Archive of Our Own

In the morning, I wake up, go to the bathroom to wash off the (hopefully) nonexistent blood, look at myself in the mirror—I see myself and can’t help but feel calmer. Then I go back, make the bed, fluff the pillows, and only then do I meet Grace in the kitchen. He’s excited and joyful about the new day, calling out “breakfast” as he dances foolishly to the Eridian music whistling from the ceiling.

“Good morning,” I say, still half-asleep.

“Morning, Simon!” Grace replies, planting a firm kiss on my forehead. I force a (crooked) smile. My forehead is burning from his lips.

Grace sets two cups of “not-coffee” and two containers of thick, nutritious smoothie on the table, along with two spoons. A small pile of pills is already lying next to my seat: assorted vitamins, dietary supplements, and all that sort of thing. The substance in the bowl tastes somewhat like “prehistoric berry mousse.” At least, according to Grace.

“Same as always,” Grace sighs, sitting down across from me. He takes a sip of coffee and grimaces as the scalding liquid rolls down his throat. “Didn’t I tell you the nutrition team promised to try making other flavors soon?”

“They’ve been promising that for ages,” I shrug, washing down a few ‘not-coffee’ pills before finally digging into the porridge-like mass in the container. It tastes a thousand times better than the rations, but for some reason, it’s not enough for me. I really want to try some new flavors.

“Yeah. But they’re still having problems with the food in general. There’s still a shortage of vitamins B9 and D, and ferritin, which, to put it bluntly, is pretty important for both of us.”

Grace pauses to stir the nutritional shake with a spoon. He scoops some up and pops it into his mouth. His tongue glides between his lips for a moment, wiping away the remnants of the pinkish liquid. He washes it down immediately with some non-coffee.

“They’ll figure it out,” I say, trying to reassure Grace.

“Yeah…” Grace mumbles, sounding strangely heavy-hearted. Suddenly he jerks, looks up at me, squints, and smiles slyly—even if it looks a little… unusual on him. “Yeah, they’ll figure it out. The Eridians are smart guys.”

“Yeah,” I try to smile back. It doesn’t come out right.

After finishing my meal, I throw on a light jacket made of a thick, Eridian fabric and step outside. My feet carry me to the shore of the artificial sea—I stare up at the fake sky until my eyes start to hurt from the bright light of the streetlamps above.

Soon Grace comes over and pats me on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

A half-smile crosses his face.

Listening to the sound of the artificial wind, we make our way to Grace’s makeshift classroom. He sits down at the organ and spreads out his handouts on the music stand. His lesson will begin in ten minutes. I lean my hip against the wall—next to me is a transparent xenonite, beyond which lies a dimly lit cave where the children are gathering. Behind the instrument (and while teaching), Grace looks younger than his years. It’s as if he isn’t twenty-seven, but barely twenty: the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes smooth out, his chapped lips stretch into a smile, and his general weariness with life becomes far less noticeable.

“You were a child soldier… Oh my God, Simon, I…”

Grace’s words pop into my head before I can stop myself.

That’s in the past, Simon. That’s in the past. You’re not a soldier, you’re not a “butcher,” you’re not a prisoner.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Do you want to stay for class?” Grace asks me. He does this every time, but I know I’ll just get in the way.

“No, thanks. I want to finish The Ethics Specialist today.”

I finished that book a week ago. And since then, I haven’t been able to start the next one, The Horse Barbarians.

Grace shakes his head.

“Remember…”

I remember.

“You can join me anytime.”

“Yes. I remember, Grace.”

“Great…” Grace fidgets. His fingers hover over the papers and stone slabs with his children’s homework. The wrinkles, small dark spots, and agonizing loneliness—the signs of age—reappear on his face. “See you later?”

“See you later.”

I leave, and I can feel it in my gut that his eyes—half filled with longing for Earth and half with resentment toward me and my very existence—are watching my back.

From nine in the morning until four in the afternoon Moscow time, I try to create the illusion of some kind of activity so I don’t go crazy.

When I get home and walk Grace to his classes, I do some exercises: push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and I try to stretch out at least a little (mostly my back, because it starts to ache from all the bending over in the garden). That takes between half an hour and an hour. After that, I collapse onto the bed Grace and I share and read all kinds of crap on his laptop until I start to feel sick. Usually, I can handle it for about an hour—especially after my unpleasant introduction to Reddit. I scroll through news stories from years ago and am amazed at how afraid people can be of artificial intelligence. You created it yourselves, after all, and you’re the ones steering its development.

Well… Or maybe I’m just an “armchair critic.” More like a bed-bound one.

While reading conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s arrest, I watch the highest-grossing movie of 2023, Barbie. That takes more than an hour.

I spend the rest of the time tending to the garden. It always demands a lot of attention: I need to weed the beds (where do weeds come from on Erid?), harvest the overgrown zucchini and pumpkins, check the potato tubers in the basement, clear the roots of the decorative pine needles of excess grass (how Grace and Adrian suffered trying to turn the Eridian “pine needles” into something resembling Earth’s!), pick apples and rake up windfall into a separate bag (the unrotten ones can be used for a pie), fertilize other plants, and check on the sprouts recently cultivated by the team of botanists. On Friday, I’ll need to mow the lawn—thankfully, the Eridians figured out how to add traction to the sixty-kilogram machine.

I can manage three hours of physical labor before I start feeling too dirty and head off to wash up in the shower. I furiously scrub bits of dirt, grass, and caustic fertilizer off my skin. My skin starts to burn from the friction, and just then Grace arrives—I can barely hear his footsteps through the ringing in my ears and the gurgling in the drain. Dirty, so dirty. This sticky, unpleasant feeling reminds me of the ocean of blood, of Ava, the radioactive chamber and the iron lung, of the monster eel, and… the God? The Devil? The one who saved me before Grace. Grace knocks on the bathroom door, asking:

“Is everything okay? Have you eaten? Should I make dinner?”

Yes (I want to believe it’s yes, not no, because just the thought that I might not be okay makes me feel sick). No (that’s true. I completely forgot about that). Later, I’ll help (I’ll make a futile attempt not to mess anything up).

