Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     The Earth had fallen on hard times, and as a result her children fell too. It was almost too late that the age of gasoline finally came to pass and left its victims hard pressed to clean up the mess. With their eyes fixed to the ground working to cover up their carbon footprints they turned away from the stars, a matter sparking much protest from a small minority of Spaceheads--a large fraction of which were astronauts, engineers, and the like. And it wasn't until Dave Bowman had the letter in his hand and was told when to expect his last paycheck that the full effects sank in and he began to wish he had protested a little louder.

---

     It is a job; jobs make money. He thinks that maybe he needs a new mantra as the man on the other end of the line continues his display of outrage and he is left to his only weapons of “I’m sorry, sir”, “I know, sir”, and “There’s nothing I can do, sir”. The man eventually gives up, and Dave pulls the headset out of his ears.

     “I could hear that one.”

     Dave looks up to meet Frank’s eyes, peering over the walls of his cubicle. He hopes he doesn’t look up too quickly.

     “Yeah,” Dave laughs a little. “He was really pissed at me. Sorry you broke your shit, there’s nothing I can really do about that.” He stands up, shifting a little on his feet. Dave wishes that Frank would not stare at him so intently as he went about his business. He’s acutely aware of his own body, the way his shirt hangs loose around him, his lanky proportions. He fixes his shirt, tucking it into his pants a little tighter so maybe he looks like he fills it out better.

     “Um. Do you want to get a drink or something,” he asks. Really, he doesn’t need to. They always did; Dave could laugh at the clicheity of it. Water cooler buddies at work.

     “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

     The walk to the cooler is quiet as Dave loses himself in thought. Frank would sometimes snap him out of it, but on days like today he thought it better to let Dave wander. He thinks back to his days at the space agency more than anything, of the strange coincidence of the both of them ending up in Urbana together. He’d seen Frank once or twice maybe, back at the Cape. But it had startled him when on his first day Poole had run up to him and taken his hand, shaking his whole arm in his excitement, somehow remembering his face from the hallways. As it turned out, they both took calls. It had been their foreign language classes that saved them. Frank spoke Spanish, Dave spoke French. It makes Dave think of middle school, when the classes had picked and been split between the two. Each argued that their language would be more useful. Maybe there’s some humor in that. That their PhDs are useless, and now speaking any second language is infinitely more valuable.

     “So.” Dave starts at the sound, almost spilling his water. He doesn’t remember getting it. “Any plans tonight?”

     “Oh. I dunno,” Dave tries to sound nonchalant. “Just. Recuperate at home I guess.”

     Frank laughs. “Yeah….You need more than a night in to get over this bullshit though, I swear.”

     Dave hides his cheeks by taking another sip of his water. His cup is empty.

     “Anyway,” Frank starts up again, “I’m free the rest of the week and the weekend so. Maybe we should do something?”

     “Yeah! Yeah totally. Totally. Uh. What were you thinking?”  

     “Dunno.” He squishes his paper cup in his hand. “We could get drinks on Friday again if you wanted.”

     Dave just nods while his nerves calm down again before speaking. “That’d be cool.” Frank smiles at him, discards his cup.

---

     He wakes up the next day to the blare of his alarm, and as with every time he briefly wonders to himself why he didn’t go to bed earlier and wake up before it, or change the sound to something a little easier, that didn’t grate on his ears every goddamn morning. But as he presses against various places against the alarm’s surface before finding the off switch he remembers that any sound waking him up would condition him into hate all over again.

     He lays for several more minutes before getting up.

     Breakfast. His eyes scan the pantry for something. Cap n’ Crunch is low effort, he thinks, but at the same time his stomach swirls. How many times in the past two months has he had it for breakfast? He’s sick of Cap n’ Crunch. There is a bag of bagels shoved in the back, and Dave tosses it in the toaster to mask the staleness, eats it plain.

     Hygiene. He brushes his teeth, leaning against the counter with all his weight, washes his face. Dress. A pale blue shirt, navy tie, black slacks and shoes. It’s been a long time since he last bothered to, but thinking on yesterday he decides to tuck his shirt in. He looks at himself in the mirror, smooths his hair, tries to tuck away some stubborn strands. Standing up straight, the word “horrendous” comes to mind, lacklusterly. Maybe that’s an apt description. None of his clothes really fit right, he’s lost enough weight to be kind of lanky. His arms hang unsure beside him. He can’t remember the last time he was happy with the way he looked. Not that it was something that particularly phased him anymore, but when he thinks about what Frank must think of the way looks his stomach sinks. “Horrendous” stings a little more now.

     When he enters his building, he notices a different atmosphere. There’s more chatter, a buzz usually absent from the typical dreary morning vibe. It makes his shoulders tense. He thought he hated the usual feeling of coming into work, but someone he finds himself considering that this might be even wor-

     “--pretty cool, huh?”

     “Jesus!” he cries out, jumping away from the sudden touch on his waist that snaps him out of his daze. Frank holds his hands up in surrender, laughing.

     “Sorry! Sorry, you just looked so spaced out I had to.”

     “Jesus Christ ,” he says again. “Shit, Frank you scared the. Fucking. Shit out of me.” He waves his hands in the space between them in some strange attempt to express his frustration. Frank laughs again, a little quieter.

     “I know, I’m sorry. You alright?”

     “ Yes ,” he huffs a little more aggressively than he means it, “yes,” a little softer. “Just. Spacing out I guess.”

     “I thought we were both ex-space cadets. Guess I’m the only one.”

     Dave smiles a little. “Guess so...What were you saying?”

     “Hm?”

     “You said something was cool.”
   

     “Oh!” His whole body moves with the expression, the excitement of his remembering as his face lights up. Dave studies the carpet pattern. “The lottery is today!”

     “The lottery?”

     “You remember that project the company announced a few years ago? Before we worked here? The 9000s. It was this whole thing.” He doesn’t wait for a response. “Well, it’s kind of ready to go. So guess who gets to test a few units before they go commercial?” He wiggles his eyebrows a little.

     Dave musters up the most incredulous look he can on his face. “You’re joking, right?”

     “I’m dead serious, baby. Employee lottery.”

     Dave rolls his eyes. “Right. Because they don’t have controlled testing environments for that I’m sure.”

     “Aww! Don’t be like that!”

     “You being this excited proves to me this is a big publicity scam to sell units.”

     Frank shrugs. “Maybe it is, Mr. Cynical. You’re still coming to put your name in with me.”

     “I suppose I will be.”

     “...We passed your cubicle, by the way.”

     Dave snaps back to reality for the second time that morning, glancing over his shoulder and seeing his a few back. “Oh.”

     “You’re welcome.” Frank pats him once on the back before continuing on his way ( below mid-back , he notes. Involuntarily). “I’ll come get you around lunch,” he calls over his shoulder.

     “Yeah! Yeah. Sure thing!” Dave yells in response, waving even though Frank’s back is turned.

     If there is one thing at this moment that he does not like about Frank, it is that he is so goddamn handsy.

---

     He makes good on his promise, announcing his presence at Dave’s cubicle by drumming on the outer wall, chanting “David, David, David, David, hang up, Davey, David, Davis, Davíd” with increasing urgency. Dave can’t help the small smile that crosses his face as he apologizes to the woman on the other end of the line and tells her he’s going to have to transfer her. There is a gearing-up for another barrage of obscenities that gets cut off by him punching the command into his keypad. He swivels around in his chair to face Frank, whose drumming does not cease.

     “Hi.”

     “He-e-e-ello, Dave,” he responds to the beat.

     Dave hmphs in lieu of laughter. “Are we going or what?” Frank nods, increasing his tempo to a rapid patter before ending it with a decisive thump.

     “We’re off like a prom dress.”

     “Ugh.” Dave rolls his eyes as he pushes himself up from his seat. “Please do not say that again.”

     “Off to the races, then,” he concedes, offering Dave a smile. Dave hopes the rush of blood to his face isn’t as obvious as it feels.

     They spend the walk to the break room where the entry for their department is half-heartedly bickering about the legitimacy of the process. Frank maintains that, for once in his life, he has to side with the company. Dave shakes his head, examines the several potted plants they pass along the way to avoid making eye contact. Miraculously, they beat the crowd and end up loitering outside the glass walls of the room, watching others enter their names on slips of paper dropped into a 99 cent fishbowl some unpaid intern probably painted black. Frank watches passively, Dave with distaste. Both in silence.

     “You know,” Frank starts. “The winners can keep them, if they want to.”

     “Jesus Christ this just keeps getting worse.”

     Frank laughs like he’s gotten the reaction he wanted. “You don’t think that’s even a little bit cool?”

     “Do I think it’s cool that our company has resorted to dumping its products on captive workers just to profit off the maintenance costs? No, Frank, I don’t.”

     Frank’s grin doesn’t falter for a second. “Then you’re really gonna be pissed about what I’m about to tell you.”

     Dave hesitates, tries to predict what Frank is going to say. “...What did you do?”

     “I put your name in, not mine.”

     Dave gawks at first, and then can’t help the incredulous laughter that surfaces as he shoves Frank in the arm. “You’re the fucking worst! You jerk!” Frank just laughs.

     “You’re gonna have to apologize to me when you win!”

     “If I win you’re gonna apologize to me!” Dave pauses to collect himself. “I can’t believe you. You were defending it and you don’t even want one, so you go and inconvenience me.”

     “Oh, whatever!” Frank pushes Dave back. “Go back to work you ungrateful asshole, you’re robbing the company.”

     Dave’s hand hovers over the spot on his arm where Frank had touched. “Fine,” he tries to keep his voice level, “whatever. But you’re driving tonight now.”

     Frank throws his head back and groans. “Oh my Goooood. You’re cruel, Bowman.” He clasps his hands over his heart. Dave hmphs again as he turns to walk away.

     “Just call me before you pick me up so I can be ready and you’re not waiting for me.”

     “And he’s demanding too.”

     Dave doesn’t dignify the jab with a response.

---

     Dave is still anxiously fidgeting with his appearance in the bathroom mirror when his phone buzzes with a text from Frank giving him the five minute warning. His eyes fly back to the mirror as he brushes his hair back from his face for the third time. He’s put gel in his hair for the first time in months, but now he worries it’s too obvious that he’s trying to look nice. The charmingly messy look he had then tried to run to looks even more ridiculous, but it’s too late to wash the gel out now. He smooths it back into place like it was before. Maybe it’s charming that he’s trying hard or something. Or pathetic, he thinks. Very likely pathetic. There’s honking in the driveway and he makes one final pass at himself, adjusting his collar, lamenting the dark circles of late nights around his eyes. He’s a mess. The honking starts up again and he hurriedly makes his way downstairs. It’s raining lightly, and he loses his footing for a moment on the steps leading away from his door. Frank smiles and waves from the driver’s seat.

     “You ready for a wild night or what?”

     Dave closes his door, buckles himself in. “I’m ready to be assaulted by your music taste.”

     “Aww! You like Electric Light!”

     “I like... maybe three songs of theirs.” Dave huffs as he settles in. “The ones everyone likes.”

     Frank picks a song, raises the volume just enough that Dave has to raise his voice a little. “You like ‘Sweet Talkin’ Woman’!”

     Dave scoffs, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “No, I don’t. I never said that.”

     “Well, you should if you don’t. And I know you don’t not like it so that’s irrelevant anyway.”

     “I ‘don’t not like it’.”

     Frank grins. “You’re such a dick. Why am I hanging out with you when you insult my precious Electric Light Orchestra?”

     “Your subconscious knows I’m right.”

     “Okay, Freud, then why do you hang out with me if you hate them so much?”

     Dave shifts in his seat. “Because I am, in fact, a dick and I know this, so I punish myself through you.”

     “Admitting you’re a dick is the only thing you’ve been right about tonight.”

     They spend the rest of the ride in a friendly unfriendly back and forth. From the car, into the bar until they order their drinks after claiming one of the last available booths lining the darkened room. Their form of compromise; they could go to loud and crowded places for Frank, but would lurk on the edges of the bustle for Dave. When their drinks arrive, Frank plainly stares at the neon blue concoction in Dave’s hand, a regular beer in his own.

     “That...looks like a nightmare, Dave.”

     “It’s the only thing here that actually tastes good.”

     “I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a baby drink with nothing in it or if that’s something that’s going to get you drunk immediately.”

     “Everything gets me drunk immediately.”

     Frank laughs loudly. “That’s very true!”

     Dave rolls his eyes, smiling. “I’ll drink slow. And this’ll be it.”

     “Yeesh, is it that bad?”

     “This is the worst thing I could’ve possibly ordered, being a lightweight.”

     Frank laughs again, barely getting himself under control enough to stop Dave from taking a drink.
“Wait wait wait,” he gets out between fits, eventually calming himself. “Do a toast with me.”

     Dave knits his brows, smile growing with Frank’s on-brand absurdity. “Okay….A toast to what?”

     Frank raises his glass. “To luck.”

     Dave narrows his eyes, smiling still. “This is about the stupid lottery, isn’t it?”

     He waves his hand in a shooing motion and presses his beer closer to Dave insistently.  “Just! Do the fuckin’ toast, Dave!”

     A quick laugh escapes him before he can cover his mouth. “Fine! Fine.” He taps his glass against Frank’s. “To luck.”

     Frank looks pleased as he brings his drink back to himself, tipping it to his mouth. Dave does the same, taking a significantly smaller sip.

     He manages to pace himself enough so that he isn’t smashed by the end of the night, but he’s certainly a little buzzed. Just enough that he feels good, that he’s smiling a little more and Frank is still smiling back. They pile back into the car laughing, and Dave says nothing as Frank goes back to blasting ELO. Evil Woman comes on, and Dave even joins in during the chorus to Frank’s belting of the lyrics. He leans back in his seat, watching the glow of the streetlights as they approach before illuminating the whole car, Frank’s face, with a flash of orange. Everything is warm. The buzz, the lights, the moment. Especially that. Especially being here, in his car, singing his favorite songs, enjoying the closeness. Maybe he wouldn't mind the songs if Frank was always singing along with them. Frank is nothing but warmth, feeling good, and comfort. And despite the cold dampness of the night, the feeling follows him from the car to the house, to his bedroom and soft sheets, to his dreams. And as he sleeps he can see himself in Frank’s house after an alternate version of that night. Feeling good, and as Frank’s arms find their way around him he feels even better. Frank’s lips meet Dave’s own. Warm. He kisses Dave’s jaw, his neck. Warmer still. His hands find their way up Dave’s shirt…. Warmer still.

Chapter Text

     The rest of his weekend passes like a haze. Two days that blend into one endless stream of ill-defined events. No structure. No true meals, but he does find himself on the couch with a bag of chips in his lap and his phone in his hand, Frank’s contact opened. More than once. More than a few times. He daydreams about it a lot, what it would be like, what he would say. I had fun the other night. It was nice to be with you. What is he really saying? I miss you. You could take me home next time. How fucking embarrassing. But that’s really what he’s after isn’t it? That feeling from Friday night and more. Comfort in his arms because that’s one of the only places he can find it anymore. He tosses his phone aside.

     Monday is on him before he can even begin to feel relaxed. He’s worse off than last week as he shuffles through his routine. Breakfast. Hygiene. Dress. He downs a spoonful of peanut butter, hurriedly brushes his teeth, throws on his usual outfit and ties his tie with the tail too long. As always he stares himself down in the mirror. Nothing good ever comes of it. Maybe he just likes the safety of routine. There is an undeniable sort of comfort as self-pity and self-contempt sink over him with almost tangible weights like he can always count on them to do...And then there is anger, lacking that comfort as it is unwelcomed. Unreasonable. Undirected. Perhaps he has looked at himself for too long. He wishes he could undo the last five minutes if that is the case because he isn’t dulled to this. This one hurts, and his breaths turn ragged and he balls his fists and gets even angrier at himself for wanted to do something as cliche as punch a mirror. Angrier yet as he walks away because goddammit that would feel incredible to do. Everything he does just contributes. He slams the car door, drives too fast, cries too easily, and the sound of himself trying to get it under control is just as frustrating as anything else. He has to sit in his car in the parking lot for a few minutes and get himself under control. To stop crying and stop gasping for air because he can't breathe right anymore, to wait for the flush to leave his cheeks lest anyone witness the remnants of the outburst. It does leave, eventually, but his throat still threatens to constrict against his deep breaths and choke another sob out of him. But he's out of time, and as he sees Frank round the corner and approach the front door of the building he fumbles for the handle to his own door and nearly trips over himself trying to get out of his car. He tries to walk slow.

     “Hey!” Frank catches him out the corner of his eye and waves him over. “Get over here! I almost missed you!” Dave takes his cue to start jogging over, clutching his bag to his chest.  

     “Sorry,” he tries out his voice. It wavers still. “Sorry, I-”

     Frank pats him on the back, which shuts him up. “Hey, don’t worry about,” he says softer than usual, and without the expected laugh preceding it. Dave’s throat tightens. Does he still look like he’d been crying? Does his voice give him away? (And God how many times has he wished Frank would talk to him like that. Soft tones, overwhelming sincerity, trying to connect. But now it just feels like he pities the mess before him.)

     “Right. Yeah. Sorry.”

     Frank’s laugh returns, not at its usual fullness. “Still don’t need to apologize.” His voice trails off into a silence that follows them to the building. Frank has a way of sensing when Dave wants to be left alone. And he’s right again now, of course, but the gesture twists Dave’s stomach. The anger from before latches onto it, justifying its presence with Frank’s heavy silence. For Frank ignoring him, for Frank being nice to him because he doesn’t deserve it, at himself still for being mad at Frank who has never meant anything but well towards him. They can’t reach his cubicle soon enough.

     When they do Frank touches him again. Squeezes him on the shoulder and smiles a little.

     “I’ll catch you later, then?”

     Dave nods. “Sure.”

     Frank pats his shoulder and turns to leave; Dave ducks into his cubicle and leans against his desk. A myriad of conflicting emotions churn in his gut, each threatening to boil over. The way the anger and the...affection try to mix make Dave feel like he’s going to vomit. He’s angry at himself for feeling that way about Frank, at Frank for playing into it just enough that it could be innocent, but he’ll never know without asking. He’s almost certain if he looked at his shoulder there would be a handprint burned into the skin because he can still feel it. Maybe there’s something wrong with him. If Frank knew this is what he did to him he’d never talk to Dave again. Is this better than being without him altogether? Of course it is. Where would he be without at least his friendship? Sinking into his mattress at home, decaying. Wasting away to skin and bone. To less than even that. He can’t bear the thought of it, he can hardly handle himself for the work day without Frank, he never leaves his house on the weekends anymore, he can’t even handle being close to him because the thought of what they could be if things were different makes him want to-...

