Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

"No! No no no. Don't touch that. Don't eat that. That's not good for you."

Sazahk bit his tongue to stifle his laughter when Garin's voice rang out through the cavern. He looked up from the readings scrolling over his glitching tablet screen to watch Garin chase after one of the long-snouted animals as it bounded away with a protein bar wrapper in its mouth.

Either the creatures he'd dubbed Fauna A had extremely poor threat detection, or they had extremely advanced threat detection and had correctly identified Sazahk and Garin as non-threatening. Within moments of them stepping into the cavern that clearly functioned as Fauna A's primary den, the animals had displayed textbook curious social behavior.

Even Garin, with his particularly low risk tolerance, hadn't been able to raise his gun at the first creature that pranced up to them, trilling and flashing pink. He'd just made an expression that looked like it hurt and let the animal sniff his pant leg. He'd drawn the line at Sazahk reaching down to touch it, but Sazahk had rolled right through said line, crouching and offering his hand for inspection to the animal's twitching, whiskered nose.

Fauna A wasn't dangerous. Anyone could see that. Even Garin.

But the Fauna A den wasn't the key feature of the cavern.

Right through the center of the vast space stabbed a massive metal rod the size of a small tower. Clearly ancient qesh in origin, it lodged in the ground as though shot into the planet like a long, thin bullet. Because, Sazahk suspected, that's exactly what had happened. The rod had likely been launched from an orbital rail gun, an early version of the ones the Qeshian military still kept on-hand in case they ever wanted to obliterate a planet again.

Sazahk had seen similar artifacts, and he was familiar enough with old technology, new technology, and history to be confident in his conclusions. But he had never come across anything quite like this. He doubted anyone ever had.

The rod still emitted frequencies inaudible to human or qeshian ears but detectable by some of Sazahk's instruments. And very detectable by the electronics struggling to function beside it. This rod, and the no-doubt countless others like it buried in this part of Qesha's flesh, was why this area was called the Dead Zone.

Even now, a millennium later, the rod still jammed any and all electronic communications anywhere near it. Sazahk suspected its power source to be a nuclear reactor deep inside the rod's core, but if he was right, not enough radiation seeped out to be picked up by his instruments to prove it.

But the consistent energy radiating from the rod did more than jam communications. Unforeseen by Sazahk's ancestors, who had hurled this splinter of metal into the dying jungle, it also supported life.

Wrapped around the rod and spilling out over every surface and burrowing into the dirt, grew the glowing mycelium. Sazahk had a battery of tests still to run to confirm his theory, but he hypothesized the mycelium harnessed the energy of the rod for biological purposes. The copious amount of mycelium in turn drew in Fauna A, creating a fully functional ecosystem with the rod as its foundation.

"Don't give me that look. You have plenty of food or you wouldn't be here." Garin stuffed the wrapper in his pocket and stalked back to the camp he'd set up. The small Fauna A who had gotten into his bag trailed along after him.

As soon as they'd stepped into the cavern, Sazahk had thrown himself into analyzing everything around him and excavating every detail and scrap of information he could. In addition to the mycelium, he'd found several more Insect growths. If they had churned the land as they burrowed through the ground, then that would have easily brought the mycelium closer to the surface soil. And if the mycelium reached the surface soil, then perhaps what it had done here, it could do there.

Sazahk's mind spun with the possibilities, but after hours of study, he rubbed his eyes and found them sore. As he sat back on his heels and watched Garin settle himself at his little camp again, his stomach rumbled.

He sighed and gathered his things.

"You done already?" Garin raised his eyebrows when Sazahk joined him at the base of the disruption rod.

"No, but breaks are vital to maintaining optimal functioning and the research here is too important to be done with anything less." Sazahk sat on the sleeping bag Garin had laid out and accepted the ration bar Garin handed him. "Your bag seems to have adjusted spacetime to fit as many ration bars as you carry. How many did you pack?"

