Archive of Our Own

The lighting this far outside of the Solar System was unmistakably wrong.

It felt wrong, it looked wrong, and it—it was wrong, and Saturn couldn’t do anything about it. Not one thing. He'd been thinking of what was wrong with it for what felt like centuries but surely hadn’t been long at all, the way the smattering of distant stars and lack of one central light rendered everything in such unflattering angles. Especially him. It was dreadful. The absence of the Sun's buttery warmth meant he was colder than he’d ever been, and that he probably looked more washed out than he ever had. Washed out, and tired, and—

Sigh.

He'd built his entire self around the Sun’s light, he’d learned his own best angles, tilted his rings at carefully calculated degrees to catch its rays and shine, and now there was nothing. Just cold pinpricks of distant stars far, far away in the darkness, too far away to warm his skin or set his gold to glowing. While that thought roiled around in the back of his mind, Saturn twisted one of the rings on his index finger, tugging it gently and then much rougher, once, twice, three times. The metal bit into his skin with each tug. The small, sharp pain was somehow grounding.

It wasn't as if he truly missed the Sun.

He’d been a tyrant! He’d moved them around in new orbits like they were toys to play with, not planets at risk of losing their moons, or their lives, or their—their rings! His own still hadn’t fully recovered, even with the prickling cold—the absence of any sort of warmth—around him. If anything…. No. Stars, he needed to move on before he waxed on anymore about the state of his poor rings, before he let himself remember what they were—

None of them should have stayed in the Solar System as long as they had.

Saturn had never quite managed to see the Sun as anything more than something to fear since he’d fallen apart and yelled into his and Jupiter’s faces after the Grand Tack. They might have… deserved it, perhaps, but it’d still been terrifying. He was a teeny-tiny gas giant in comparison to their star, and he was still reeling from what he’d helped Jupiter do, that his first reaction had been for them to lie, and then he’d only been able to think that lying and leaving it behind them was the right thing to do when the Sun’s anger had reached them, and…

His thoughts were a veritable minefield.

Was there anything that didn’t make him want to forget he’d ever done it? Or was he just a bundle of fear and mistakes and an inability to actually face the consequences of what he’d done?

Saturn twisted another one of his rings, this time grabbing so roughly he felt his nails digging into the soft skin at his knuckles, scraping with each twist. He didn’t stop. He just let his nails dig in deeper, until as he pulled his hand away he saw in the dim light a tiny line of red, an unmistakable scratch.

(He'd have to cover that later. Somehow. It wasn’t likely anyone would even notice it, but he couldn’t risk it in the first place.)

Jupiter should have noticed.

The thought surfaced ugly and ungraceful as he stared at the scratch on his knuckles. He tried to ignore it.

Jupiter was carrying enough, he told himself. He didn’t need to worry about me, too.

Jupiter was always carrying enough. That was the problem, wasn't it? Jupiter had taken their shared blame—the Grand Tack, the ejection of Planet X, the four-billion-year lie—and swallowed it whole, carrying it alone like it was the penance he needed. And Saturn had let him, like he hadn't even been part of it.

But they'd done it together, their combined gravities far stronger than either of them had anticipated. And Jupiter had even wanted to go after him. Saturn was the once who’d argued against it—he’d been the voice of reason. He'd argued against going after X and… well, perhaps he’d been the one who’d truly left him, in that case. And then, when the Sun had appeared, demanding answers, and when Jupiter stammered out the cover story—he wanted to explore other solar systems and he left—Saturn had stood beside him and nodded along like it was the most natural thing in the world. He’d told Jupiter that they just had to live with it, and what had Jupiter done but live with it by taking it all on himself?

On it!

Two words, and he'd helped destroy a planet's life.

(Stars, he hadn’t even apologized for it! He was worse than Jupiter in every way that mattered, and he knew everyone would agree. It wasn’t even the only bad thing he’d done, apparently, because his rings were—)

He'd let Jupiter carry the majority of the guilt because it was easier than sharing it. Because Jupiter's guilt made Jupiter need him, and being needed was the closest thing to being loved that Saturn had ever figured out how to earn. He'd built an entire identity around being Jupiter's safe harbor, his confidant, the one person who would never demand more than Jupiter could give. And in return, Jupiter had assumed he was fine. Had looked at him and the performance he’d built just for him and thought: He's fine. He's always fine.

For four billion years.

It wasn’t like he’d done anything to fight that assumption that he was fine. Saturn had more than enough chances to tell him he wasn’t. He had more than enough words, didn’t he?

The scratch on his knuckle throbbed.

More than enough words, and he’d never used any to speak up.

He pressed his thumb against it, the pain grounding. (Had he let himself feel guilty about it at all? Or had he just swallowed it, like Jupiter, and called that coping with what he’d done?) Caught in his thoughts, he was barely aware as the gravitational hold on his rings tightened—an involuntary constriction, the rings drawing closer together, the ice crystals shimmering in the dim light in a practiced dance he’d relied on the Sun’s light for before. But he felt the shift a second later and hated himself for it, because even now, alone at the edge of the rogue planets’ hideaway with no one that mattered to see him, the first thing his mind reached for was performance. To look better instead of showing off the true storm building within his core.

(What would it be like, he wondered, to just be? To exist without the constant awareness of how he looked, how he sounded, how he was being perceived? To live without knowing that he had mistakes he couldn’t even remember weighing on him?)

He swept his hair behind his ears. First his left side, then his right side, and then he untucked both sides to let the strands fall forward to veil the sides of his vision. The gesture was so automatic he didn't realize he'd done it until his hands were already curling together, fingers closing around another ring.