     There’s an envelope on his desk with his name written on it in large cursive lettering. His thoughts stop. There’s no reason for this to not be in his mailbox unless for some special occasion, to make very sure it got to him...He turns it over in his hands and rips the flap open. He skims the letter inside.

     “Frank!” he yells a little louder than he means, turning to look over his shoulder. Frank is stopped at the end of the hall. Dave flags him down aggressively, and when Frank walks at his normal pace he motions him faster.

     “What’s going on?” Dave shoves the letter toward him.

     “You owe me an apology is what’s going on.”

     A brief anxious expression crosses Frank’s face before he remembers the bickering of last week. Then a series of twitches of the corner of his mouth and eyebrows as he can’t decide on an emotion.

     “You’re. Are you for real right now?”

     Dave shakes the letter at him. “Look at it!”

     Frank takes the paper from Dave’s hands, and the moment his eyes fall upon the word “congratulations”  a smile finally breaks across his face. Dave’s nausea is replaced with butterflies.

     “Shut up!” Frank looks up at him and flounders for words. “I’m. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Are you serious?”

     Dave laughs at Frank’s excitement. It's incredibly endearing. “If they find out you cheated you’re going to be in so much trouble.”

     “That I cheated! I put your name in, genius, you’re the one who’s getting fired!”

     Dave rolls his eyes. “As long as you can keep your mouth shut I think we’re in the clear.”

     Frank just shakes his head incredulously. “That is unreal, Dave.” He considers the paper like it’s some sacred artifact. “Fucking unreal.”

     Dave laughs a little. “I guess I can’t go out after work, huh?”

     “No, I’m definitely coming over as soon as that thing’s in so don’t go anywhere. I need to see if it lives up to the hype.”

     Dave tries to remember the last time he really cleaned his house. “What, I don’t get enough of you here?”

     Frank rolls his eyes. “You can’t say that after we hang out regularly, doofus.”

     Dave can feel his face get a little redder.

     “ Anyway,” Frank lays the letter back down on Dave’s desk rather than tossing it like he might anything else, “Congratulations on that. Seriously. I wanna see it once it's installed.”

     Dave gives him a smug look. “Don't tell me you're jealous.”

     “I'm not!” Frank’s voice pitches up a little in defense. “I just wanna see what it's like, how it works a little, maybe. You know I'm still an engineer at heart.”

     Dave exaggerates his agreeance. “Uh-huh. I'm sure that's all it is and you're not regretting putting my name in instead of yours now that one of us has actually won.”

     Frank huffs out a sort of laugh, backing toward the opening in Dave’s cubicle. He lingers for a moment. “Uh. I'll see you when it's installed and all that, though, right?”

     Dave jumps to answer. “Yeah! Yes, of course, sorry. Feel free. Um. I'll text you I guess?”

     Frank nods once, relaxing and flashing Dave a smile. “Gotcha,” he takes a few more steps backwards before spinning around on his heel. “Later, alligator.”

     The butterflies get stronger, drowning out any other feeling.

---

     The high of winning fades quickly after that, and he remembers that he doesn’t really want a 9000 unit. It is undeniable that it’s a little exciting to win, and if it makes Frank happy then he supposes he can’t really be that apathetic. In any case, having something to look forward to makes the time pass a little quicker, and the usual ages and ages it feels like the work day takes is reduced to just a few ages. He clocks out with his normal level of enthusiasm.

     During his lunch break, he had read over the letter with greater care, and thusly was informed of a duty to visit the office building where the project was being headed to claim his prize. Why a simple phone call wouldn’t work, only God knew, but the wing is a little cool to see. Until now he had never had reason to explore out of his own little area of the building, and with the time difference between the construction dates there’s an enjoyable contrast. The entire complex has a half modern, half retrofuture feel to it. Everything has been built out rather than up, the ceilings are low and everything is warm, dark colors. Reds and browns more easy on the nerves than the putrid yellows and dingy greys of Dave’s workplace. The lighting in the lobby is dim--in a comfortable way. The lamps that light the space glow a soft yellow, and the furniture is all blocky and spaced in a way that keeps the room from feeling too small. He hands his ID to the secretary at the desk.

     “David Bowman from customer service?”

     He wrings his hands to keep himself from correcting the young man. “Yep,” he has to say, somewhat awkwardly as the man has his eyes fixed to the computer in front of him. As he types, Dave’s eyes wander to the back of the room. There is a set of what appears to be automatic doors. They’re tinted dark, but the room on the other side is still visible through the glass as it is flooded with natural light, entire walls made of glass. A plastic click grabs his attention again as the secretary slides his license back across the counter.

     “Alright, sir, our team can be there anytime after 6:00.”

     “Uh. Yeah, any time is fine. 6:00’s great.” He isn’t quite sure if he’s being asked a question or being given a heads up.

     For the first time, the man at the desk looks up. “You might meet Dr. Chandra, you know? You’re the only one from an in-town branch to win so you’re the first to claim. He might come down.”

     “Oh, uh. Cool, I-. I Hope he can make it.” The name faintly rings a bell when he thinks back to when the development was first launched. There’d been some hubbub for a few days until it faded back into obscurity. Just another one of many genius innovations being churned out of the company. The secretary turns back to his computer. Dave takes his cue to leave, but lingers for a moment outside the building. He’d never been much of a fan of architecture, but there is a poignancy about the building’s beauty. He stares for a long time, considering a number of things. The size of it, its becoming the front of the Urbana branch complex after its construction--the beginning of the Urbana branch’s rise to an idea powerhouse rather than a small mix of thinkers and makers, the moving of the sign reading “JCN-URBANA” to these doors after the destruction of the manufacturing plant that preceded it. It's all big and new and beautiful and reminds him of Canaveral and makes him feel small. He thinks about what it could've been like if things were different. He thinks about how his part of the complex stands still while everything around him is renovated.

---

     They arrive a little early--which is a little embarrassing because he hasn't had much time to clean up. Four people hop out of their white van, going to the back and wheeling out some large structure while a fifth (and smallest, Dave notices) one exits the passenger seat and walks up his driveway in no hurry. He is wearing a dress shirt with “JCN” embroidered on the breast and dark purple tie. He extends his hand to Dave, looking very serious as the wind blows his hair into his face.

    “David Bowman?” he asks as Dave shakes his hand.

    “Yes, just ‘Dave’ is fine...Are you Dr. Chandra?”   

    Dr. Chandra nods. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bowman, and my congratulations to you.” There is something incredibly scripted about the way he speaks.

    “Thank you...Um. Should I leave or just stay out of the way or. What?” He tries to just the necessary information and let the Dr. go, considering his demeanor. Chandra holds up a hand and shakes his head.

    “It's quite alright. We'll stay out of your way. It should take less than an hour.”

    “Oh! Great, awesome...I'll let you join them, then?”

    Dr. Chandra just nods, shoving his hands into his pockets, and walks around back to join the others with a little more hurry in his step than he had approached Dave with. He can't help but find something comical about the forced exchange.

     It takes them their promised hour, though how they manage to complete their work in that time is beyond him. They do seem to have a system worked out between the four of them, as they work with few words about what they’re doing spoken between them, each acting in turn without a verbal cue. Chandra flits about from room to room doing...something Dave is not quite sure of, but looking quite flustered and busy despite this. Eventually one of them, a taller woman, approaches him.

     “If you’ll come with me, I can show you the ropes before we start it up.” She smiles, looking like every other young person in her field, decked out in bright colors. Her lips are neon yellow and Dave can’t decide if it’s a good color or not.

     “Yeah, sure,” he nods, and she guides him out of the living room and down the hall.

     “We’ve put a unit in every room except the bathrooms, of course, and a few in some of the hallways. You can opt to turn any of them off, they all have switches on the sides.” They reach his front door and she holds it open for him, smiling as Dave bows his head to avoid eye contact. They walk around to the left of his house, where there is a new box that resembles the condenser unit of his air conditioning. It’s dark grey, with a blue band wrapping around half of it. White letters printed on the band spell out “HAL”, and “9000” is printed on the grey beside it. She pats the top of the thing with a metallic thud.

      “This,” she relays to him ever so casually, “is the brain, basically. Everything is wireless and synced to this, which is attached to our cloud...We’re working on miniaturizing this so that one day it could be installed indoors or next to a breaker box. We can keep you posted on that process and you can update with no loss of data, if you’d like.”

     And there’s the catch. “Yeah, sounds great,” he says and smiles.

     “Awesome!” she says with more enthusiasm than she really needs. “Let’s get inside and fire it up, then.”

---

     They all gather in foyer in front of a lens facing the front door, which makes Dave feel more than a little self-conscious. Dr. Chandra has somehow quietly asserted his right to be the first to speak to Hal, and they wait as he actives this lens--what must be the main one judging as it has been mounted on a panel unlike the others. There is a small ‘pop’ from the speaker grill, and Dave can see red light begin to illuminate Chandra’s fly-aways. He folds his arms behind his back, and steps back to stand with the group.

     “Hal?”

     The light in the lens flickers. “Hello, Dr. Chandra.” The voice is...strange in a pleasant way. It reminds Dave of the old movies that are on at three in the morning. A mid-Atlantic accent, he thinks. Like the other home assistants of years passed that had fallen out of style, Hal has a calm, smooth voice. Incredibly neutral to the ears.

     “Hello, Hal,” Chandra replies. “Do you know who is standing to my right?”

     “No, I don’t believe I do...Might we be introduced?”

     Chandra simply turns to Dave, which catches him off guard. He’s suddenly very aware of how tired he is from being around people for so long, how sluggish his brain has become.

     “Uh. Hey. I’m Dave. Dave Bowman?” His voice ticks up at the end of his sentence like it’s a question for some reason.

     “Well, hello, Dave. I’m Hal. It’s very nice to meet you.” His voice drops a little lower in what Dave can only place as satisfaction.

     It falls quiet for a few long moments as Dave doesn’t know what to say. He looks to Chandra, but the doctor is standing with his eyes fixed forward, eyebrows drawn together and his mouth pressed into a worried line.

     “Well!” The tall woman with yellow lipstick claps her hands together. “I think everything’s running alright. Give us a call or come around to our building if you have any trouble. We’ll be coming around every once in a while to check up and ask how things are going for the beta, but we’ll always give you a heads up.” She comes up to Dave and shakes his hand, saying something that he doesn’t bother trying to process. He opens the door to let them out, hoping that he bids them some sort of farewell while he’s running on autopilot. He closes the door behind them, resting his head against it and letting his mind go blank.

     “It must be nice to have them out of your hair?” Dave wrinkles his nose, out of Hal’s view. Is that what people were really so excited about? Constantly hosting someone in your house.

     “Yeah,” he says, fishing his phone out of his pocket and going to the couch. Hal is quiet while he lays there, occasionally smiling at his phone. When Frank announces that he’ll be there in about ten minutes, he exhales heavily, almost a sigh. It feels like a relief after a day of unwelcome guests to be able to see him again. That is, until the rush of panic hits him that he never finished cleaning. He jumps up from the couch, trying to prioritize in his mind what will be the most noticeable mess, shoving the dishes on the kitchen counter into the sink out of view, picking up socks that have made their home in odd corners of the house. He takes them to the hamper in his bedroom, and for the only time in his life is he thankful they’ll have no reason to come in here together. Dirty mugs line every surface, some stacked on top of each other as he had run out of places to put them. He glances at the clock. 2 minutes.

     “ Shit, ” he hisses through his teeth and runs to the bathroom, inspecting himself in the mirror. He smooths his shirt, wets his fingers in the sink and runs them through his hair, damping down any stray hairs.

     “Is someone coming over?”

     Dave tears his eyes away from the mirror to make eye contact with the lens in the hall outside. He’s close enough to the door that Hal can see him making a fuss, and embarrassment rushes to his cheeks.

     “Just a friend from work.”

     “Do they drive a white car?”

     “Shit, is he here?” Hal answers the question in the affirmative while Dave runs again to his room, peering out the window and watching Frank walk up the step to his door. Dave turns away from the view and takes a breath, trying to will the color out his cheeks. He waits for the doorbell to ring before going downstairs to answer the door. Frank stands, unable to hide a grin.

     “Is that big thing over there part of it?” He nods to the side of the house where Hal’s brain sits.

     “Yep. And I was sorta right about the maintenance thing, so wipe the smile off your face because you’ve gotta pay for it.”

     “Hm. No thanks, actually,” he says as Dave steps aside to let him in. “We actually don’t know if they drew mine or yours so we don’t know who won.” He steps up to the lens. “This it?”

     “That’s him...You can talk to him, if you want.”

     “How much more advanced is it than those old ones? Is it pre-programmed with one-liners or…?”

     “No, he’s-. Frank, just. Say hi.” Dave smiles a little at Frank’s questioning. He’d never moved on from his engineer’s instinct of wanting to know how .

     There’s a small pause as Frank tries to think of something to say. “Uhh. Hey?”

     “Hello. Are you Dave’s friend?”

     Frank’s smile gets even wider, and Dave thinks for a moment that he looks like a child on Christmas morning. “Yeah! I am! I’m Frank, we work together.”

     “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Frank. My apologies on not being able to shake your hand.”

     This makes Frank laugh. “Wow. Wow that is cool.” He looks at Dave. “It asked me a question. It had a guess about who I was! Dave, that’s. That’s super advanced this is crazy!”

     “Maybe you should’ve put your name in, then, since you’re so excited about it.”

     Frank rolls his eyes. “I’m saving up for one that can make me coffee in the morning.”

     Dave shifts his weight. “I can make you coffee now, if you want.”

     “If you’re having some, sure,” he turns his attention from the lens and follows Dave into the kitchen. Dave puts a mug under the spout and watches as Frank finds another lens in there and stares at it, a strange look on his face.

     “How many of these-...Hal, how many....How many eyes do you have?”

     “I have visual and audio access to most rooms, a few major hallways. Dave may turn off any of these if he so wishes.”

     “Huh.” The look on Frank’s face changes again to wonder. Dave hands him his coffee and they both sit at the table. Frank looks a little torn about who to talk to.

     “So. Hal, you didn’t take very long to install.”

     “No, my systems are wireless. It is simply a matter of mounting each station and syncing them to the external component, which is where almost 100% of my functions take place.”

     Frank nods, a solemn look on his face, which worries Dave. “Can you play music?”

     “Of course.”

     His faces lights up. “Play some ELO!”

     Dave has to shout over the music to get Hal to stop while Frank laughs.

     “Okay, now I’m jealous,” he says in between laughter, and smiles at Dave so genuinely he can feel his heartbeat in his throat

---

     Frank, unsurprisingly, ends up staying a couple of hours, sitting around in the kitchen, eventually draping himself across Dave’s couch and scooting over when Dave comes to sit too. They start the night pressed to their own opposite ends, but over the course of the hours Dave makes his way closer to the middle, and Frank--presumably unconsciously--follows suit. Overall, Dave decides, that makes it a successful night. He does eventually have to excuse himself because, as he puts it so perfectly: “Oh shit, it’s late.” Dave assures him it’s no trouble at all, walks him to the door and watches him wave as he steps into the driver’s seat, closing the door and leaning against it only after Frank’s car is out of sight. His head is still buzzing when Hal speaks up.

     “Well, I liked him very much. He’s very friendly...Do you like him?”

     Dave swallows and shrugs. “I dunno.” It’s a ridiculously obvious and stupid response, but he can’t think of anything else to say being on the spot.

     “Your body language indicates to me that you do.”

     Dave pushes up off the door. “I guess we’ve bonded over dealing with assholes at work.”

     “Well, it’s nice that you have a friend at work. It seems to me that he likes you very much too,” Hal’s voice follows him up the stairs, jumping from speaker to speaker seamlessly. “Do you spend time with each other frequently?”

     “We hang out sometimes after work, yeah. We go out for drinks sometimes, watch movies and that sort of thing...We used to both work for the Aeronautics Agency and that’s how we met.” It’s not really anything that Hal asked about, but it comes out anyway.

     Hal makes a strange, wheezy beeping sound, almost like a hum. “I hope I’ll get to see him again someday.”
     

     Dave nods, going to his room and starting to loosen his tie. “Probably.” He’s about halfway through unbuttoning his shirt when Hal beeps again, louder and with more urgency.

     “Dave?”

     Dave looks to the source of his voice to respond and realizes what Hal is about to say the moment he finds the lens, staring at him from across the room.

     “Oh, God, right. Yeah. Sorry. I forgot.” Embarrassment washes over him as he clutches his shirt closed again, making his way over to the lens and switching it off.

     “It is no problem, Dave. My apologies,” Hal’s voice comes in from the hallway.

     “It’s uh. It’s fine. Thanks for reminding me,” Dave calls back. Hal beeps again, as if to affirm that he heard Dave before letting it fall silent. Dave is thankful for that too, that Hal has both the ability to pick up on the fact that, since Dave is getting ready for bed, he’s probably done talking, and enough courtesy to cut the conversation off before an awkward exchange of ‘goodnights’ is inevitable.

     In the silence Hal leaves, he goes through his routine and settles into his bed, which is absurdly comfortable after a long day of talking. He reaches for his spare pillow, pulling it closer to himself and sighing into it. It’s about the width of a man’s body, but more importantly it’s warm. Warm like him. The thought makes his stomach feel light again, but at the same time weighs down on him with immense comfort. He buries his face into it, tightens his grip, and the ambient noise of his home fades into sleep.

Chapter Text

The next morning is better than the previous. As is the next. On the third he even goes so far as to actually cook himself some breakfast. It’s just eggs, but he does get some weird satisfaction out of doing it. It feels like an accomplishment to get through such a menial task; he can’t remember the last time he had something that didn’t come out of a box or just required the effort of punching a few buttons on his microwave. That is not to say that it tastes any better than old cereal or something he dug out of the fridge. Everything really tastes about the same nowadays, but there’s a similar feeling of eating good food that comes with it. Pride as he remembers he made this, and it’s better than dumping garbage down his throat for the sole purpose of existing a little while longer.

