“God, I hope we never have to do that again,” Aspen laughs, the kind of laugh that sputters out of a shaky breath, and Abriel has stopped counting how many times he’s said that. He shouldn’t have started in the first place. It had been a rough take off, if he remembered correctly, and Aspen stretches in his seat like a cat in a sunny spot. As he pilots the ship, connecting the shuttle to the station, Abriel taps a message out to headquarters. It’s illegible to him; it’s something he memorised, simple information like Substance A reacted positively to Substance F, and the mechanics on Part Φ work smoothly. But he has to send it out on the dot. His telecommunicator buzzes with the response from Ms. St. Clair. Aspen sighs when he hears the sound, whispering “is she giving you grief?”

“Always,” he smiles at his fiancé, and with practised grace they both make their way onto the station. 

Space is always humming. It’s a buzz that Abriel finds comforting now: the oxygen whistling, the pressure of the manufactured gravity, Aspen’s titanium feet hitting the metal floor in uncertain steps, and his fingers fiddling with the scratched-up plastic toolbox.

“You’d think they’d tell us anything about this stupid thing, but no, it’s always, ‘it’s a rudimentary fix,’ or ‘that’s classified, Kohler,’” Aspen complains loudly, blue eyes narrowing at the floor. Abriel takes his hand quietly, pressing fingertips into his palm. Aspen looks up, continuing, “I just…I’m so done with being sent up here to do god knows what. Upkeep?”

“You’re making sure this machine has power.”

“Power to do what? What are we doing? I’m…I don’t know,” his hand grips harshly, before he apologises under his breath. Abriel grips back. 

“How about, instead of worrying about this dusty thing that hasn’t even been used, we think about dinner?” Abriel offers the advice easily, and Aspen shrugs.

“We can think about that when we get home; this shouldn’t take more than half-an-hour.”

“Anything that takes only half-an-hour shouldn’t be something you worry about, Aspen.”

He laughs at that one, and they finally reach the corner of the station that houses the machine. It spans the whole room, with wires hanging from the ceiling, weaving together. It’s just like any other machine, and yet Abriel can’t stop a tickle from running down his spine. There’s a little window, the small red sun peaking out from the far left providing the only lighting. Aspen takes out a flashlight from his box, handing it to Abriel automatically. 

He’s certainly a master. Abriel knows that, but every time he watches the way his fiancé knows exactly which wire to pull, which part goes where, even with no information about the machine itself, he feels his face warm. Aspen can’t possibly know what it does, and yet after twenty minutes, he rolls his shoulder and high-fives Abriel. 

“Easy!”

The machine’s two indicators light up in blue and red, and Abriel feels his communicator buzz on his wrist.

Substance G and O reacted negatively to Substance AFM. There were casualties.

Abriel rolls his eyes, and throws the switch on the machine. 

“God, I hope we never have to do that again,” Aspen laughs. Abriel relays the last message through his telecommunicator, with Ms. St. Clair replying with a rudimentary thanks. He gazes at his fiancé, taking in the way the moles dotting his face contract as he stretches in his seat, twisting with relief. They always reminded him of constellations, and Aspen catches his stare. He smiles, that crooked grin that’s intimidating to the new recruits, and whispers, “you can look at me like that when we’re done, okay?”

Abriel smiles back, and they head into that hallway that’s become his world.

“Do you remember your first impression of Ms. St. Clair?” Abriel decides to start a conversation. Usually he lets Aspen talk, lets him air out his nerves, because those times are the ones where the machine gets fixed the fastest. But he’s gotten bored these past few hundreds of hours. Or however long it's been. Aspen considers the question, and shrugs. 

“Young. Bitchy. She’s good at her job, though. I can always respect that,” he says, tapping his prosthetic foot against the metal ground. Abriel focuses on the rhythmic thuds; he watches the way Aspen’s skeletal tattoos peak out through the neck of his uniform. 

Abriel’s memory has started getting fuzzy. Ms. St. Clair is becoming nothing more than the person who texts him instructions, and the one who he parrots those instructions back to at the beginning of the loop. He hates it. He only remembers one conversation with her clearly.

“You always report directly to her, right? What did you think of her?” Aspen asks, and Abriel tries to think about something that happened so long ago for him. 

“She’s…she’s something. I don’t know why she trusts me so much.”

He thinks that “trust” is the wrong word, but he doesn’t know what else to call it.

“Vasquez, you are the only one who can complete this mission,” she ends her powerpoint with a click of a button, and Abriel’s still reeling from the first slide. 

“So…there’ll be a supernova? And we have a time machine,” he asks. He’s not really asking. It’s just incredulous, and he’s hoping that when he says it, she’ll start laughing. Her eyes sharpen instead, blue piercing, rooting him to his chair. She reminds him of Aspen, in that purely physical way, blonde and blue-eyed, scary. Aspen never made him afraid, though, not like her.

“It’s currently without power, and we have only days until the advent. You are the one who will flip the switch. Only you will remember the loop occurs. You won’t physically age, and you won’t need to eat or sleep. But you will remember. We will relay progress to you after about an hour, and, after you reset the loop, you will relay it back to us. We can make breakthroughs, and we have a theory as to how to counteract the sun’s life cycle.”

