Because now he knew it could be different—bloody, awful, but different. And once he knew, he couldn’t allow himself to settle for anything less. There was no avoiding it, no sense in lying to himself or to Iris. “I didn’t want you to die alone. It’snot a good time. You wouldn’t have liked it. But when I got to you, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t move you. I couldn’t fight our way out. All I could do was stay. Sometimes that’s all people like me can do.”
Yan curled his lip in disgust. It was a pathetically needy thing to say. It was apt, factual, and painfully pathetic. Despite the delusional nature of his desires, he wanted to show Iris his apartment and the windows that spurred its rental. There was an old lecture hall that someone had spent an obscene sum on to restore in the style of First Earth universities, with rows of benches and stained glass, and Yan knew that Iris would like it there, especially in the morning when the room flooded with kaleidoscopic sunlight. There was the library too, and hundreds of coffee shops and pubs that, like on any university campus, began serving cheap alcohol an hour before lunch and were always filled to the brim with broke graduate students. There were so many things he wanted to show Iris. So many things that he had already collated a two-page list and hidden it between the pages of his report.
Iris gave Yan’s hand a squeeze, tightly this time, so tight it hurt. His face was finally wrangled into relaxation under the weight of Starlit-imparted discipline, but Yan knew better than to look to Iris’s face for any tells of his internal distress. A tendon along Iris’s neck tensed as he clenched his jaw.
“You’re in pain,” Yan said. “You’re due for your meds.”
Iris squeezed his hand tighter and shook his head back and forth. “I want to keep a clear head.”
“Of course.”
Still stubborn. Far more stubborn than Yan could ever be. But that particular character flaw of Iris’s had been refined over decades, and Yan simply couldn’t compete. Yan had spent most of his time talking AI systems down from breaking away andforming their own society or quitting their jobs, or worse, first-year students who believed they deserved better grades. Iris had spent his time alone, and solitude had done wonders to mould his character into a solid monolith.
Yan leaned over and pressed his lips to Iris’s fingertips. To his surprise, Iris didn’t recoil. “Let me know when you get hungry. I’ll get you something better than med-bay food,” he said, pulling away. By the time he looked at Iris again, he was already asleep.
It was another two days before the rods were pulled from Iris’s arm and another two days before he could stand unassisted. In that time, Yan wrote three more reports and was outlining a fourth, including a paper on the ship’s use of organics as batteries and conductors when all the wires had long rotted away. He had compiled another page of all the things he wanted to show Iris and ranked them in order of anticipated enjoyment. Neither had broached the subject of why Yan had stayed around or where Iris would be going after his discharge. The med-bay had become a place out of time, and both silently welcomed the reprieve. Giving in to Iris’s protests, Yan withheld from purchasing him new clothes and instead brought in what Yan already had in his storage. But while they nearly matched in height, Iris had grown even more slender while he recovered.
“I’m getting this tailored,” Yan said, stepping back and admiring his work. Iris stood in the middle of the room, dressed in black slacks and a grey sweater, drowning in both. “You look ridiculous.”
“I assure you, this is quite all right,” Iris insisted and methodically began rolling up his sleeves. He paused for a moment and gave Yan a small bow as thanks.
“I could also see what can be salvaged from your robes. The medics had to cut through what was left. If you’d like, I’ll have a new set made for you. All you have to do is give me your measurements.”
The same agonised look flashed across Iris’s face. He exhaled sharply. “That’s quite all right, engineer Yan. I won’t be needing those anymore.”
Stillengineer. Despite proximity, despite countless, albeit reserved, conversations over food, Iris remained distant. When left alone, he sat unmoving in his bed, tracing the outlines of the med-bay in silence with his gaze. With each passing day, he grew quieter. With each passing day, he stood a little farther and spoke a little more formally. Iris deliberately skirted all discussions about theNicaeaand had not mentioned his construct a single time.
