Page 55 of Cloverleaf Station

Elenus blinked. It was as close as he came to evincing astonishment. “You … okay, either you think I’m a really incredible caliber of asshole, or you seriously don’t understand what’s going on here between us.”

“I understand it fine. We’ve learned to get along, that’s great, and Catie likes me, but—”

“No.” Elenus leaned forward and stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “No, Kieron—Catie loves you.”

“I know she does,” he murmured.

“But do you understand what that means? Practically speaking, that is?” He forged ahead before Kieron could say anything. “I’m sure the answer to that is no, given that you’ve experienced love from probably fewer than five people in your entire life. But love isn’t just a feeling, Kieron. It encompasses a whole range of actions as well. People don’t let the people they love hitchhike across the galaxy, holding onto the remains of their bestie when they could give them a ship that could get them there in just a few weeks.”

Kieron felt his cheeks heat. “The Lizzie is too advanced to be trusted to anyone else’s hands. You’ve said as much yourself.”

“Yeah,” Elenus said bluntly. “Anyone who isn’t you, me, or Catie. We’re read in on how special she is and how amazing she has the potential to become. Catie already thinks of her as her sister. I wouldn’t let anyone pilot her who wasn’t completely aware of her amazingness, and you are, Kieron. You are.”

“How?” The question slipped through his lips before Kieron could stop it. “How can you be so sure of me? How do you know I won’t betray you, won’t run off with her and sell her secrets to the highest bidder?”

Elenus laughed. “I’m sorry, have you met yourself? I can’t think of anyone less likely to betray a trust than you. It’s like with love—you’ve experienced so little trust that every instance of it is golden, engraved in your mind forever and ever. You value it beyond almost everything else, which is how I know you wouldn’t betray it. I trust you, Kieron.” He leaned forward a bit more and reached out for Kieron’s hands, taking one of them in both of his own. “You just need to learn to trust yourself a little.”

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Kieron admitted, feeling a little helpless.

“I know you don’t,” Elenus replied before pressing a kiss to the back of his knuckles. “And I think that no matter what I say or do, the best way for you to understand is for you to simply live with my love and trust for a while. No expectations, no specific agreements, no looking over your shoulder. Just do what you have to do and know that every second we’re apart, I’m still loving you, and trusting you, and so is Catie.”

“You love me?” Kieron was stunned. He felt caught between the cresting wave of happiness and the deep undertow of denial. “How?”

Elenus scoffed. “That’s a mystery for the ages, isn’t it? It’s the last thing I thought would happen when I first got here. I admit, I didn’t make it easy on you. I expected you to be a stiff-necked asshole, and I tried to roll over you time and again, and it just didn’t happen. You stood up for yourself, but you still helped me. You—Kieron.” Elenus pulled him forward a step and rested his hands on Kieron’s hips. “You brought back my child. You helped save my life, when my ribs broke—remember? You’ve proven yourself far more deserving than anyone else I’ve ever loved, and I’m ridiculously attracted to you as well—like, ridiculously. I know it’s hard to believe, but can you at least accept that whatever I’m feeling is real?”

“I … I want to,” Kieron said. Then, spurred by a desire to meet Elenus’s transparency with his own, he continued, “I wish I could, but you said it yourself. I’ve never … I don’t have any experience with love, or trust. Not a lot of it. Definitely not the kind of love that goes beyond friendship.”

“That’s fine,” Elenus said calmly. “Do you think you ever could feel that sort of love for me? It’s fine if you can’t, I just want to know.”

“I want to,” Kieron repeated. “I might already, I think I do, I just don’t know that I do, not the way you love me. I know I love Catie, and I do love you; I just worry that it’s not the same love you’re talking about.”

“That’s all right. We can work with that,” Elenus said, kind and patient again. How could he be so patient with Kieron? He was one of the least patient people Kieron had ever met! “You say you need time? You can have time. When the station is in the safe zone again, and we can travel, you take the Lizzie to Trakta and give Zak back to his family. Stay there, go somewhere else, set sail for the farthest star—it’s fine. Do whatever you need to do but promise me you’ll think about it. Okay? Think about the fact that Catie loves you like a father, and I love you like the all-consuming force you’ve proven to be.

“Then when you’ve made up your mind, come back to us. Come to Gania, let us welcome you, let us show you what we could all be, somewhere that isn’t Cloverleaf Station.” He smiled a little crookedly. “Who would have thought that an outdated science station in the Fringe would be the spot where I’d find the love of my life?”

Kieron surged forward into Elenus’s lap, framing his face with his hands and kissing him desperately. He had to do it—it was the only way he knew to express everything he was feeling in that moment. He was full to the brim with love and fear and hope, and the thought of something better for his future, something he could never have imagined before Elenus came into his life, teased the edges of his brain.

Elenus matched his fervor, and they almost toppled over onto the bed and moved on to other activities before Elenus pulled back and added, “And you better believe that Catie’s going to be chatting the hell out of you two while you’re on your way to Trakta—because distance is no object for her, and she’s not going to let you fly off in her sister without a backward glance.”

Kieron thought about it for a second, then smiled. “That’s fair.”

“Damn straight it is.”

***

Even if Kieron wasn’t entirely sure he trusted Elenus to keep his word, even if he might change his mind and decide he didn’t want things to go anywhere between them, their talk changed the last few months before Cloverleaf Station was back in relative safety. Those months went from something painful to something truly enjoyable. Every care, every worry was quiet now, tucked into the back of his mind like the memory of an old wound—it twinged from time to time but was easy to ignore.

Elenus made it easy to ignore everything but him and Catie. His liveliness increased, his chats with Catie took her learning to new heights, and he spent a tremendous amount of time with Kieron. Everything from sex to simple conversation to the occasional talk about their pasts, and the things they wish had gone differently, or that they’d done better.

Those talks happened in Kieron’s room, where Catie didn’t listen in. Everything else—even the sex, after a make-out session in the control room got out of hand—happened all over the place. Cloverleaf Station might be shamrock green on the outside, but the inside had been cold and sterile before this, and now it felt … well, like a home. Like a place for family.

“What’s your home like on Gania?” he asked one day while Elenus and Catie were debating over a new skin for the Lizzie. The ship wasn’t sentient yet and couldn’t pick for herself, and Kieron, as Elenus put it, was “no fun when it comes to aesthetics, I could paint her black or orange or leave her matte gray, and you’d just say it was fine when it’s not, it’s going to clash with her interior, like this shade of pink, Catie!”

“It doeeeesnnn’t! It’s beauuuuutiful!”

“My home?” Elenus asked, returning Kieron’s attention to the moment. “It’s lovely. Growing up I lived on the ground level in Kellin City, but as soon as I registered my first patent and began my company, I bought a suite in the highest skyscraper in the city. Upper mid-level, but every year after that I bought another, and now my home rises all the way up to the top of the building. I’ve even got a space there for Catie if she gets tired of living at the lab.”

“I waaant to live with youuuu,” Catie said firmly. “You and Keeeeron.”