Work Text:
Henry won’t pretend he doesn’t understand why they crave it.
It’s fundamental, the base instincts that it satisfies. Physical touch. Comfort, closeness, intimacy. Things that, if one has an abundance of, it might be easy to take for granted.
He knows the feeling well.
+
It wasn’t always this way, though Henry can’t recall much of the time that came before.
He has his father’s stories, his journals, the recounts of times when everything wasn’t needlessly divided. But isolation makes for easier control, and they’d been outnumbered.
The darkness doesn’t much help the state of things. They’re far from the nearest light source anyway, but the development of another colony that directly blocks their pathway has snuffed out even what they did have. Henry finds it difficult to believe that there was anything else before this—this dark, dust-filled, jagged landscape that so obviously was never meant to be tamed and colonized. And yet, somehow, they persist.
Henry dreams of leaving until he doesn’t. Until the unforgiving planet takes not one but both of his parents in different, equally cruel ways, until it separates him from his sister, until only he and his brother remain, too different to bridge the gaps they’d built between themselves.
Sometimes, at his lowest, Henry will pull his sheets from the bed and sleep on the floor beside the generator. Heat spills out onto his face and he shuts his eyes, lifts a hand and pulls it through invisible rays of warmth. Tells himself it’s the real thing.
Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps him sane.
+
Most of the others aren’t like them. Not that they’re permitted much access to communicate about such things.
But Henry has seen them before, during sanctioned visits from other colonies. He loathes them, however necessary they may be. They come for supplies, for trade, sometimes simply to observe. Those are particularly the worst, Henry thinks; the ones who come simply to point out all of the mistreatment and misfortune and return home without so much as offering a kind word, much less valuable resources.
He’s seen their ships. Their advanced technology, equipment lightyears ahead of what they have here. He’s watched them in their suits meant to separate themselves from the rest of their peers and even themselves.
He’s seen the way people who aren’t allowed the pleasure of physical touch come here to find it. For some of them, it’s the first time in their lives. Henry’s been with a few of them.
It’s a rush of power, the way they look at him. As if he holds the answers to the entirety of the universe in his palms when he touches them to a broad chest, when he takes delicate, untouched skin between his teeth, when his fingers map out places no one else’s—not even their own—have been before.
For them, not even the process of procreating is allowed an aspect of passion. It’s all been sterilized, simplified. A tool, meant to breed more of the same. Henry abhors the idea. For that, at least, he feels for them.
Though he wonders, sometimes, if it might be a fair trade for the sunlight. For the lush, green grass. The rain. The nutrition in the food grown from the dirt.
It doesn’t matter, really. Henry will never experience both to be able to compare.
+
The first time they send a group from one of the bright colonies, Henry is paired with a man named Abel. He is tasked with showing the man around the colony, what the days look like, where he sleeps and the routines he upholds. Henry isn’t told what purpose Abel is here for, but he doesn’t much care to know anyway.
He doesn’t share everything, of course. Everything of value, his books, his parent’s writings, his sister’s old scarf, all safely locked away out of sight. Henry takes Abel instead to somewhere less quiet, more rowdy, lanterns flickering dim, where voices have devolved into sounds instead.
It’s a language they’ve not heard before. Henry allows him to take it in, keeps to a dark corner and waits for what he knows is coming.
When Abel inevitably asks him to, Henry reaches around his lumbering, burly form, scratches his blunt nails through a thicket of coarse, well-maintained hair and wraps long fingers around his cock from behind. Puts his lips to the spot where his beard becomes only stubble on his cheek.
It doesn’t take long. Never does.
Abel is quiet when he comes, which isn’t a surprise.
He leaves shortly afterward on his ship, doesn’t say a word to Henry before he goes. Whatever he’d come here for, he’d evidently found all he needed to know.
Henry never sees him again after that.
+
Ethan is almost a carbon copy, if not for his blonde hair and shorter stature. The top of his head is the color Henry’s was as a child. By this point, it’s nearly fully brown.
He keeps his eyes on Ethan’s shiny, soft, blonde hair as he looks up at him from his knees. Feels the dusting of it on his calves down to his ankles. Wishes he could sink his fingers into it and pull it all out, keep it for himself. He wonders what he would’ve looked like if he’d ended up there where Ethan came from, tan and clean and alive.
Henry doesn’t hurt him. Can’t bring himself to. Ethan will hold onto this memory for eternity, and Henry isn’t as cruel as the others are.