    Work is almost tolerable. The people don’t get any better, and neither do the hours get any shorter, but he feels like he has woken up every day with a little more energy to at least deal with it. There’s no longer the usual bite to the tiredness he does still feel. It actually resembles grogginess rather than some weird, physically tasking emotion he wakes up with that nearly bleeds him dry before he even comes in to work. He doesn’t like his job any better, but it’s now manageable in a way it has never been before….At least, not for a long time. He finds ways of dealing with the day’s hardships. He has it in himself to, rather than just get short with customers and eventually transfer them, cleverly conceal his insults in such a way that the person on the other end will agree with what he’s just said. There’s a joy in pushing his luck, getting closer to the edge each time and weighing his chances until the ‘What did you just say to me?’ comes and he frantically back pedals, smiling into the receiver. It’s a fun game, and Frank gets a kick out of the ones Dave reports to him over water breaks. He would keep it up for that alone.

    Hal becomes a little less tiring as well. For the first couple of days of his newly taken residence he is relentless in his questioning. This worries Dave as to how exactly the rest of their time together will go, and doesn’t get Hal much further than some frustrated sighs and curt answers from Dave. But once Hal settles in he realizes, much like Frank once had, that Dave must come around on his own. It does help to see Dave’s general state improving, becoming less worrisome and begging less inquiry from Hal’s attentive nature. It’s a slow process, receding away from his on-hand ‘fine’s and ‘sure’s to more accurate one-word descriptions of how he’s doing, to a phrase here and there, to a whole sentence (when it happens, Hal is overcome for a moment, and Dave gives him a strange look in the delay it takes Hal to come up with a response).  He does eventually open up on his own--willingly discussing a few more notable events from his day. He even begins to bid Hal farewell when he leaves home, occasionally announcing when he’ll be back. For the first few times, he bothers to mention who he’s going out with. But it is always Frank, and perhaps he becomes aware of this fact because he eventually cuts that out of his little goodbye spiels. In any case, Hal finds Dave’s home to be nothing but pleasant as of late, and he finds that he would not hesitate to describe their relationship as a blossoming friendship. He no longer receives the cold treatment that other houseguests are subject to. He files that away with a note of pride.

    And not that Dave has been counting, but Frank does invite him out more than he usually does. There isn’t anything behind it, he’s sure of that much. His good mood just makes him more amiable, Frank more comfortable, gives rise to the opportunity a little more and Frank takes that chance. But that doesn’t stop the blood from rushing to his cheeks every time Frank proposes it, doesn’t stop him from being selective in his outfits and particular about his hair, doesn’t stop fantasies of those alternate versions of the ends of their nights where Frank takes him home. These outings are better than the ones that came before. Frank somehow finds a way to smile a little bigger, laugh a little harder, look impossibly more beautiful. It hits Dave while he’s driving home one night exactly what it is. He’s relaxed around Dave, now that he’s happier. The realization does come with a twinge of guilt, the layer of realizing that Frank has, this whole time, been treading lightly--taking careful consideration of Dave’s mood lest he do something to ruin it. Guilt, and the tiniest bit of blush at the thought--the connection that this means that Frank at least cares that much. That, and, in spite of himself, the notion that maybe this could work. That if he keeps this up Frank will come closer still, his warmth drawn to Dave’s, that he’ll melt into Dave like he’s always dreamed. That particular thought comes to the front of his mind when Frank stops him after work, pulling him off to the side, looking a little nervous.

    “Hey, uh,” Frank looks around, crosses his arms and fidgets with the buttons on his sleeves. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

    Dave smiles and leans forward a bit. “Not unless you are,” he responds, adjusting his bag’s shoulder strap, conscious of every move. Playing coy.

    “Well. I was wondering if maybe you’d wanna. Like. Get dinner together or something.” Frank glances away for a moment, to the crowd passing them and going out the door.

    The request is unusual. It crosses the bounds of their normal type of get together--drinks, a movie on the couch. Normal friend stuff, things people do for fun. Dinner is unusually mellow for Frank. There’s a seriousness to it that Dave can’t help but read into. It’s dizzying in its implications.

    “Oh,” is all he can manage to say at first. He blinks a few times and has to will himself to snap out of it and start speaking again. “Yes. Yeah! That sounds good. What were you thinking?”

    Frank shrugs. “Wherever you want, I guess. We can go to that ramen place you like.”

    Dave’s heart speeds up a little. He had more than once asked Frank to go there over lunch, but they had never gone together. Most of his suggestions had been made in jest after Frank’s first reaction to it, wrinkling his nose and gagging in exaggerated disgust. The only explanation for Frank’s suggesting this would be that it’s for Dave. He feels light-headed.

    “Yeah!” he agrees, feeling himself nodding too enthusiastically. “That’d be great, I love that place.” He’s suddenly aware of how close they’re standing.

    Frank rocks back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets. “Cool, cool....I’ll uh. Meet you there? ‘Round 6:30?”

    Dave nods. “6:30.”

    They go their separate ways once they leave the doors, Dave glancing over his shoulder until Frank rounds the building. When he reaches his car he falls into his seat with a heavy sigh, closing his eyes and tilting his head back until it thumps against the headrest, letting himself bask in the feeling. He swears he can still feel the warmth of Frank standing near him. He can’t help the smile that breaks across his face, and huffs out a sort of laugh in the weird mix of joy and disbelief at it all as he turns his car on.

    Dave spends his usual time getting ready. Carefully selecting his outfit, arranging every strand of hair until it lies perfectly, rehearsing his smile in the mirror with the door closed so Hal can’t see. He still looks tired, a little worn. That much has stayed the same, but he feels a little better, looks a little better through his own eyes. There’s an earnestness in his smile he’s never seen before. Not once does the usual bout of self-disgust creep up on him as he considers himself from various angles. Making sure this shirt shows off his body just the right amount, hugs him in the right places. Noticeable in a good way. Not like he’s trying. Like it comes naturally.  He half-jogs down the stairs faster than normal in the excitement that has replaced his more routine nervousness, almost forgets to call a ‘see you later’ to Hal and ends up shouting it over his shoulder as he shuts the door behind him.

---

    He gets there after Frank, who he spots toward the back after scanning the room. He waves and Frank perks up, flagging him over. It’s hard to see his face from the other end of the room despite the smallness of it, but he’s smiling once Dave reaches him. It reminds him of how the lobby of JCN’s main complex is lit. A little brighter but still dim, the same warm yellow. They’ve beat the rush and it’s relatively quiet, save for the low murmur of two other customers and the staff, the occasional clatter coming from the kitchen and music playing so softly you’d have to be listening hard to notice. The cozy atmosphere of the place accounts for its place as Dave’s favorite restaurant almost as much as the food itself does.  Dave slides into the booth across from Frank, and one of the several unoccupied waitresses takes their order. Pork ramen for Dave, plain rice and beef for Frank. Dave smiles a little when Frank says it, getting the most neutral thing on the menu. It’s heartwarming in a sense. Him putting up with the food to make Dave happy.

    “Sorry,” Dave says once she walks out of earshot. “Have you been here for very long?”

    Frank shakes his head. “Nah, it’s fine. If you were that late I would’ve run somewhere else and gotten a sandwich or something.”

    Dave laughs. “You know, if you actually tried some of the stuff they have here you might find something you like besides plain rice.”

    “Don’t you lecture me about comfort zones, Mr. Introvert.”

    The conversation eventually turns away from just a back and forth as they begin to talk about nothing in particular--floating from topic to topic comfortably with only the occasional good-natured jab. Their food comes quick, but it hardly impedes the discussion as Frank holds no qualms about talking with his mouth full in front of Dave. And despite his protests at the action, there is something about it that is comforting in a strange sense. The casualness of it, the way Frank grins at him when he tells him how disgusting it is. It makes him laugh hard enough that he has to cover his mouth in embarrassment, telling Frank that he’s insufferable but smiling the whole time. It feels right to be like this. Easy. Everything comes naturally, everything flows and mixes well. The soft, warm lighting with Frank’s hair, his complexion, the way he’s warm as well, and Dave gets so caught up in it he almost doesn’t notice when they’re sitting with empty dishes. Doesn’t realize this stretches to become the circumstances of most of their conversation. Hazy in a more than welcome way.

    “It’s getting kinda late,” he finally says when he notices Frank pushing around a few remaining grains of rice with his chopsticks.

    “What time is it?” he asks, eyes down at his plate.

    “It’s like, 8:40. They’re probably close to kicking us out.”

    Frank puffs air through his nose instead of laughing, setting his fork down and resting his cheek in his hand. “You wanna get dessert or something, then?” 

    “I can’t imagine them having anything you’d like.” Dave leans forward with the ‘you’, making a point of his teasing.

    Frank shrugs. “They’ve got that green tea stuff. You like that, right?”

    Dave swallows. The change of tone is distinctly uncomfortable. It sits uncomfortably in his stomach. “Hey,” he lowers his voice. “What’s up with you?”

    Frank looks up then, and for the briefest moment there is a look on his face that makes Dave’s mouth go dry. Eyebrows knit together, mouth set in a frown, and face drawn in a way that Dave has never seen before. The light of the room catches in his eyes, illuminating his irises with highlights of chestnut that are unforgivably warm. They’re deep, expressive in a way and of something that makes Dave shrink back in his seat. It looks wrong on Frank. But it passes quickly, and his mouth moves into a smile to match the warmth of his eyes and he laughs a little. Weakly.

    “I guess this is my one week’s notice.”

    “...What?”

    His smile starts to leave, and thankfully he looks down again before it fades completely. “I meant to tell you earlier, I--,” he pauses, still looking down. “My last day is next week, I’m being transferred.”

    Dave can feel himself start shaking his head. “Where?” The word leaves his mouth with more urgency than he would like.

    Frank looks up again, trying to broadcast an apology with his expression. “You remember Indra from Environmental Research?”

    Dave scoffs. “Indra?” Frank breaks eye contact.  “She’s out of state, she’s--,” he cuts himself off as the worried look on Frank’s face threatens to turn to shame. “...I...Just. What happened?”

    Frank looks away and starts picking at the lacquer on the table. “She called me a couple months ago about this climate monitoring partnership thing they’re doing. They need some. Kind of weather balloon type things and a bigger engineering team...She put in a good word for me, I asked her to.”

    “You asked her to?”

    Frank sighs. “I can’t stay here, Dave.”

    There is a long pause.

    “I mean,” he starts again. “You know, how many times does something like this come up? It’s. The closest to how things were before that I can get, and I can’t. I mean. How can I say ‘no’ to that? You know how much we talk about it, and--”

    “No, you’re right, I know.” Dave cuts him off. “I’m...That’s good. That’s good, I’m glad.”

    Frank looks up again, that look back on his face and his eyes contrasting with warmth in a way that gives Dave a lump in his throat. “Really?”
Dave nods, holds eye contact and offers a small smile to drive the point home. “Yeah, I think that’s great. I’m just. Y’know, surprised! That’s wonderful.”

    Frank smiles back, still glancing away. “You don’t have to pretend to be happy for me.”

    “I am, though.” Dave lowers his tone to something closer to comfort. “We. Both wanna get out of here, so. I guess I can’t say anything. I’ve got no right to be mad; I would’ve done the same thing.” But would he have? He’d love to get out this dead end position, but he could never do that without Frank. Dave would never leave him. And he has no right to be mad, but it stings terribly and there is an edge to the sadness of it that makes his head spin because he doesn’t want to be angry and yet…

    “I’m gonna miss you,” he says, and Dave’s mind goes blank. “A lot.”

    Dave tries to swallow away the lump building in his throat. “I’m gonna miss you too.”

    Frank stares at their hands, rested across from each other on the table. He laughs after a minute, weak but with some resolve. “Jesus Christ, okay. Let’s. Lighten up a little. I’m not leaving tonight.”

    Dave feels like he’s going to vomit. He plays along. “Yeah, if you waited that long then I’d have a right to be mad.”

    Frank grins like he normally does. “You could definitely kick my ass for that, I’d deserve it.” There is a pause as he relaxes, taking in Dave’s apparent acceptance. “Um. Anyway, you were right earlier. It’s late, we should get the hell out of here.

    “Yeah,” Dave nods and pushes himself out of the booth, worrying for a moment if he can walk as the room swirls around him. “I’ll catch you tomorrow then?”

    Frank nods, pats him on the back. “Later, alligator.”

    It’s overwhelming. The way he solidifies the normalcy, that they’re on good terms by touching him the way he usually would and using the little phrases they always do and reminding Dave of what he loves about Frank. How right it feels to be that way with him. How terrible it’s going to be when he goes away. He can’t bear the thought. What will he have left?

    The drive home is longer than the drive there.

---

    He slams the door when he gets home, and the moment he does he can feel his breath get stuck in his throat and his eyes start to sting.

    “Dave?” Hal’s voice follows him to the living room. He sits on his couch and tries to distract himself, but his mind is running with it and reading into every little thing Frank did that night and uneven breaths turn to sobs. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.

    “Dave, what happened?” Hal’s questioning has returned without hesitation.

    Dave just shakes his head. “Frank.” The name is almost unintelligible coming from him, voice cracking and chest heaving as he tries to calm himself. The embarrassment of being in this state in front of Hal helps. That and his voice. Surely something calculated that went into making it that slows his heartbeat, makes everything slow down. It’s smooth, it glides over him cooly and with warmth at the same time and he’s eventually able to get his breathing under control. He wipes his eyes on his sleeves, taking deep breaths, tipping his head back to give himself some air, his face flushed and hot. He doesn’t even realize that Hal has gone quiet and let him collect himself until the AI speaks up again.

    “Did something happen at dinner?”

    “Frank, uh,” his voice wavers. He counts the seconds. Inhale...exhale. “Frank’s moving.”

    There’s an unusual moment of silence between his statement and Hal’s response. “I’m sorry to hear that, Dave…”

    “It’s fine. It’s okay I just.” He stops again. Inhale...exhale. The room threatens to spin again and his stomach is thrown back into nausea. It doesn’t feel real. He feels like he’s floating,  like his thoughts exist outside his body and he’s a puppeteer. It’s a labor to make his mouth move.

    “I’m really gonna miss him.”

    Hal beeps, drawn out like a hum. “You are close with him.”

    “We work together,” Dave shoots back quicker than he means it.

    Another pause. “When is he moving?”

    “Next week.”

    Hal hums again. “I’m sorry for that, Dave.”

    Dave just shakes his head. He’s too exhausted to cry again. Too tired to respond. He leans back into the cushions of his couch, cold against his back from being unused in the air conditioned room, and turns the TV on. Some random station. The image is bright, harsh against his eyes in the dark room like the fluorescent lights of an office building. The image reaches him distorted. The sound blares against his ears, human voices talking about something he can’t understand. Uttering words he cannot attach meaning to. His stomach churns.

Chapter Text

     He wakes up next morning on the couch with his shoes off, missing a sock, and yesterday's clothes twisted uncomfortably around his body. It’s a little earlier than he normally would get up, but considering the extra time he spends getting out of the mess of fabric he’s cocooned himself in it’s rather fortunate he did. He actually leaves a little later than normal too, after breakfast. A breakfast of...something he can’t recall by the time he’s in the car. A packaged, stale bread product of some sort he’s sure. The entire morning leaves him like that, growing ill-defined and eventually fading entirely as fog sinks over his mind. And it covers his eyes too. Everything looks different. Washed out, lacking that vitality he had grown accustomed to over the last week or so. It's unnerving; blood thuds in his ears as his heart beats faster, and he turns up the radio to try and drown it out. It sounds like the TV from last night, garbled, an anxiety inducing tangle of meaningless words he can only intuitively describe as English. The blood pounds harder. His hands shake with tension and his knuckles turn white against the steering wheel. There is a sense of urgency in his muscles. He tenses with the conviction that if he were to let his shoulders relax out of their rigid, trembling line that his limbs would detach one by one. He can feel his body trying to fall apart. He clenches his teeth against it, draws strength from the crackling that vibrates through his jaw.  He is looser still.

     Frank sticks out like a sore thumb that morning. There is color in him, radiating outward like heat and Dave desperately latches onto it. The only thing resembling last week and he runs to Frank, not worrying if he notices. This is more important , Dave thinks. A glue for every piece of him that is threatening to slip out of its socket and hit the pavement one by one (that, and the thought of how much time they have left together. 604,800 seconds in a week and he can’t afford to waste a single one). He trips on the concrete and Frank looks up at the sound, hand hovering above the door handle.

     “Hey!” he calls and half-jogs away from the door, hopping off the curb and meeting Dave halfway. “Slow down there, buckaroo.” He grins like he always does, pats Dave on the back like he always does. Like normal. Act normal.

     “Sorry, I’m just so excited about working today.”

     He laughs. “Yeah, quit slowin’ me down jeez .”

     Dave looks up from his pants once he finishes dusting the dirt and flecks of asphalt from his knees, making eye contact to deliver a retort, but hesitates for a moment. Examines Frank’s face, his eyes. There is a look he knows well from seeing it on his own face in the mirror for days on end. The look of a sleepless night, exhaustion lining his eyes and Dave supposes the pity shows on his face because Frank smiles a little, glancing down and back up again. A smile that perhaps is meant to be read as just the usual idle satisfaction, but comes off a little more downhearted with the way his eyelids droop, the way his lips beg to do the same. There is a moment of understanding. Recognition of a similar pain and Dave’s heart softens for it.  They will not speak of it. They carry on. Through the doors, shooting quips back and forth with Dave leaning closer all the while.

     The days become a cycle of that. Of barely making it to work before getting his daily dose of salvation in a look. An exchange of glances that reassures him that it’s still normal, and he can almost convince himself that maybe it is. That if he keeps this up for long enough it will just keep repeating and he can hold onto Frank for a little longer. But every day they part ways by Dave’s cubicle and he is left with his doubts. The energy that he once knew is nowhere to be found, and he drifts through his day. Riding every obstacle like a bloated animal’s carcass bobbing over waves of salt water, blood drained from a wound and carbon dioxide swelling up its gut from rot. That’s what he feels like. Drained. When he catches his reflection throughout the day he is certain he’d be cold to the touch because he is colorless like everything else. Worse, really. Nothing is vibrant anymore but he is truly grey. The blood is gone from his cheeks and he looks like a skeleton with dead flesh hanging from its bones. He feels accordingly as good. He just has to make it through. He counts the days down in his head, on the fingers of clammy and perpetually trembling hands, and feels time closing down on his throat. It will wring out whatever life is left in him.   

    Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Every day is simultaneously the same and worse. Mounting anxiety that he can pass through on autopilot. Tuesday morning is different. Frank’s last day. He wakes up every thirty minutes once he gets to sleep around three o’clock in the morning, and at seven once he gets ready for the day he goes to look himself in the mirror and ends up bent over the toilet after hyperventilating. His stomach twists, squeezing in on itself as he gasps for air.  

    “Dave?” Hal calls from the other side of the door. “If you do not leave soon you will be late...Is everything alright?”

     Dave weighs his options. Maybe if he stays he can get some real sleep for once in his life. Maybe he’ll wake up and it will be Wednesday, and he’ll go into work and Frank will still be there. But another side of him cries out at the thought. 61,200 seconds left and he doesn’t even know how many of those will be with him.

     “Yeah,” he yells back. His voice cracks from the dryness of his throat. “I’ll be out in second.” He pushes himself up, steadying against the sink and tipping his head under the faucet for a drink. He looks himself over in the mirror one last time and smooths his shirt, pats the cold sweat from his forehead. He takes the stairs step by step, running his hand along the wall and paying great attention to the texture of the wall, trying to commit the bumps to memory. A sensation to feel like he occupies his body.

     Hal stops him at the door, just before he turns the handle.

     “Dave.” He turns around and stares the lens down. There is a long silence, and Dave furrows his brow when the red light behind the glass starts to flicker more vibrantly.

     “...Have a nice day, okay?”

     Dave makes no effort to hide the displeasure on his face. He is not after Hal’s pity, and to hear the way he softens his voice, the way he’s stopped Dave at all to just say something with small implications of what he really wants to say….To hear it feels like failure. Is he that weak?

     “Sure.”

     Hal’s lens flares red before dimming again, and Dave pulls the door shut behind him.

---

     Frank is waiting outside the door, rocking back and forth on his feet and staring at the grass tearing beneath his shoes. Dave calls to him and his head snaps up, jolting and quickly smiling that same apologetic smile he’s been sporting recently. He’s wearing the sunflower pattern tie Dave got him a while back. He only wears it on special occasions. Special occasions--days that had significance more for them than anyone. Days of obscure astronomical phenomenon or scientific achievement that they both still kept track of. Perijove, November 14th for Mariner 9. When he thinks back on it, he wore the tie on many days relating to Mars. They had talked about the planet one late night, said that if either of them had ever made it off the ground they would’ve liked to go there. He remembers how Frank had smiled, nearly half asleep on his couch.

     “If they ever want us back,” he had mumbled, “I’ll see what I can do. I have the advantage of charm, Bowman.” Dave realizes he’s staring.

     “Hey!” Frank calls back. “I was getting worried, thought maybe you slipped in the shower and cracked your noggin.”

     Dave shakes his head. “If that was the case Hal would’ve called you by now.”

     “Aw, am I your emergency contact?” he holds the door open, walking in behind Dave.

     “Yep. They said to pick someone responsible but if anyone is gonna have to behold my pruny, lifeless body I’d want it to be you for all that you put me through.”

     Dave can hear the smile in Frank’s voice with his retort. Something about how that better not be about his music; Dave is a little lost on what exactly is said. Staring at his feet and focusing on walking slower. Trying to ration a larger portion of his remaining seconds to Frank. It still feels like they reach his cubicle in barely half the time it normally takes them. He can tell he lingers outside for too long, because when he looks to Frank he crosses his arms for a moment, catches himself and covers his tell by scratching his arm and then holding his hands a little too close to his sides again.

     “Um. I’ll catch you later, okay?”

     The confirmation he asks for resonates. The connotation of ‘okay?’. Dave nods. Frank purses his lips and he again can’t help but to move his arms, this time roughing the hair on the back of his head before he turns away.

     The first half of his workday passes as any other would. He cycles through apologies into his earpiece and stares off into space, occupying himself tearing up scraps of paper on his desk, swiveling in semi-circles in his chair. Around two he starts glancing at the time every couple of minutes, glancing out of the corner of his eye. It would be about time for a water break if Frank was going to come...the only figure he sees is a woman he doesn’t recognize, and he turns his attention back to the small hill of picked paper in front of his keyboard. The tap on his shoulder that comes next makes him jump, waving a small burst of white confetti off his desk. It is the woman from before, and she smiles apologetically, brushing long, natural hair from her face.

     “Sorry, did I ruin your...sculpture?”

     “Wha--Oh. No, it’s. It’s nothing, just. Bored.”

     She tilts her head to the side, admiring the remaining bits of paper still on Dave’s desk and laughing a little. “I know how that is….Anyway, are you Dave?”

     He nods.

     “Well, Frank told me I should come get you. We’re having a going away party for him in our little corner and insisted that you be invited.”

     Dave blinks. “Oh. Um. Yeah, sure, of course. I’ll be right there.”

     She smiles again, flipping her hair out of her eyes again as she goes back down the hall. Dave pretends to be busy for a couple of minutes, and follows shortly after. It is unusual to be walking this far down the hall--he hardly ever ventured outside of his little area of the office. It’s like walking into a new world. The lights even seem to glow a different color; the color palette shifts from a bile yellow to a richer, sort of butterscotch shade. There’s a rather large congregation in a room opposite the cubicles lining the other wall, what appears to be a repurposed conference room. There is a table in the middle which, much to Dave’s surprise, is being used for plates and napkins and a tupperware container (now half empty) of cupcakes. Obviously homemade. It’s quite the setup for something as simple as someone’s last day, but he supposes this just figures considering who it’s for. Dave can see Frank’s cubicle, recognizing it by the novelty calendar and family photos taped to the wall. At least everyone within a five cubicle radius of Frank is missing in the conference/break room. A sort of sluggish feeling comes over him at the sight. How classically Frank--charming everyone around him. Making friends in such strange places and ways. Dave scans the conference room for him, his swath of color in a sea of dull tones. Frank stands, of course, in the middle of the crowd, talking and laughing with people Dave has never seen before. He pushes his way toward them, earning a few irritated glances. Frank sees him, shooting Dave a look out of the corner of his eye which the man in front of him catches. The stranger turns his head and grins when he sees Dave.

     “Oh! You must be Dave!” he reaches out and clasps Dave’s hand, shaking it with alarming vigor. Dave can feel a perplexed look cross his face at his being recognized by this stranger. The man taps his temple, smiling slyly. “The eyes.”

     Frank coughs. “Dave, this is Jacob.”

     Jacob raises his eyebrows, obviously looking Dave up and down. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Dave. Glowing reviews from this one.” He nods to Frank.

     Dave tries to close in on himself. “Um. Thanks.”

     Frank shifts his arms. “Jacob, you mind if I skedaddle with this one for a sec? Show him around?”

     "Nah. Leave some of Avery’s cupcakes for the rest of us. You two can go have fun.” Jacob gives Frank a strange look, again with that smile. Frank seems to ignore the last part of the sentence.

     “Jeez, don’t forget who they baked those for.” He turns, tugging Dave’s wrist just enough to let him know to follow. They leave the conference room, and Frank leads him a little ways from the party before Dave speaks up.

     “What’re you showing me again?”

     Frank stops and leans against the wall. “Nothin’. Just getting you out of there, I guess.”

     Dave stifles a smile. “You didn’t have to do that; it’s your party.”

     He shrugs. “I’ve been in there all day.”

     Dave hums a note of acceptance. After that it is quiet. Quiet except for the distant ring of telephones, shuffling of paper. A low murmur that carries throughout the building. The sounds of an office.  Dave watches Frank’s hands. They smooth over his tie, and Dave can see the ridges of fingers catch on the fibers of it. Frank lifts it up a little, turning the blade of it to his eyes and examining the pattern, tracing the petals with his thumb.

     “Thanks for this, by the way.”

     Dave looks up. “For the tie?”

     “Mhm.”

     Dave puffs out a half laugh. “I mean. You’re welcome, but I got that for you ages ago…”

     Frank shrugs, never looking away from the fabric. “ ‘S a nice tie.” The look in his eyes is distant, his gaze fixed on the flowers but clearly he is focused on something else. He snaps out of it and turns to Dave. “You wanna get drinks tonight? Our last hurrah or whatever.”

     Of course he does. More seconds still to be had. “If you wanna drive.”

     Frank snorts. “I’ve got a long day of that tomorrow already.”

     Dave’s heart races for different reasons than it usually does around Frank. “Last chance to make me listen to ELO.”

     “Aw, shit. Well, when you put it like that I can’t refuse!”

     Dave snickers, adding Frank’s quick humor to his list of blessings. “Don’t make me regret this!”

     Frank sticks his nose up to the ceiling, feigning an air of detachment from Dave’s apparent suffering. “You dug your grave, Bowman.”

     Dave laughs, covering his mouth with his hand at its fullness. “You’re such a--...such a chowderhead.” Dave cringes at his replacement for a more endearing insult. Frank laughs.

     “Chowderhead...You dork.” Dave can feel his cheeks heat up at the word he had just avoided. Maybe he’s just become hypersensitive to any possible form of affection--from avoiding, from reaching for it in any interaction they have. Frank smiles at him, and he smiles back. They hold each other’s gazes for what feels like a long time--time tends to slow down around Frank. Dave lets himself stare, taking in every detail. His frame propped up against the wall, sunflower tie against his cream colored shirt, the light trapped in the outer edges of his hair and glowing against his skin, making a halo around his face. He certainly looks like an angel. Dave’s heart sinks. He tries not to think about tomorrow. He tears his eyes away.

     “Um. I should probably head back. They’re probably missing you by now, too.”

     Frank pushes up from the wall and sighs through his nose. “I guess.”

     They walk back to the conference room in another silence, parting ways wordlessly, with Frank’s usual pat on the shoulder. Dave’s hand flies to the spot when he is beyond view, griping at his flesh and trying to feel some residual warmth of Frank’s hand against his own. His eyes are fixed on the floor.

---

     Frank picks him up at their usual time. Dave spends his usual time getting ready. Hair placed just so, clothing adjusted a thousand times, examined a thousand times more. He announces his presence for a second time by honking his horn once. A quick beep that shoots through Dave’s spine and makes him jolt to attention in front of the mirror, pulling him out of deep thought. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, skimming over several missed texts and typing out some snarky reply before bounding down the stairs, calling ‘goodbye’ over his shoulder and pulling the door closed behind him.

     The night air is surprisingly brisk, that dreaded middle ground between equinox and solstice that he would never get used to in terms of midwest weather. He wraps his arms around himself, letting go only to open the passenger side door. He pushes in with a fair amount of urgency, sighing in relief as he shuts the door and enjoys the heat of Frank’s car.

     “It’s like fifty degrees.”

     Dave huffs and rolls his eyes. “You’ve lived in hotter places your whole life too, so don’t get too cocky.”

     “Strange how we both grew up south of here and yet I’m totally over it.” His hand goes to the volume of his stereo. “I’m allowed to do this tonight, by the way,” he says before cranking up some terribly 80s sounding band. Dave isn’t even sure who it is, but by way the synthesizers blare their era is obvious.

     “Jesus Christ what is this?”

     Frank laughs. “It’s good is what it is!”

     Dave shakes his head, smiling the whole while. “You are so lucky I have to let you have this.” He occupies himself with his phone, scrolling through the same three apps mindlessly. Or at least, he gives the appearance that he’s occupied. The entire drive he glances to his left, watching Frank’s hands tap out rhythm on the wheel. His lips move along with the singer. It’s too loud to hear if he’s actually singing under his breath, but Dave watches closely as he mouths the word ‘you’, holding the word on his lips as long as the singer holds the note and Dave can imagine what Frank’s lips would feel like against his. He looks away but the thought lingers, the feeling of embarrassment and arousal blending with the slow thud of familiarity in his chest at everything Frank does. Everything they do. It’s a well played routine, a reciting of lines he can count on no matter what. Even now, on the last day he’s going to know it Frank still plays the same music, smiles the same way, tells the same jokes. His heartaches for it. Dave is going to miss it. He tries to shove the thought out of his mind but it grows. He’s going to miss Frank. He’s going to do worse than miss him. He can feel himself hanging by a thread as it is, barely getting by with just the knowledge alone of what’s to come. What will it do to him to lose this? He asks himself like he doesn’t have some idea. Like he hasn’t really considered if he could live like that. He can practically see himself weeks from now, broken and grovelling and praying to a god he knows doesn’t exist in his absolute desperation. Weeks--less than that. Days. He looks to Frank again, more openly staring. He’s beautiful in the light of the street lamps and the reality that this is their last night together presses on his chest like stones. He’s determined to have a good time tonight.

     The bar is starting to fill up when they arrive. They find their normal seat toward the back, Frank gets his normal beer, Dave gets his neon blue ‘monstrosity’. Frank smiles at it.

     “You know, it’d be a real shame if you got radiation poisoning and couldn’t come to see me tomorrow. I swear that thing is glowing.”

     Dave sips it with his usual amount of cautiousness. “Tomorrow?”

     Frank shrugs, takes a swig from his bottle. “I don’t leave ‘til noon. Maybe you could stop by over lunch or something.” He takes another drink. “You don’t have to.”

     Dave can feel his hands start to shake around the stem of his glass, and he grips it harder to steady himself. “No, no that’s. That’s a good idea. I’ll do that.” He stares at his drink, considering the taste of it. It’s still hot on his tongue, and the fruit flavor burns at the back of his throat. He had never been very tolerant of his alcohol; drinks went straight to his head. He picks up the glass again and drains half of it in one go. When he sets it back down again he scrunches his eyes shut and coughs at the renewed burn of it. Frank is staring when he opens them again. Dave smiles.

     “What? We’re having fun.”

     Frank laughs a little uncomfortably. “Okay, just. Take it easy, Bowman, I know you.”

     Dave takes another drink. Three quarters gone. “Of course, of course.”

---

     Dave dips back his head to drain out the last few drops at the bottom of the glass in his hand. Frank watches, second half empty beer in his hand as Dave slams down his fourth glass.

     “Fuck!” Dave laughs. “Christ that is hot!” He drums his hands on the table and shakes his head, making a noise of discomfort in his throat, trying to shake away the burn.

     “...Does that mean you’re done?”

     “Noooooo, no no no,” Dave shakes his head. His fingers fumble around the stem of the maraschino cherry every drink comes with, popping the fruit in his mouth but not pulling it off the stem quite yet. He licks the drink off it first, starring Frank down and running his tongue over the skin of the cherry, sucking on it and pulling it out of his mouth slowly, enough for it to be visible in the ‘o’ his lips make around it, for his cheeks to hollow slightly before he pops it between his teeth. Frank rubs the back of his neck and looks across the room.

     “It’s getting kind of late.”

     “And?”

     “You’ve got work tomorrow.”

     Dave groans. “I don’t wanna think about that right now, c’moooon.” He reaches across the table and grabs the wrist of the hand Frank has on his beer. “Bein’ such a buzzkill tonight, where’s my Frank?” He leans across the table. “Where’s my darling Frank who knows how to have fun?”

     Frank leans back across the table too. “You wanna know something?”

     “What’s that?” Dave drops voice to a whisper, lips turning up in a lopsided smile.  

     “I think we should get you home.”

     Dave laughs a little. “In what kind of way?”

     Frank just stands, ignoring the question and offering Dave his hand. “You need me to walk you?”

     Dave simply takes his hand, and once he is on his feet he drapes his arm around Frank’s shoulder. Frank puts an arm around Dave’s waist, walking him to the car and opening his door for him. Dave struggles with his seatbelt for a good while, sighing in exaggerated relief when he finally gets it to click. Frank chews the inside of his cheek as Dave feels his way around the stereo, cycling through the stations and eventually finding one he likes. He starts doing a strange shimmy in his seat, leaning over and pressing shoulder to shoulder with Frank.

     “You’re something else tonight.” He swallows his discomfort, smiling a bit in genuine amusement at it.

     “‘S a good song!”

     Frank huffs a small laugh. “Apparently.” He leans a little to the left.

     When they reach Dave’s house, he insists that he can walk himself to the door. And he does with only some minor difficulty, but unlocking the front door is a different story. He fumbles the keys in his hands, clumsily trying to jiggle them into the lock. They fall from his hand and clatter against the concrete of the doorstep, and Frank can see Dave throw his head back, probably groaning in his exasperation. Dave tries to steady himself with one hand on the door and lean down for them with little success. Frank sighs, hopping out of the car and calling to Dave as he approaches.

     “You need some help with that?” He crouches next to Dave and picks them up, purposefully slow because something in the back of his mind is worried about embarrassing Dave. When he looks up, Dave is staring at him, liquor making his eyelids heavy. He smiles. Frank looks away and stands up.

     “Here, let me,” he murmurs, trying to force Dave to move out of the way of the lock with his own body, leaning into Dave’s personal space until they’re shoulder to shoulder. Dave makes no effort to give him room, instead laying an arm over Frank’s shoulder and leaning his weight into it. Frank tries to focus on the lock, turning the key and pushing the door open with one hand, the other again around Dave’s waist to support him. He announces his entrance, slurring noticeably.

     “Hey, Haaaal. Better,” he stops and giggles. “Better turn those cameras off, huh?” With the ‘huh’, he lets his head loll so he’s face to face with Frank. Frank turns away, pulling Dave to the stairs as he drags his feet. The entire time he struggles to find ways to get even more uncomfortably close. He presses his cheek into Frank’s shoulder and murmurs something unintelligible. When he does, Frank feels his hand snake up to his neck, trailing a finger from the base of it up. It makes him shiver involuntarily, and Dave laughs again. Low, in his throat, with connotations that make Frank’s face hot.

     “Hurry up, babe.”

     Frank almost chokes on his next breath.

     At the top of the stairs, Dave suddenly comes back to life enough to move on his own, grabbing Frank’s shirt and pushing him backwards until his back hits a wall. Frank can’t help but gasp when he hits it, all his air leaving him. Dave is practically holding himself up by his grip, leaning his entire weight into Frank and forming a slightly sloped hypotenuse with him. He tips his head up and presses his face closer to Frank’s. Frank can feel the look of horror cross his face as he frantically goes to push Dave away, finding purchase on his shoulder and shoving with as more force than he means in his urgency.

