad. There should be a space for a bike like yours and I don’t think anyone will make off with it.”

“I resent that remark,” Naruto speaks over the whine of the engine as they come into land on the designated pad, suspended over the alleyway, its motion-sensitive lights flashing gently. “This thing is a powerhouse and it looks great.”

“It’s matte black and has orange accents. It’s a horror.” Sasuke hops off the bike before it stops, adjusting his tunic and tugging at the loose fabric on his knees, casting a glance over his shoulder, watching Naruto ease it into a spot just big enough to fit the speeder bike and Naruto both, with just enough space for him to slide from the bike’s seat, killing the engine in the same motion he uses to walk away. 

Sasuke’s back is to him as he buzzes himself into the residential building, the door whirring open as he shifts his holster on his shoulder. Naruto follows behind him, their pace the same, their steps the same, paired together over time and space and everything else, as though they’d been walking side-by-side again. But this time, they’re not, and the shape of Sasuke’s shoulders, the cut of his hips, the way his hands hang loosely at his sides, it makes Naruto’s breath come up short. The field of noise shifts around his ears, muting the hum of the climate control unit, the murmur of air-recyclers, the lived experiences of the residents as they walk themselves down the hallway, toward their exit, toward a night on the town, toward leaving the planet, never to be seen again on some stupid quest for power or revenge or whatever.

The thought of getting into the turbolift at the end of the hall makes Naruto feel like puking, and he wonders if he will throw up in the turbolift of a place where he doesn’t even live, and how he’ll have to tell the people who work here that he barfed because he thinks he might be panicking about something, that this puts him in the past somewhere indistinct but terrible, and—

Sasuke takes his hand.

He’s stopped walking, and he’s taken Naruto’s hand, and he waits in the center of the corridor, letting the rollercoaster slow down again, easing to a stop at the end of the ride, and Naruto can breathe. One breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Another breath, just the same. A third one, deeper and longer and easing his heart rate.

“You okay?” Sasuke asks, summer rain on a distant farmworld, hitting the wide leaves of some cultivated plant. His face is carefully neutral, even though the Force simmers with shame in the background. Naruto’s hands stop shaking.

“Absolutely,” Naruto replies, even though it’s, like, a cough. “Don’t you have a surprise for me?”

“I do,” Sasuke’s watching Naruto’s face with cautious consideration, taking an inventory of his eyes, his mouth, the line of his throat, which, admittedly, does feel sandy on the inside. “You good to get onto the turbolift?” 

“Absolutely,” Naruto says again, this time with gusto. Sasuke might even believe him this time, especially since it’s mostly true, but the eye-roll makes him believe otherwise. Whether or not Sasuke has his entire buy-in to Naruto’s statement, he turns back around, keeping Naruto’s hand in his own, tapping the turbolift’s call button with one knuckle. 

Naruto is breathing easier as they step onto the lift, the pressure of the change in direction only twisting his stomach a little. For extra security, Naruto laces their fingers, covering their hands with the sleeve of his outermost robe. Hidden from sight, Sasuke’s thumb traces over Naruto’s own, pressing gently against cracks in the dry skin there.

Sasuke doesn’t say anything as the lift stops, the door sweeping to the side, revealing a corridor identical to the one they’d left, its tiled floor polished to shining, its lamps tastefully decorative and modeled to look like wrought iron sconces, their light flickering like burning candles, casting and re-casting shadows on the walls and floor and ceiling. The apartment doors are farther apart up here, so the living quarters behind them must take up a little more space. They’re likely bigger than the Knights’ rooms, that’s for sure, bigger than the Masters’ suites too.

And Sasuke stops at the end of the hall, letting go of Naruto’ hand to pull two star-shaped keys from a pouch on his holster, glancing at Naruto’s face and away again in a heartbeat’s time. He tosses Naruto one of the keys, pushing the other into the lock beside the door, the mechanism itself holding tightly to it’s pointed edges, magnets whirring around it. 

Naruto inspects the key in his hands, his thumbnail catching in the miniscule folds in its shape where the magnets in the locking mechanism are pulling hidden pieces free, turning it into a different shape entirely. It’s one of the most secure locking styles ever made, immune to hackable codes and flimsiclips with screwdrivers. They’re expensive, but they’re worth it.

“Are we breaking and entering?” Naruto says into the empty hallway, even though that doesn’t seem likely in the least.

“We’re not.” The key pops out of the lock and Sasuke drops it back into the pouch it had come from, pushing the door open with his elbow, pulling his boots from his feet with his free hand as he steps inside. It’s the least elegant thing possible, and yet there Sasuke is, making it look elegant. “Boots off.”

The apartment past the door is warmly lit, lights coming on further into the entryway-and-living area in response to their entrance, reflecting themselves steadily against the transparisteel windows that are half-covered by cloud-gray curtains. The door clicks shut without any fanfare, the lock sliding itself back into place. Naruto’s boots make more noise than the lock does when he drops them to the floor, but that doesn’t really register, not in the same way that the apartment does. 