"Enough for this mission to go twice as long as planned." Garin looked up from cleaning the pieces of his dissembled spare pistol. "But I probably shouldn't have told you that."

Sazahk snorted as he unwrapped his bar and didn't deny the implied accusation. "I'm sure you'll be pleased to know then that I currently believe we should return early."

"Early?" Garin shot him a look and dragged his bag away when a Fauna A pawed at it. "I thought I'd have to drag you back to the compound kicking and screaming."

Fear stabbed the back of Sazahk's neck at the image despite Garin's tone and he glared at him. "You wouldn't."

"No." Garin looked up sharply and froze with a cleaning rod stuffed down the barrel of his gun. "I really wouldn't, Sazahk. I'm sorry, that was a terrible joke. I'd never lay my hands on you like that."

Sazahk eyed him and sighed. "I know." He trusted Garin. As much as he trusted Zyk, Ha'ral, or Squad M. He hadn't expected to when they'd set off into the Dead Zone, and it was illogical after so little time together, but he did.

"Good." Garin returned to his gun and dabbed lubricant along the clean barrel. "I'd probably just make a lot of pointed and passive aggressive comments." He slotted the pieces of the pistol back together. "Why are you thinking we should head back early?"

"I came here with a clear directive." Sazahk handed Garin his multi-tool when he gestured for it. "Find a way to make the Dead Zone habitable for the Insects. I may have found that way, or at least a promising enough lead, that it should be shared with the politicians before they do anything drastic, and with Dom, so he can help bring the plan to fruition."

"You know how to save the Dead Zone?" Garin's mouth fell open, and he froze with his knife sharpener poised above his multi-tool's largest blade.

Sazahk raised a finger. "I may have found a promising lead. There's an enormous gap in meaning between that and knowing how to bring the Dead Zone's life-supporting capacity in line with the rest of Qesha's." He shook his head. "I believe a combination of the mycelium and the Insect's own infrastructure may be the key, but it's too early to discuss details."

"Fair enough." Garin smiled and the gooey ball in Sazahk's chest squished at the sight. He started sharpening the various blades on his clearly well-loved toolset. "I probably wouldn't understand it, anyway."

"I think you would understand a large percentage of it." Sazahk frowned as he finished the last of his bar. "As you informed me, you attended a university and received an above average education, and our time together has led me to conclude that you possess an above average intellect." Sazahk dug out the blood testing device and passed it to Garin. "I think you'd understand the major points of my solution, even if particular pieces of genetic engineering jargon were opaque to you."

Garin ducked his head as he accepted the device but sent Sazahk another one of those goo-inducing smiles from under his lashes. "That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Sazahk."

"I believe I informed you that you're physically attractive a few days ago," Sazahk pointed out, though he tried not to call to mind the image from that morning of Garin standing fully nude before him.

"Mm," Garin scrunched his nose. "I think you said I had all the requisite markers of health and hardiness."

"Yes, exactly." Like a symmetrical face and a full head of hair and a strong jaw and clear eyes and various other things that Sazahk had already mentally enumerated and which he didn't need to enumerate for himself again

Garin laughed and shook his head as he pricked himself and handed over his blood sample. "You're something special, Sazahk."

Sazahk felt pleased yellow spill down his temples. People had said such things to him before with varying levels of hostility and disdain, but Garin's voice didn't possess a trace of sarcasm. Sazahk suspected that he meant it in the most positive way possible. He took his own blood sample and set them both aside. If his suspicions were correct, then the pollutants that had been building in their systems since their first night in the Dead Zone would have plateaued the moment they entered the caves. He looked forward to testing that theory.

"For you to consider me intelligent is more flattering than for you to consider me handsome, anyway." Garin checked the sharpness of a blade against his thumb.

Sazahk finished his ration bar and zipped his wrapper in a bag so a Fauna A wouldn't get at it. "I consider you both."