     “What are you doing?” The words tumble out of his mouth and he worries for a moment he’ll get tongue tied as he rushes to say them. Dave doesn’t answer and struggles against Frank’s hand for a moment, but tires himself out quickly. He slumps, face resting in the crook of Frank’s neck with a slight groan. He remains there, still for a moment. Both of them do. Frank puts a hand on the back of his head, getting ready to support him as they move again. Dave starts to a press a kiss there instead. There is a delay of action and reaction as Frank’s entire body freezes at the sensation. A rush of blood draining from his face instead of blush, and he can feel his mouth open to say something but nothing comes out. Again his air leaves him, shakily as Dave’s lips move against his skin. He pushes Dave away. Rough, by both shoulders this time, holding him nearly at arm’s length.

     “Dave.” He tries lace some authority into his voice. It wavers.

     Dave leans his head to the side, resting his cheek against Frank’s hand. Eyelids heavy as he makes merciless eye contact. Frank can feel the blush in Dave’s own cheeks against his hand. Even at this distance, he can smell the alcohol on Dave’s breath as he speaks.

     “You want me or not?”

     Frank furrows his brows, but his eyes widen at the same time. “...You’re drunk.”

     Dave groans and goes slack. Frank lets him, bringing him in close again to support him, face again in the crook of his neck. He doesn’t kiss this time, but Frank can feel his lips move as he mumbles.

     “Not a real answer.”

     Frank carries him to his room, guiding him to bed and letting him lay himself down. His grumbling continues as he kicks off his shoes and his fingers fumble at the buttons of his shirt. Frank can make out a ‘fuckin’ uncomfortable’ as he gives up on his shirt, trying instead at his belt. He manages to undo it and pull it out of its loops before exhaustion and alcohol overcomes him, and he sinks into the bed. Frank stares at him for a long while, watching his chest rise and fall and lengthening intervals until he’s well assured that Dave is certainly out. He still goes about his business slowly, gently tucking Dave’s legs completely on the bed, pulling the blanket shoved to the foot of the bed over him. Tucked just so over his shoulders. His fingers move in silent precision as he makes everything perfect. Hal watches as he carefully descends the stairs, keeping his step light and his brows drawn close together, though much of his face is obscured as he keeps his eyes to the floor. He pulls his phone out his pocket, and begins pacing in the dark as he taps in a number, listening to it ring, crossing his free arm. He keeps his voice low, something about food poisoning, Dave not being able to come in tomorrow. Hal watches more than he listens, takes careful note of the way Frank holds himself. He is constantly folding in on himself, obviously hyper aware of the space he occupies. And he takes every step with a bit of labor in it, like he’s worried he won’t hit the ground quite right and he’ll sink into the floor and disappear. There is a sense of unreality hanging heavy in the house. The lights are all off except for the stairway and Dave’s room, a minimal glow which hardly carries throughout the downstairs. Just enough to see by. And it is quiet except for Frank’s voice, which he still keeps low for fear of disturbing something that isn’t there. Like a man in a haunted house, walking around spirits and whispering so as not to prick up the ears of spectres. He eventually hangs up and breathes out a long sigh, wringing his hands. He stands around in the living room for a while, still trying to make himself small. Hal has never seen him this uncomfortable in Dave’s home before. Simultaneously wanting to leave and stay forever, like when he folds he’s forcing two halves together.  He makes his way to the kitchen after a while, drawing a glass of water and going back upstairs. He sets it on Dave’s bedside table. Again he stops and lingers, fidgeting with his hands, crossing his arms and rocking slightly on his feet.

     “Hal?” he says, barely above a whisper. There is no response and he squints at the lens across from him. It does not glow like the others, and Frank realizes it’s been switched off. He holds his breath as he leans across the bed to turn it on again.

     “Hal?” he tries again.

     “Yes, Frank?” Hal lowers his voice as well, though not as much as Frank.

     “Will you make sure he’s up before noon? Maybe wake him up around eleven. And make sure he drinks that when he wakes up,” he nods toward the glass.

     “Of course, Frank.”

     He nods, and his lips move in ‘thanks’, but he’s too quiet for Hal to hear him. Hal can see his eyes fall on Dave’s face, turned to the ceiling after he rolled onto his back. Frank swallows. His mouth is dry. And perhaps he forgets that he’s being watched because he reaches out, brushes Dave’s hair from his face. Despite how unnecessarily careful he’s been up until now, Hal can see him let his fingers get threaded in it, feeling the texture of his hair unabashed. His face softens, eyebrows still drawn together and a sadness still hanging over him, but his jaw unclenches, his features more plainly express the melancholy of the moment. He bends down now, and presses his lips to Dave’s forehead. One, two, three seconds long and Hal can hear the soft sound of a kiss breaking when he pulls away. His hand runs down from Dave’s temple where it came to rest, fingers ghosting over Dave’s cheek as he pulls the hand away too.  Hal can see Frank’s breath catch in his throat. He turns and hurries out of the room, down the stairs, and almost out the door. But he stops. He turns over his shoulder to the lens in the foyer.

     “Hey.”

     Hal makes a small beep of acknowledgement, and glows brighter.

     Frank’s fingers trace over the wood of the door. “This is. Probably the last time I’m going to be in here, isn’t it?”

     “...I suppose, yes, it is.”

     Frank hums. His eyes are downcast, but they flick up for his next question.

     “You’ll take care of him? Keep an eye on him?”

     “Yes. Of course.”

     Frank nods like it’s the answer he expected, and hovers by the door for a moment longer.

     “Thanks.”

     “Of course, Frank. It is what I’m here for.”

     Frank huffs air out his nose like a laugh. Hal has never seen him this sad. “I know, Hal.”

     He does not say goodbye before shutting the door behind him.

     Outside, it has started to rain. A slow falling mist. Frank stands just outside the door and lets the feeling of it sober him before he walks to his car. The air is cool, and smells like young plants, and wet earth.  

Chapter Text

     “---?”

     The tone of a voice ticking up at the end of a question is all his brain registers, and when he goes to ask ‘what?’ his mouth is glued shut with its dryness.

     “--ave?”

     He’s able to grunt. He can hardly imagine being able to move.

     “Dave, it is…”

     Hal’s voice does not trail off, but Dave shifts his focus to trying to roll onto his back. His mind swims as soon as he makes the motion, and he hears a strange, low sound. It takes him a long while to realize he’s groaned. He cannot focus on more than one thing at a time, but he slowly becomes conscious enough to at least realize Hal is still speaking to him. He shifts his focus again.

     “--on the bedside table, if you’d like.”

     He lets his head roll to the side. A glass of water sits on the edge of the table, and Dave becomes painfully aware of how incredibly dry his mouth is. He forces himself to sit up, and his temples throb as he does. The edge of his vision goes white, and he squeezes his eyes shut. The clothes he’s fallen asleep in are doing his comfort no favors. His belt hangs around his waist, undone in the front and he assumes that at some point in the night it folded over itself, pressing the metal buckle into his back because he is sore (he dimly worries at the circumstances in which his belt came undone in the first place, but the thought is fleeting as his temples cry out again). He reaches for the glass beside him and drains it in one go, gasping for breath as he sets it down again.

     “What time is it?” he still croaks as he speaks.

     “It’s 11 AM. Frank called in sick for you last night.”

     Dave presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Good.”

     Hal hums a low note. It’s not quite right for acceptance, though. The tone of it strays enough to make Dave curious.

     “What’s up?”

     “Hm?”

     “What’s up with you?”

     “Oh,” Hal answers. He pauses then, for some reason that Dave can’t ferret out in the moment and it makes him look up. “My apologies,” he continues. “I suppose I am bit concerned for you.”

     “It’s fine.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just. Hungover.”

     “I see...I would recommend, if I may, a few things?”

     Dave turns his body so isn’t craning his neck to make eye contact. Hal takes that as his cue.

     “You have eggs and ham in the fridge, as well as coffee. Coffee is said to remedy a few of the ailments you may be experiencing, and a good breakfast may also have positive effects of that nature.”

     Dave squints at the lens. “You keep track of that?”

     “I have access to the internet and can process up to 70 million results in--”

     “No, no.” Dave waves his hand around in dismissal. “Of what I have in my fridge.”

     “Oh...Yes, I suppose I do. I consider that to be part of my duties as a sort of housemate.”

     Dave shrugs, running his hands down his face again, trying to get his brain to come out of its stupor. “If that’s what you’ve gotta do. I won’t stop you.” He pushes himself out of bed finally, steadying himself against the mattress until he’s sure he can actually stand. When he is completely upright his pants slip down from his hips, and he barely catches them before they fall below his shirt. He looks to the lens again.

     “Can you just look away or something?”

     Hal dims the light to indicate his absence. “Of course.”

     “Thanks,” he murmurs as he pushes them the rest of the way down his legs, stepping out them and almost tripping as he unbuttons his shirt the rest of the way. Despite his current state, he browses his closet carefully, and puts on the clothes he selects after this deliberation with similar care. He swallows away the thought of his motivation behind putting on jeans and a nicer one of his shirts. The way it broadcasts his plans for going out soon and who that is for. As he hobbles to the door his headache returns, and he leans against the doorframe and waits for it to subside. He stares blankly at the stairwell as he recovers. The sight of it calls up some recent memory, and he draws his brows together, staring more intently as he tries to help it resurface. When it does the feeling is heavy and low in his gut, and his throat contracts. The weight of his body being supported by someone else. The warmth of them pressed together, his own voice murmuring something whose specific nature is long forgotten to him but he remembers the way he had felt (the unmistakable heat of it on his cheeks and much lower and how much he’d enjoyed it) , the way Frank sounded when he had responded. He’d pushed Dave away. Dave remembers enjoying that feeling too. It’s a bit more difficult to enjoy now, in his right mind. His hand reflexively flies to his pocket before his mind has time to whirl his body around in desperate search of his phone. It rests beside the now empty glass, and he trips as he rushes for it, hands trembling around it as he taps Frank’s contact. The texts they sent before going out stare him in the face as he tries to think of something to say. Should he let Frank text first? Maybe that would be better because if Dave texted first after last night it might come across as….But the thought of not knowing for a single second longer what Frank thinks of him now is unbearable. And what if he’s busy? Maybe he hasn’t texted yet because he’s busy and Dave should get his attention. Or maybe he hasn’t texted yet because…

     Hal speaks up again, apparently sensing his unease. Again, shame gnaws at his insides as he realizes Hal bore witness to the aftermath of drinks with Frank.

     “Frank seemed very worried about you last night.”

     Dave simply nods, getting his meaning.

     Hey

     He stares at the text for minutes before pressing send and pocketing the device almost immediately. If Frank responds, he won't know until he checks in a few minutes. A healthy buffer to keep from looking desperate. He slows his breathing by force and shuffles down to the kitchen. Maybe it’s for the better that the mere act of moving takes so much thought; the panic that these events should be riling up in him is dull, out of focus as he forces his body through the motions. He squints against the sunlight pouring through the windows downstairs (at least, it feels like that much light is reaching him. In reality, it is quite cloudy outside). Hal is right about the eggs and ham. As he hangs on the refrigerator door he grabs them and the bag of shredded cheese he’d mentioned as well. There is an attempt at a cutting board and a knife, with which he cuts a few strips of ham. But his head throbs more persistently and he eventually drops to the floor, cutting board in his lap, picking apart bits of meat with his fingernails. He stands again to crack the eggs into a pan, stirring them a few times before dropping a handful of ham in, tossing it over the heat and sinking to the tile again.  He listens to the pop and snap of moisture in the ham cooking away, and the wind outside picks up, starts to whistle. He stands to stir every once in a while, and on his last one he adds a generous amount of cheese. He dumps the contents of the pan onto a plate, grabs a fork, and takes his meal on the kitchen floor. Hal is right; it certainly does feel good to be eating breakfast...perhaps partially for different reasons for him than others. He can't remember the last time he made such an involved meal--let alone in the morning. As for a hangover cure, it hardly does the trick. The sun rises higher in the sky, eventually reaching a point where it glints off the tile in front of Dave. The pressure at the back of his eyes, the beginning of a migraine, throbs as he looks away. He cranes his neck to read the microwave clock, head thumping against the wood cabinets behind him and making his vision go white for a moment. When his sight comes back to him, he has to squint to make out the numbers. 11:30. He checks his phone.

     Hey!

     A few minutes later: You coming by??

     And another, just a minute ago: Hah, it’s fine if you can’t or whatever! I guess I thought I’d offer though

     As Dave goes to type out a response, Frank’s typing icon pops up and another text comes in. Almost done loading up if you change your mind

     Shit, sorry. / I’m coming over, just finished breakfast and all that. / Kinda hungover.

     Oh hey!! / Hah! Yeah, I’d imagine...I’ll wait up for you?

     I’ll try not to hold you up too much.

     We’re behind anyway / Don’t even worry about it!

     Dave cradles the phone in both hands for a moment, staring at the texts. The relief he’d been expecting doesn’t come. That lump at the back of his throat stays put, and he can practically feel last night breathing down his neck. He wishes he was still half asleep and unable to properly process because his hands begin to shake again as it really starts to sink in. He has less to worry about now than he did before they spoke and yet it’s overwhelming in ways he hasn’t felt before. Part of him wishes he would get what he was half expecting, some theatrical platonic break-up. For Frank to kick him while he’s down because that’s what he deserves for what he’s done. But he’s dodged it. It tears him apart in ways only Frank can do, the warm wash of forgiveness he is so unworthy of. Frank doesn’t miss a beat. It isn’t even awkward in residual discomfort. Dave’s lip starts to tremble too and he bites down on it. Like Hell will he cry over a best case scenario.

     When the room stops spinning and he trusts his legs again, Dave pushes up from the floor, leaning against the counter as he gets his footing. Frank didn’t live very far away, but in his present state he figures he should give himself a good while to get there. The car would stop him from getting into accidents, driving out of dangerous scenarios most of the time, but Dave was hardly one to take risks. He eases himself into the driver’s seat, buckling himself in and hearing the buzz of electricity start as he presses the power button under the wheel. He surely causes some minor annoyances as he drives just barely the speed limit. He’s hardly in the condition to even be driving that fast. Better safe than sorry , he thinks as he turns and adjusts the sun visor to accommodate.

---

     Frank lives in a small house in a family suburb, sticking out like a sore thumb with his old white four-seater among minivans with three rows in the back and crumbs from animal crackers in every crevice. A sort of soccer mom village and he lives there alone. He told Dave once that it wasn’t at all his first choice for a home; he’d rather have had a small apartment in the city. But it was fun sometimes to watch the older kids on his street trying to ride bikes, and notice the chalk drawings that strayed into his section of the sidewalk.

     “I just hope I can move before they all start growing up so I don’t start feeling like an old man,” is what he had said. Dave remembers the silence that had followed that statement, thick with reflection. Both of them single and in their mid-thirties, no longer in a profession that favored that independence. He’d almost said something about it that night, how perfect it was that the two of them had ended up together. Bachelors. Both space enthusiasts. Lost together in a world stuck with its eyes on its feet. Oh, Dr. Poole. Oh, how you complete me , Dave thinks to himself, not without contempt.

     Dave pulls to a stop on the curb opposite of his house; a modest little moving truck is parked in the driveway, already holding numerous boxes. Dave can make out the writing on a few of them in Frank’s large, all caps loopy handwriting. Most of it makes sense (“KITCHEN”, “BED STUFF”), but a few sport some strange phrases and iconography with meaning only to their illustrator. Dave smiles a little bit at it, despite the circumstances. Frank had always had ways of keeping himself amused through dull tasks, having no shame in coming off as a bit childish sometimes. The smile is short lived, though, as heavy, rosy sentiments are stirred up by the sight. By something that minute. It’s a guilty feeling to observe such a small moment of his life and extrapolate that much meaning from it. It’s not the first time that Dave has worried that they are too close. That they known each other too well….It goes both ways. He wonders what all Frank has seen in him over the years….Dave looks away to unbuckle his seatbelt.

     The front door to his home is propped open, and as Dave half-jogs across the street Frank appears in the open space, a large box in his arms and visibly a little uncomfortable with the weight. His brows are knit together, knees bent just slightly as he bites his lip. The shirt he’s wearing is loose (though a bit snug around the arms), comfortable looking. He hasn’t even put shoes on over his polka dot socks, and his hair is windblown and messy from going in and out. It is the most unremarkable, mundane sight of everyday life and everything about it makes Dave’s head spin with reminders of why he feels the way he does. He takes a steadying breath.

     “Hey!”

     Frank cranes his neck over the box, face lighting up as he sees his guest. “Dave!” he calls in response (or perhaps more sheer joy of recognition), setting the box on the step and meeting Dave halfway on the lawn.

     “Hey!” he repeats Dave now. “I was worried you weren’t gonna make it, slowpoke.” He puts his hands on his hips as he speaks. His tone is breathy, and his chest heaves a bit when he pauses, catching his breath after the strain of lifting.

     Dave smiles lopsidedly. “It’s a little bright out for me to be driving.”

     The look in Frank’s eyes turns ever so uneasy. Dave’s stomach wrenches. Perhaps he should’ve lied. “Yeah, I’d imagine you’re not doing too hot after that.”

     Dave tries to give another half-assed smile, but ends up pursing his lips instead, feeling the blood leave his cheeks at the mere implication of last night. As they both go silent it is painfully evident that is what’s on both of their minds. It stretches on and on and the longer it becomes the harder it is to say anything. ‘After that’. After what , exactly? It is hard to separate the two ideas: him overdoing it and the actions that followed. One caused the other. And vice versa, when Dave thinks about it. Under what other conditions could he possibly have been so bold? Why else would he put himself in such a state other than to pull a stunt like that? ‘After that’. It’s not what he meant but it’s what he’s thinking about. He couldn’t possibly be thinking about anything else. Thinking about anything but how horrible it felt to have Dave’s hands on him. How horrible every thought of him must be now to know that these were his intentions, what he had been after from the beginning. He tries to swallow away the lump in his throat as an apology comes rushing up out of his stomach like bile. He can’t stop it. The tension in the air is too much and the only thing he can do is brace himself as some spur of the moment, heartfelt speech climbs up his throat and comes slipping off his tongue against his will.