“Yes. No,” I want to add, “Grace, I’m sorry,” but I can’t get my tongue to move in the right direction. I want to get down on my knees and start begging for forgiveness. I promised not to skip meals, and I can feel my stomach—accustomed to regular meals—twisting with hunger. “Later, I’ll help.”

Grace seems to nod in response and walks away.

I step out of the bathroom with my hair wet from root to tip, wearing one of Grace’s old science-themed T-shirts (“I Have Potential”) and sweatpants. The clothes are soft and comfortable. Grace used to wear them often. That’s probably why they fit so well.

We spend some time apart: Grace checks his students’ homework for the next two hours. I don’t want to disturb him. Meanwhile, I stretch again, listening to relaxing music and trying to move as quietly as possible.

Two hours later, I meet Grace in the kitchen—he’s bustling around the shelves and cabinets, looking for various spices and seasonings. Finally, he fishes a half-empty bag of rosemary out of a far corner. Ilyukhina had a strange attachment to this spice (or flower) and had expressed a wish to take it with her on her final journey. Now it had ended up in Grace’s hands.

He tosses two withered buds, along with a flimsy sprig of pine needles, into the skillet where oil is sizzling and meat is frying. I involuntarily swallow.

The fact that this is Grace’s flesh shouldn’t satisfy me. I feel as though I’m tasting someone I’m unworthy of—and this fills me with an ecstasy born of pure human selfishness.

“How was your day?” Grace snaps me out of my thoughts.

“Everything’s fine. I spent almost the whole day in the garden. I watched Barbie.”

“What did you think?” A smile spreads across his face, and I want to kiss it away.

“Not bad,” I shrug. “And as for the garden, well… Nothing’s close to perfect, or whatever the saying goes.”

Grace laughs good-naturedly.

“You’re like a bee, I swear! Always working,” he sighs, still chuckling. “I’m going to have to tear you away from your work. Want to watch another movie with me?”

“Sure, of course. After dinner, though.”

“But first, let’s go for a walk. And I have to teach you how to set up a solitaire game! God, how could I have forgotten that…”

Next to the meat, Grace tosses a meager handful of vegetables we managed to grow in the garden. Squash, potatoes, zucchini—all the hardiest varieties. Their seeds turned out to be packaged on the Hail Mary, a fact Grace only discovered after surviving a bout of scurvy in Eris’s orbit. The seeds came without soil. An oversight. Grace ended up complaining bitterly about it in his ship operation report.

The vegetables are slowly simmering in the meat juices, and a subtle aroma of rosemary and pine needles, with spicy-sweet undertones, wafts through the air.

Finally, we sit down at the table. I look at Grace and at the meat on my plate and see almost the same thing. The fibers should be dense and tough. I know—or at least I assume—that Grace’s muscles are the same.

“They give you a centimeter, but you try to take a kilometer from others. What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Davy isn’t here. Davy has “reunited with stardust.” Davy was a medic, and I took advantage of her kindness toward the Father’s children—I took too much, until she stabbed my palm with a long, rusty pair of bandage scissors when I tried to grab an extra flask of alcohol. I was in a lot of pain after my last run-in with the C.O.I. at one of our stations: my ribs, barely healed, stabbed the surrounding muscles with every movement, and my previously injured left hand—which a soldier had stabbed with a knife—hurt more than ever. I was smart enough not to go back to Davy like that again.

I blink and look at my hand. In the center of it, barely a millimeter from the bone, a rounded scar glows white.

I wonder if Grace ever mistook a kilometer for a centimeter.

Grace picks up a fork and knife, cuts off a small piece, and puts it in his mouth. He chews slowly, grimacing.

“It’s burnt.”

I watch his lips move, followed by his teeth. I need to eat, too.

The taste of Grace spreads across my tongue, punctuated by rosemary and pine needles. No, it’s just tissue, cloned by the Eridians to avoid actual cannibalism. Grace’s tissue.

“It’s tasty,” I say. “I’ve heard people used to eat raw meat, too.”

“Yeah, but there were a lot of superstitions surrounding that. Mainly because of the widespread fear of parasites in meat. And those same people love their meat rare and stuff like that! Although, sometimes even cooking it doesn’t help against them.”

“Well, you don’t have any parasites, do you?”

“No?” Grace switches to the vegetables, making a futile gesture with his fork. “If I did, I definitely wouldn’t have developed a sudden allergy to apples. My eosinophils would have something to do.”

“Maybe.”

“Ugh, let’s not talk about worms. I still feel kind of awkward about us eating my raw meat, even if it is cloned.”

In response, I nod sheepishly. A reasonable answer.

We finish dinner in silence—I listen to the sound of the sea outside the window. Grace still seems a little out of sorts. After dinner, he decides to skip the evening walk. As evening falls, the wind in the biodome turns cold and damp.

“Hey… What movie do you want to watch, Grace?”

He mumbles thoughtfully.

“I was thinking about Blade Runner? The one from ’17.”

“Ryan Gosling again?” I say, half-jokingly.

“You can’t blame me!”

And I really can’t blame him, seeing the scenery from that movie and how perfectly this actor fits into it.

During one of the scenes, Grace rests his head on my shoulder. I lean back against him in response, stroking his shoulder. He takes my hand in his and squeezes it tightly. Through my skin, I can feel the lines on his palm, the rough scars from burns on his fingers, and the veins bulging on his wrist.

Grace surprisingly rarely interrupts feature films. But during those lousy “educational” films and old, critical documentaries, I like listening to him grumble.

The movie ends soon. We sit in silence for a while—I listen to Grace’s breathing, and he, I think, listens to mine. We crawl into bed, discussing the movie as we go:

“They really dragged the movie out, didn’t they?” Grace says, slipping off his T-shirt and flopping onto the bed with a satisfied groan.

“Yeah. But the visuals weren’t bad,” I say, stretching out on the blanket next to him. Grace snorts.