Garin's thumb slipped and a bead of red appeared on the skin. "Shit."

"Are you okay?" Sazahk straightened and reached for Garin's hand, but Garin shook his head, a blush staining his cheeks and ears.

"Fine, I'm fine." He smeared the drop of blood away with his forefinger and an awkward chuckle. "Just, uh, you're laying it on a little thick today."

"I'm merely stating opinions backed by observable evidence, but I apologize if I've embarrassed you or made you uncomfortable." Sazahk bit his lip. Of course, he'd made Garin uncomfortable. "I should have monitored the verbalization of my opinions more closely, especially considering our recent, dubiously consensual sexual activities."

Garin's blush darkened to something vaguely concerning and Sazahk wondered at the surface temperature of the skin on the top of his ears. "It's, um, it's really fine, Sazahk."

Garin stashed his multi-tool and unpacked an unfamiliar contraption from his bag. He shifted his hips as he did, twisting them away from Sazahk, and Sazahk's eyes fell to his groin. He cocked his head at the tightness pulling the front of Garin's pants taut.

"Are you feeling any lingering or recurring sensations of arousal?" Sazahk sat up on his heels, suddenly concerned that Garin might have been suffering silently for hours.

"No," Garin shook his head, and plopped the box-like device down between them, hiding his hips. "Nope."

"Are you sure?" Sazahk peered around the device, but Garin shifted to keep himself obscured.

"I'm very sure, Sazahk, I'm fine."

"You'd tell me if you were having anything that might be a reaction to our surroundings, wouldn't you?" Sazahk studied Garin, his blush, his eyes pinned on the keypad he typed into, his hunched shoulders.

"I would, yes." Garin hit a button, and the machine whirred to life. "I promise."

Sazahk eyed him a moment longer, then nodded and sat back to untie his laces. "Alright, I believe you." He kicked his boots off and curled and flexed his toes, working the blood back into them. "What is that thing?"

"This is a portable atmospheric water generator." Garin tapped the top of the box fondly. It was about a foot tall, but had a footprint of only a few square inches. "It takes forty-eight hours to extract any useful amount of water and it shouldn't be moved while it's working, so I haven't taken it out yet. But I'm assuming you'll want to stay in this area for at least a couple of days."

"That's a safe assumption, yes." Sazahk shimmied his legs into the sleeping bag for warmth. The caves didn't have the same extreme temperature fluctuations as the surface. They just stayed cold.

"Perfect. I'll feel better with replenished water stores." Garin pressed a few more buttons, then puttered about with his bag, organizing and setting things to rights, and pushing a Fauna A away when it tried to stick its snout into his pocket. Finally, he settled on the ground with his back against the disruption rod and his tablet propped on his knees.

He stuck an earpiece in one ear, then the flickering light of a video lit up his face. Sazahk watched him smile at whatever he saw and familiar curiosity, along with something unfamiliar and bitter, piqued inside him.

What was he watching?

There were no broadcasts here, no news to keep abreast of. And besides, news never made anyone smile. Whatever Garin was watching, he'd downloaded it before their excursion, meaning he'd known he'd want it.

Sazahk pulled the blankets up around his torso and under his chin as the chill crept across his skin.

The light reflected on Garin's face changed color as Garin swiped the screen to another video. What sort of videos would Garin have downloaded onto his tablet to carry with him wherever he went? What made him smile like that? What eased the lines around his eyes and softened his lips?

Sazahk tightened the blanket around himself. He knew he wasn't the sort of company that people sought out, but he was still here in the flesh, which was more than could be said for whoever or whatever was on that screen Garin had his eyes glued to.

The word ‘flesh' shot an idea into Sazahk's brain like a bullet.

Pornography.

That was the obvious thing for a virile man to download onto his tablet before isolating himself from others and the internet for an extended period of time. Sazahk swallowed. The unfamiliar bitterness on his tongue coated his throat and he realized what it was.

Jealousy.