Most of the space is tasteful. 

“What the fuck is that?” There are a lot of questions Naruto could’ve asked and chose not to, because holy shit.

The couch is, without a doubt, not tasteful.

It’s an orange-and-navy-and-red monstrosity, all patchworked together and practically overstuffed. When Naruto touches it, it feels horrifically comfortable, like a coma, or something. Sasuke’s watching him from where he’s standing by a wooden desk, simply stained and unassuming. There are two holoimages upon it—from what Naruto can see, one is Sasuke, his mother, his father, and his brother. The other is the original image of their Padawan trio, glimmering a delicate, silver-blue. 

Beside the holoimages is a small metal box, the lock rusted and unusable, even if the rest of the box is in pretty good condition. It’d been a box of Sasuke’s trinkets, left behind some years ago, kept by Naruto under his bed, and returned again. He’s pretty sure Sasuke’s Padawan braid is in there. He’s pretty sure that Naruto’s is, too. 

“Are you going to sit down, or not?” Sasuke steps away from the desk, dropping onto the couch, which huffs against his weight but doesn’t squeak. 

Naruto breathes out and tastes mint. 

The couch doesn’t shift when Naruto vaults over the back, huffing just the same as when Sasuke had dropped himself there. The pillows hopped with the force of it, his feet thunking softly against the floor, the impact muted by the high socks he’d been wearing under his boots. There’s about half-a-meter of space between them, almost enough to leave the middle cushion free of weight. Sasuke isn’t staring at him anymore, his attention fixed instead on a simple holoprojector, dark and showing nothing. 

Naruto has to swallow to speak past the feelings jammed in his throat. “This is the ugliest sofa I’ve ever seen.”

A glance in his direction. An almost smile. “I thought of you instantly when I saw it.”

“Ouch! Or is it?” Naruto plucks at a loose thread on the back of the couch, blue in color, stitched into some of the white patchwork red. It keeps his brain from thinking too fast. “Is this a rental place? Did it come with this thing?”

Sasuke licks his lips, quick and missable, and his fingers are threaded together like he’s about to get a lecture. “No. This is place is—I bought it. I picked out the sofa.” Silence, inching its way across the room like a glacier in the spring. “I had an appointment to check on it and make sure it was livable, before I came over to see you.”

Naruto whistles and it comes out steady, which is a shock. “Your own place, huh? Holy shit, Sasuke!”

“The Chiss pay really well,” Sasuke tells him, and his eyes don’t move from their place on the holoprojector, still dead and still not showing anything. “And I was actually thinking that this could be, like—our own place. I guess.”

Naruto’s heart stops, skidding against too-dry dirt in his chest, wiping out against a particularly sharp rock that might’ve been his lungs or a blood clot. “Excuse me?” he says, when part of him wants to ask when Sasuke ended up on the Chiss’s payroll. They’re a picky bunch, exclusive beyond belief, and his brain is trying to hold onto that tighter than what Sasuke just said.

“Earlier,” Sasuke explains, and it sounds irrelevant, but it might not be, “I said that you can just say whatever you want. This is like that.” His knuckles pop when he squeezes his fingers together, and the tips of them are going a little bit white. “So, surprise. I gave you a key because I want to live with you.”

The rollercoaster clicks its way upward inside his head, starting the slow rise into being unable to breathe for another indeterminant amount of time, but Naruto stops it, puts his feet against its nose and shoves backward, trying to keep it in place. His heartbeat rumbles in his ears, the reverb hitting his eardrum with heavy fists.

“But what about the sweet digs at the Temple?” Naruto’s voice is higher-pitched than he remembers it being, like a wheeze, maybe, and Sasuke’s eyes move toward him then, and they’re always unbelievable. Hesitation is swirling in the burnt glow around his pupils, contracted underneath the lights. 

Sasuke only stares at him, thins his lips, blinks slowly. There’s something unsettling about the color that isn’t in his cheeks. The breath he takes is unstable when he says, “I think that it’d be easier to meet up here after a job. I think it’d be nice to have a bed that we share. I think it’d be nice to eat in and figure out if we can eat stewed otamots and nemar noodles. I think that it’d be nice to be next to you, even on nights I can’t sleep, and to think about doing that over, and over, and over—”

He doesn’t taste like mint when they kiss. He tastes like curry and Bellassan peppers, stewed otamots and Ghoba rice. Naruto cradles Sasuke’s face in his hands, tilts his head, opens his mouth into the kiss and Sasuke responds in kind. He shifts his body, angles closer, pushes his heel against the floor. Naruto can feel Sasuke’s eyelashes as he closes his eyes like he always can, and Sasuke lets out a sigh from his nose.