“And the characters are so bland. Maybe that’s a feature of the replicant’s point of view. Oh, who knows… The author’s idea?”

I shrug. Grace laughs, shakes his head, and shuffles off to the bathroom, forgetting his pajamas. So he’ll probably come back to the room wearing just a towel in about twenty minutes. Or I could interrupt him in ten by bringing him his pajamas myself.

Patiently, I wait nine minutes, examining the bioluminescent star stickers on the ceiling. A few seconds before exactly ten minutes have passed, I get out of bed and rummage through the closet, eventually finding his pajamas—something halfway between a nightgown and a loose summer dress—among Grace’s many trinkets and personal belongings. I wouldn’t be surprised if this used to be Ilyukhina’s outfit.

Soon I walk over to the bathroom and listen for sounds inside. The water is running, and Grace’s slightly off-key singing is barely audible over it. I knock. The singing stops. Grace mutters a curse.

“Thanks! Come in.”

When I open the door, Grace is crouching in the shower stall, his hands between his legs.

“You know I know you have a penis, right?” I ask mockingly.

“Well… I’m not exactly comfortable with nudity, you know! Leave your pajamas on the chair. Thanks again,” I say, placing the dress there as instructed.

“You sleep in a dress,” I tease him out of habit. “Your dick keeps pressing against my butt at night.”

“Excuse me!?”

I step out of the bathroom before Grace starts to panic.

He comes out seven minutes later, flinging my own boxers—which I accidentally took along with his pajamas—in my face.

…I need to sort out the closet tomorrow. Separating my things from his would be a good solution.

In the shower, I try not to think about Grace, or the feeling of blood on my skin, or the next day. As I thoroughly wash away sweat and other bodily fluids with alkaline soap, I count sheep.

When I return, Grace is curled up in a ball, snoring softly. I lie down next to him.

For what feels like long minutes, I stare at the ceiling, blocking out any thoughts that pop into my head. I need to fall asleep. I start counting out the rhythm of a waltz, imagining Grace and me spinning together as clear, bright stars shine above our heads.

I desperately want to hug Grace. I see how he sometimes scratches his elbows, staring at my hands for a long time; I see how often he hugs himself and his pillows, burying his face in them, and I want to be in their place. But that’s out of the question. I barely managed to persuade Grace to kiss me on the forehead in the mornings, citing “the ancient customs of Eden”—Father will never forgive me for this.

I sink into an unpleasant, restless sleep, hugging the blanket and listening in my memories to the lullaby my mother used to sing long, long ago.

Lullaby, my treasure, my little one.

My pure gemstone,

my little piece of this vast world.

Lullaby, lullaby—how great is my love.

My sweet one sleeps in his crib, free from sorrow.

I open my eyes in a hazy, groggy state, not remembering if I slept at all. Grace is still snoring next to me. It seems to be pretty early. Yes, the digital clock on the nightstand shows the numbers four and seventeen. It’s a bit early.

Grace wraps his whole body around my arm. His dress rode up when he shifted, and now his limp cock is pressed against my thigh.

I have a hard-on.

Everything’s gone to hell.

I don’t want to get up and go to the bathroom—whether to masturbate or get soaked under a cold shower, it doesn’t matter. I stare at Grace’s legs sticking out from under the blanket in the semi-darkness, counting his moles and pigment spots. There aren’t many of the latter.

I don’t know what I’d be thinking about if I did go to the bathroom. About Davy? My palm starts to ache at the thought of her. About Grace? My cock twitches.

I really want to take a shower. That’s bad. That’s very, very, very…

Grace moans in his sleep. His eyelashes flutter, his lips twitch into a grimace, and an anxious sigh escapes him.

“You can’t kill me! I… I’ll sabotage the mission! It’ll be your fault, Stratt!”

Grace is just as selfish as I am. So I stroke his hair and hum a song I’ve known since childhood:

“Lullaby, my treasure… A pure gemstone… The most beautiful in the world… Lullaby, a blessed world… Where one can sleep without sorrow…”

A few hours later, I wake up again, this time without Grace in bed. It’s still slightly warm from him. No dreams again—and I’m incredibly grateful for that.

In the bathroom, I comb my hair with a wooden comb and tie my grown-out curls into a ponytail with a hair tie. Next, I brush my teeth with strong toothpaste and rinse my mouth with tasteless water.

Grace and I run into each other in the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom.

“Good morning,” I nod.

“Good morning,” Grace smiles, stepping into the kitchen.

His cheerfulness seems unnatural to me—he looks tired, as if he’d been thinking too hard about something all night. I won’t ask unless he hints that he wants to talk about it.

Against my better judgment, I break my own promise.

“Bad dream?” Grace sets a plate in front of me with the same nutritious smoothie as yesterday. Shrugging, Grace sits down next to me instead of across from me.

“You sing beautifully,” he says, as if stating a scientific fact, placing his hand on mine. His face is too close to mine. His lips almost touch my cheek.

“No. You weren’t asleep…”

“Yeah. Sorry. But it’s true!”

“Don’t change the subject, Grace.”

“What’s the point of me having a bad dream? It’s still just a dream. I’m amazed you don’t have them, after what happened…”

“It’s a good thing I don’t,” I interrupt him. Grace bites his lip. He hesitates as his hands glide over my cheeks, tilting my head forward slightly—his neck stretches out and he gently kisses me on the forehead. “Thank you. What would I do without you?”

Grace smiles.

During breakfast, Grace tells me how dreams work, and as he speaks, his mood gradually improves, and his passion for teaching wipes the exhaustion from his face. This is the second time he’s given this lecture, but I don’t mention it, letting his voice fill my head.

Later, I walk him to class, and his eyes follow me all the way home.

Back in bed, I’m afraid to pick up my laptop because all my thoughts are consumed by Grace and his damn nightgown. He doesn’t mind wearing a skirt either, I know: back in Hail Mary, he stopped caring about gender norms entirely, because “I’m all alone, sixteen light-years from Earth”!