Stop, he told himself.

Saturn didn’t stop.

He just twisted the rings again, forced his expression into something more pleasant for an audience that didn’t exist. (But the audience was always here. The audience was in his head, a billion years of learning that his value lay in being beautiful, in being charming, in making everyone around him feel better (at his own expense, something he’d never acknowledge). He couldn't turn it off any more than he could stop from twisting his rings when he was anxious.)

Rather than apply more effort into being composed, Saturn let himself drift further from the cluster of rogues, past even the point where he could feel the gravitational tug of the other planets. To where all he could feel was the unfamiliar wall of the rogue planets’ gravity, altogether strong as a stars’ gravity but missing something essential he couldn’t name.

Behind him, somewhere in the cluster, the other planets were settling into their new existence. The rogue planet kingdom. SIMP's domain. He'd kept up his smile through it all, let Jupiter do the talking and agreed with what he did, but something about this place had made his skin prickle from the first moment. The way the rogue planets looked at them, sometimes. The odd tension in SIMP's court of sorts, the way she smiled with too many teeth. Everything about it felt off.

But none of the others looked like they’d felt it.

Perhaps he was just imagining it, assigning blame where there was none in effort to avoid making himself think about the mountains of blame piling heavier and heavier on him.

Saturn had always been good at redirecting his own feelings.

I am very disappointed in you!

Blaming others and seeing the fault in them was easier than seeing it in himself.

(There was a reason he’d let Jupiter silence him without more than a single attempt to tell the Sun he’d helped him. It was just another way he’d been the coward he always was.)

Everything about this place felt like a performance that wasn't quite landing. The rogue planets were friendly, but it felt almost too friendly, unreal and fake. They'd been recruited—rescued, SIMP called it—and Saturn couldn’t shake the feeling that the recruitment wasn’t for something they wanted to be involved in.

He didn't trust it. He didn't trust any of it.

But Jupiter had already committed to their cause. He’d seized on the chance to redeem himself—to help a million planets, like it was that simple and saving enough planets out in the galaxy beyond would erase the destruction he'd—they’d—caused in his own Solar System. Saturn had trouble believing in it, but he’d followed, and he’d keep following. He’d stay with Jupiter on this, because he’d failed to speak up (even if Jupiter interrupted him, he had no physical way to stop him, did he?) and stay with him before, and he couldn’t let that happen again.

He’d follow Jupiter into a black-hole if he needed to.

(Sometimes he resented that, too. The way his own agency disappeared the moment Jupiter made a decision. Resented being told he couldn’t come clean about his own guilt. Resented—

But resentment was a luxury he couldn't afford, because if he started resenting Jupiter—really resenting him, the way he sometimes wanted to—then what was left? What was he if not Jupiter's best friend, Jupiter's safety net? A protection that’d failed him in making him keep the secret as long as he has, a protection that’d given X the opening he needed.

The rot beneath—)

He’d be himself, and he’d do what he needed to do.

Saturn twisted the ring harder, rubbing his thumb against the metal until it ached.

He was not, despite his attempts to construct and show all evidence to the contrary, fine.

He was far from fine, and Saturn knew if he tried to keep up any sort of facade around the rest of the Solar System (not anymore, he supposed, but it was easier to them of them as that) he’d collapse to pieces instead. So he’d drifted to the edge of the Rogue Planet’s little cluster—where the light was wrong and the darkness never-ending, and nobody would see him fall apart—with a pitiful little excuse that nobody had said anything against, and he’d stayed there since.

And he knew nobody would follow him.

…Nobody except, apparently, Neptune.

Who he sensed long before he saw, with a tiny gravitational tug against his own that his own gravity recognized without conscious thought as Neptune, as a friend and not one of the many unfamiliar rogue planets scattered countless around them.

Saturn found himself staring at Neptune before he'd even consciously decided to look. He quietly watched the way Neptune swayed as he drifted, rocking slightly from heel to toe like he couldn’t keep still even already on the move. His bright blue curls bounced against his shoulders with each small movement, and his jacket, that deep blue thing he and Uranus had asked him to help with—help he’d happily provided, glad for the distraction—was hanging open. The fluffy white lining of his hood caught the distant starlight, casting a slight glow over his face from below. He was a pretty enough sight despite everything that Saturn’s false smile gained a realer edge, the corner of his mouth curling up.

He was humming, he registered a moment later. Three notes, over and over, looping upon each other in what was almost a song. And he had a… rock? He cradled it in his hands so carefully Saturn thought it was one of his moons, but a few seconds of staring told him it was quite literally just an inanimate asteroid.

"Neptune? What are you doing here?"

He sounded more accusing than he meant to be, wincing at his own voice.

But Neptune looked up and his whole face transformed from a half-smile into one far more brilliant. A deep dimple appeared in his left cheek, his eyes lighting up, and his humming broke off into a giddy laugh. "Oh! Saturn! I didn't see you there, neighboring! What a coinky-dink, that we come across each other here!" He threw his hands out and spun in a quick, full circle, the motion sending the rock tumbling away before he caught it within his gravity, stalling it midway between them. His curls bounced with the movement, and his scarf spiraled behind him like a comet tail. "I'm singing to Guillermo the Second."

"Guillermo the Second?”

Saturn was—as he tended to be when it came to Neptune—very confused by the interaction.