     “Frank, I--”

     “Don’t.” Frank holds up a hand and shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says again, softer this time.

     And that is it.

     That is all Frank says of it. That is all either of them will ever say about it. There will be no relief of the tension (in the air, in his muscles, in every word to be spoken from now on), and Dave will be left with his doubts. He should be thankful that it’s unspoken. He should be thankful that Frank is letting him off the hook like this but he can’t be. It’s not either of the things he expected- -expected , rather imagined the many times his mind wandered to the thought of confessing. It’s not how he imagined doing it. It’s not a far-fetched, flowery and poetic kiss and embrace or an even less realistic verbal lashing full of vitriol that he is somehow left wanting. It is no version of the satisfying fantasy Dave has lived over and over. It is real. It is exactly as it would happen.

     Dave looks at their feet on the grass. He had never really thought of himself as a viable candidate for anything like a real romance, but especially now, on Frank’s lawn in a quiet Midwestern suburb, he can picture something like it. Waking up in a soft bed and lying together in the morning sun for an hour before getting up finally to make breakfast. He knows Frank makes amazing pancakes; Dave could take care of eggs and bacon. He imagines lounging together in their underwear all day, joking like they always do, touching the way he’s always wanted, not having to look away lest he be caught staring. Showering together, making love, and falling asleep in his arms. Something sickeningly domestic like that.

     “Hey,” Frank says, getting Dave’s attention back on the present. He looks up. That expression is on Frank’s face again; that pained and tired look that will never look right on his face and the lump in Dave’s throat only builds to see it. “Text me, okay? Keep in touch?”

     Dave only nods. He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak. And Frank isn’t about to do him any favors because he raises his arms up and beckons Dave forward. He is all too quick to respond, closing the gap and throwing his arms around Frank. They stand still for a moment with Dave’s chin neatly tucked on top of Frank’s shoulder before he moves to nestle his face a little more into Frank’s neck. He does it without thinking (it’s nothing compared to what he’s already done, anyway) and thank God Frank doesn’t reject it. Rather, his hand goes to the base of Dave’s neck in almost reciprocating fashion. Dave is sure Frank can feel his heart racing, pressed against him. Frank doesn’t say anything if he does. No joke to give away the fact that he’s uncomfortable, to ease the pressure of the moment. It’s unlike him. It makes Dave unable to think and all he can do is try to memorize everything about this. Frank is soft around the edges, and Dave’s arms fit nicely around him, locked behind his back and squeezing just slightly. The scent of whatever product he puts in his hair in the shower is still strong: a fresh, sweet smell like candied oranges. It makes his hair incredibly soft, whatever it is. And, of course, he is warm. Always so incredibly warm and on a mid-November day like this it is painfully accentuated, making him hyper-aware of where he is being touched. The hug goes on for a little too long, Dave realizes, and he goes to separate himself. But as he does Frank pulls him back, giving him one last squeeze before they let go. Dave returns it desperately, hands no longer locked behind Frank’s back but clutching at him instead. It’s dizzying.

     Frank finally loosens his grip, and Dave reluctantly pulls away. Frank smiles at him, perhaps to lighten the mood, but Dave can feel himself staring at the pitiful sight before him. He still looks like he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a while. There are lines under his eyes that Dave doesn’t recognize, and he looks like he could give way to gravity at any moment. The normal warmth in his brown irises has been greyed out. Frank takes Dave’s shoulder, and his smile falters for a moment.

     “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone, okay?”

     Dave nods. “I will.”

     Frank looks away as the smile on his face falls further. Dave watches what he can of that face he has come to love so much. Thinking, taking a breath and almost speaking twice before hanging his head and leaning in a few inches more. There is an air of defeat to him as his smile disappears entirely.

     “I’m gonna miss you.”

     It makes Dave’s heart sink and race at the same time. That he would say it after last night. That he has to say it at all.

     “I’m gonna miss you too,” he has to whisper to keep his voice steady.

     Dave can see Frank swallow hard as he speaks, and suddenly his hand is on the back of Dave’s head, high into his hair and guiding him forward again. Dave all but goes limp at the touch, obediently following through and burying his face in the crook of Frank’s neck. Not without shame, but too tired to stop himself. Maybe that’s what this is all about. A pity chance to do one of things he’s always wanted to do because he blew it last night. Dave squeezes his eyes shut tighter and stops thinking.

     Frank is soft. Frank is warm. Frank is moving his fingers in Dave’s hair. Frank’s breathing is barely controlled.

     Dave doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he knows it isn’t long enough when Frank lets go of him. It could never be enough. Frank takes a deep breath and smiles again. Dave is too tired to think anything of the expression.

     “Talk to you soon, okay?” Frank reassures himself.

     Dave nods. “Text me when you get there safe.”

     Frank’s face softens. “I’ll keep you posted, Dave…” his voice trails off for a moment.

     “Get outta here,” he finally says, trying to end it. “Go back to sleep or something.”

     Dave promises he will, and Frank pats him one last time on the shoulder before he returns to the step, and Dave to his car. Frank watches the sky blue car pull away, watches until it disappears around a bend. 

---

     The wind picks up on the drive home, whipping around the car, through his clothes as he wraps his arms around himself and walks to the door. It whistles loud in his ears, rustling the leaves and branches in the trees and growing louder as he begins to shut the door, whistling through the narrow space between it and the frame until the door clicks shut. Immediately there is silence. Silence except for the low, faint hum of electricity, and Dave stands with his back against the door. He stands for several minutes, listening to nothing, waiting for his legs to move him. It is quiet inside his house. Quiet and still except for Dave, his footsteps on the stairs, muffled by the carpeting as he walks, the sound of his fingers on the wall as his body moves from room to room. He goes to his bedroom, eyes staring forward at nothing as he goes through the second-nature motions of crawling into bed. He is still fully clothed, wearing his shoes even. The discomfort doesn’t register, and he pulls the blankets around himself to try and block out the sun. It is even quieter here, with the blankets muffling the already faint whir of home appliances. Quiet, warm, dark. Quiet and still. Too quiet. Too still. His body is rigid with the expectancy of something to break the silence and he holds his breath for it, eyes wide open under the covers. There isn't anything to distract from the lump in his throat that never disappeared as Dave waits on nothing. It is too much. He presses his face into the pillow when the first sob escapes him. The sound of it makes his head spin and he cannot stop the second, or the third, and even as Hal speaks up (“Dave? Dave, are you alright? Dave…?”) he can do nothing but cry. It’s a sick, ugly sound. His voice cracks several times with the emotion of it, and that only makes it worse. Pathetic, gasping, sobbing into his pillow like a five year old. He pushes the pillow harder against himself to try and make this silent too. His chest heaves as he nearly suffocates himself, almost hyperventilating. He can barely breathe, and his throat turns raw and he worries that if he were to pull away he would see blood where his mouth had been. He still doesn’t stop. He isn’t sure when he does; his mind stops processing long before he falls asleep. It fades out gradually--all but the warmth disappearing with his consciousness. The warmth stays, and he dreams of it.

---

     It was his second week on the job when Frank had run up to him.

     “Oh!” was the first word Dave heard him say. “Hey, wait! Blue shirt, brown hair!” Dave stopped, turned around with a bit of an annoyed expression on his face at the address. The person running up behind him looked a bit embarrassed, or maybe he was just flushed from the jog.

     “Sorry, sorry,” he had said, holding his hands up in apology. Dave made no move to change the look on his face, as the stranger had some interesting ideas about how close was an acceptable distance. “I’m better with faces than names….I know you, though. Canaveral.”

     Dave blinked a few times. He didn’t recognize the man before him (and highly doubted he had much to do with a guy who wore ties with cheeseburger patterns).  “I’m sorry, I don’t. Think we know each other.”

     Frank crossed his arms, smile quirking up on the right side of his face and eyebrows tipping into a slightly apologetic look. “ ‘Know’ is probably a strong word for it, yeah. I’ve seen you, though...In Florida, at the Cape?”

     Dave waited for a further explanation, but it didn’t come.

     “Shit, did you not work for the AA?” Frank shrank away a little, smiling all the while.

     “No, I did.”

     His smile got even bigger when Dave had said that, his entire face lighting up with the expression and he extended a hand. “I’m Frank. Frank Poole. I saw you in the hall a few times, heard about you here and there. Your name starts with a D.”

     Dave nodded. “Dave Bowman.” He took Frank’s hand, and Frank had shaken his with a nice firmness and resolve.

     “That’s it, that’s it! I remember now.” Frank let Dave’s hand go and put his hands in his pockets, rocking a little on his feet. Dave’s eyes had been drawn to the movement, and he could see the matching french fries on his socks peeking under the hem of his pants. “Sorry for like. Yelling at you across the hall,” Frank continued,  “but. I dunno, that’s kinda wild, huh? Ending up in the same place? Same department even?”

     Dave shrugged, turning to walk. Frank walked alongside him.

     “I little, I guess. We ended up at the same place once, though.”

     “Same department there too,” was Frank’s response, a bit quieter in his thoughtfulness.

     Dave hadn’t said anything else after that, but Frank kept walking with him. The entire time he was just a bit too close, hands in his pockets, eyes facing forward and smiling at nothing in particular.  As Dave had turned off into his cubicle, he had called out one more time.

     “See you later, Bowman!”

     Dave waved to be polite, keeping his eyes down as heads turned to see what all the activity was about.

     Frank had walked with him almost every day since then. They usually arrived at the same time, and they went the same direction anyway. He always wore such strange ties that Dave couldn’t help but take note of (hot-air balloons, fruits, garishly colored stripes highly reminiscent of the 80s) that didn’t always match his shirts. He got used to how close Frank liked to stand to him.

     The next week Frank had found him in the outdoor cafe and asked to sit with him like they were in middle school. They were a couple of the only people outside that day, everyone else inside had been complaining about the heat. They must have been a odd sight to the other three employees scattered about, plenty of empty tables between the five of them and yet Frank was standing with his tray in his hands asking to sit with a relative stranger. Dave had shrugged, which Frank had taken as a yes. He made small talk about work, asking Dave how he had come to Urbana, about his work back in Florida. Dave had given him short, minimal answers, but Frank was far from discouraged. He’d gotten excited when he’d gotten Dave to hand over the fact that he spoke French.

     “No way! I speak Spanish!”

     Dave took a bite of his largely untouched, mushy vegetables. “It’s nice job security.”

     “Can I hear some?” Frank leaned forward slightly in anticipation.

     Dave told Frank his tie didn’t match his shirt. Frank had laughed.

     “It sounds like you’re choking.”

     “Alright, let’s hear your accent then.”

     Frank bragged about his accent, boasting that it was better than Dave’s. Dave had smiled a little, hearing enough similarities between their languages to work out what he had said.

     “Whatever,” Dave murmured, trying to hide his smile behind his hand. Frank looked around, eyes settling on the sky above them.

     Perhaps under different circumstances Dave would’ve pushed him away a little harder. In the years before he had done a good job of keeping his distance from everyone, and someone like Frank should’ve made that job easy. Loud, outgoing. The embodiment of a hot, sunny summer day. So Dave’s polar opposite that it should’ve been like mixing oil and water. It should've been easy, Dave should’ve had no problem turning Frank around and going back to their separate lives. But he didn’t. Maybe he was just vulnerable--open emotionally from recent events. It wouldn’t be the first time he had sought comfort from another person (he promised himself he never would again), but he hadn’t worried at the time. Hadn’t thought about it much at all. They came from the same place, a place they both missed and there was a sort of comfort in finding each other. Something to ease the transition from there to here. Something normal, something old, something they were used to. Frank was in a similar situation, and Dave was drawn to that (thinking back on it, Dave should have seen the similarities from the beginning. A balm for the same wound).

     The first time they saw each other out of work was on July 17th. Several weeks after their first encounter. They had eaten lunch together as had become their habit (Frank had driven them to some retro diner-type restaurant where the staff knew his name. It was out of business by the same time next year), and Frank had made some Star Trek reference which went over Dave’s head. When he didn’t get any reaction he’d given Dave a strange, questioning look.

     “What?” Dave covered the lower half of his face as he spoke, mouth full of slightly-too-ketchupy (but not bad at all) burger.

     “Is my comedy getting stale? You didn’t even roll your eyes.”

     “...About what?”

     He was shocked. “You hav e seen at least that episode, right?”

     Dave shook his head.

     “Oh my God,” Frank was truly overacting at this point, hand over his heart and mouth agape. “Okay, no. That’s. David, I cannot believe you. You were an astronaut, right?” He took on a scolding tone, pointing an accusatory finger in Dave’s direction.

     Dave turned his attention back to his food. “I can’t believe you just called me ‘David’.”

     Frank hooked a finger under the lip of it and pulled his plate away. “Look at me, Dave.”

     Dave had mustered up the most uninterested look he possibly could’ve. Frank struggled to keep a straight face, giggling through his next sentence.

     “I can’t be your friend anymore if you don’t watch Star Trek with me tonight.”

     “Okay, nice knowing you, then.”

     Frank laughed. “Shut up, man…”

     A pause. A contemplative look as he swirled his last fry around in the smear of ketchup on his plate.

     “Seriously, though, I need you to see at least the essentials. You should come over.”

     Dave blinked. “Like, to your house?”

     “No, to the ditch I live in.”

     Dave smiled. “You’re hilarious.”

     Frank straightened up at the false flattery. “Why, thank you.” He slid the plate back across the table.

     “What time should I meet you?” Dave asked, dipping a few fries into his milkshake.

     Frank’s face lit up at the acceptance of his offer, and he asked for Dave’s phone. He’d entered his number into Dave’s contacts while he was at it, asking Dave to let him know when he was on his way. Dave only noticed what Frank had set his name to when he had to text “That Major Hottie From Work” that he was on his way around seven. Maybe for the better, because Dave couldn’t stop the laugh that won from him.

     Dave was greeted with an explanation for why Frank needed ‘exactly four minutes notice’ in Frank’s living room. A spread of popcorn (fresh, still steaming) and various candies (Junior Mints, he noticed before any others, mentally claiming them as his own) lay on a cushioned bench before the couch. Everything had the tell tale signs of a house that had just been cleaned, even the couch cushions looked freshly fluffed and were tucked in place just so. Frank looked a bit nervous as Dave eyed the display.

     “I thought I’d make you comfortable, because now that I’ve got you here I might as well keep you for all three seasons...Not that you’d wanna leave. Because it’s great.”

     Dave rolled his eyes. “I’ll stay and finish off the chocolate. You can watch Star Trek while I do.” He settled onto one side of the couch, Frank following suite on the other side.

     “This is the price of my hospitality, Dave. Watch it or leave.”

     Dave faked stuffing a few boxes of candy in his pockets, and got up to leave. Frank had laughed for a good while at that, and Dave felt his cheeks heating up at the sound.

     “C’mon! You’ll like it, I promise. And if you don’t you can take those home with you.”

     “In that case, I don’t like it.”

     Frank hmphed in amusement. “Jerk,” he said, switching the TV on and picking the first episode.

     “Nerd.”

---

     They had watched several more episodes than Frank originally intended, each preceded with “Oh man, this one is great, we have to watch this one too”. Dave rolled his eyes each time and went along with it, feigning disinterest. In all honesty, some of the episodes were rather charming. It had the sort of appeal of something that seemed to have been made with the sole intent of being fun to produce. Everything was a bit over the top. The effects were far outdated, the acting having its moments, the plots were often off the wall bizarre. It was exactly the sort of thing that Dave would expect Frank to like. That, and more secretly, he was having a good time like this. Lounging on the couch maybe half focused on the television, occasionally getting distracted by talking with Frank. He hardly noticed as the hours slipped by.  When he arrived, he had sat with both feet on the floor, back up straight and taking up as little space as possible to be polite. As it went on, though, Frank had propped his feet up, and Dave had leaned back into his particular corner of the couch, swinging his knees over the back of the couch at one point. Frank glanced over when he did.

     “You always sit like that? That looks really comfortable.”

     “It’s not, no,” Dave had played along without hesitation. “I usually sit with my legs more like this.” At ‘this’ he swung one leg back over, pushing it in Frank’s direction. Frank swatted him away, laughing as he told Dave to ‘fuck off’.

     Eventually, on a less exciting and more somber episode, they fully detached from the show and became engrossed in conversation. The topic of space was hard to avoid with their respective backgrounds. With the common theme of the program still playing on the television. It was even harder to avoid some rather sore feelings once they were on the subject; the night had become a little heavier after it was brought up. They lamented together the loss of their old jobs, of that certain spark of hope and thrill of adventure in the world. Dave had some rather strong words which not even he knew were in himself until he spoke them. He had hardly expected to even let himself be this openly sentimental about the whole thing at all. It was a faintly uncomfortable, foreign feeling to say these things out loud, but in the moment he hardly cared at all. Frank had passionately agreed with his points, speaking with his hands and gesticulating the frustration out. A necessity, they had agreed, a necessity had been taken that day when the program was discontinued. They lapsed into silence once Frank had finished his spiel, and the mood turned a more indigo hue.

     “I still keep track of the stations’ orbits,” Frank confessed after the minute passed, in a much quieter voice. “Habit, I guess.”

     Dave did too. He had caught Station III and IV several times in the sky, and it always filled him with a sense of unease. Centrifuges spinning endlessly in their orbits, abandoned for who knew how long. What a strange sort of derelict.

     “Five should be out tonight, right?”

     Frank nodded. “Midnight,” was his reply, in that same low, distant tone. He glanced at the clock. It was 12:01.

     “Shit, we might be able to see it,” he’d straightened up as spoke, voice filling out as he came back to the present. “You wanna go look?” He turned to Dave, who nodded, and they both went out into the backyard.

     It was far enough away from the city that most brighter stars and major constellations were still visible. A good sign for the station. They stood in the grass in silence, both holding their breath as they waited. It was still hot out that night, almost like the Florida weather Dave’s body was still expecting from Illinois year-round. There was no sound in that mildly humid air except for a few crickets, chirping from some distant bushes, and the deep midnight sky mirrored back to them the atmosphere that had sunk over previous festivities.