Ethan shakes so terribly when he comes down Henry’s throat that Henry worries he’ll collapse. It takes him a good while to recover from it. When he does, Henry helps him pack what little he’d brought with him and leads him to the door. Ethan glances wide-eyed outside of Henry’s room to ensure they’re alone, then darts up to press his lips to the corner of Henry’s mouth, like he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to or not.
It’s more of a thank-you than Henry’s ever received before. It makes him feel rotten inside, behind his ribs. He doesn’t take any of them back to his room after that.
+
There’s Tom shortly after that. Dark skinned with a buzz cut so precise it comes off as severe, a furrowed brow so solid that Henry thinks for certain this one will believe he’s too distinguished to stoop to Henry’s level.
It’s amazing how desperately he begs for Henry’s fingers inside of him. Henry bends him over a generator in a lesser visited area of the colony and gives him what he asks for. He cries when he comes, big, thick tears on his cheeks, but he still doesn’t make a sound.
+
Ryker doesn’t give in as easily. Not at first, anyway.
He tries to physically fight Henry multiple times before Henry realizes what’s happening. Henry tackles him to the ground and pins him in place with a hand around his neck, gets his fingers between them to palm at his cock through his suit. Ryker doesn’t let him pull away from his throat, wants Henry’s thighs covering his own even when he’s spent and wet inside of his boxers.
+
There are others. Adrian, Nikolai, Scott. Some are more memorable than others.
Henry starts thinking of them as experiments. It’s easier that way. Each one different and yet exactly the same, products of a code with only so many variations. Henry twists them this way and that, pushes here and pulls there, feels a sense of satisfaction upon locating what exactly breaks them open, never to be the same no matter how much they pretend.
Because there’s always that moment—that fleeting, split second where they’re the most vulnerable they’ve ever been in their sheltered lives, where they’re flailing and Henry gives them an anchor. When those who are keeping Henry locked away down here, through their own actions or not, turn to him for guidance. For comfort. For control.
That’s what they’re bred to want. Control. It’s all they’ve ever known, even under the illusion of freedom.
They aren’t so different, when Henry thinks about them in that way.
That brings guilt, though, so Henry doesn’t. He thinks of them as nothing but flashes of light in the distance, not quite defined enough to be stars.
He wonders how many of them could be something if they wanted to. If they tried.
He wonders the same of himself.
+
Alexander is the first one that divulges what he’d come here for. The only one who asks for Henry’s name, too. It’s odd. Henry isn’t sure if he likes it or not. He debates giving a false one, but can’t come up with any reason why he would do so.
“Henry,” Alexander sounds out, the first time Henry’s heard it aloud in ages. “I’m here to prove the existence of love.”
Henry’s entire body jolts at the word. He’s not heard it discussed save for his father’s journals when he’d written about his mother, a precious heirloom frozen in time, one not meant for Henry to be privy to. He wants to ask Alexander why he’s chosen here to collect his data. He doesn’t.
“I’m not sure you’ll find what you’re looking for,” he admits. It’s kinder than he ought to be.
Alexander only smiles. Henry jolts at that too.
“That’s okay.”
+
Alexander—Alex—doesn’t wear his suit when Henry takes him around the colony. He doesn’t tiptoe as if afraid the terrain may bruise him or mar his untouched skin. He talks. Asks questions that aren’t the pre-approved ones from other errant researchers that find their way here.
Henry doesn’t take Alex the same place he took Abel. Or Ethan. Or Tom, Ryker, any of them. Alex is too curious, too openly immersed in what’s around him for Henry to show him nothing but a cacophony of dead ends, no matter how bright they may appear at first glance.
There are beautiful things here. One must simply know where to look for them.
Henry takes Alex instead to the solarium. The glass panes covering the roof had been built in hopes that sunlight would reach them and, though it isn’t a hope anymore, Henry still enjoys it. It’s one of the few places his father had brought him that remains standing.
There are only a few plants that have managed to sustain health, despite how closely Henry attempts to nurture them. None of the species are the same as they once were initially. The leaves are dark, near black, the only color from glowing throughlines like crackling veins, a manifestation of the excess generator energy finding its way into the roots.
He’s not verbalized it before, but often times, Henry feels a kinship to these plants more than any fellow human. Growing and shifting and becoming despite the restraints of a place he was never meant to be confined to.
“What is this one?” Alex asks him, inclining his head toward a particularly bright orb nestled at the center of overlapping, dark petals.
“It does not have a name,” Henry says, sudde nly a bit embarrassed to reveal his endearments for them.