Yan almost cursed out loud. Where neither of them could shut down theNicaea, Iris’s construct could. There were no more half jokes, no more detached smiles as Iris conversed with his construct. When they spoke, Iris no longer disappeared with a glassy-eyed look as his AI presented him with some piece of trivia it had pulled from the feed. It was just the monk now, a single person with no recollection of ever being alone, experiencing the boundless space of his consciousness for the first time—alone.
Yan couldn’t make the hollowness left by Iris’s missing AI any less cavernous. He couldn’t replace a lifelong friend. It had cared for Iris, kept him safe. And in the deciding moment, it had given its life to protect Iris and Yan and Jesi. Yan wondered if it had felt fear, if in its last moments it had wanted to turn back. He was eternally grateful that it hadn’t. Perhaps there was something Yan could do: be of service.
Iris was still fumbling with one of the sleeves when Yan violated the unspoken distance they’d established and reached out for the fabric. He folded the sleeve over Iris’s forearm and then once more over itself. “That way it doesn’t roll down,” he said. Iris didn’t move, his expression remained unchanged, but the vein pulsing along his neck gave away his anxieties. Yan left his hand on Iris’s forearm, fingers relaxed.
They were so close now, closer than they’d ever been outside of immediate danger. Iris looked up with eyes blacker than the farthest parts of unexplored space, challenging, and Yan could swear that if he looked into them long enough, he would find every constellation to ever exist in any sky. There was an old and faded scar cutting across Iris’s upper lip, and anyone else would surely miss it unless they knew where to look.
There were no right words to say, but Yan tried anyway. He dug deep into a childhood memory, one lodged between when everything was still all right and when he learned death. The memory was blurry and emotional, but in it, Yan found the right sentence from a sutra. He hoped it was from a sutra. “Death is the shift in the tide, the crashing of a wave, never, even for a moment, apart from—”
Iris kissed him. It was with complete abandon of caution and discipline that his lips collided with Yan’s. Every frustration, every instance of helplessness and dismay were poured into that kiss, far too precise for someone a decade out of practice.
Iris tasted of that morning’s hot and sour soup, and smelled of antiseptic and sandalwood, and if Yan could breathe and taste nothing different for the remainder of his life, then it would be a good life. The fingers of Iris’s left hand raked through Yan’s hair, hard enough to hurt. But what a wonderful pain it was, yearningmixed with grief. Every muscle in Iris’s body sang with tension as if to prove that despite the injuries, he didn’t need or ask for a shoulder to lean on. Yan was only beginning to understand this strength, but he already knew not to mistake it for boundless.
Yan’s thumb brushed over Iris’s bruised temple, featherlight, careful to avoid the stitches. He deepened the kiss, pulling Iris into him, offering himself up to take most of the weight. Their chests now pressed against one another, Yan felt Iris’s heart slow from its maddening pace, the tension bleeding away from already strained muscles.
All Yan could do was bear the weight. After a moment, he pulled away first, but not before brushing his lips against the faded bruising on Iris’s face. Once along the eyebrow, once along the temple, and once along the cheek. Instantly missing the closeness, Yan softly nuzzled the bridge of his nose against Iris’s cheekbone. “You should eat,” he said softly. “We should eat.”
He would provide care, yes—fetch food and order for clothes to be tailored. He would be the idle chatter that kept silences at bay, a comfort in any way that Iris needed it. And if Iris found his presence tolerable enough, perhaps—Yan nursed a futile hope—he would stay. Yan didn’t dare hope for more.
Iris nodded stiffly. His left hand found the space between Yan’s shoulder blades and settled there, his fingers clutching at the fabric of Yan’s sweater.
“The soup again? Or something solid?” Yan asked.
“Soup.” Iris pushed himself away from Yan with what looked like overwhelming effort. “Soup would be lovely.”
Soup was halfway across the station, a twenty-minute walk one way. Yan gave Iris a small smile. “I’ll be quick.”
He was a step out of the door when Iris called to him. “Yan?” Noengineer. No manufactured distance, only his namehanging in the air like a bubble waiting to burst, and Yan never could have imagined how much it would scare him to hear it without the habitual prefix.
“Yeah?”