It burned down into Sazahk's stomach, even as he tried to douse it with reason. Garin was entitled to his fantasies and his types and his preferred sexual outlets and the idea that Sazahk could be an acceptable replacement or stopgap for him merely because he was physically present was ludicrous.

But what were Garin's fantasies and types and preferred sexual outlets? Extenuating circumstances aside, Sazahk had succeeded spectacularly in sexually pleasuring Garin the day before. If Garin desired sexual contact again, why not approach Sazahk?

Sazahk curled his knees to his chest, trapping the scraps of his warmth around himself, and scowled. He knew why Garin wouldn't approach him. Because there were differences between genital response, sexual desire, and pleasure. Desire and pleasure were complex concepts for sentient beings, and Sazahk manipulating Garin's body effectively didn't mean he appealed to the more cerebral aspects of Garin's sexuality.

Still, Sazahk wished he knew where he was lacking. Garin shifted with a little sigh and Sazahk couldn't take it anymore.

"Are you watching pornography?"

Garin whipped his head up so fast he slammed it against the metal disruptor rod. "Ow. Fuck." He clutched the back of his skull with a wince and a groan, then peeled his eyes open to stare at Sazahk. "What?"

"Are you watching pornography?" Sazahk nodded at Garin's tablet, his hands still wrapped in the blankets pulled up to his chin.

"No!" Garin turned the screen to Sazahk, showing him the silent video of two identical teenage boys in front of a two-tiered cake with flickering candles, laughing and shoving each other as other teenagers hollered. "I'm watching a recording of my little brothers' eighteenth birthday party."

"Oh." Sazahk stared as the boys blew out the candles, and a young woman with the same nose as Garin sliced the top tier.

"Why would you think I was watching pornography?" Garin removed his earpiece and turned the screen back to himself.

"It seemed the most likely genre of entertainment video that one would download before subjecting themselves to extreme isolation." Sazahk wondered what flavor the cake had been and if Garin had enjoyed it. Sazahk hadn't seen Garin in the video, but he assumed he'd been the one filming it.

Garin gave him an exasperated look. "Nostalgic family home video didn't occur to you?"

"No." Sazahk didn't have a single photograph or video of anyone in his family on his tablet, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn't look at it for leisure. He assumed Serihk had a video or two of him somewhere, but for official purposes or in case they came in handy, not to reminisce when he had a spare moment.

The frank answer seemed to pull Garin up short and his face fell. He scanned Sazahk from head to toe, and after a moment, he frowned. "You've got black on your cheeks. Are you cold?"

The black had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the multi-faceted envy still upsetting Sazahk's stomach. But Garin didn't need that clarification, so Sazahk nodded. "Yes. The natural habitat of the original qesh was a tropical climate, and we never evolved an efficient method for generating body heat."

Garin nodded sympathetically. "Would you like some of mine?"

Sazahk's eyebrows rose. Garin had been so reluctant to share a sleeping bag originally that the offer surprised him. But he supposed it shouldn't. He doubted Garin could resist an opportunity to smother someone with overbearing care. Sazahk hated to be smothered, but he thought of the wonderful heat of Garin's body beside him the past few mornings and nodded. "Yes, please."

"Alright." Garin's lips cocked into a half-smile and he pushed up from beside the disruptor rod. He walked over to Sazahk and slid into the blankets next to him, then tugged them over a little to lean back against a boulder. He lifted his arm, making a clear space against the side of his body. "Come here."

Sazahk hesitated, caught between a vague apprehension of being pinned down and the knowledge of how deliciously warm Garin's skin was.

"You don't h—" Garin started to drop his arm, when Sazahk made his decision and slid under it. With a small hum, Garin wrapped his arm around Sazahk's shoulder and tucked him against his side. "Better?"

"Yes." Sazahk pushed his hands against Garin's ribs and groaned as the cold seeped out of his fingertips. "Considering the original homo sapiens evolved in a near desert climate, it's impressive that you retain such an ability to generate heat. It must have been quite a hindrance for your ancestors, but I suppose that's why they dispensed with fur."