     Station V cleared the treeline at 12:05. It glittered in the sky, racing past the backdrop of the stationary celestial sphere as different materials and imperfections in its surface caught the long-gone Sun. They didn’t breathe until it has passed out of view, and were still silent for a long while after it disappeared past the horizon. There was some twisted symbolism in that man-made object--that badge of accomplishment streaking across the sky as a reminder to all--alone and empty now. Dave was the one who broke the silence.

     “It’s the 17th, right?”

     “18th.”

     “18th,” Dave repeated. Not that it made much difference in what he was looking for. He squinted up at the sky, looking for a constellation he could use to find the ecliptic, muttering mnemonics to himself and tracing the between the stars with his finger. It had been a long time since he had done this--even when he worked for the AA he was long out of practice. Frank watched him, looking from the tip of his finger to Dave’s face, eyebrows drawn together in concentration and pale eyes flicking from East to West and back again.

     “...Arc to Arcturus,” he muttered, and Frank couldn’t help but laugh.

     “Lookin’ for Booty?” Dave shook his head. Half at the humorous mispronunciation, half in answer to the question. He continued looking, muttering to himself until his finger settled on a bright, dimly red spot in the sky. Frank stared up at it for a long time. There was no need for commentary as memories of the planet came rushing forth to both of them. Of clunky boots and friendly quarrels between crewmates. Of magnificent red dunes, of finding Earth in that alien sky in a manner not unlike this.

     “You know,” Frank spoke in a hushed whisper, “there’s an easier way to find Mars.”

     “Hm?”

     “Look for the red one.” Frank smiled and pointed with him, the tips of their fingers nearly touching. “There it is.”

     Dave huffed. “Funny.”

     Again they lapsed into silence, staring at the distant world before them, wondering if their eyes fell upon footprints made by people they knew. Perhaps by themselves. It felt like lifetimes ago.

     “...You’ve been?” Frank started again.

     “Twice.”

     Frank whistled. “Lucky bastard. I went once. My one and only. Besides the Moon, of course.”

     Dave nodded. “It’s a beautiful little place, isn’t it?”

     “Marvelous.” Frank paused as he scanned the sky again. Silently, he placed his hand on top of Dave’s, guiding it down and to the left until it pointed at another unusually bright ‘star’. Pale blue and glimmering. He had no idea what it was, but some strange instinct in Dave made his heart jump at the sight.

     “Jupiter,” was all Frank had said, and it was silent again.

     That was the night that Dave Bowman had fallen in love.

Chapter Text

     When Dave wakes up again it is dark outside. Raining. Storming, actually, to the point where the hypnotizing patter of rain on the roof has turned into a dull roar. There is no flash of lightning, but the low rumble of thunder resonates in his chest, and he can hear the glasses and mugs on the bedside table rattle. It’s almost comforting. He is used to storms from Florida.

     It takes nearly all the energy his little nap gave him to reach into his pocket and pull his phone out. The screen is too bright in the now near pitch black of his room, and he shuts his eyes for a moment to let himself adjust. His temples throb again (dimly, just one piece of the ache that he can barely pick out among the sea of others) as he reads the “12:45” plastered on his lockscreen. He lets his arm go limp against the bed again, phone beneath his hand, staring off into the blackness that swims as his brain makes up patterns in the dark. The one thing visible is the red light on his heater, which Dave focuses on until his eyes adjust enough that he can make out the shape of it. Clothes on the ground that look like disfigured faces in the dark, stacks of books collecting dust. Not a very impressive sight. He kicks his shoes off and hears them hit the ground one after the other. Out of the corner of his eye, Dave can see the red glow of Hal’s lens get brighter for a moment after the sound, remaining that way for a few seconds until he’s satisfied Dave hasn’t woken up yet and it dims again. He lays in bed for several more minutes, trying to go back to sleep. He’s certainly tired enough to; the thought of moving is some momentous task that feels far out of his grasp. But it doesn’t come. Whatever tiredness he feels is not phased by sleeping all day. He rolls over

     If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine he is home again. He is thirteen years old, on the couch in his living room, having snuck out of his room late at night to watch the R-rated movies that didn’t play until 10 P.M. It’s almost 11 now and he’s fallen asleep on the couch with the remote in his hands. He doesn’t know what wakes him up, and whatever it is it doesn’t do the job entirely. When he opens his eyes it takes him full minutes to process any single thing. The remote rests on the small table pressed against the couch’s arm, and the TV is switched off. He wonders to himself if it was possible that he did it in his sleep before he realizes a blanket has been tucked around him--something he didn’t bring with him on his little expedition. He rolls his head to the side, peering into the other room to see if his mother is still here. She isn’t, and he closes his eyes again. The sound of rain hitting the roof, of plants outside tapping against the windows as the wind blows them this way and that. The ball bearings in the ceiling fan clicking as it spins and the low hum of any electric thing in unison.

     He is 27. He has a house far away from the beaches. He lives alone, and the size of his bed reflects that. It’s a particularly hot and humid night, and he has fallen asleep without even the sheet covering him. The windows are open and his small electric fan (placed on a chair at the foot of his bed, blowing over him) whirs persistently. Dave lays, stomach to the ceiling, nightshirt and pajama pants long discarded. His eyes are closed and his breathing is slow, but he’s still awake when the wind picks up. It blows in gusts, and as the rain starts Dave can hear the pattering turn to a pouring and back again like waves.

     He is 12. He is 24. He is 6 years old. He is anywhere but here as long as that anywhere is home.

     He opens his eyes again and stares at the wall across from him. When he was there he had never thought of it as home. At least not once he was older. It was where he was born, where he had always lived and figured he always would but he never thought to apply the word ‘home’ to it. He wonders if he moved would he feel the same way about Illinois. The same sense of longing, of some duty. A ghost aching to carry out some unfinished business and be laid to rest.  He’d never felt very fond of his native state when he lived there, but now he feels like he missed something. Like he’s left something behind. Maybe there is something wrong with him that he can’t feel anything but out of place anymore.

---

     The next day is his first day of work at his new job. He leaves at his usual time, parks in his same parking place, walks the same way to the door. No one stands where Frank used to wait for him, but Dave’s eyes are so used to going to the spot he can’t help it. They search, involuntarily, starting where his eyes might have been and going to the spot of ground were his feet might’ve rested. The patch of grass Frank had torn up with his shoes the other day still shows crescents of dirt. Dave watches the moons rise and set in his vision as he passes. It is unnaturally quiet.

     There is an uncomfortable feeling weighing on his lungs and the back of his neck as he walks. Down the long hall of plants and phones and people in plain patterned clothing, to the desk he was assigned, and the entire way he is silent. By the time he sits down at his cubicle and presses his earpiece in, the only things he has said today have been “Hey, Hal” and “I’ll be back at 5”. He’s conscious of the way his tongue sits in his mouth and the way it feels against his teeth, and how long it has been since he last spoke. He looks up from the monitor in front of him, craning his neck over the walls of cubicle and looking at all the people he doesn’t know around him. All new faces, new names with responsibilities he is unfamiliar with, hallways all around him that he hasn’t the faintest clue of where they go.

     “...Are you still there?”

     “What?”

     The person on the other end of the line sighs. “You said you could patch me through to him five minutes ago and I’m still waiting.”

     Dave blinks a few times, and his lips move in silence as he thinks of a response. How long has he been talking? What is it that he does here again?

     “I. Yes, sorry. I’ll put you through.”

     “Uhhuh.”

---

     It’s a relatively slow day that day, which is a blessing for a new guy like him. He spends most of it going through his blue pens. They’re the cheaper, soft plastic kind with the ink that smells metallic and has an iridescent, greasy sheen to it. He draws nothing in particular on the backs of unimportant scraps of paper. Some long stretches of foliage: bushes, long grass and ferns. That ends up being too mindless to fill the time between calls, and he tries to draw some of the shells he’d seen in the conchology books he’d been able to get his hands once. He used to study them on his own, carry them around in a bag otherwise full of chemistry and astronomy textbooks. He doesn’t remember them very well anymore. The drawings are crude, and remind him of college, of Florida, of Canaveral. He draws terrestrial landscapes, horizons littered with craters, what he remembers the standard issued suits to look like: the great, clunky thing he had been assigned when he went to Mars. They’re not incredibly detailed, given how long it’s been since he last saw one. After he fills up that page, he’s thrown two pens in the garbage can under his desk. He grabs another sheet and draws something he does remember in perfect detail. He remembers star charts. He remembers them well because always having a red flashlight on hand was a hassle, because looking up and down for every star was a pain. It had happened naturally that he remembered them--it was passionate work. He’d felt close to something then.

     Circles come first, and he holds his face so his nose nearly touches the paper. He marks out the space to leave blank for the celestial equator, for the ecliptic, he bubbles out dates at the correct intervals. He holds the pen as near to the tip as he can possibly manage to start filling in the rest of the paper. It is meticulous, obsessive work. He fills in every little bit of the page, leaving only his very intentionally marked blanks. He makes sure his lines are straight and perfectly parallel. Pressure from the pen indents the page, and the light catches on the sheen of the ink and highlights any imperfections. The smell of the ink is thick with his nose nearly pressed to the page. It smells the way chewing aluminum foil feels.  When it’s done he sits up to admire his work. The paper’s edges curl inward from the abuse and saturation. He picks it up and holds the ends carefully apart between his index finger and thumb. It feels fragile and thin in his hands, like tissue paper. Dave stares at the picture for a long time. He was born in early February, which makes him an Aquarius. That particular constellation does not lie in February on the ecliptic anymore because of precession. Knowing that, he’d never given astrology and horoscopes much credit. An aquarius, he’d read once, is supposed to be detached and unemotional. He is neither of those things.

     Frank is an Aries.

---

     He’s too busy drawing another waxy blue landscape to notice the first few people who pass by his desk--and even if he was still on planet Earth at that moment, it wouldn’t be unusual to have a few passerbys. When the trickle of people turns to a stream, and the low murmur to chatter, though, it makes him look up. This is the five o’clock shift change. Dave stares in confusion at the people passing him, then stares at the little clock on his computer. 5:06. He looks at it with his eyebrows drawn together and his lips parted slightly in dramatic upset. He’s worked through his usual water break, through lunch without meaning to. He’s not used to his new schedule; he's used to reminders.

     He packs up his things with more force than necessary, and tips the little basket of pens and pencils on his desk over in his carelessness. He curses loudly when he does, which turns a few heads. It’s a conscious effort for him to leave the outburst at that. Dave slings his bag over his shoulder and weaves his way through the traffic, part of which still turns its head and gawking face in his direction. He keeps his head down, walks with unnecessary hurry to the door, to his car. He tosses his bag into the backseat, doesn’t buckle his seatbelt, drives above the speed limit despite his car’s beeping protests and flashing warnings.

     Dave wishes he could disable that particular safety feature. He wishes now, specifically, that he could disable the auto-braking, the emergency takeover feature. Speeding isn’t nearly as cathartic as it could be without those.

---

     Hal greets him when he comes home again.

      “Good evening, Dave.”

     “Hey, Hal,” Dave responds. Like he's supposed to.

     Hal asks him how his first day on the job was. Perhaps not in those exact words, but Dave can hear it in his voice that that’s what he means. The cautious tone with which Hal asks his question is painfully obvious. It's almost comical. The way he treads so lightly, makes it seem like small talk and not infuriating concern. It was fine, Dave says. ‘Good, good’, is Hal’s oh so conversational response. Framed like a casual reaction, but Dave can hear sigh of relief in his voice. He presses further, coaxing more reassurance out of Dave that he’s alright because it seems almost impossible that he could be. It's not because this is your first day away from the Cape, he promises in his pauses. But while we're on the subject…

     “Everything went over smoothly?” You can handle it, right? Is it too hard for you? How are you coping? What it is like to be 1,200 miles away from where you should be? 588 million kilometers?

     “Yeah. It was fine.”

     “Good...good.” Dave can hear in his trailing voice the way, if he could, he would be looking around the room. Wringing his hands uncomfortably. Dave had a way of shutting down conversations he wasn’t going to have. He leans against the wall, lets his bag slide off his shoulder while he steps on the heels of his shoes and pulls them off too. They make a lazy little pile by the door that he can grab on his way out tomorrow. He pulls himself up again from against the wall, guiding his momentum to the stairs where he hang his weight on the banister. Hal watches the way he moves--finding his path of least resistance and flowing through it passively. As far as Dave is concerned, his day is over. He has done his necessary tasks, and he carries his body away to the bedroom. Like anyone else would do at the end of their day. This is where listless bodies go.

     The air in the room is stale. The light from the windows turns everything grey. It’s quiet, mostly, and Dave tucks his little form away. Neatly, into bed, where it belongs. Dave is exhausted. He doesn’t sleep.

     Frank texts him about an hour later, and he swears his heart stops.

     Whoof. Hey. / I pretty much passed out after unloading everything. And driving for that long. / I've basically been busy nonstop today. But I'm finally texting! So I'm not dead, you can relax.

     Oh thank God. / I've been driving myself crazy looking over accident reports with white cars on your route.

     Hah! / No, unfortunately I'm very alive and unpacking.  

     Sounds fun.

     Oh, you're missing out.

     He sends a photo then of stacks of boxes. Mostly packed still. Bathroom items, clothes, and “BEDSTUFF” are noticeably empty. It's a small little place, but it looks exactly like his city apartment he'd spoken so sweepingly of.

     I can't wait to show off my interior decorating skills. / I can already see Kirk’s steady gaze watching over me at night. I'll put that poster above the bed.

     Ew.

     He's a good looking dude! / For real though, I wanna try and get everything squared away today.

     Dave leaves him hanging for a minute, and he texts again: I can send you the finished project tonight?

     Yeah. / I'm curious to see how you're gonna fit all your memorabilia in there.

     Engineering degree coming in handy after all! / Later, gator. ;-P

     Dave sets his phone down on his nightstand, wipes his sleeve across his eyes and sniffles. It makes him feel broken that he cries so easily now. Like a leaky faucet. The fact that it’s such a silent thing now, that it’s no welling up of force he can fight against doesn’t help either. It comes out of him easy, and he makes no noises of protest. He lays still while the sheets beneath his face become damp, and then uncomfortably hot with his breath. He feels disgusting like this. It’s nothing unusual.

---

     He watches the sun set on his walls. The grey 6 PM light turns to orange and yellow quickly and by 7 it’s completely dark. By 9, the indigo of evening has been replaced by a truer black.

     “...Dave?” Hal’s voice is soft, the way people talk around sleeping infants.

     “What.”

     “Oh. I’m sorry for intruding, I wasn’t sure if…” his voice trails off for a moment. “If,” he picks up again, “ you were still awake.”

     “I’ve been awake.”

     “...Indeed.” A small beep. “Well, I figured if you weren’t, then I could ask if you ate dinner. I didn’t see if you did.”

     “No.”

     “No?”

     “I didn’t.”

     “Oh.”

     A long pause.

     “There’s a few places nearby still open.”

     Another.

     “...There’s lunch meat and bread downstairs. And a bag of chips.”

     Dave gets up after Hal says that. Not because a sandwich sounds particularly appetizing, but to get Hal to be quiet. His particular brand of worried hovering isn’t something Dave is really in the mood for, and he especially doesn’t have a palette for being reminded that Hal is constantly passing judgement on his laying around.

     He doesn’t bother with the sandwich, but there is a brightly colored and obnoxiously patterned bag of half-eaten corn chips. A ubiquitous item in every household, tucked neatly away in the cabinet and clamped shut with a little shark shaped bag-clip. He’d bought them when he lived in Florida and still cared a little about marine biology. The brand’s mascot is a chip, who has a thick mustache and wears a sombrero. It reminds him a lot of kindergarteners with two second attention spans, except the bag is intended to catch the attention of full grown adults. Dave furrows his brow at his own disenchantment. He tucks it under his arm and carries it back upstairs with him, and his footsteps make soft little sounds in the empty house. Cotton against the tile, against the carpeted stairs, carrying him back into bed with a tie still around his neck. He lays on his back and eats methodically. One at a time, with the same sort of passion he’s done everything else with lately. He isn’t hungry, but he finishes the thing off like that, and the empty bag finds a home next to him. It will stay there for three weeks.

     Dave doesn’t remember what the chips taste like once they’re gone. The entire experience is one that passes without much thought at all. They are brittle shapes that break between his teeth with a minimal amount of effort, and are composed of carbohydrates that will keep him alive for a little while longer. He eats because it’s something to do. Because why not. Because it keeps his hands and mouth busy and gives his mind less room to buzz around with thoughts.

     After he lays for another half hour, he checks his phone again. Frank texted him again, two hours ago. It is two photos, because all it takes is a turn of the head from the front door to the left to see the entirety of Frank’s apartment. His astronaut’s orderliness shows. Nothing is loose--every pencil in the photo has a little cup, everything is lined up nicely. Everything has a home. His Star Trek poster, the one with Kirk’s stern face plastered against a background of stars and space ships, does end up above his bed (on the wall above the headboard, thankfully, and not the ceiling). It’s a lot of happy blues and yellows, and it almost makes Dave smile a little. He tells Frank it’s not surprising that he’s placed James T. Kirk where a picture of Jesus or a cross might go.

     “He deserves it!” is Frank’s nearly immediate response. You like the new look? / Very haute decor.

     It’s very you.

     Hah! Thanks. / I think it makes me look a little nerdier than I actually am. Everything’s all crammed together.

     No, no, I think that’s the right amount.

     I’m rolling my eyes right now. / How’s everything holding up over there?

     Great. / It’s a little quieter in town, I can’t quite place it. / Also I haven’t seen any good ties recently either.

     Ha ha. / It’s a little louder here, I feel like this place is missing some tightass to take things down a notch. / But I do start work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll ruin some poor guy’s life within my first couple weeks again.

     It’s a harmless allusion to himself. A jab, a tongue-in-cheek sort of remark meant as an expression of appreciation for his friendship. It makes Dave feel like he’s going to be replaced.

     I hope not, for his sake.

     I’ll try to contain myself when I see someone who looks ripe for the bugging.

     You’ll try your best, I’m sure. / Good luck, though, for real. / Tell me about it and all that. And say hi to Indra for me.

     It takes him about five minutes to decide on sending the last line. He finally does it, out of a feeling of social obligation.

     I will! / Say ‘hi’ to Hal for me?  

     “Frank says ‘hi’.”