Abriel doesn’t have anything to say about any of that. He’s not a science guy, at least in that way. He just performs medical checkups. He doesn’t have an option, either, so what’s there to say? But there’s another point: his fiancé’s name coming up somewhere in that dense presentation. 

“What does Aspen have to do with any of this?”

“You cannot fix the machine, can you?” She also isn’t asking. Her gaze flicks back to the powerpoint, and she turns it back a slide, continuing, “that’s why Kohler will be with you. He can turn the machine on. You must guarantee that he fixes the machine within an hour, or else.”

“And you think you can find a solution?” 

“Vasquez,” she smiles, and nobody likes seeing her smile, “we have all the time in the world. Think of what’s at stake, and think of what you’ll be rewarded.”

He thinks of the house he could get for Aspen. A house they would own. A place they could call home, where his wheelchair won’t bump into door frames and too-small corridors. They won’t have to work anymore, at least, they won’t have to work here. He could see Aspen painting again, painting more, and Ms. St. Clair promised that any children they have will be fully financially supported. They all will. And they’d save the world, which probably should’ve been his first thought, but it wasn’t. 

“You must realise that we can send Kohler alone. He’s the only one who needs to be up there. He could turn on the machine. Your medical background has nothing to do with this mission.”

He knows they know his history. At least, Ms. St. Clair knows his history. The scars that line his thighs, row by row. The willingness he has to give up himself, especially for someone so much brighter and vivid. This is someone who’s worth the weight of the world to him.  

He nods. And she smiles again. 

He ends up resetting while Aspen is mid-sentence this loop, which he always hates. They were talking about…it was that anecdote about him throwing one of his prosthetic legs at a classmate in middle school. Abriel knows that talking about anti-gravity will get him to tell that one again, so when they make their way into the space station he comments about how much he hates that they can’t turn off the artificial gravity.

“Y’know, that’s why I wanted to become an astronaut in the first place,” Aspen responds, which isn’t exactly what Abriel was expecting, but he loves hearing any story. 

“I think I know that one; you liked feeling weightless, right?”

“I guess. I liked that I could move so freely,” Aspen picks at the socks layered over his compression suit, “I love my legs, but, man, did it suck sometimes when I first got them…well, actually, most of the time now, too. That’s not their fault, though. For the first time I didn’t have to think about it.”

Abriel stares at the way his fingers roll the top of the socks, and he smiles at the way Aspen refers to his legs as “they.”  And he realises somewhere in the back of his mind that he hasn’t eaten anything in…he’s not allowing himself to count. If he counts, he’ll lose his mind so much faster. 

“What should we have for dinner?” He unwittingly interrupts, and Aspen sputters out a laugh. He stops in his tracks, clutching his stomach, and Abriel can’t help laughing, too. Aspen looks up, smiling and sunny.

Abirel feels something slip down his face, and before he can even recognise he’s crying Aspen takes his cheeks into his hands. His brows are knit, and Abriel can hear him talking but he can’t…he can’t hear what he’s saying, and that’s when his spine quivers from the weight of it all. 

They end up rushing to turn on the machine, because Aspen wants to leave early. 

“I’ll make you something real nice, and we’ll go out for ice cream, and we won’t have to deal with the government’s bullshit for at least a week!” 

Abriel’s telecommunicator buzzes. 

Positive reaction between Substance UO and Substance PW, Part Ξ is functioning flawlessly.

Aspen puts his hand over Abriel’s wrist. 

“We won’t have to deal with them for a while,” he kisses Abriel’s brow, and Abriel smiles, turns and pushes the switch to On. 

“I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve first met,” Abriel starts the conversation, which is becoming his favourite thing in the whole world. Aspen shrugs. 

“I mean, it’s been a couple of years, I guess.” It’s a seemingly timid answer, but Abriel knows that Aspen is the real counter in this relationship. He’s the one who reminds him of anniversaries, even celebrating half-years with cake and confetti. 

“How could I forget the guy who stomped on the foot of his commander, then sprinted into the seat next to me. I was afraid you’d hurt me,” he’s smiling as he teases, and Aspen glances away. They were on the same mission, but they’d never been introduced properly, because the government’s space program was an organisational nightmare that didn’t know how to communicate to do anything. After all, if they’d come up with an actual plan, they wouldn’t have to sacrifice so much of Abriel’s sanity. 

“I-I would never hurt you! That guy…ugh I don’t even want to think about him. But…” Aspen pauses, uncharacteristically, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but I think you took my breath away when I first saw you.”

He hadn’t told him that, but Abriel had access to all of their suits' medical metrics. He had seen Aspen’s heart rate spike, but he had assumed it had been from almost breaking his boss’s foot. 

“How did they not fire you?”

“Nice pivot, darling. I was too good at my job. Better than the guy barking orders, anyway,” Aspen smirks, and Abriel is faced with the machine again. 