Grace doesn’t look anything like a woman. Not in the slightest. He especially doesn’t look like Davy—dark-haired and strong, with broad shoulders and a chest cinched by a belt with knives—the one the Father wanted to marry me off to, until she told him about my alcohol escapade. I was whipped and stripped of my right to marry, on the grounds of my greed.

It makes me sick that my body reacts to Grace the way it should have reacted to Davy when she was undressed during the medical exam at the barracks. I’m losing the battle as I discover a veritable treasure trove of porn on my laptop, and from everything available there, I choose a video featuring two men. One of them is dressed in traditionally feminine clothing, and in his place, I imagine Grace. In the showers, I’ve always looked at other men’s butts anyway. So what’s the difference if I keep doing it?

Although sometimes I want to wear a dress too, just to understand why Grace gets so turned on by it.

Instead, I grab Grace’s pillow, sit on it, and pull down my sweatpants.

I don’t even know if I’m attractive to anyone—or if Grace is attracted to anyone or anything other than science and research. The rock-like aliens he saves stars from, or, for example, the men he pulls out of a bloody ocean who then latch onto him like stray dogs to random passersby. Or maybe it’s very smart but domineering women who can put him in his place. I don’t know. I have a few items on the “What Ryland Grace Likes” list: Rocky, microscopes, teaching, exploring the world. Maybe someday I’ll be on that list too, Simon.

Rubbing my cock against the pillow that smells like Grace’s shampoo, I bury my face in our shared blanket. I take a deep breath and move my hips erratically. Pleasure spreads down my spine, while I imagine I’m rubbing against Grace: against his thigh, or his chest, or his dick.

I think this is called aromanticism or asexuality. The way Grace is.

I bite my hand (I’d like to bite Grace: to taste his raw, real flesh—God, what am I thinking?), and a knot forms in my lower abdomen like a snake. My hips keep moving on their own, even when I want to stop and pause the annoying video. The man in the dress moans too loudly—Grace wouldn’t do that. And the actor isn’t crying—but Grace would.

With the final movement, Grace’s tear-stained face appears in front of my closed eyelids.

I’m disgusting.

But as soon as I picture Grace’s wet eyes, his reddened cheeks, the flushed bags under his eyes, and his moist, parted lips gasping for air, excitement begins to surge through me again.

All right. I still need to work in the garden. I’ve got what feels like an eternity of harvesting and fertilizing vegetables ahead of me.

With some difficulty, I wriggle out of my cum-stained boxers and the not-so-clean blanket, find my outdoor work clothes, and head outside, feeling stale and tired. I start with the zucchini: I harvest the fruits that have grown recently, my bare wrists scraping against the plant stems. Then I allow myself to stroke their leaves. They’re thick and rough as they brush against my fingers.

On Eden, we weren’t allowed to touch the sacred tree—only to feed it the bodies of those who had served their time and were not sick. 

Well. I’m dwelling on the negative (I shouldn’t be doing that now, on Erid).

But back there, Alex taught me how to pilot the shuttle that Matthew later stole, leaving me behind at the Filament station. This skill was considered a secret gift from the Gods, since any spacecraft was insanely expensive and valuable after the Quiet Rapture. My father didn’t know I could do it.

And here, Grace taught me gardening, cooking, science, the Eridian language, and so much more.

How unusual. Eden was both a home and a grave for those who were on its side. It could have been my grave, too—as soil for the Last Tree. But now my grave and my home are becoming the dome on Erid.

It’s just… It’s a strange feeling, dying somewhere other than where you expected, isn’t it? Of course, I could do something that would make the all-loving Eridians of Grace fling me out into open space and… Yeah. A quick death. But once I leave Earth, in that case, I won’t be coming back.

Next up—the pumpkins. Grace says they’re smaller than they should be. But, damn it, they’re still big and heavy. I pick just one and carry it out to the balcony, covering it with a cloth to protect it from the sun. I can stretch this pumpkin out over a few days: make a pie from one part and use the other as a side dish for (Grace’s) meat.

I take a short break, sitting on the porch and gazing at the patches of sky in the distance. And I start thinking about Grace’s dress again. What would Rocky think of it if he were more concerned with gender issues?

I hope I’m not the one who wakes up the next night with a hard-on right next to Grace’s butt.

Getting back to work didn’t help me shake off these thoughts. Neither did the shower afterward. Crouching on the ground with a bucket of fertilizer and hair getting in my eyes, I repeated Grace’s math lectures to myself. I do need to catch up, don’t I?

Grace comes back while I’m fiddling with the dough in the kitchen. Thick enough to be mixed without a whisk, it stuck mercilessly to my hands. The grime on my skin was so irritating that the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Coming up behind me, Grace gently wraps his arms around my shoulders, as if afraid that I might, startled, elbow him in the stomach. I flinch.

“Once you put the pie in the oven, shall we go for a walk?” he asks me, massaging my shoulders and back. It’s a divine sensation—the fatigue that’s been tightening my muscles slowly recedes under the pressure of his firm fingers.

Now I remember Alex’s fingers holding my shoulder as I made my first solo flight between stations. A whole day in open space, locked in a metal box amid the funeral fires of dead stars. The whole time, Alex had been teasing me about my shaky hands, trying to talk me into doing some “cool move.”

“Yeah, I’ll be done soon,” I say, shaking off my thoughts. “Can you get the uniform out of the bottom drawer, please?”

Grace buries his nose in my neck, squeezing my shoulders in his palms a little tighter for a moment, only to let go the next. He crouches down and pulls out the round baking pan I need. I place the dough on the floured table and roll it out into a thin sheet. I put it in the bottom of the pan, pressing it against the bottom and sides, and spoon in the filling I prepared earlier: mashed pumpkin mixed with something vaguely resembling condensed milk (or the Eridians’ attempt to recreate it) and potato starch. It tastes sweet, but not too sweet.

Potato starch, yes, instead of chicken eggs. The final taste turns out a little different, but “Egg Substitute 3000” does the job. Actually, there was a cultural oddity involving this before.

Asking for eggs to cook with from an egg-laying species that considers the act of eating repulsive was a very hasty and foolish decision, Dr. Grace.