"Yes! He's the son of my previous rock, Guillermo! I was going to do Guillermo Junior, but when I talked to Guillermo he said that Guillermo the Second sounded better." Neptune hugged the asteroid to his chest, patting it the way he might one of his small moons. "He’s a very good rock. Excellent listener. I thought I lost him for a bit, but it turns out he’s with Planet X! I would have taken him back, but I think X needs him more than I do, and friendships are for life, anyway! Guillermo won’t forget me." He held the rock out at arm's length, squinting at it critically. Saturn noticed the way his nose scrunched when he concentrated, the small furrow between his brows. "This one's new, but he's learning! And he’s Guillermo’s rock son, so I know he’ll do great. Rocks can be related, right?" He tilted his head, one eye drifting slightly to the side. "I think they can."

Saturn tried to muster a laugh, his mouth twitching in its practiced smile.

"I don't know," he said instead, sounding just as miserable as he felt.

Neptune's perpetually sunny expression dropped slightly, his brows furrowing a little more as he squinted right at him. Saturn fought the urge to shift in place, instead just following Neptune’s eyes with his own, scraping together everything to keep a small smile.

He just drifted closer.

"Are you sad, Saturn?"

"W-What? Nonsense, darling! I'm fine." The words came out with practiced ease, the same performance he'd been giving for billions of years. He tilted his head and tucked several loose strands of hair behind one ear. “Just a bit cold, yes? It’s odd without sunlight.”

"Mmm." Neptune made a noise that was clearly disagreement, a skeptical hum.

Saturn just tilted his chin up.

He looked down at Guillermo the Second, nodded at him like the asteroid had said something, and then looked right back up at him. In effort to lose the burn of his gaze, Saturn finally looked down and focused on Neptune’s hands instead. He wore a pair of fingerless gloves with a crop of fluffy material on the back of his hand, material that matched the hood of his jacket. His thumb was repeatedly tapping a pattern against his uncovered fingers: pointer, index, ring, pinkie. "Nope! I don't think you're fine. Your rings are very craaaazy today." Neptune pointed towards the hand still worrying at the gold band. He immediately separated them, for nothing as he added, "And that looks like it hurts."

Saturn ignored the rings intruding into the top of his vision and how obviously loose they were.

"They're not loose, they're just—! It’s the lack of stable, constant gravity! I’m trying—”

Neptune reached out and touched the closest ring with one finger, tapping several straying pieces of icy rock back into place. Saturn forgot what he’d been about to say, blinking several times as he stared and Neptune continued pushing icy rock back into the rings. He found his words still arrested and held in place as Neptune traced the edge of the ring, straightening it with the same care he might use to gently push a moon away, fingertips skating light across the crystalline surface. The slight glow they still carried reflected in his bright blue eyes; Saturn found that he couldn’t look away.

"There!" Neptune announced, satisfied. He tilted his head, admiring his work before flashing him a brilliant grin. "Much better. Now you look less sad! I know you like your rings to look good.”

"Sad—" He blinked, performative indignation rising automatically. "I don't look sad, Neptune!”

“Are you ss-uuu-re?” Neptune chorused. “Your eyes looked sad! Like this!” He closed his eyes tight, and when they reopened Saturn’s lips parted without words behind them, the sheer strength of misery in Neptune’s eyes catching him off guard. When he blinked again the look disappeared, replaced by his usual brilliance.

Saturn’s mouth felt oddly dry. “I—ah, I didn’t realize…”

"Now you don't! Which is good. I like seeing you not-sad!” The gravitational hold on his rings loosened further as he relaxed without even realizing it. More ice scattered, tiny pieces disappearing one by one from the outer edges of his rings. He didn't try to pull them back. "But it's okay!" Neptune sounded sincere enough that Saturn’s core twisted. He bumped his shoulder lightly against his own in a playful nudge, and Saturn felt the cold of him even through his own clothes, a pleasant chill very unlike the leeching cold of the darkness around them. His scarf brushed against his arm, soft and worn, and the fluffy white lining of his hood grazed Saturn's cheek, a soft graze that made him want to lean in and bury his face in it. "You don't have to tell me, Saturn. But if you wanted to, I'd listen, I promise!” He put one hand behind his ear and added conspiratorially, "I'm still not great at it, but I'm very enthusiastic. And I’m getting better all the time!”

Despite everything, a small, fractured piece of his core warmed like it hadn’t since they’d left the Solar System. A theatrical response of thanks—the hand over the core, the gushing gratitude—rose up automatically, and he swallowed it back down. "That's… that’s a really nice offer, Neptune.”

"Thanks!" Neptune rocked on his heels, clearly pleased. “My listening ears are open!” He held the same brilliant smile—maneuvering Guillermo the Second into his arms with a quick tug of gravity that Saturn felt brushing against his own—and stared at him silently.

Rather than pry as he half-expected, Neptune just waited. And waited. And waited.

Saturn had no idea how long they stared silently at each other before the words stuck inside suddenly spilled over and tore out of him. It wasn’t even what he’d actually been thinking about. It was the guilt of something far different that’d still dug into him just as deeply.

"I don't even know how it happened," he heard himself say, his own voice sounding off to his ears. "That's the worst part. I don't remember it. Not a single second. I don't know if it was an accident or if I—" He choked on his own words, swallowing hard. "—if I somehow did it on purpose. My own gravity tore a moon of mine apart, and I don't even know why! I didn’t even know it happened. Nobody ever told me. Someone must have known. Someone! And then some Earthling—some tiny, fragile Earthling—he just… he told me like it was a fun fact." His voice cracked, and he felt his gravitational hold on the rings stutter and tighten so much Neptune blinked, clearly recognizing it. "He said my rings may have originated from a moon that got too close to me like he was talking about the weather on Earth’s surface! And I—I didn't even have time to brace for it. Or expect it, or—”

Even now, his eyes stung with tears he hadn’t reached for.