Garin chuckled and hauled him closer. "I suppose so. I don't think we stayed in the desert all that long, though. We got to all the continents, eventually."

"I wonder if your species' need to travel through dangerous and uninhabitable waters to traverse your planet is partially responsible for how quickly you developed space flight." Sazahk wormed his toes between Garin's calves.

"I wouldn't know." Garin opened his legs to make room for Sazahk's cold feet, then closed them again and enveloped Sazahk's freezing toes in warmth. "Jeez, tell me next time before you get so cold."

"I was distracted by wondering what you were watching."

"You mean jumping to conclusions?"

"I didn't jump to a conclusion." Sazahk settled against Garin's side, content with his current temperature. With his cheek resting on Garin's firm pectoral muscle, he couldn't see the human's face, but he heard his steady heartbeat. "I formed a hypothesis and tested it by asking you a question."

"Mhm." Garin stroked his thumb up and down Sazahk's deltoid, quiet for a moment. "You said pornography was the most likely thing someone would download before this mission, right?"

"Yes." Sazahk tilted his head when Garin's heart rate increased.

"So, did…you download any pornography to bring with you?"

"No." Sazahk dropped his still-cold hands to Garin's waist and slipped them under the hem of his shirt to touch his burning bare skin. Garin inhaled sharply, but didn't stop him. "But unlike the majority of human, qesh, and klah'eel individuals, I have little interest in sex."

A brief spasm wracked Garin's frame. "You don't like sex?"

Sazahk shrugged, used to the shock that confession inevitably elicited. "I have occasionally enjoyed it, but I rarely crave it." He didn't mention that most of the craving he'd ever done, he'd done in only the past four days. "I don't have an aversion to it, merely a general lack of interest."

"Oh." Garin's thumb resumed its absent-minded stroking.

"Do you like sex?" Sazahk's hands had finally warmed, but he didn't pull them away from Garin's bare skin.

"Uh, yeah." Garin cleared his throat and Sazahk glanced up to see that his cheeks were indeed red, as he had guessed. "I do. Regularly enjoy it and regularly crave it."

"Do you have a preference in partners?" Sazahk tangled one finger in the coarse hair above Garin's waistband, intrigued by the juxtaposition of textures between his skin and body hair.

"Men. It's always been men for as long as I can remember, but—" Garin's breath caught and his hand squeezed Sazahk's shoulder, but he continued. "—but I'm pretty flexible within that category. There are a lot of different men out there and I think most of them are attractive in their own way."

"Considering your own physical appearance, I imagine your partners tend to possess above average physical traits." Sazahk ran his fingers over the grooves of Garin's abdominal muscles, and they tensed and fluttered under his touch. Did Garin prefer a firm technique or a gentle one with these partners? "With few exceptions, individuals tend to self-sort into bands of attractiveness and couple off exclusively with other individuals within that band."

"I didn't exactly keep score. I never rated my partners on a scale of one to ten. Could you not do that, please?" Garin caught Sazahk's wandering hands with his free one and tugged them out from under his shirt.

"I'm sorry." Sazahk quickly pulled back from Garin's side and wrapped his hands in the blanket.

"No, you're fine, it's just a little…" Garin huffed a laugh and shook his head, but kept his arm draped over Sazahk's shoulders. "Stimulating. As we just established, I like sex, so when you touch me like that, my body gets the wrong idea."

Or the right idea. Sazahk's general lack of interest in sex had stopped applying to Garin sometime around when he'd shielded Sazahk from scalding water with his own body, then been too shy to undress in front of him for no clear reason. His feelings had morphed into an uncomfortably powerful, active desire when Garin, overwhelmed and frightened, had entrusted himself into Sazahk's hands and found comfort in them.