I place the raw pie in the preheated oven and playfully flick Grace on the nose as I walk past him.

“How did class go?” I ask, as is my habit, stepping out of the house ahead of Grace and, after waiting for him, carefully closing the door behind me.

“Everything’s fine. Penny’s a little mischievous as usual, and Rusty’s quiet, but I’m managing… I hope,” Grace says, walking slowly beside me along the beach, gazing into the illusory distance. The pebbles crunch pleasantly under his sneakers. “At least the kids are reluctant to leave.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“By the way! Don’t forget, you can always ask me to teach you something… I wouldn’t mind spending time with you that way, either.”

“I have your databases. Including the instructional videos,” and I don’t want to bombard Grace with the questions that keep popping into my head. He deserves better than that.

Finally, we reach the edge of the dome and turn back. Grace glanced at me from time to time, opening and closing his mouth.

“If you want to say something—say it.”

“You… Listen, it suits you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your hair. It’s…” Grace tucks a strand of hair that had slipped out of my loose ponytail behind my ear. “It looks really good, Simon. And your hair looks good down, too.”

I freeze, blinking stupidly and staring at him. Grace’s face gradually turns pink. He takes a step back and hides his hands behind his back, deciding the ocean is more interesting than my face.

“It’s just a ponytail,” I say blankly.

“It looks good on you,” Grace replies without looking at me.

My mom used to put her hair up like that a lot. How much I look like her right now.

Everything inside me is ablaze as Grace and I return home, eat pumpkin pie in an awkward silence, and go to bed. Grace sleeps in his dress, and I sleep in my boxers.

In the middle of the night, after tossing and turning for several hours, I have to get up and go to the bathroom so that, sitting on the toilet seat, I can imagine myself in a dress beneath Grace. Maybe he’ll hold my hair from behind and call me a “good girl.”

I tug at my hair, sliding my hand into my underwear. My hard cock is soaking wet with pre-cum, just like a woman’s pussy.

It doesn’t take me long. Biting my free wrist and moving my hand, I finish quickly. The fabric becomes sticky and unpleasant. Now I feel even more ashamed and have no desire to be a woman for Grace.

Maybe that would have made everything easier.

Maybe it would be easier if I were the only person on Erid.

The next morning, I still have two hands, two eyes, two legs, and two ears. I tie my dirty hair back in a ponytail, promising to wash it later today so I’ll be clean for dinner.

Grace also has two arms, two eyes, two legs, and two ears. His glasses are crooked on the bridge of his nose—I adjust them, trying to look as natural as possible. In response, Grace looks away and gives a stifled chuckle. I obediently lower my head as he leans in to kiss me on the forehead.

The conversation at breakfast goes right over my head. But Grace must have been talking about something important, judging by his strange expression: neither his usual pleasantly pensive look, nor one of tension from overthinking some problem.

Grace was definitely talking about plans. The Eridians are going to expand the dome slightly in the near future, even though Grace swore he wasn’t cramped. Maybe I’ll have a home of my own. They’re also working on simulating Earth’s weather so they don’t have to keep the entire perimeter perpetually cloudy. Then I’ll be able to tweak my plant care a bit—they’re a little short on sunlight, so let’s hope that problem gets solved… somehow. I have no idea how. Aren’t sunlight and carbon dioxide the fundamentals of plant growth?

“If you want, we can plant that seedling from the pendant, too,” Grace says, pulling me out of my thoughts. I’m holding a spoon. I’m eating. Grace, sitting across from me, is staring intently at me.

I shake my head. The “gift” from the previous prisoner in the boat is cold against my chest under my T-shirt. I awkwardly rub it.

Grace shrugs in response, starting to chat about Eridian plants.

For some reason I can’t quite figure out, these conversations make me feel uneasy. Although, what’s wrong with planning?

Maybe it reminds me of Father. Or Ava from C.O.I. The way they mapped out my life as easily as they tattooed and branded marks on my skin.

Grace is probably mapping out my life in his head.

First, I learn how to cut up human flesh (I don’t like the way it feels on my fingers), and then I climb the walls of my iron cell, consumed by guilt and the realization of my own stupidity. I was free, but I was locked up—Eden was such a nice cage. The C.O.I. had worse cages: made of metal walls and transparent windows, so that you, the prisoner, could watch how the decent citizens of the Consolidation lived.

Was Father drinking up the scarce alcohol at a time when my brothers, my sister, and I were ready to die just to avoid feeling the pain? Or was it that the pain was too much for Father, too, to stay conscious?

“Simon, you’re free on Erid. I’ll understand if you want to, well… bring the Hail Mary back to Earth.”

I don’t want to.

Very soon, I’m watching Grace from behind the artificial rocks while he teaches. I’m both close and far away at the same time. My thoughts are swirling in my head, shrouded in a fog that prevents me from catching a single one. It’s as if I’m not thinking about anything, yet I can’t seem to stop thinking.

I don't want to go back to the garden just yet. I like plants, and I love taking care of them. But I think I'm going to throw up.

In any case, I have plenty of time.

I draw a crooked portrait of Grace in the sand, then immediately smudge it with the toe of my boot. It doesn’t look like him: his eyes aren’t that big and deep, his cheeks aren’t slightly sunken, his hair isn’t sticking out in all directions, and his glasses sit unnaturally straight.

Oh well, so what if Grace has plans for me. He certainly won’t throw me into the bloody ocean (there isn’t one here) or force me to kill (Grace is the only other person here besides me. Would he tell me to kill myself?)

Probably.

Just how deceitful is Grace’s tongue, anyway? I can’t know for sure what he’s thinking. What if I really am nothing more than a specimen under a microscope?

Thoughts like that drive me into some kind of paranoia.

I watch Grace laugh heartily as one of the Eridian children sings something that seems to be absolutely hilarious. The students pick up on his laughter, and their high-pitched chirping carries all the way over here. Grace throws his hand up in the air, still trying to catch his breath. I swear he says, “Be quiet! My hand is up.”

I hope he’s lying not telling me the whole truth—just to me.