“And I want to mourn whatever moon or moons or—stars, who knows! The Earthling said it could have been a cycle.” How many moons had he killed without even realizing it? How much of his life—his idiocy—could he not remember? “But I can’t remember them. I can’t remember anything about the moon that made…” His eyes darted up and caught the edge of his rings. “I don’t even know what they might have looked like. Or sounded like. It’s empty! I can’t grieve something I don’t know!” At least not true grief. He felt bad, yes, so very bad.

But true grief escaped him endlessly. It felt like punishment.

“It just feels like another thing I’m failing at.”

His eyes fell to Neptune’s hands, which had stilled completely cupped around the asteroid.

"I can't remember their names," he went on, the confession spilling out unfettered now. "I apparently killed them, and I wear them like jewelry, and I can't even remember the name of the moon that made them! Stars, I can’t even remember any moon’s names but Titan’s half the time, and they’re all alive. What kind of planet can’t do that?"

A failure of one, that was who.

He couldn't keep speaking as a choked sob swallowed the rest, and suddenly he was crying—really crying, the ugly, unperformative kind he'd only ever managed completely alone. His rings scattered above, tiny sparks of light that winked out one by one. His hair fell forward, hanging in his face.

Neptune made a sad sound. “Oh.”

And then he did the last thing Saturn expected and pulled him in, wrapping his arms around him—Guillermo the Second pressed gently between their chests—and hugged him. IT wasn’t a shoulder-press, nor a tentative pat. It was a full embrace, cold and impossibly comforting, a hug he usually gave but rarely received. He bent in and buried his face in the curve of Neptune's neck, sobs hiccupping and catching. Neptune's hand came up to cradle the back of his head a moment later, fingers threading through the golden waves of his hair, grazing the base of his rings. The touch was gentle—surprisingly so, given how enthusiastically Neptune did everything else. He noticed, distantly, that Neptune's hood fluff was pressing against his cheek. It was soft as he’d felt and imagined. "I've got you!" Neptune sang in a surprisingly quiet tone. His voice was soft, as soft as the jacket fluff against his cheek. "I've got you, sparkly planet. Saaaaturn.”

He let out a wet, hiccupping laugh against Neptune's shoulder.

"Did you just call me sparkly?"

Saturn realized his hands had fisted in the back of Neptune's jacket—the fabric was soft and worn, but he couldn't seem to let go even when he told himself to. He could feel the equations and pictures printed on it, the material raised slightly under his fingers, and he let his fingers rub against them just for the feeling. "Mm-hmm. You are. Very sparkly. Even when you're sad. You glitter! Goo-oold." Neptune's hand dropped, his fingers switching to trace in wide, swooping circles against his back. "And you've got sparkles on your face, too. The little dots. On your nose, and your cheeks!"

He blinked. "My freckles?"

"Freck-les," Neptune repeated, sounding the syllables out like he was tasting them on his tongue. "Yes! Those. Freckles. They're sparkly. Like you. Not as mu-uch now, but they still do!" He tilted his head, and his thumb brushed across the bridge of his nose, feather-light, tracing the scatter of dots that were so light Saturn assumed nobody ever saw them. Then Neptune's eyes widened, and his whole face shifted into an expression of absolute delight. "And look! I have some too. See?" He pointed at his own face with his usual brilliant smile, and as Saturn peered closer he registered the faint scatter of darker spots across his warm brown skin, barely visible just like his own… unless you were as near as they were. His left cheek had a small cluster of them lower than the rest, right near the dimple.

He'd never been close enough to notice them before.

"We match," he said, pulling out of the hug just enough to wipe away the remnants of his tears even as his fingers itched to reach up and touch Neptune’s freckles, trace the pattern the way he’d traced his. Neptune beamed so widely that his dimple deepened, the freckles crinkling with it.

“We do!"

And then he wound his arms even tighter around him to pull him back into another hug, and Saturn went willingly, bent so his cheek pressed to Neptune's hood, his tears soaking into the soft white fluff.

Some distant part of his mind told him that this was the first time in a very long time that someone had hugged him like this. Affection was something he gave to other people, not something he received. But Neptune was hugging him like he was the one who needed to be held, and—

Well, the strange thing was that he did. He really, really did.

He needed this.

"I knew a moon once," Neptune abruptly said, his voice still light but unmistakably a little less happy. "Well—a lot of moons. And they were my moons, and then they weren't."

Saturn went very still, breathing in shakily as he listened like he never had before.

"I forget most things. But I remember that."

"What happened?" he whispered against Neptune's hood, though he could guess.

"Triton, technically. But it was my fault, not his." Neptune’s voice hitched a little. "My gravity pulled him in from the Kuiper Belt. I didn't mean to—! I was just moving, and he was there, and then he was crashing through my old moons, and they…" He shivered, a full-body tremor, and Saturn’s arms tightened instinctively, pulling Neptune closer. "They didn't survive it. Triton was unconscious, and I didn't know what to do, and Uranus said—" Another laugh, this one less fond. "Uranus said I could say he was always my moon, so the Sun wouldn’t overreact about it.” Saturn’s brow pinched. He knew exactly what Neptune meant. “So that's what I did. I told Triton he'd always been my moon. I told the Sun the same thing."