Abriel doesn’t like looking at the machine. Its wires start shifting, and the murmur it emits when Aspen powers it up always crashes down on his shoulders. It’s like it’s breathing, exhaling and inhaling, and Abriel doesn’t like the knowledge that the only thing that’s really in this loop with him is the machine. Aspen doesn’t know. But the machine does. He almost wishes he brought something for distraction, headphones, something. But he couldn’t. Ms. St. Clair wouldn’t allow it. He must be totally in the moment, in order to react to anything. He thinks she might be trying to support him, though. She tapped his shoulder before take-off, in some strange show of solidarity, maybe, and Aspen looked like he was going to kill her. He feels Aspen’s finger poke the tip of his nose, and so he returns his focus to his fiancé. Their arms are linked together, and Abriel feels his wrist buzz, and Aspen’s lips form a pout. 

Sometimes he just wants to let the world end. It definitely isn’t the first time he’s thought this. It’s always creeping in the back of his mind, wrapping itself around his being. He hates that he can’t stop thinking about it, but he’s gotten better. He no longer pierces himself in barely-lit bathrooms, like he used to on high school field trips. He stopped hiding box cutters in his pillowcase. He started to work towards something, anything at all. And he’s finally established something about himself that he loves, and it’s something that he never wants to let go of.

He loves Aspen the most, more than anyone else in the whole world. He hasn’t seen the tattoo across Aspen’s collarbone in god knows how long, but he will never forget that those crow’s wings are meant to be him. They’re so intertwined. And he’s finally admitting to himself that Aspen doesn’t deserve this. 

Coming close to project completion. Along with the longest string he’s seen. He repeats it aloud, and Aspen starts questioning him before Abriel reaches out for the switch.

“Can I tell you something?” Abriel knows the answer already, but he always likes to ask. Aspen nods. “I think I wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t met.”

Abriel honestly can’t recall if they’ve ever had this conversation, and Aspen just gazes up at him with focused intent. He stills, his attention completely on Abriel, and this intensity would make him crumble with anyone else. Aspen almost glares, not on purpose, of course, that’s just how he looks, but there is a hint of something. Frustration, perhaps. It’s closer to fear. Abriel can’t tell. 

“I love you,” he says, as a conclusion, or maybe in want of a conclusion. He doesn’t know why he brought it up, but the hallway is closing in on him and he thinks he wants to throw himself into the wall until his bones break, his skull splits open, and his brain matter sears as the sun consumes them all. But he won’t. Cause Aspen is here staring at him, and nothing in the world is worse than seeing his fiancé upset. 

“I love you, too,” Aspen whispers to the floor, and they walk forward. He knows how Abriel gets sometimes. 

“I want to eat Ben & Jerry’s when we get back.”

Aspen snorts.

He’s stopped being able to describe it. It creeps from every corner of the room, like an overgrown plant, and he can’t remember if this is at all what it used to look like. But it’s almost impossible to breathe, and the sun burns red at the corner of his retina, just out the window. Sometimes he spends these moments gazing out the window, letting Aspen hold his own flashlight, or just use the headlamp he brought. But he likes being helpful, and so he takes the flashlight handed to him. 

It never takes as long as getting there does. In minutes? It’s longer, but the hallway spans for so many miles, and his legs never tire but sometimes he wishes that he kept all the physical experiences. He would feel hunger again, in that physical way, and thirst and…and so much more that he’s lost. Is he even human anymore? What would make him inhuman? He thinks that the only reason he still recognises himself in the glimpses he sees in that tiny window is that Aspen looks at him with the same love. 

And he hears something he’s never heard before. Aspen stops his work, and springs up. 

“What the hell was that?” Aspen asks, and suddenly that small window erupts with brilliant light. 

Abriel crashes into Aspen, pulling his head into his shoulder, and he starts babbling endlessly. 

“I know that I put so much pressure on you. I keep telling you things, things like ‘I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.’ I’ve been treating you like…like an anchor, or an object, or a part of myself and…I’m so sorry. I know that I can’t put this on you, put my existence on you alone. I just…I just want you to know that I’ll always want to be in your life. Anything you want me to be. And if you want me to leave I will, and I’ll be happy to.”

Aspen pulls back, blonde hair reflecting all the bright lights from the window, kaleidoscopic, almost, blue eyes flecked with gold and red and warmth, and he glares up.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

And Abriel laughs, because the world is ending, or maybe it’s beginning anew, and he wonders if the rings they had to leave on Earth mean anything at all anymore. Aspen brings him back down, grabbing his face with his hands, cradling it like a glass angel, like something precious. 

“We are getting married, right? A-are you walking it back? Did I do something? I-I don’t mind? What…what’s happening?” Aspen’s rambling too, and though his words speed up his hands stay gentle. 

Abriel’s telecommunicator buzzes.

Mission Accomplished. Come back to HQ.

“Abriel what the fuck is happening?”

And the lights dim just slightly, and the sun blazes in golden hues.

“I want ice cream, and a nap, and hot chocolate, and a hug, and--”

Aspen pinches him.

“You’ll get all that! You’ll marry me, and if you won’t I’ll kill you. A-and we’ve got to find somewhere else to work, because this job is driving us both insane. We’ll figure something out!”