On Eden, you weren’t allowed to draw people. And to be honest, there wasn’t anywhere to draw them anyway.

The whole school day slips by unnoticed. I return before Grace and rearrange the tools in the shed next to the garden, getting my elbows and knees a little dirty in the dirt, pretending I’d been busy all day. Then I run to the shower as fast as I can, because otherwise my thoughts will suffocate me. What will they think of me? That I spent the whole day doing nothing? I’m not sick enough to do nothing useful.

Grace arrives thirty seconds after I turn on the shower and stick my head under the stream. Along with the dirt, my thoughts wash down the drain. Grace knocks gently on the bathroom door.

“Simon? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, swallowing water. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’ll be out soon.”

“Okay. I went to check the homework.”

Still, I don’t get out of the shower for nearly an hour. For most of that time, I’ve been trying to scrub every trace of thought from my head with soap—scrubbing and scrubbing until my scalp starts to burn.

Grace doesn’t come out of his office until nine o’clock at night, having ignored my reminder about dinner. His face looks haggard, and the bags under his eyes have grown even darker. He yawns into his hand and shivers as he walks past me later.

“You haven’t eaten all day,” I say, stopping to scold him. He laughs defensively.

“Sorry, Simon. Lots of work.”

“Please eat. Don’t make me make you.”

“Ugh, you sure do like to boss people around. I’ll have some coffee. Will you make some? I need some more…”

“For tonight?”

“Yeah, for tonight. I need to finish up a few more things. Go to bed without me.”

Feeling foolishly upset, I go to bed alone, pulling the whole blanket over myself out of childish resentment.

Grace was sleeping on the couch. I was cold—I don’t know if it was because my usual routine had been disrupted or because Grace seemed to have a real stove built into him. Actually, it was because of people like that on Eden that most of the soldiers slept huddled together. There wasn’t enough energy for proper heating

Eden is in the past. Enough thinking about it. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The past is in the past, the past is in the past, the past is in the past.

Lullaby, my treasure,

A pure gemstone,

The most beautiful in the world.

Lullaby, a blessed world,

Where one can sleep without sorrow.

That night, Grace sat across from a red Eridian in a dirty white shirt, whom he had nicknamed Freud. They were separated by a solid wall of smooth xenonite: on Grace’s side was an empty, dimly lit room with nothing but a chair and a small stack of napkins on its armrest, and on Freud’s side—almost pitch darkness and a small device for recording the conversation. It ticked away, counting the passing minutes.

The first interstellar psychiatric session: Grace should have been proud of this opportunity, yet an irrational fear, accompanied by nausea, prevented him from even considering what this might mean for contact between Erid and Earth. But there would be no contact between them, at least not until Grace’s death.

“Tell me, why savior Grace decide to turn to me, question?” Freud asked him in deliberately slow Eridian.

“I… I haven’t been feeling well lately. No, it’s not because of the new person in the dome. And no, it’s not because I’m not on Earth,” Grace shook his head, letting out a bitter laugh. “Please, you can speak however you’re comfortable. I know Eridians don’t like slow speech.”

“I speak like this because it puts humans at ease.”

“For heaven’s sake, listen…”

“What do you think cause your discomfort, question?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because we’re the only humans here on Erid.”

Grace didn’t know how Simon would react to the fact that the dome wasn’t soundproof. It was just an ordinary zoo with people instead of animals—just like with Billy and Montana Wildhack on Tralfamadore.

“But savior Grace has another human.”

“That’s complicated.”

“Is that contact not enough, question?”

“That’s also very, very, very complicated.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Freud, you know this “saving the stars” story all too well. I’m used to handling test tubes, Petri dishes, microscopes, and all that sort of thing, but not people. But even I can see how much of a new experience this is for him… I don’t even know what word to use—boring? Dreary?” or maybe lonely. Perhaps Simon is actually buried under the weight of real depression and PTSD; perhaps he suffers from other disorders as well that directly affect how his brain functions—including how he perceives and interprets reality. “You know, when kids are taken away from abusive families, as they get older, they might start missing the ‘action’ that used to happen in those families.”

“The human brain is complex, complex, complex,” Freud sang in a sad, low voice.

“The human brain is complex, complex, complex. Simon isn’t a child. I can’t send him to Child Protective Services and hope they’ll help him. You… You see where I’m going with this, right?”

“We agreed to discuss the savior Grace problems, not a new person, question?”

“I don’t have… Ah, never mind. I can’t just stick Simon under a microscope and rack my brain trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. He can handle astrophages, but he can’t handle a normal human’s low spirits—that’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“Savior Grace is not stupid,” Freud objected passionately.

“You have no idea how much, Freud. I didn’t have anyone on Earth except my children and my students. I don’t know how to deal with what I’m facing, and I…” Grace slumped lower in his chair, covering his face with his hands. “And it makes me feel terrible.”

“Savior Grace is feeling frustrated, question?”

“I don’t even know how to approach him. One wrong move and he’ll definitely shut down. And, oh my God, I’m almost certain he thinks he’s some kind of germ to me.”

“The human brain can convince itself of many strange things, question?”

“A great many. Um… Tell the engineering team to make the biodome inaudible to the Eridians.”

Grace shifted in his chair, trying to relax. Just imagine opening your soul to a rock—what’s so hard about that? Except the rock didn’t really look like a rock.

Freud nodded in agreement. Grace sighed.

“Talk to new human, question? That help solve both of your problems, question?”

“Whatever’s getting in the way of Simon’s life is surely connected to where he came from. I don’t know the details, though I’m certain of it. It’s the only explanation. I’ve tried to get him to tell me more, but he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

On Earth, Grace could have taken Simon to a professional doctor (rather than the Eridian equivalent, who only dragged Grace deeper into the abyss of disappointment instead of helping him climb out of it). He would have been prescribed medication, he would have completed the full course of treatment, and Grace would have been there to lend him a shoulder to cry on during a tough day. And everything would have been fine.

But the nearest psychiatrist was more than sixteen light-years away.