Saturn pulled back just enough to look at him, met with a heartbreakingly sad look on Neptune’s usually cheerful face. "The worst part," he said, voice gone quiet in a way Saturn had never heard before, "was that I never got to know them. My old moons. They never woke up. They were just… there, and then they weren't. I didn't get to learn their names or learn what they liked or how they’d be. I just had to guess. And I've been guessing for billions of years." Neptune had one hand closed in the fabric of his shirt, and Saturn freed one arm just to grab his hand, intertwining their fingers and squeezing tight in what was hopefully a comforting gesture. "Maybe one of them would have been like Proteus! Or maybe one would have been like Sao, or Galatea, or an entirely new personality!” His brows furrowed, eyes shadowed. “But I'll never know, you know? All I have is what-ifs, and what-ifs aren't the same as memories. They're just… holes. Holes that hurt to think about. And sometimes when I look at my little moons, I remember some of them came from the debris of the old moons. They're made of the same stuff. So the old ones are still with me. And the new ones too. Both at once! Even if it doesn’t seem like it.” Neptune’s eyes flicked up and caught his, a tiny smile returning to his face. “Right?”

“Right,” he echoed.

His hand was still on Neptune's cheek. He could feel the natural chill of his skin, and before he knew it his thumb traced the scatter of freckles across Neptune's nose just as he’d imagined before. They were even fainter than his own, barely visible against the rich brown of his skin.

"So they're still here," Neptune said, jarring him from his appreciation. He freed Guillermo the Second from between them and held him up, waggling the little rock back and forth. "They just have seconds! Your moon—the one you can't remember. It's not gone. It's just—" He tapped the rock against the nearest curve of his rings, making a tiny clink. "—redistributed! Sparklified. They might be dead, but they’re also something new! So you can appreciate the something new instead of disliking yourself for being unable to grieve what you don’t know!”

He laughed once, and then again and again. Sparklified. Neptune had invented a word for it. Neptune had invented a word for the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and he'd made it sound like something wonderful.

"You're so weird, darling," he managed, his voice wrecked. “Odd in the best way.”

"Thank you!" Neptune beamed, a full, dimpled smile that crinkled his eyes nearly shut—and then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

It was just a peck, light and cool and utterly without expectation, but it sent a shock through his entire system. His gravitational hold on the rings slipped for a moment and left icy rock scattering in every direction before he reined them back into place and tightened his hold on them as a distraction.

(He knew he should say some. Something! Anything! But the words wouldn't come, and he wasn't sure what he would have said.)

Neptune pulled back looking enormously pleased with himself. His eyes were sparkling with something that might have been mischief or perhaps genuine delight. "You looked like you needed one of those! I know I'm supposed to ask before I do that, but I forgot." He tilted his head, his curls falling against his cheek with the motion. "Was that okay?"

He opened his mouth.

A theatrical response—darling, of course!—rose up and died on his tongue. What came out instead was the truth. "I—yes. Yes, that was—" He swallowed, his throat tight. "That was okay, Neptune. Thank you.”

"Good!" Neptune rocked in place happily, toying with the ends of his scarf. "Because you still look sad, and I might do it again." His eyes shut with the force of his smile that time, and a genuine one tugged at his mouth, his cheeks aching. “Just think about what I said! And maybe talk to them just because. I hum to mine all the time, and they love it. My old moons, and my new moons! Well, not so new. I’ve had them for a whileeeee." He paused, tapping his chin with one finger—a gesture so characteristic that it made something in his chest ache. "And I don't know if they love it. They might think it's annoying. Larissa says she likes it, but she likes everything I do, so she might be biased. They’re all very, very, very supportive." He tapped his chin again. "But you get what I mean!”

He straightened up and nodded.

“I think I do,” he said, a bit of his usual grace back in his voice. “Thank you, darling.” He focused back on his rings and let the ice settle back into its usual alignment, his gravity coaxing the scattered rock back into place just like Neptune had one-by-one before. Once they looked nicer than they had in a long while, Saturn swept his hair behind his ears—left side, right side—and clasped his hands together.

Before he could think better of it, he leaned forward— though he had to duck his head to reach—and pressed a kiss to Neptune's cheek in return.

“I appreciate the help, Neptune.” He gave him a real, shaky smile. “And now we’re even, because I suppose I forgot to ask as well.”

Neptune blinked, eyes widening. Then his whole face lit up—brighter than he'd ever seen it, the blue of his eyes practically incandescent—and he inhaled loudly in an overly dramatic gasp. "Oh, wow!" He touched his cheek where he’d kissed, staring at the tips of his fingers when he pulled them away as if he expected to find physical evidence of the gesture. "That was very nice. Can we do that more? I think we should do that more. That was—" He rocked on his heels even harder than before, his curls bouncing, his gravity giving a delighted little tug against his awareness. "Yepperoni. Definitely yepperoni."

Saturn hummed in confusion. "Yepperoni?"

"I made it up! It means yes with extra enthusiasm. I have a lot of words like that. Uranus says they're not real words, but I think they're real if people understand them, and you understood it, so it's real." To his surprise, Neptune was practically vibrating now, his whole body radiating delight. "So? More?"

Saturn felt happier than he had in ages. "If you want."

"I want!" Neptune declared. True to his word, he leaned in and kissed his other cheek, this time lingering a second longer as Saturn purposefully tilted into the touch. "There! Now you're symmetrical again."

He laughed, pressing one hand over his mouth. "You're absolutely ridiculous."

"Thank you! And you're very sparkly." Neptune paused, then waggled Guillermo the Second between them, his expression shifting into something almost shy—an expression he'd never seen on Neptune's face before. "Do you want to hold Guillermo the Second? He's very nice to hold. I've been teaching him the names of all my moons." He held the rock up to his ear, as if listening, his face utterly serious. "He says he'd like you to hold him. He thinks you seem nice."