"I'm sorry," Garin grimaced and Sazahk shook his head.

"No, you have every right to enforce boundaries around your own body. I should have been more mindful of the effects my actions might have on you." Because Sazahk's actions affected him. Sazahk shoved that too hopeful thought away. Of course they did. They precipitated a very normal sexual response from a person who felt regular and general sexual urges, rather than the very specific and contextualized sort Sazahk did. "Could we watch more of your movies?"

Garin's eyebrows rose. "My home movies? Like, with my brothers and sister?"

"Yes." Sazahk couldn't indulge his curiosity about what Garin's skin tasted like in the hollow of his throat or whether he preferred teeth or a tongue applied to his inner thighs, but he could at least find out more about this family Garin cherished enough to carry around with him in a way other than emotional baggage.

A smile spread over Garin's lips. "Okay." He popped his earpiece back into his own ear, then held the other up to Sazahk's. "May I?"

Sazahk nodded and Garin slipped it in, his fingertip caressing down the shell of Sazahk's ear and making him shiver.

"This is from a few years ago." Garin pulled Sazahk in close to his side again and set the tablet on their laps, rewinding the video to the beginning. "Their eighteenth birthday."

"Eighteen is a significant milestone age in modern Human culture." Sazahk leaned into Garin's side and watched the two boys, each with Garin's eyes, make faces at the camera. They chattered amongst themselves, and their accents matched Garin's, too.

"It is, yeah." Garin smiled down at the screen and the proud, but wistful look in his green eyes distracted Sazahk from the scene of the boys striding across the large living room to a door.

"Is that why you chose this video to save to your tablet?"

"Oh, I have a lot more than just this video." Garin's eyes flashed to his with a chuckle before looking down at the screen again where the boys opened the door and revealed a gaggle of girls their same age. "I was just rewatching this one because it's their birthday today."

"Today?" Sazahk straightened up.

"Yeah." Garin grinned. "They're twenty-two today."

Sazahk didn't relate to Garin's clear attachment to his family, but his heart dropped. "I'm sorry."

Garin looked away from the screen to frown at him. "Why?"

"Because you're missing it." Sazahk watched the boys toss drinks from the fridge to each of their friends.

"Oh." Garin shrugged. "Don't worry about that. I missed this one, too."

"You're not recording it?"

"Nope, this is Beaty, my sister. And whoever else she passes the tablet, too." Garin chuckled as a girl opened a can and unleashed a geyser of carbonated sugar water onto herself. "Could have seen that one coming."

"What are your brother's names?" Sazahk watched one boy throw more sodas at his friends as though he hadn't seen the explosion, and the other carefully arrange bowls of chips.

"This little chaos monster is Ethan." Garin pointed at the soda-throwing boy. "You remind me of him sometimes."

"I am not chaotic." Sazahk looked away from the screen long enough to send Garin a pout.

"Mmm," Garin hummed dubiously, then chuckled. "Really though, I meant that he's brilliant and asks the damnedest questions. Always has."

Sazahk's chest warmed at that and he ducked his head. "Curiosity is an underappreciated trait."

"Not in my family." Garin pulled Sazahk a little closer. "Mom and Dad were both engineers. Ethan got most of the brilliance, and Lucas and I got the organization." Garin pointed at the chip-arranging boy. "Lucas is that one, if you couldn't guess."

"And what did Beaty get?" Sazahk smiled when Lucas frowned at his twin with the exact same expression Garin sometimes frowned at him with. "She's your sister, right?"

"That's right." Garin dropped into a sadder register. "She got all the heart and all the grit. And the short end of all the sticks. When I left, the whole household fell on her."

Sazahk watched the merriment on the screen with disjointed melancholy. "Why didn't you attend the party? You clearly care a great deal for them and they you if they bothered to record the whole thing for you."

"I haven't been to a family party since my own high school graduation." Garin shook his head. "Never had the time. Someone's gotta pay for it all, you know."