“Certain events, a series of events, or prolonged exposure to stress can severely disrupt the functioning of the human brain due to, um… disrupted hormone synthesis, for example. There are many other things that… That are treated with medication on Earth. Because not all words can, ahem… Fix the problem not in perception, but at the source of perception.

Perhaps Grace himself needs a doctor’s help. Isn’t that why he’s here? He spent nearly five years in space fully aware that he would never see another human being again: he wouldn’t slap Stratt, wouldn’t hug his students at the end of the school year, wouldn’t receive an approving pat on the shoulder from his colleagues in the lab. And then Simon shows up—the solution to all his problems—but that turns out not to be enough. Simon isn’t even from Earth; he doesn’t even resemble the average person from Earth. Something in Grace’s mind is broken, and it can no longer be fixed with the words “everything’s fine now” accompanied by awkward hugs (in which Simon is obviously terribly uncomfortable).

The stars are saved, Rocky has returned to Adrian, Grace has gotten his new home, the Hail Mary is ready to depart for Earth…

“Savior Grace, we need to talk about you, not about new human,” Freud interrupted Grace’s thoughts.

“Humans are just as social as the Eridians. Most of us tend to mirror the state of someone close to us.”

Let the problem lie solely with Simon’s state of mind. Let Grace not wake up from nightmares in which Melnikov’s hands are twisting him, and Stratt’s ringing voice is asking him to think of all the children of Earth. Let Grace not feel that there is something wrong with him specifically: no one can remain sane after spending so much time alone with an alien (a species completely different from humans). Let Simon’s mental illness have been only the tip of the iceberg, at the bottom of which, in raging salty currents, churned a longing as vast as another iceberg—for a boy from one of Grace’s classes, who surely looked exactly like Simon in his youth. The boy came from a religious family. As luck would have it, his name was Simon, too.

“The biodome team needs to heal new human to make savior Grace feel well, question?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to cure Simon.”

“But we want to cure Grace.”

“Well? Don’t take on too much,” Grace cleared his throat and stood up from his chair. “I think all of this is a fair price to pay for what I have right now.”

Even if Grace won’t be able to enjoy it to the fullest.

“Take care, Freud,” Freud tensed, his five slender legs stretching out, lifting his angular body upward.

“Grace, we not even—!”

Grace walked out of the room.

No. Simon won’t come here.

In the morning, I feel miserable because the bed is cold and empty. In the kitchen, Grace gives me a routine kiss on the forehead, then gives my shoulder a light pat to tell me to back off and stop rubbing my face against him.

“I’m free all day today. Want to do something together?” Grace asks me, brewing a cup of non-coffee.

“If you insist…”

While trying to force down a nutritional shake, Grace tells me about card games. We settle on the simplest solitaire game—the Klondike.

“You know, while I was waiting for a reply from Rocky, this is exactly how I passed the time,” Grace says, lazily shuffling the deck of cards made by the Eridians. “Thank Stratt for the biggest act of piracy in history! I think Stardew Valley is lying around there somewhere, too. You’ll love this game—I’m 100 percent sure of it.”

“Is it a farm or something?”

“Something like that. It’s pretty relaxing.”

I make a mental note to look for this game. Meanwhile, seven vertical columns of one, two, three, and so on up to seven cards are laid out on the table. Grace places the remaining cards in a pile nearby.

He slowly explains the concept and rules of the game to me. Black cards can be placed on top of red ones, and red ones on top of black ones, all in descending order. Aces—the lowest-ranking cards after twos—should be set aside so that cards of the same suit can later be placed on top of them in ascending order. When the cards in the deck and the rows run out, the game is won.

But here’s the thing: it’s a solo game.

When I try to lay out the cards on my own, Grace sits too close to me. His breaths tickle my skin, and his hands brush against my bare skin.

“Good job, you’re doing great,” he comments sweetly as I complete a row of four cards. I can’t help but smile.

“Thanks.”

“I learned this in college when I was trying to tune out the information noise. Believe me, I was really bad at it at first!”

“Come on. You saved the stars—it’s just a deck of cards in front of you.”

Grace is silent. I freeze.

“Well. I didn’t save them of my own free will. I don’t think that counts,” he says slowly.

“But you still…” I try to object.

“Because Stratt’s plan worked. And because Yao and Ilyukhina didn’t make it to Tau-Ceti.”

Water drips onto my neck. Grace sobs, pulling me closer to her.

“I was willing to jeopardize the survival of seven billion people just to live another forty years on a dying Earth. I’m a coward, Simon. And I know you tried to retrieve the black box from the submarine, despite your brothers who betrayed you and the people who sent you to your death.”

“You would have done the same thing,” Grace did the same thing anyway. Only more—many times more.

“Did it really cross your mind to keep the box for yourself out of spite? Simon, I really did consider not sending the bugs to Earth simply because I was angry at Eva.”

I awkwardly stroke Grace’s hair, trying to soothe him, but he starts to sob.

“Oh God, this is all so stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m so sorry you ended up here instead of on Earth. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Simon,” Grace lets out a few heart-wrenching notes that make up the first part of the Eridian name Rocky. “If only DuBois or Shapiro were alive…”

If they were alive, Grace wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have to think so much. And he wouldn’t have to put up with me. Everything would be a thousand times better if I’d just died in that boat. But I’m so glad to be alive.

Grace is showering me with apologies and those strange whistles I’ve sometimes heard from the Eridians. I lean back on the couch, pulling Grace with me—he curls up into a tight ball on my lap, clinging to me. I feel needed.

Maybe the two of us are on Erid because we’re too selfish for Earth or a couple of dying stations.

So I allow myself to untangle the ball that is Ryland Grace and kiss his lips through the tears still streaming down his face. Grace is shaking. He presses against me, biting and gasping, his fingers digging into my clean hair.

I’m taking advantage of him, aren’t I?

Oxygen is draining from my lungs, and Grace’s lips only make it worse. He’s clumsy, as if trying to merge with me into a single entity, which makes every part of his body tremble with tension. I open my eyes slightly, see Grace’s reddened, tear-stained face in front of me, and my cock stiffens.