He reaches over the glass and gently scoops the mound of old dirt into his palm, roots safely encased inside as he holds it in front of his chest. Slowly, he extends it toward Alex.
“I can… touch?” Alex glances up at him, brows pinched.
“Feel,” Henry amends.
Alex’s hand lifts, steady, and hovers above one of the petals.
“I won’t harm it?”
Henry’s voice softens. “Not unless you wish to.”
Alex doesn’t take a blade for a sample the way others might’ve if Henry had shown them. Instead, he tentatively traces one of the leaves with the pad of his finger, gasping when it unfurls further under his ministrations. His grin, even in the dark, is blinding.
Content to spend his time tucked away from everything else, Henry takes him around to each of the other plants and scarcely living, resilient things, one by one until there are none left.
He catches Alex’s eyes on the first more than any other though, as he observes it and Henry observes him.
+
Alex stays longer than any of the others Henry has ever been paired with. Which means, despite his initial hesitance to do so, Henry brings him back to his home when there isn’t anywhere left to explore.
He approaches it with the same reverence he had everything else, asking before he touches, handling gently, curious to know more. It is not much but Henry has come to think of it as safe, and the fact that Alex’s presence doesn’t feel like a danger soothes him. Henry’s gut is often correct about these things.
It’s a small space, especially once Alex takes up residence on a pallet on his floor. Henry has recreated a map of the original constellations across his ceiling, and Alex gasps as he takes in the smattering of them above his head when he lies down.
“They don’t look like this where I come from,” he notes.
“Nor from here,” Henry admits. It’s been ages since they’ve seen anything similar. “My father grew up on Earth. This is how they appeared from there.”
Even when they could see them, Henry’s view was only ever large, open, undefined light. Which was still a marvel on its own—Henry spent many nights basking in their glow as a child, and he’d give anything to feel that again.
But his father’s maps are so different; concise and clean, a clear pathway of controlled light brightening the darkness around it. A balance.
“They’re beautiful,” Alex whispers.
They are. Henry forgets how much, at times. He’s grateful to Alex for reminding him.
+
Eventually, Alex makes his way through Henry’s books, flipping through the pages and asking about which ones are Henry’s favorites. He has many of them hidden just in case they’re ever banned, tales of love and romance that his father had brought with him. When Alex reaches the box of journals, Henry allows him to read excerpts from a few of them for his research by the lamplight.
For the first time since he’d arrived, Alex goes quiet. Henry had only planned to let him see a bit of it, but he can’t bring himself to take them away from Alex’s wide eyes and the thoughtful furrow of his brow, his finger tracing absently over the written words.
He doesn’t speak again until much later, when they share a meal at Henry’s folding table.
“Your parents were in love.”
Henry nods. “Yes.”
There were very little truths that he was taught to hold onto as a child. He doesn’t question them.
“My parents—” Alex begins, then stops, poking at his plate with his silverware. Henry waits for him, inclining his head encouragingly. “My parents could hardly even stand to be around each other for the mandatory bonding period before conception. It was before the way they do things now, where there’s no contact at all.”
They are taught little of what the processes are elsewhere, and Henry finds himself interested to know how the differences impacted them both. If never having loving parents at all is better than losing them.
“They were happy, once. I think. Before me. When they had my sister. But her genes were so ideal that they wanted my parents to conceive again and achieve the same results,” he continues with a heavy pause. “I don’t think I was what they expected.”
Any traces of the smile Alex has worn previously fade further as he wades into his memories. Henry aches to reach out and console him but Alex isn’t accustomed to physical touch in any capacity. He isn’t sure if his comfort would be received as a threat or an insult before anything else, so he tightens his grip on his own silverware while Alex talks in between small bites of food.
“I feel lucky to be among those who know where I came from. But sometimes…” he frowns, as if displeased to even have the thought at all, “sometimes I wonder if not knowing would have been better than being born a disappointment.”
Henry feels foolish for attempting to compare their grief. The hurt he sees in Alex’s eyes is one he knows intimately, one he carries with him in every breath, every step. Henry drops his fork and Alex startles across from him when he stands, following his movements.
“Alex, may I—?”
He blinks slowly, wide eyed and glassy. “What is it?”
Henry motions for him to stand and then carefully reaches out, showing Alex he means no harm as his palm brushes the outside of Alex’s bicep. Alex jolts but doesn’t move and, when Henry raises his other to do the same on the opposite side, it isn’t a far stretch to slide them inward over Alex’s back and pull him in.