He looked at the pitted, unremarkable little asteroid in Neptune’s hands.

He thought about his moons and all the names he still couldn't get right as much as he should, the guilt of it a constant, gnawing presence. He thought about Jupiter carrying his own weight alone, assuming he was fine because he'd always been fine, because he'd spent four billion years making sure Jupiter never had to see otherwise. He thought about the way Neptune had kissed his cheek and called him sparkly, and how his own lips still tingled with the cold of Neptune's skin.

"Yes,” he managed. He held out his hands, the elegant fingers with their gold rings trembling slightly. "I think I do. If—if Guillermo the Second doesn't mind."

"He doesn't mind! I asked."

Neptune placed the rock in his hands with clearly feigned solemnity. His fingerless gloves brushed against his palms as he transferred Guillermo the Second—a fleeting touch, the fabric worn soft, the contact lingering a half-second longer than necessary. The rock was cold and bumpy and entirely unremarkable, but Saturn held it carefully, its tiny weight held between his cupped palms.

“He is—is very comforting to hold,” he admitted.

“I told you!”

With a tug of his gravity, Neptune drifted up and bumped his forehead gently against his own. He leaned into the touch without even really thinking about it, letting his eyes close. Neptune's forehead was cool against his, his curls brushing lightly against his temples. A shiver ran through him as he abruptly registered the difference between Neptune’s familiar cold and the horrid chill of the darkness so far from a star. It was creeping in, the way it repeatedly had out here, and he'd been so tangled in his own thoughts that he hadn't noticed how much he’d stopped focusing on keeping it at bay.

Neptune pulled back the moment he shivered, his brow furrowing, and without a word he unwound the scarf from around his own neck—the fabric spiraling free in a slow, graceful motion—and looped it around his neck instead.

"You're not used to the cold yet like I am," Neptune said cheerfully, tugging the ends of the scarf into place. His knuckles brushed Saturn's collarbone through the fabric. "I've spent a lot more time in cold like this! You've only had a little while." He patted the scarf, apparently satisfied with his work. "There we go! Now you won't shiver.”

Saturn pressed his lips together in sheer happiness. “Thank you,” he said, stroking a hand against one end of the scarf. “It’s a lovely scarf, Neptune.”

“Yep! And even better on you!”

He blinked in surprise, smiling as his face warmed. “How sweet.”

“And very, very, very right!” Neptune declared, nodding until Saturn was sure he had to be dizzy; but the moment he stopped he surged right back into him, arms wrapped around his neck and forehead braced against his again, cold breath puffing against his cheek as Saturn reflexively relaxed into him just as much.

He became acutely aware of how close Neptune was—how his jacket cast a faint blue glow across on their faces from beneath, the fluffy white lining of Neptune's hood brushing his jawline from how it was piled around his face. He could see the freckles again, scattered across Neptune's nose, and the sight of them made something in his core twist. He'd spent his entire existence noticing details, but he'd never really been close enough to Neptune to notice them.

What a shame.

Eyes open, he studied Neptune’s face. Even with his eyes closed, Saturn could see the faint lines at the corners of Neptune's eyes. Laugh lines, maybe. Or worry lines. Or both? It wasn’t like Neptune was likely at a lack of either. His core felt… somehow like it was melting within him, but a good melt. He didn't know what to call the feeling. It wasn't friendship—or rather, it was more than friendship, layered and complex and terrifying in its newness. He'd spent so long being at Jupiter’s side, being Jupiter's safety net, his best friend, that he'd never considered actually attempting to make friends (let alone more) with someone else, even the someone elses that lived in the same Solar system as him. Another person who would look at him and actually see—not the performance, not the charm, not the strategic sweetness deployed to keep everyone happy.

Just him.

But here, even with everything weighing over them and everything that’d already happened… somehow he had Neptune. Neptune, who’d definitely followed him, because it was far from likely they would have just happened upon each other given where they were. Neptune, who’d listened to him and offered advice and experiences of his own in a way he definitely hadn’t known to expect from him.

Stars, this wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d drifted away from the others.

But it was the best.

"You're the best of us," he said. The words spilled from him just like his confession had, uncontrolled in every way. "You know that?"

Neptune pulled back, blinking. His left eye drifted, then corrected to focus intently on him. “What?"

"You're the best of us," he repeated. He kept his eyes on Neptune, meeting his brilliant blues. "You are! All of us—Jupiter, me, Uranus, the rocky planets, everyone—we're all so tangled up in our own guilt and our own fear and our own—our own stuff. We hide things. We lie. We forget what matters. We assume people are fine instead of asking." He reached up and touched Neptune's cheek again, his thumb brushing against his a smattering of freckles. The gold rings on his fingers glinted in the blue light. "You remember your moons' names. All sixteen of them. You know when people are hurting before they know themselves. You followed Uranus out of the solar system when he tried to leave, even though it meant leaving everything else behind. You carry all this—" He gestured vaguely, the motion uncharacteristically ungraceful, "—all this pain and all this brightness and you still show up. You still love. You still try—" His voice cracked. “You're the best of us, Neptune. I don't think anyone's ever told you that. But you are."

Neptune stared at him, thumb tapping frantically against his fingers. Pointer, index, ring, pinkie. Pointer, index, ring, pinkie. The pattern went faster and faster.

"I—" Neptune sounded more unsure than he had the entire conversation. "I don't—that's not—I'm not—" He laughed, an odd hiccupping sound that seemed to catch in his throat wrong, and his hand flew up to cover one drifting eye. "Nooooo! I'm the weird one. The silly one. The one who forgets things and talks to rocks and—and blinks separately and—" His voice cracked just like Saturn’s had, like he was seconds from breaking into tears. "I'm not the best of anything. I'm broken. Everyone knows I'm broken."