I'm taking advantage of him. I need to comfort him, but I don't know what to do. No, I do know what to do. I just don't want to.

I love seeing Grace cry. At times like that, he becomes just as lowly as I am.

I run off as soon as I realize that Grace might be able to see my erection, and lock myself in my room for the rest of the day with the cardigan I stole from the laundry basket.

God, I hope this is all just a weird deathbed dream, and that I’m already almost dead.

I return the cardigan with a few extra stains.

At night, I miss Grace sleeping next to me again.

I dream that I’m sitting in a cell in front of the Father. I confess to him that I’m attracted to a man. I like the way he suffers. I don’t want to let him go far away, because I’m flawed—and so is he. I confess to greed, laziness, and lust. The Father sentences me to twenty lashes.

An inky expanse of sky stretched out in front of me. Through the surprisingly clear glass of the spacesuit, only darkness was visible, punctuated by rare flashes on either side. The radio crackled in my ears.

I heard music.

Far in the distance, the Lighthouse pulsed—a star whose light still reached this place (where am I?). A single white dot illuminated the dead heavens with a captivating light. I wanted to hear that quiet ringing. To feel the gentle warmth on my cheeks.

I wonder if the Lighthouse was the path to the New World? Perhaps that was where people and stars disappeared after the Quiet Rapture. Suddenly, there, many light-years away, was hiding…

What was hiding there? The essence of the Devil who had swallowed the stars?

I turned around (why? I didn’t want to), and before my eyes appeared a huge green planet, covered in whirlwinds of the same pure, bright color.

Such a color… didn’t exist in the solar system.

“How’s Grace doing, question?”

“Everything’s great,” I replied in Grace’s voice. “Just a few more minutes. There’ll be enough astrophages on the collector soon. Get ready to meet me.”

“Good, good, good. Rocky can’t wait.”

“Rocky, you have no idea how magical this planet is,” I laughed lightly. “Oh, by the way. Don’t you want to give it a name?”

The radio crackled as Rocky began to sing thoughtfully, then played a sequence of notes I didn’t recognize.

“U-um… what does that mean?”

“That’s Rocky’s partner’s name.”

Oh, I see! That jerk never mentioned that—apparently, Eridians aren’t big on chatting about their personal lives.

“So, it’ll be Adrian.”

“Good, it sounds good,” Rocky agreed. “Grace, get back on board.”

“Hold your horses!”

All morning, all I’ve been doing is thinking about the upcoming grass-mowing session in the biodome. I don’t want to do it, but I have to.

I asked Grace why he wasn’t sleeping in the same bed with me anymore. He replied, “I don’t want to bother you, but if you want, I can come back.”

“Am I bothering you?” I ask in return.

“No, no, what are you talking about? Of course not! It’s about your…”

“Then come back,” I said. Otherwise I’ll have very strange dreams.

Why on earth did my brain decide that I want to be Grace?

Grace leaves for class much later than usual and promises to come back early. That means I only have two hours to get everything done.

I struggle to start the lawn mower—my weakened arms cramp up as I push the heavy machine forward with all my strength.

I manage to get through half an hour and a third of the yard. Sitting down on the porch to catch my breath, I pull the cloth gloves off my hands and toss them aside. My legs are covered in grass up to my knees, and the rest of my body itches from phantom stinging sensations. I have to keep going. I have to get up, do my part, and make life easier for Grace and the Eridians.

I need to exercise more. Maybe tomorrow. And I also need to make dinner, or else I’ll be a burden on someone else again.

Maybe the Eridians can find me a job that’s less physically demanding?

Come on. In their eyes, I’m probably a dummy compared to Grace. So what if Grace was thrilled with that damn homemade map? It’s no surprise—I wanted to survive (and, for better or worse, I did survive in the end).

After a long break, I’m mowing the second third, getting stuck for a long time on the section near the vegetable garden. There are too many turns, which are pretty hard to navigate with this marvel of technology.

Maybe I’ll be able to finish the last section right away.

I drag the lawn mower over to this section. Grace likes the freshly cut grass—it reminds him of the yard near his parents’ house, where he lived as a child. He was always forbidden to lie on the grass without a blanket, on the grounds that all sorts of things lived in the soil.

I don’t have the strength left for the remaining three-by-three-meter patch. My fingers, stiff with tension, won’t even let go of the lawn mower’s handle as I collapse exhausted onto the grass. My arms go limp on their own, and I bury my nose in the grass and close my eyes—the acrid smell stings my throat.

Even now, I don’t feel useful or satisfied with the work I’ve done, though I should.

I need to be better, I need to be happier, I need to stop worrying Grace and the biodome team.

Grace finds me lying there on the lawn and finishes mowing the grass himself, then lies down on his back next to me.

“I’m amazed at how you do this,” he laughs wearily. I notice the glint of sweat on his forehead. “It weighs a ton!”

“I have to help you.”

“The grass was my idea. Who knew it would be so unruly on Erid?”

I sigh:

“I like it.”

“You don’t have to help if it’s too hard for you,” Grace replies kindly, as always. “No one will mind if you spend the rest of your life exploring the Internet.”

“But I want to help.”

He shrugs, laughing.

“Then let me help you, too. Want to watch a movie together?”

“Sure. Just let me freshen up first.”

We go to bed early, but together. I let myself snuggle up against Grace’s warm body, which has grown a little weaker with age.

I wake up, and I see Grace. He teaches all day—all day I think (I don’t want to think; I want to disappear). I fall asleep, and I see Grace. On Thursdays we play solitaire together, and on Fridays we mow the lawn.

I let my hair grow out, and I let Grace comb it. I hope this makes me look more like Mom.

Grace looks strangely happy when he looks at me. I, too, feel strangely happy when I look at him. Do I like it? This feeling. It’s muted by a wistfulness hanging in the air, but there’s nothing too bad about that.

And it all happens again. And again.

And again.

It ends in a single quiet moment.

Waking up too early one day and pressing my ear against Grace’s chest, I can’t feel his heartbeat.