There’s tension at first, and then Alex feels fluid against his chest, exhaling into Henry’s neck with a quiet, “Oh.”
Henry holds him until Alex gingerly learns to hold Henry in return, until the moisture soaking into the collar of Henry’s shirt has ceased.
Most who end up here know nothing but to take. Henry vows to himself never to forget this, to never forget Alex.
The one who gave.
+
Alex does not ask Henry to touch him again, even when Henry knows he wishes to.
Perhaps he’s heard the stories about what his peers often come here for, Henry reasons, and doesn’t wish to take advantage. Perhaps he believes Henry will think him a hypocrite or a liar for building an emotional connection with him first.
Henry won’t.
From the way it appears, Alex himself is surprised by his own inclination for it. Be it the touch alone or the fact that Henry is a man, he isn’t sure. Alex’s colony cares more for those things than Henry’s does.
But he acts much like the flower in the solarium does. Softens when Henry touches his wrist, enlivens at the contact when they graze shoulders in passing. Seems to reach for it even long after Henry has pulled away.
Perhaps Henry has his own reservations too. He wants, yes. Desperately. He just isn’t sure if he deserves.
+
They return to the solarium the day before Alex is scheduled to leave.
Alex packs a small bag of food and drink and Henry brings a journal of his own, one he’s not picked up in ages after having exhausted all there was to write about. They trek across the rocky terrain in the dark and settle on a blanket at the back of the building, humid and warm, while Alex reads and Henry writes.
There’s a desperation in Henry he’s not felt this strongly before. He’s never been an artist —that was always his sister—but he finds himself wishing he could sketch Alex regardless. Immortalize a version of him here to keep.
He uses his words instead, which is an area he’s much more proficient in. Henry’s wrist aches for how much he writes, for how much he’s learned in such a short time. Or remembered, rather.
For all he still aches to know.
They pause to eat eventually, and Alex tells him of all that grows on the surface of his colony. Aided by the unfiltered light, they’re able to plant produce and feed themselves independently, if they so choose. Henry pictures his hands when Alex describes each flavor, what it must be like to dig a thumb into the skin of a blood orange and let the citrus linger on his tongue.
Alex cares a great deal about those things. They’re the only living organisms he’s permitted to touch and hold and consume without gaining permission beforehand, but he doesn’t take advantage. He speaks heavily of doing all he can to preserve them, to give them away to others when he has an excess himself.
There is no darkness on Alex’s colony, but Henry learns that it does not mean there is none inside. When everything is light all of the time, there is nowhere to hide from it. Alex is hopeful, but he is also tired. Maybe not as weary as Henry has become over time, but something very similar.
It warms Henry inside to consider that perhaps this place that he’s come to love and loathe at once could be somewhat of a reprieve. A safe place to rest for a while.
“Would you like to return home?” Henry asks him when they’ve finished eating, gathering the dirty plates to re-pack.
Alex scoots back until he’s sitting against the far wall and takes his lip between his teeth.
“Could we stay here a while longer?”
Henry would give him anything he asked for. He nods.
“As long as you’d like.”
+
The first time he kisses Alex isn’t entirely on purpose, though Henry would never refer to such a thing as an accident.
“I—I’m sorry,” Alex gasps as he pulls himself away.
Henry doesn’t let him linger in his sorrow.
He puts a hand on the back of Alex’s neck, strokes a thumb over his jaw and pulls him back to his lips.
There is a reason Henry’s colony is well known for physicality. They’ve had much practice, with few regulations and less to fill up their schedules with, and though there’d been no emotion in it, Henry is familiar with the heights that his body can achieve and bring others to. It’s an art, when it doesn’t feel like an obligation.
Alex has none of his experience. He’s a paradox in every way he moves; eager but tentative, confident in what he desires but unsure in the execution. Henry lifts his hands, settles them atop his shoulders. Allows Alex to move them as he pleases, coasting over Henry’s back, his arms, his hands.
He goes easily when Henry presses him down to the blanket, willing himself to go slowly this time. He mouths indulgently at the blank slate of Alex’s smooth throat, dips his tongue into the divot at the base, presses his teeth to the rabbiting pulse under the skin.
“Henry,” Alex breathes, fingers twitching around his wrist.
“I’m here,” Henry tells him. The only thing he’s actually sure of. He smooths another kiss high up on Alex’s cheekbone. “I have you.”