"Oh, Neptune." Saturn caught his hand—the one covering the eye—and pulled it gently away. His fingers intertwined with Neptune's, the gold rings pressing cool against the worn fabric of his fingerless gloves. He rubbed his thumb along his knuckles. "Being broken doesn't mean you're not the best. It means you understand what being broken feels like. And you still—" He squeezed his hand gently. "You still make everyone around you feel like they matter. I have spent four billion years trying to make people feel okay, and you do it without even trying. You do it by existing. That’s far from just broken."

“But it doesn't always work. I still forget things. I still say the wrong thing and hurt people without meaning to. I still—" He looked down like he couldn’t manage eye contact a second longer. "I'm still broken. I'm not the best. I'm just—I'm just trying."

He reached up and cupped Neptune's face in both hands.

Guillermo the Second the Second floated forgotten beside them, tumbling gently in the void. "That's exactly why you're the best," he said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. "You're trying. You've been trying for billions of years. You've been alone and scared and broken and you still—you still try! That’s so very brilliant of you, darling.”

Neptune blinked. His left eye drifted, then snapped back onto him. "What is?"

"Trying. Continuing to try. For billions of years. All by yourself, in your lonely orbit. That's—" He shook his head, a startled laugh escaping him even as he smiled. "That's the most stubborn, ridiculous, wonderful thing I've ever heard."

"But I wasn’t alone,” Neptune said, perking up. “I had my moons! And also Uranus, sometimes. And Guillermo!” He swept Guillermo the Second back into his arms. “And now Guillermo the Second! And you!” He paused, tapping his chin with his free hand. "You know, I forgot my own name once. It was very embarrassing. Uranus had to remind me."

"That's—" Saturn stared at him. "That's horrible, Neptune."

"It was a little bit horrible," Neptune admitted. "But then Uranus said 'your name is Neptune, you absolute disaster!' and I remembered, and we laughed about it. Well. I laughed. He just stared at me with a funny face. This one!” He demonstrated, mouth falling open as his eye twitched, and Saturn fought another laugh. "The point is! I kept trying to remember, and eventually I did, and now I haven't forgotten my own name in at least a hundred years.” He tipped his head to the side. “Probably. I might have forgotten and no one noticed. That happens sometimes."

"Neptune." Saturn was laughing now, the sound surprised and warm. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Being brilliant without noticing."

Neptune's face went through several emotions—a flicker of surprise, a brief crinkle of something that might have been shyness, and then the full-force return of the dimpled grin. "Well, if you say so,” he chirped. “I think you're very smart about things, so you're probably smart about this too." He leaned forward, let go of the asteroid, and bumped their foreheads together again, harder this time, almost a gentle headbutt. "Also, did you know you're still wearing my scarf? You look very pretty in my scarf. I think you should wear it forever. I don’t mind that.”

“Maybe I will,” Saturn said, bumping him right back.

Guillermo the Second drifted past Saturn's left ear, and Neptune reached out to snag it without looking, his fingers closing around the rock with practiced ease. "I'm percepting," he announced, settling back with the rock cradled against his chest, "that you might like me. Just a little bit. A smidge. A tiny, microscopic, barely-visible-to-the-naked-eye amount."

"A smidge," Saturn repeated, and the word felt ridiculous in his mouth, and he loved it. "Darling, I have to say I think you're severely underestimating."

"Good!" Neptune leaned forward again, his gravity giving a happy little tug, a deliciously chilly pull against Saturn's own. "Because I like you too. A lot. More than a little bit. More than—" He paused, clearly trying to calculate. "More than all the asteroids in the Kuiper Belt! Which is a lot. There are so many asteroids. I've named at least seven of them."

"Seven entire asteroids,” he said, cheeks aching from the force of his smile.

"Seven entire asteroids!" Neptune said cheerfully. "Exactly! That's how much I like you. Seven asteroids worth. Maybe eight. I'm still deciding about the eighth one.” He looked around and then leaned forward, cupping one hand against the side of his mouth. “Don’t tell him I said it, but he's kind of an asshole."

Saturn couldn’t help his laughter. “Is he?”

Neptune nodded firmly, then tilted his head, his expression shifting into something oddly nervous. "Can I kiss you? Properly this time? Not on the cheek.” His fingers tapped together. “Look! I remembered to ask this time! I deserve a gold star. Do you have a gold star? Or maybe a blue one. Or a purple one. I just want a star. But gold is a pretty color.”

Saturn felt like his core was going to crack from happiness. "I don't have a gold star."

"Okey-dokey! That’s okay. I'll accept the kiss instead.”

"That seems like a fair trade,” Saturn said, breathlessly. “A kiss.”

"Yay!" Neptune beamed, and Saturn’s attention fractured as his hand cupped against his jawline—cool fingers, worn wool against his skin—and he leaned in. "I'm going to kiss you now. Okay? Okay!”

And then he did, and Saturn had absolutely no protests at all. He had barely any thoughts.

It was cool—cooler than he expected, even knowing what Neptune was, lips cold as the rest of him—and also achingly soft. Nothing like the quick peck on the cheek from before. This was something else entirely. Neptune practically sighed into his mouth, and his thumb was brushing over Saturn's cheekbone, tracing the freckles there, the ones they shared. Saturn made a sound into the kiss—involuntary and completely, utterly real—and his hands came up to grip the front of Neptune's jacket, clutching tight in the fluff lining the inside, soft as the kiss. His skin prickled where Neptune's fingers still cupped his jaw—the feeling sending a cascade of goosebumps down his neck, his arms, the whole length of his spine—but the kiss itself was warm in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

It was brilliant. Brilliantly perfect.