Sazahk looked harder at the interior in the video. It had a spacious parlor and large floor-to-ceiling windows framing Earthen urban architecture. "You've implied that you grew up with modest to minimal means, but this home appears to be above standard Human living conditions."

"It is." Garin nodded, and his lips quirked up in a half-smile as someone carried the two-tiered cake Sazahk had seen earlier and placed it on the dining room table. "I bought it for them. I've only set foot in it a couple times myself, but it was never for me, anyway."

Sazahk didn't care about the cake anymore. He stared at Garin's profile, the bits and pieces he'd gathered about the man fitting into a complete picture. "That's why you joined the military, even though you don't like violence, and why you work for Dominic now. To support your family."

Garin glanced back at Sazahk. "That's why most people work, isn't it? But yeah. The army gave me a scholarship to their best academy. Paid for the whole thing. And the hazard pay for the Vanguard unit was so good, it only took me a few years to save up for this place." He pointed at the home in the video with his chin.

A home he never got to live in with people he never got to see. Sazahk slowly rested his cheek on Garin's shoulder as the boys shoveled cake into their mouths.

Garin ran his hand up and down Sazahk's arm, then caught the edge of his braid and toyed with it between his fingers. "What about you? You go back for family parties?"

"My family doesn't throw parties." Sazahk shook his head, but not enough to dislodge Garin from his hair. "An occasional gala for a political candidate, but I wouldn't want to go to that even if I was invited."

Garin hummed. "Sounds like another thing you and Dom have in common. Does your family not celebrate birthdays?"

"My parents do not see my birth as something to be celebrated."

"What?" Garin leaned back enough to get a good look at Sazahk's face. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that my birth and existence are a source of deep shame to my parents." Sazahk had lived with that shame his whole life and yet the horrified look in Garin's eyes still made gray skate across the backs of his hands. "Qeshian society has long valued small families in order to maintain a population below the maximum capacity of the planets within our system. For my father and mother, prominent political figures, to have a second child when so many others abstain is a mark of decadence, selfishness, and a casual disregard for the collective."

Garin gaped at him, his face pale below his tan and freckles, and his fingers frozen on Sazahk's braid.

"You cannot wage war either against or allied with a people you have limited to no understanding of." Sazahk shrugged off the dead weight of Garin's arm. "So surely these basics of the modern Qeshian culture would have been covered in the curriculum of your higher education."

"They were, but—" Garin came to life and reached for Sazahk's arm as he pulled away, then caught himself and left his hand hanging awkwardly in the air between them. "There's a difference between knowing that a culture encourages only children and hearing someone say that their parents don't celebrate their birth."

"And where are your parents, then?" Sazahk jerked his chin at the tablet, defensiveness flaring up in the face of Garin's pity.

"Dad died in a lab accident when I was eleven." Garin dropped his hand into his lap and glanced at the screen and Sazahk's defensiveness whipped back and wrapped around Sazahk's throat. "And Mom doesn't do parties. She hasn't really done much of anything since Dad passed. She was probably in her room for all this." Garin again reached for Sazahk, as though he couldn't help himself, but let his hand fall short, landing on the ground a few inches from Sazahk's knee. "But she's still happy that she had the boys, and that they exist, and that they're growing older."

Sazahk eyed Garin's hand on the blanket beside him, then picked it up and turned it over to examine the callouses on his palm. "It's not that my parents wish I were dead, or that I had never been born. We have the technology to terminate a pregnancy, and while there is some stigma attached to the act, it is far less than the stigma attached to excess progeny. For whatever reason, they chose to bring me into existence. And I think they have regretted it ever since."

Garin's hand twitched as Sazahk dragged the tip of his pointer finger along the tough skin at the bases of his fingers. "I'm sorry."

Sazahk shrugged but didn't look up. "I could have done more to endear myself to them and to validate my existence in the eyes of their peers and constituents. And for a time, I did. Very successfully. But—" but then he'd made it so, so much worse. "But that time has passed."