It’s warm inside of the solarium, the doors sealed to keep in whatever nutrients the plants might be able to absorb. His skin is sticky and slick against Alex’s, clinging to one another even through their clothing. It reflects the light from the bulbs on his scrunched brow, the dainty arch of his cupid’s bow above an open, wanting mouth.
Henry presses him into the blanket and tastes him leisurely, their palms together and hearts beating in sync. When Alex’s hips unconsciously begin to seek something to relieve themselves with, Henry pulls back to undress him properly.
“Please,” Alex says when Henry asks him if he’s certain. “Even if I never get to have it again…” he shakes his head, slides a hand back up Henry’s arm and into his hair. “I want to know what it feels like.”
He tugs gently, until Henry drops down to kiss him again. The sound of his voice settles right onto Henry’s tongue when he speaks again.
“Will you show me?”
“To the best of my ability,” Henry vows. “I promise.”
They take turns undressing each other, kneeling on the blanket. Henry pushes Alex’s shirt from one of his shoulders and Alex undoes Henry’s belt, equal in every measure.
Where the others hadn’t wanted any evidence left behind, Alex pleads for more of Henry’s fingerprints, the imprint of his canines. Where the others had wanted something impersonal, Alex craves the deeper current of intimacy. Where the others had kept themselves quiet to the point of pain, Alex communicates with his body and his mouth; more and there and can I? ; implores Henry to respond to every unasked question with an answer of his own.
Henry does not think of Alex as an experiment, the way that others were. Something to pick apart and study as some twisted sort of enjoyment. Perhaps for the first time, in a way he’d least expected, Henry feels leveled. Balanced.
Where the others had wanted control, Alex only wants love.
The blanket is forgiving beneath Henry’s palms, on his knees. He turns his back to Alex the way he never has with anyone else, if only to feel him that much closer. He can feel every stilted breath Alex exhales against his shoulder blades, every stutter of his sternum on the inhales.
The burn in Henry’s neck as he turns it to meet Alex’s mouth reminds him he’s alive, the staccato pulse between them mimicking a heartbeat. Henry’s cheek drops to meet the blanket but Alex’s palm cradles it first, and Henry soaks up the sweat there with his tongue, in between the webbing of his fingers and the crooked jut of each knuckle. The roughness despite Alex’s sheltered background; Henry’s hard edges that have worn soft in the middle once again.
Alex cries out when he comes, says Henry’s name over and over and over again, until it’s nothing more than a noise, primal and urgent and everlasting. Until it’s sunlight, spilling in from the glass panels at the top of the solarium, the way it was meant to be.
There isn’t a single moment of quiet between their open mouths and their bodies moving together through even the aftershocks, and yet, Henry feels at peace for the first time since he can remember.
He turns underneath Alex, sated and more than willing to be a soft place for Alex to land as he splays across Henry’s chest and catches his breath. Henry tangles their fingers together in one hand, the other swiping the dark curls back from his temple to sear his lips to the spot.
“Did you ever get your answer,” he asks eventually, having lost count of the times he’s climbed the notches of Alex’s spine with his thumb.
“I had it before I began searching,” Alex admits. “I already knew love existed because it was within me.”
He shifts a little, just enough to turn his head and press his lips to the spot over Henry’s heart. Undoubtedly close enough to feel it jump beneath the skin, as if desperate to claim its place between Alex’s teeth.
“I wanted to see if I was the only one,” he whispers.
Henry’s hand halts it’s journey back up toward Alex’s shoulder blades. He presses his fingers to the low of his back instead and holds.
“You aren't.”
He feels Alex smile against him.
“I know.”
+
The darkness feels heavier than normal as he walks Alex toward his ship. The whirring of the generators and the mechanism itself provides them some privacy for saying their goodbyes, but there is no escape from being seen once they’ve arrived at the station, the buzzing fluorescents too harsh, Alex’s skin a dull tan instead of the golden Henry’s grown accustomed to.
One would think that all the time they’d spent together in the hours before would have been enough, but Henry thinks he could run out the rest of his days in a similar fashion and still never tire of it.
It isn’t a choice he gets to make.
In the short amount of time Alex had dozed, Henry had held him. Watched his eyes move beneath closed lids as he dreamt, listened to the evenness of his breathing, the lines in his face, be it worry or smile, all perfectly relaxed.
He’d thought of what it might be like if Alex were to stay, but couldn’t bear to entertain the notion for too long.