When Neptune pulled back, his eyes were sparkling warmly, his lips slightly parted. He looked brilliantly, utterly adorable. "You taste like starlight!" he announced, beaming. “Like gold!”

He was the prettiest sight he'd ever seen.

(And Saturn had seen himself on his best days.)

"I don't think starlight has a taste," he managed, practically whispering.

"It does now! I've tasted it. It's warm and sparkly and a little bit sweet." Neptune quickly kissed the tip of his nose, quick and playful, his lips cool against the bridge of freckles. He could feel the smile pressed into the kiss. "It tastes like you. I've decided. You're my favorite flavor."

He blinked, cheeks warming. "I'm a flavor now?"

"Mm-hmm. Saturn-flavored. Very rare. Very sparkly. Very unqiue. There’s only one in the universe." Neptune rocked in place, and the motion was somehow so familiar that he felt something loosen in his chest. He was still looking at him with undisguised delight, his jacket a little skewed and his curls wild, his eyes brilliantly blue, and Saturn was so happy.

The universe had finally decided to be nice to him!

He leaned forward and pressed another kiss to his cheek, the one opposite he had before.

"Now we're symmetrical again," Neptune announced, counting on his fingers. His brow furrowed slightly, the way it did when he was doing math he wasn't entirely sure about. "Four cheek kisses and one proper kiss. That's good math."

"That's terrible math."

"It's Neptune math! The best kind of math. Right next to calculus!" He bumped their foreheads together again, and his grin was so wide it made his eyes nearly shut, the laugh lines at the corners deepening. "I'm going to do more math later. Lots of math. All the math. But right now—" He pressed one more kiss to his forehead, right between his eyes, cool and quick. "Right now," he continued, oblivious to Saturn nearly, "I think you need to hold Guillermo the Second and feel how soothing he is! Just for a little while." He tilted his head, curls falling. "And then we can figure out the rest." He retrieved the rock from where it had drifted during their kiss, cradling it carefully in both hands. It was cold and bumpy and entirely unremarkable, and it was the most precious thing he'd held in a very long time. He looked at Neptune—at his bright blue curls and his warm brown skin and his freckles and his dimple—and he felt happier than he had in a long, long while.

"The rest," he repeated. "What's the rest?"

Neptune shrugged, a full-body movement that set his curls bouncing. "I don't know. More kissing? Finding out what’s going on with all of this? Going back home? And you can find Jupiter and telling him—" He paused, tilting his head the other way, his expression flickering through something complicated before settling back into brightness. "Actually, I don't know what you'd tell Jupiter. That's your business. I'm just here for the sparklies." He poked another icy rock back into his rings.

"The sparklies," he said, and a laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest—bright and warm and real.

"And the kissing. Don't forget the kissing." Neptune gave him a stern look, one finger raised in admonishment as he swept it back and forth. The dimple ruined his feigned sternness entirely. "That's important."

"That's important," he agreed.

He was still smiling.

Actually smiling, the type of smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He could feel it there and in his cheeks, the continued unfamiliar ache of muscles used differently. He could feel the fabric of Neptune’s scarf still wrapped around his neck, the ends heavy against his chest. He could feel Neptune’s hand finding his, their fingers winding together tightly, Neptune’s comfortingly cold against his.

He was still not okay. He knew that.

There were conversations he still needed to have with Jupiter, ones where he stopped protecting Jupiter from consequences and started telling the truth. I'm hurting too. I've been hurting for billions of years. You never asked. You never saw. Where he told him to think a little deeper about what was going on, exactly what they were getting themselves into. He still had names to remember, still had to make sure his moons knew they all mattered. But Neptune had picked up the same hum again—the same three looping notes—and he couldn't find any reason to do anything but sit there.

At least there was something to hope for, now.

"You really think I'm the best?" Neptune asked, his voice quieter than before, muffled against his collarbone where he’d buried his face in his own scarf.

He pressed a kiss to the top of Neptune's head, right into the nest of blue curls. "I really do," he said. "I really, really do. The best. You’re the…” He clicked his tongue, searching for the best way to translate it to Neptune, and finally settled on, “The yepperoniest.”

Neptune's head snapped up. (Saturn was very glad they were far enough apart.) "You said yepperoni!"

"I said yepperoni,” he echoed, nodding with a smile.

"That's my word! You used my word!" Neptune was practically vibrating abruptly, his whole body thrumming with the force of his happiness, his gravity giving delighted little tugs that made his own gravitational field pulse in response. "That means—that means you like me! A lot! In a yepperoni way!"

The laugh that followed surprised him from how it bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest.

"I think I already confirmed that, darling, but yes. In a yepperoni way," he confirmed.

Neptune kissed him again—quick and impulsive and slightly off-center, catching the corner of his mouth. His lips were still cool, still soft, and the kiss was over before he could close his eyes. "Good," Neptune declared, pulling back with the satisfied air of someone who had just solved a very complicated equation. "That's settled, then. You're my sparkliest, and I'm your yepperoni, and Guillermo the Second is our asteroid!" He paused, tilting his head. "Okay? Okay."

His fingers curled tighter around Neptune's—those cool half-gloved fingers fitting against his gold rings, the worn wool a texture he was already memorizing. He didn't let go.

"Most definitely," he agreed. “Most definitely okay.”