#but. rewind the tape. ive never wanted to kiss anyone. or do couple stuff. i just wanted someone to think im special & pay attention to me.

[seaquestions]

i dont know how it took me this long to fully come to terms with it but. im literally just aro. or something to that effect.

[breakdownsbuttlights]

I think we´ve all been waiting for this. Human! Dratchet's first kiss. What was it like? The more details, the better.

Drift meant to leave.

As soon the fever passed and the IV was out of his arm, he was up and about in a tangle of sheets, pulling on his dirty old clothes, groping under the cot for his boots. He was sorry, he said, not meeting Ratchet’s eyes. He was sorry for causing trouble. He would make his own way from here. He would take his car, he said, and drive to B. and get supplies. And then what? Drift wouldn’t or couldn’t say. It struck Ratchet how much like their first meeting this was, Drift back from the brink, all patched up and in a hurry to be gone, not because he had a plan, but because he was desperate to get as far from the wreckage of his old life as he could. It occurred to Ratchet, with a sudden pang, that this wreckage probably included him.

Well, if that was what Drift wanted, what could Ratchet do to stop him? Was his own plan any less vague or improbable? He’d found Drift, saved him, healed him. So what? That was his job. The kid owed him nothing, certainly not the things he hoped for, the pathetic fantasies of a lonely old man. I left the Lost Light for you. Ratchet couldn’t say that. It was true, but he couldn’t say it. Instead he said something else, which he regretted almost instantly.

“How much money do you have left?”

He was thinking of Drift’s gold card, shoved so carelessly between the pages of a book. He was thinking, too, of what there was in B., what meagre prospects and what awful temptations. The skin above Drift’s brow had been split recently: an accident, maybe, but more likely a fight. A vow never to kill again clearly hadn’t kept Drift from the brawling Ratchet knew he loved. Was that where he was going now, to a small town full of bored, drunk men, to resume his station in a private war?

In the months following Drift’s exile, Ratchet had hunted for photographs of him and was dismayed at how scarce his image turned out to be. The kid had no social media presence and no evident desire to be caught on camera, unusual for someone his age. Aside from a couple of posed crew photographs and the odd candid shot on Rewind’s blog, there was very little other than what Ratchet knew he would find if he dug deeper: the archival news clips, the sinister mugshot. The nightmarish sex tape, which Ratchet scrubbed from his computer as soon as he realized what it was. And the famous black and white photograph of the burning car, the kid in the foreground almost unrecognizable with his shaved head and air of aggressive criminality, Uzi pointed to the sky.

“That’s not really your concern, is it doc?”

A warning in that nickname: a reminder of his place. Ratchet felt miserable. He had no idea what to do. And so he helped Drift pack up his stuff, collapse his tent, load everything into the back of his car. It was dusk, lovely and mild, the purple sky whirring with bats. Ratchet hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d missed Earth, its sounds and scents and the sweetness of its wind. He’d never been out this way before, and though the desert smell of chaparral and sage was new to him, it had an organic familiarity that made his heart ache. He’d stay here, he decided, even if Drift didn’t want to stay with him. He’d camp out for a while, go a little wild, let a lifetime of inhibition and missed chances and regret dissolve in the face of this vast empty beauty. He remembered then that he didn’t have anything to drink. He and old Cyclonus had practically kept Swerve in business for the past few months but now he had nothing; he’d wanted to keep a clear head on his errand. Just as well: the temptation to drown his sorrows was powerful. He was getting too old for that sort of thing, anyway.

Drift closed the rear hatch of his car and turned to Ratchet. There was something odd about his demeanour, a nervousness that hadn’t been there before. Anxious to get on his way, Ratchet supposed: anxious to leave this humiliation behind and resume his flight, the dissolution of his former self. Well, that makes two of us. He put his hand on Drift’s shoulder in farewell, conscious as he did so of the familiarity of the gesture. I saved your life today, kid. What happens next is up to you.

He expected Drift to pull away then, to put up that wall of Vedic impassivity he often raised when he wished to draw a boundary, say “thanks, doc” and get into his car. Instead, he raised his right hand to cover Ratchet’s own, keeping it planted on his shoulder. Outside the odd clap on the back and a bit of roughhousing, it was the first time Drift had touched him deliberately, and Ratchet was surprised at how firm and strong the hand that gripped his was. The kid’s expression was difficult to read in the dimming light, but the nervousness was still there: Ratchet could feel him quivering.

The kiss, when it came, was tentative and closed-lipped: a shy, exploratory kiss of the sort Ratchet hadn’t experienced since grade school. Just the gentlest touch of mouth on mouth, Drift leaning forward so the strands of his forelock tickled Ratchet’s cheek. Yet it brought him close enough for Ratchet to catch his scent: a little sour from his illness, a little skunky from the stuff he smoked, but so vulnerably, intimately his own that it sent through Ratchet’s body a current of desire so strong he nearly groaned. Oh, kid, he thought. Oh, Drift.

There followed a moment in which it seemed as if the kiss might deepen, though that was probably all Ratchet’s doing; he’d pressed forward almost without thinking, opening his mouth, automatically and inexorably assuming control like he always did in a kiss. (“You just have to be the boss, don’t you?” Pharma had said once, though not accusingly; he’d loved it.) But Drift didn’t yield to him. He parted his lips for the barest of moments, nipping Ratchet’s own with a snaggled bicuspid. Then, in a motion that excited Ratchet acutely before he realized what it meant, he placed both hands on Ratchet’s hips and pushed him firmly away.

“Drift,” Ratchet blurted, hoping to communicate in the urgency of that syllable his bewilderment and frustration.

Drift said nothing. Instead he smiled the first actual smile Ratchet had seen since his exile: the real thousand-watt deal he only turned on when he was truly pleased with something, a smile that dimpled his cheeks and showed even in the dusk his crowded, pointed, brilliant white teeth. Then he ducked away, went around to the driver’s side door of his car, threw himself into it with the kind of leonine ease appropriate for a young man with a fast ride. He gunned the engine, goosing the throttle once, twice, three times before he took it out of neutral and let the wheels grip the dust.

Ratchet stood and watched the taillights diminish in the blue twilight. Then he turned back to his camp and began to pack his own gear, quickly and methodically, all thoughts of remaining in this spot gone as though they never were.

When Ratchet was young, he’d had many lovers. They’d come and gone without trouble or hard feelings, enriching his life briefly then vacating it before things became burdensome. They’d been attracted to his gentleness, his earthiness, his easygoing goodwill, and when those qualities had retreated in self-protection, so had the lovers, but by then Ratchet had other things to worry about. He’d never had to pursue anyone before. It was harder than he thought. But he was learning: that kiss had taught him something.

He’d give Drift a head start, let him get to B. Then he’d follow him. They were traveling together now.