“I’d love to live with you,” Naruto says, kind of delirious, because of, you know, everything. Sasuke’s face and his eyes and his hands, his shoulders and his hips and his ankles, the fact that he’d come back from Rhen Var and had stuck around, the fact that he’d just asked Naruto to move in with him like they’d been normal people with normal lives and that this was the obvious next step for them both. He was giddy with it. He was going to lose his shit, because he can’t stop anything coming out of his mouth. “I’d love to live with you. I love this fucking couch. I’m going to marry you one day.”

Sasuke does that thing where he looks at him and there’s a universe that he’s seeing and can’t describe, hyperspace lanes that haven’t been set yet, ghosts that are haunting the hollows and hallways of his heart and body and soul. “You think you can tell the future?”

“I think I don’t need to.” Naruto twists a lock of Sasuke’s hair around one finger, two loops up to his knuckle. “I think the future is going to answer to me.”

They’re breathing into the space between their mouths, and it’d be distracting if Sasuke’s eyebrows weren’t trying to tell him something, if the curve of his lips weren’t trying to indicate something very important. 

“Hey,” Sasuke says instead of responding to what Naruto had said, because there’s a lot to talk about before then, but his hand played across Naruto’s chest, and his eyes are wide and astounding, amazing, deadly. “I love you.”

Naruto wonders if Sasuke can feel the way his heart is beating underneath his palm, wonders if it makes the tips of his fingers feel like they can’t get a grip. And he smiles, and it’s wide. He says, breathless, “I know”,  kisses him again, and he’s so confident that Sasuke loves him that it’s like there’s starlight bleeding from the marrow of his bones. “I love you.” 

Sasuke looks at him, and his voice almost doesn’t tremble when he replies,“I know.”

(Naruto had been pretty sure that this was the closest thing he’d ever been to being cradled like a baby.

Iruka had been holding him like a punished toddler even though he was too old for that kind of treatment, his arms hooked under Naruto’s own, squeezing his ribcage under his armpits, and Naruto had been struggling anyway. His hands had been covered in illicitly obtained spray paint, and so had the sleeves of his robe, and his knees, and the soles of his boots. The reek of it followed them both down the corridor of the Temple, singeing the inside of Naruto’s nose with it’s sharpness.

“let me go!” Naruto had said, loudly, and he’d been trying to slip out from the loop of Iruka’s arms as they rounded a corner. He’d known exactly where they were going, because he’d made this walk too many times to count already. The Force had writhed against Naruto’s bones, like there’d been too much of it in his body at once. If he’d yelled any louder, he was almost sure he could throw it up. Almost. Maybe. “i said let me go!”

“no,” Iruka had said, and he’d sounded tired. “you literally spray painted every jedi statue around the temple. not only does your dedication know absolutely no bounds, but that’ll take weeks to get rid of. you know that, right?”

“so what? they’re dead.” Naruto had coughed as Iruka’s arms tightened around his chest, hoisting him up higher with his knee. “they’re not just dead, they’re one with the force, which means they can’t even see it! what’s the big deal?”

“it’s disrespectful,” a sigh—long and very much put-upon. “and maybe they can see it.”

Naruto had felt like there was a boiled rock in his mouth, pressed against his teeth and his tongue and his gums. It’d felt like the skin was peeling away from his mouth. “if they could see it, why don’t force ghosts ever, like, visit?”

The pause Iruka had left him with stretched out almost as long as his sigh had, his bootsteps slowing against the marble floor, even as the Council chamber loomed in front of them, it’s doorway shaped like a maw that had no teeth. 

“sometimes,” Iruka had told him, and it had been the most grown up he’d ever sounded, even when he was lecturing to all the younglings in the early morning, his voice low and sad and suddenly very serious, “shitty things just happen, naruto.” It had been a very un-Jedi like thing to say, when all things contain the will and direction of the Force, and Naruto had almost said so, had almost tried to dig himself a grave so that this line of conversation would’ve been able to stop, and so the hole in his gut wouldn’t have felt quite so wide. 

But he hadn’t gotten to that, not before the Council chamber door had opened, giving it’s geriatric, Bothan-looking face teeth for a split-second, revealing the faces of all the Masters, the Grandmaster himself, and a kid who wouldn’t have been any older than he was. His shoulders had looked stiff, the skin on his hands pink and raw from where he’d been scratching at them. The robes he was wearing had been to big for him, the rough fabric pooling at his feet.

He hadn’t been wearing shoes.

But the most noticeable thing had been his eyes, glimpsed only for moment before he’d shut them. They’d been warm and molten, like burning coal, and his presence in the Force had felt like nothing else in the universe, probably. He’d cast the whole room around him in something that felt like moonlight, doubled over—sharp enough to cut through darkness, bright enough to blind if looked at the right way.

Naruto had felt something in his chest shift, and breathing had come easy.

The Force, curled tightly around his bones, had loosened its grip.

The only way that he could’ve experienced a light like that was with his eyes wide open.)