"Sazahk."

Sazahk's breath caught at the sound of his own name murmured in Garin's soft, fervent voice. Garin's hand appeared in Sazahk's periphery and slowly, giving ample opening for Sazahk to push it away, reached toward him and hooked a finger under Sazahk's chin.

Garin lifted Sazahk's gaze to meet his. "I don't think you're excess."

Sazahk licked his lips. "You are the eldest Human child of four. You have very different sensibilities about what constitutes an acceptable family size."

"I think this galaxy would be worse off without you in it, no matter what the rules of responsible family planning say." Garin's eyes flickered to Sazahk's lips before staring into his eyes again. "And I, personally, am glad that you were born."

An alarming heat built in Sazahk's eyes. He tried to blink it away, but it spread down the back of his throat into a space behind his heart. Garin's words touched a hurt in Sazahk's psyche, and like pouring alcohol on an open wound, pain lanced through him and he wanted to cry out even though he knew the wound was being healed instead of exacerbated.

"Will you come here again?" Garin's hand in Sazahk's lap caught Sazahk's fingers and gave him an inviting tug.

Sazahk ducked his head and slid into his spot against Garin's side, tucked under his arm. He wrapped his arms around Garin's midsection and buried his nose in the hollow where Garin's shoulder met his chest, hiding his face.

"There you go." Garin closed his arms around Sazahk, not holding him down or penning him in, just blocking out the rest of the world.

Sazahk inhaled deeply and cringed when his breath shook. He knew there were other people who were glad he'd been born. He had done a lot of good for a lot of people in his life. There were plenty of individuals who, were they to balance the cons of his existence in their lived experience and the pros of his existence, would find the pros more substantial. And yet…

"I'm glad you were born, and I'm glad I met you." Garin rubbed his cheek against the top of Sazahk's head.

And yet to hear the words snapped something inside of him like a bone being rebroken so it could be reset.

It hurt .

For several long minutes, they sat in their blankets, surrounded by glowing mushrooms, while Fauna A rustled about their little camp. Garin kept stroking him, with his cheek against the crown of his head, with his thumbs, or with his hand over his hair. In their ears still echoed the laughter and bright conversation of a party neither of them had attended.

Eventually, Sazahk turned his face out of Garin's shirt to keep watching the screen.

Not every Human sibling relationship was positive and loving. Dominic and Oliver Turner were arguably greater sources of each other's trauma than their father, though Sazahk still suspected it all wrapped around to him and their mother once all was said and done.

But the Garin siblings looked like a billboard advertisement for family harmony. They smiled at each other, helped each other, teased each other, defended each other. Their postures were loose and relaxed, their movements easy and casual. No one scowled at anyone in anything other than playfulness.

Ethan crammed his face into the camera's view with a half-eaten slice of cake. "Thanks for the cake, Kevin!"

Lucas yelled from out of sight. "Yeah, thanks Kev! And thanks for the tablets, too!"

Sazahk cocked his head at the sudden realization that should have been obvious but felt surprising. "Does your family call you Kevin?"

"Yeah." Garin nodded, his cheek still resting on Sazahk's head. "They're the only ones that do, though. I don't even think of myself as Kevin anymore."

"What do you think of yourself as?"

"Garin."

"Why?"

Garin shrugged, jostling Sazahk in his arms as he did. "That's what they called me at the academy. It's what my Vanguard buddies called me. It's what my civilian colleagues call me."

"You didn't want your friends to call you Kevin?" Or your lovers? But Sazahk kept that question to himself.

"No." Garin played with Sazahk's braid again. "I guess when I left home, and I became Garin, I kind of…became my own person again. Kevin has so many responsibilities and so much pressure and my family needs so much from him all the time. Garin…has a little more space for himself, if that makes sense."

"It does." Sazahk nodded. "Families can be smothering. Even the ones that love you."