Alex doesn’t belong in darkness. Even if he doesn’t wish to stay in the sunlight forever either, he has hope up there—one that doesn’t last very long down here. Henry refuses to snuff out the first spark he’s been privy to since his father passed, no matter how much he aches to hold onto it.
So he’ll give Alex a piece of himself to take with him instead.
“Orion,” Henry supplies.
When Alex tilts his head, Henry nods toward the flower with the glowing orb between them, the one Alex had taken a liking to. It’s always been Henry’s favorite as well.
“Its name,” he clarifies.
“It’s beautiful,” Alex says, his voice softening as he reaches out to stroke one of the petals, “but I can’t accept this. You know I can’t. It won’t survive up there.”
“I want you to have it,” he insists.
“It belongs here, with you. You can nurture it. Keep it safe.”
“I don’t want it,” Henry maintains, a bit petulantly. He’s made up his mind. “It will only ever remind me of you.”
Alex smiles, glancing down between them at the flower. He curls both of his hands over Henry’s, the moist dirt grainy between their fingers, and nudges it back toward Henry’s chest.
“Then I especially want you to keep it,” he says. “Is that selfish of me?”
Henry sighs, the fight exhausted out of him with little effort.
“Perhaps we have both been incredibly selfish.”
Alex hums. “I don’t think so. Love is not selfish.”
The word does not make Henry jolt any longer. He knows it intimately now, not only through his father’s writing, but through his own. Henry has touched it, let it stain him, and he intends to bask in the glow for as long as he’s able.
Behind them, Alex’s ship alerts its imminent departure as a few of his fellow peers begin to board the vessel. Alex inhales sharply, carefully sets Orion aside, and reaches up to hug Henry despite the fact that he’ll be questioned about it later on.
Henry hugs him back. If Alex is willing, so is he.
“Will you wait for me?” he asks, his voice concealed from anyone listening in the side of Henry’s neck. Henry’s hands tighten on his back.
“You plan to return?”
“I plan to go somewhere new entirely,” Alex whispers. “My sister and I—we’ve gathered a small group of those of us who are tired of living without feeling. I’m not sure how long it will take, but I have faith it will happen. Soon, if I can manage it.”
It is such a courageous mission that Henry can’t even fault him for it. He knows Alex’s bravery now, understands why he’s inclined to take such risks.
It does not make him any less concerned for his safety.
“Be careful,” Henry warns gently. “Do not get yourselves caught.”
“This is far from the first time we’ve outsmarted those who believe us to be fools,” Alex laughs. He pulls back only enough to meet Henry’s gaze. “I’ll come back for you. If you’ll let me.”
Henry shakes his head. “Stopping here will only increase the risk of getting caught. It’s not worth—”
“You are,” Alex stops him. “You’re worth it. Please. Let me come back. We can go anywhere.”
His hand slips up to Henry’s cheek to hold it in his palm, and Henry can’t bring himself to pull away. He should turn Alex down, insist that they continue on without him. Henry has long since grown familiar with the lackluster quality of life here. He’d already resolved to spending the rest of his days that way.
But the spark of hope that Henry had known when he was young flickers briefly, called back to life. He closes his eyes amidst the sting of tears he hasn’t allowed himself in ages, and forces them back open if only to see that Alex is still there.
“The sun,” he rasps, fickle and steadfast. “I want to feel the sunlight.”
Alex’s dimples carve out craters in his cheeks, darkness to balance the bright. He nods.
“You’ll have it. I swear it.”
He hugs Henry again, tightly, both of them quieter this time. Only when the ship signals for its passengers again do they reluctantly part, and Alex’s eyes fall back to the flower beside them on the ground.
He removes himself from Henry’s hold and replaces the empty space with the roots and dirt.
“Perhaps somewhere with both,” he amends, “so that we may bring Orion along as well.”
“Both, then,” Henry agrees. “I’ll wait.”
+
Henry returns home sometime later, the space too large without Alex inside of it as well.
His promise radiates in what little excess Henry hasn’t managed to fill; the bare wall just behind the front door, the slice of empty air between stacked, clean plates in the cabinet, the sliver of space between the books on the shelf where Alex had rearranged them upon their return.
Beneath his father’s old desk, Henry bends to rifle through the old mechanics until he finds the wiring and small bulbs he’d used to create the map on the ceiling, pulling out just enough to add a new coordinate.
When he climbs into bed they all shine back at him, one just a bit brighter than the others, illuminating the dark.
One day, Henry promises—to himself, to Alex, to his family—he’ll be up there as well.
For now, he’ll wait.