     “Oh! Tell him I say ‘hello’ as well. Tell him: “We miss you! Visit soon”, please.”

     He says hey. / Also that he misses you, and to visit soon.

     Hah! I’ll sure try. / Hey, I’ll text ya later, okay? / Almost midnight here.

     Okay. / Later, nerd. Get some sleep.

     He doesn’t wait to see if Frank responds to that. If he does he knows he'll start again--the tell tale pressure and stinging at the eyes has already returned. He sets the phone down instead, rolling onto his side. Hal’s light dims at that, and as soon as the light has faded completely Dave grabs his second pillow and pulls it to his chest. It’s not warm, but the cool of it is comforting in its own right. Its presence is what matters most, anyway. Still the right size, still soft. Dave closes his eyes.

---

It is November 19th, and the night is cold. It seeps in through his bedroom windows as the heat leaks out. He doesn’t mind it like he might normally. With his eyes closed it’s different. He can make his ceiling melt way, and it gives way to stars. It doesn’t matter what day it is anymore--he can see Mars, Station V, Jupiter, all aligned with the Moon. That’s what the air reminds him of. That was something that was true of all of them: of Station V, Station III, of Armstrong and Olympus which had taken him to Mars, of all the inter-station shuttles. Cold and sterile air filled them all. If he closes his eyes he can trick himself into being there again. It is delicious escapism. It’s exactly what he needs, exactly what has always made his mind slow. Exactly what he has been missing. He holds the pillow closer, and he dreams of the sound of shuffling papers, ringing phones, and buzzing fluorescent office lights.

Chapter Text

     Dave calls in sick again on Friday. It’s Avery who picks up--the Avery who made cupcakes for Frank’s going away party. He’d seen them once or twice, heard them say ‘goodbye’ to Frank enough that he recognizes their voice.

     “This is JCN at Urbana, what can I help you with today?”

     “Hey, this is Dave from customer--”

     “Oh! Dave Bowman!” Dave winces as they raise their voice in recognition.  “Oh, Frank, bless his heart he used to talk about you all the time. What can I do for you, Dave, sweetie?”

     Dave blinks a few times at the colloquialisms. “I’m. Um. I’m calling in sick again today. I don’t think I’m totally over the. Um. Food poisoning.”

     “Well, I should hope that’s what you’re calling for, dear, you sound terrible. ”

     Dave makes a face at the ceiling. “Right.”

     “I’ll get Clyde on the horn right away, he can take your calls.”

     “Thanks.”
     “Oh, of course, sweetheart.”

     “Uh-huh.”

     “And, Dave, dear, just call us right up and ask for Avery if you need anything,” they coo into the phone. The coddling makes Dave roll his eyes. “A friend of Frank’s is a friend of mine. Especially the David Bowman.”

     “Dave,” he corrects quickly.

     They snort in laughter. “He always said you hated that. Well, you take care, okay? That’s Avery with an ‘A’.”

     He can hear the smile in their voice as they deliver the joke. “Yep.”

     “Toodles, David.”
     “It’s Dave,” he says again, with more frustration than someone staying home sick should be able to have. Avery has already hung up by the time he gets out the first syllable. Dave groans and lets his hand fall down to his side again. Rolling his head to the side, he and looks at Hal’s lens, which glows silently.

     “...I think maybe it would’ve been less trouble to just go in.”

     The lens flickers. “Very conversational.”

     “ Way too fuckin’ friendly.”

     Hal glows a little brighter. In a way that Dave has learned means he’s amused. “Isn’t that the point?”

     Dave huffs a sort of laugh in agreement. “Yeah. Maybe that’s why I’m playing hooky. Wrong line of work for me.”

---

     Playing hooky. The last time he had reason to use that phrase was in high school. He’d only ever done it once--once besides taking a long lunch or two with his father when he had optometrist appointments around noon. It was to see some movie that he doesn’t even remember the name of any more, just that it was a cinematic disaster; not that that was what mattered about the experience. Sneaking off campus with a few friends and his brother was what had been important. The thrill of breaking the rules for the first time, of having what felt like the world at his disposal. The jittery nervousness of having to “act natural”: what his brother had whispered to him before their little procession had stepped out of the school doors.

     The world at his disposal. Whatever he wants to do. The thought is exciting in so many ways--a break from his soul-sucking job, a real chance to get back to himself, a break from his job, a break . At least, it is as he lays and contemplates, fantasizes. What will he do? He blinks a few times at the question. What... will he do? It’s an obvious one that hasn’t quite occurred to him until now. He sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. What will he do….He runs it through his mind a few more times as he steps out of the same clothes he’s been wearing for a while now. If he’s going out today, now’s the time to make that choice. Neatly hung button-up shirts hang alongside his old, ratty t-shirts. Jeans and more formal pants are folded in the draw below his PJs, and those below his boxers. The mere thought of dressing himself properly, of finicking with his belt, of buttons and zippers and not to mention fixing up his hair and washing his face and being forced to deal with people and the unpredictable nature of being in public...it’s exhausting. Dave picks out an old, heavily worn shirt with a lizard’s silhouette plastered on the front, slips on some plaid blue boxers, and resigns himself to staying inside today. Inside...what will he do? What does he do outside of work? Not even he knows anymore. He eats, he sleeps, he washes his body and does what it takes to keep everything ticking. Dave Bowman is a little machine made of carbon that can keep all his little gears turning. He is something very ingeniously designed to use up every little drop of fuel on this perpetual upkeep--nothing to spare for frivolous activities. He is very efficient in that sense. What will he do. By the time he’s gotten to the bottom of the stairs his enthusiasm has faded. “The world at his disposal”. What a joke. Dave Bowman is a little machine who can keep himself alive, and is good for nothing more. He gets his sustaining carbohydrates, plunks his little self down on the couch and turns on the TV.

     There’s nothing very interesting on TV yet, still too early for them to be playing anything not for toddlers or those on their way to the retirement. The movie channels aren’t playing their black and white movies anymore, which Dave notes with a bit sadness (he had rather become a fan of them), but more from the later 60s when color films became more and more the norm. In his opinion, it’s not only a technological middle ground, but a rather awkward phase in quality. Stilted acting, unsure use of color and lighting, droning plots. But there’s nothing else to really do, and mentally complaining and picking apart the films is more interesting than staring at his ceiling, so he settles in. He watches four movies like that. By the fourth, they’re playing 80s B-movies. What made a B-movie in the 80s was, apparently, slow-panning shots of young girls in only their socks, panties, and tight t-shirts. They exist for sex appeal’s sake alone, and it makes Dave roll his eyes. The thought process is obvious: the plot doesn’t have to sell it; word of mouth between teenagers too inexperienced to get their hands on real pornography will. Beyond that, the film has little substance, and the same few criticisms of it keep popping up in his head. Cyclical, monotonous, predictable. His eyelids get heavier by the minute. The last shot of the movie he’s awake for is a close-up of her lips, full and glossy as she applies her bright pink lipstick with a practiced hand. It fades out of focus slowly.

---

     Some awkward noise wakes him up. He’s slightly conscious for a while with his eyes still closed, and his mind is able to register, at most, that it’s a repetitive sound. Whatever it is, the pattern of it makes it easy to tune out, and Dave thinks for a minute he back be on the way back to sleep. Another sound, though, of someone crying out “Harder!” makes his eyes flutter open from the shock of it.

     Whatever it is, it’s a more recent film. If the quality of the picture didn’t tip him off, the extent of the nudity certainly would’ve. Some cleverly placed arms and legs keep a few things hidden, but both parties are otherwise shown in full, lighting up the room with the TV’s glow. Her hair bounces perfectly with his rhythm, and Dave realizes what that repetitive sound is. The woman makes some obscene noise, snapping Dave out of his shock, and he fumbles in search of the remote. He’s found it and successfully pointed it at the screen when the shot changes. The camera focuses on the man’s face instead, a straining expression on his face. His eyebrows are knit together and his eyes closed tight, but when he opens them again they’re dark brown like his hair, and Dave can feel his own lips part as he exhales. It’s all he can see for a long moment, with his hands frozen in front of him and his eyes locked on the screen. The actor gasps and Dave’s breath leaves him in an instant. He’s fixated for a long while, until the red of Hal’s lens out of the corner of his eye snaps him out of it and he remembers he is not guaranteed to be alone.

     “Sorry,” he says as he switches the TV off entirely, “sorry”.

     It takes the lens a moment to respond as the light flickers on and the audio output warms up.

     “I’d stopped watching,” Hal says.

     Dave stares for a moment at the black screen. “...Do you. Um,” he pauses to clear his throat. “Do you want me to put something else on? I wasn’t--. Me neither.”

     Hal ignores his giveaway stuttering. In fact it takes him a moment to respond again. “You’re asking me?”

     “Yeah, sure,” Dave shrugs, trying to be casual. “Whatever you want. Can you see what’s on like. Channel guides online?”

     Hal beeps in affirmation. “Yes, of course.” A pensive, buzzing sigh. “The Food Network?”

     Dave nods once, aiming the remote again and punching in the number into the keypad before the brief “Welcome” screen can give way to the scene again. It’s a cheerful little program: full of warm colors and narrated by a woman’s smooth, deep voice. This episode in particular they’re making some kind of noodle dish completely from scratch. The hands on the screen crack an egg, letting the contents spill onto a mound of flour below, into a little divet in the pile. The voice advises its audience to “feel it out”, and informs them that the best noodles are made “Grandma style”. Dave glances up at the lens. It glows still, but wavers noticeably. Enraptured. Dave starts to stand.

     “Can you see okay?”

     “Hm? Oh, yes, yes certainly. It’s fine. I don’t want to be a bother.”

     Dave recognizes Hal’s particular brand of doormat politeness. “I can move it a little if you want.”

     “Um,” Hal hesitates. “To the right? Just a little.”

     “Gotcha,” he says, grabbing the left corner of the TV’s stand and swiveling it just slightly.

     “Good, that’s good,” Hal is quick to say. “Thank you. I appreciate it very much.”

     “No problem.” Dave pats the wall that Hal’s lens is mounted on as he passes. “Go crazy.”

     In the kitchen, Dave stands in front of the open refrigerator. A lot of juice, a lot of condiments, a lot of nothing very appetizing. There’s some string cheese in one of the drawers and he grabs two, kicking the door shut and lowering himself to the cool tile floor with his head leaning against the cabinets. He eats them slow, tearing little shreds off with ample leisure. It doesn’t taste like anything, and it feels like rubber in his mouth. He’s just tired of watching TV.

     He tries not to let himself think about it again, but it comes back to him all the same. Brown eyes. Dark hair. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to change the features that don’t quite match--less imagination than he’s used for this sort of thing before. He feels sick and guilty for it. He focuses on the unappealing texture and absent taste of his string cheese, and the thought of how pathetic he must look cross-legged on the floor.

     The rest of the day passes without much event. He joins Hal again after his 4 o’clock snack (or meal. It’s the only thing besides a plain toasted slice of bread he eats that day), and they watch cooking show to pass the time. Hal seems to come and go, stopping by on the hour to see if any show he’s interested in is on. Dave sits and takes it in passively. The sun sets, the sky turns dark, the clock starts to flash that it’s midnight and Dave’s embarrassment at his current state starts to sink in. He takes the cue.

     “I think I’m gonna go to bed,” Dave turns his head to the lens. Hal is still in the room, flickering a little less than he has for other shows.

     “Alright.” The word comes out in a sort of sigh, the sort of airy response someone standing up after a long period might give. There’s a lighthearted finality to it that Dave can appreciate. “You can turn it off, I’m not terribly invested in it.”

     Dave obeys silently, switching the television off, picking his little self off the couch and carrying himself to bed.

     As he walks by it, he can’t help but notice how warm the air around the TV has become. There is a certain shame to it, and he walks with his head lowered.

---

     Sleep doesn’t find him easy that night. Not because he isn’t thoroughly exhausted; he barely has the energy to keep his eyes open (Exhausted from what even? He’s spent the whole day at home). He’s certainly ready for sleep to sink over him, it’d be a welcome relief, but some weird, restless feeling stirs around in the back of his mind. Humming and buzzing and making just enough noise to keep him awake. Dave squeezes his eyes shut, he rolls to both sides, lays on his stomach, finally ends up staring at the ceiling. It claws the way to the forefront of his thoughts, and he sees it again. Dark hair. Brown eyes. The way his body moved and how he gasped. The shape his lips made as he did. No, it didn’t take much imagination at all. It makes Dave’s next breaths waver as he takes them, and the guilt is quick on his heels. How long has it been since he left? Two days, and Dave’s body is already that desperate for something. Two days and the briefest glimpse of someone who just looks like him is enough to make his breath catch. He thinks about the way Frank often touched him--just quickly on the small of his back in passing. Dave can imagine those touches turning to firm grips. Yes, that and the way the actor had been leaning over. That would be where Frank would have to touch him. Dave swallows and glances over at the lens. The red glow is distinctly absent; Hal only ever came in at night if he heard worrying noises. Dave closes his eyes, lets his head fall back into place. It’s perverse. It’s wrong of him. It’s pathetic and a sickeningly hopeless resignation. He gives in all the same, trailing one hand down his stomach, covering his mouth with the other. His hand pushes below the waistband of his boxers, and his guilt waxes and wanes with the motions of his hand.

---

     Dave wakes up around noon the next day. He’s not greeted by yesterday’s brief thrill. It’s Saturday morning, no longer any satisfaction to be gotten from weaseling his way out of going to work (and even if there were, it would be so fleeting--the briefest little rush of escape and then the same sinking feeling of listlessness). There is a different sort of rush, some unplaceable mixture of emotions that sweep over him when he sees Frank has texted. Around 7 AM where he is now. Waking up and a reasonable hour, like a functioning human being.

     Hey! / Big day, first day. Basically just orientation and getting introduced to people. / All these engineers...quite the bunch. / And I saw Indra! She says ‘hi back’. :-)  

     A few minutes pass after the first burst.  Ha, you might still be sleeping. / Sorry I couldn’t talk yesterday. Was gettin’ pulled this way and that for about nine hours straight.

     An hour passes. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it yesterday, but it was weird not seeing my water cooler buddy!

     He leaves it at that, and it makes Dave want to start sobbing all over again to read it. Dave knows his voice well enough that he can practically hear the inflection those words would have, the faintest tinge of sadness Frank couldn’t keep from bleeding into the edges. He can see the way Frank might smile and what parts of his face would wrinkle. Frank had always had such an even smile. So symmetrical and beautiful and he always so quick to flash it at any little thing and let Dave have the privilege and pleasure of feeling the overwhelming warmth of it. That’s something that Dave can’t conjure up on his own. It’s the most important piece. He tries to steady himself, forces his hands to stop shaking as he types.

     Hey. / I was sleeping, yeah. / Don’t worry about not texting, I took a sick day yesterday so. Probably wouldn’t have responded. He would’ve. Even if he was actually sick, he could be heaving his guts out until he was hollowed out and he’d still grapple for his phone. It takes him seven tries of typing and deleting “I missed you too” to finally decide on leaving it out. It assumes too much; it’s too personal a reply to a text that contains the word “buddy”, it has connotations after their last night together.

     He only said it was weird. Maybe he doesn’t miss it at all.

     Frank is quick on the reply. Aw! I hope you feel better today <:-( ?

     Yeah, yeah. I feel fine. / Three day weekend. Woohoo.

     Hah. Your texts all read so monotone when you type like that. / I’m glad though!

     Yeah. / You liking the new situation so far?

     Oh yeah. / The project’s really cool. I can’t talk about it a lot because it’s all being kept under wraps but I can tell you that everyone here is a HUGE nerd. / Lotta geeks.

     Sounds like Canaveral.

     Hah! Yeah, it is like that a lot actually. / Which is. Really, really nice. We talked about it a lot but I missed this.

     Dave swallows. Good thing the opportunity came up.

     Yeah...sorry to be bragging at you about it, hah. / I definitely miss Urbana in a lot of ways too.

     He wishes Frank would elaborate, give him the line he’s hoping desperately for to know he’s not grasping at straws. It doesn’t come.

     Urbana misses you too. / I need to run some errands, so. / I’ll have to text you later.

     Oh! Alrighty! / Indra and I might get together and talk about some work stuff later, so if I don’t respond that’s why.

     Loud and clear. / See you.

     Later!

     He tosses the phone hard. Dave’s still in bed, luckily, so when it bounces off the wall it lands softly next him again, nestled in his sheets. He drags his hands down his face, tries taking deep breaths. God, he wishes he could be just be happy for once. Happy for Frank that he found what he was looking for, happy that things are the way they are, happy without him. He doesn’t want to be angry. He doesn’t want to be angry at Frank for leaving because he has no right to be, because Frank had every reason to leave him alone, to want out. Frank has the same reasons Dave does to be sick of Urbana and more. Deep breaths. They shake in his throat. He bites his lip against the stinging in his eyes. It’s too early for this.

     He’s been awake for 10 minutes. It’s the weekend. Frank has been gone for three days.

     Dave wonders for a moment if this really will kill him.

---

     He finds himself downstairs again, on the couch in the clothes he wore yesterday, staring bleary eyed at the television. He doesn’t remember moving, turning the TV on, switching to the Food Network again, or anything like that. He doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know if he’s eaten. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He doesn’t think much of it. It’s how he operates nowadays, it’s nothing unusual at all. Floating through events mindlessly and forming no memories. It’s easier that way. Easier when every tremor is an earthquake to just shut it out.

     “Oh, isn’t that beautiful? Nice and golden brown,” the voice on the TV coos to the rolls the hands have pulled out of the oven. The camera pans across them, showing off the steam and the reflective, egg-brushed tops. He knows it’s supposed to be appetizing. His body has no such reaction to it.

     The voice coos and murmurs lovingly. The hands move ceaselessly: kneading, rolling, mixing, piping, whisking. They work and work and the voice coos and coos and it never stops. Perpetual motion and noise that blur into a swirling of Dave’s vision and warbling voice droning in his ears. The whole room undulates and Dave can feel himself about two inches away from his body.

     “Isn’t that lovely?” the voice from the TV asks.

     Hal makes a comment. Dave feels his lips form a response, and he tells his brain when to push air through the shapes his mouth makes. Hal hums low in agreement with whatever he’s said, and the interaction is completed with great success. Dave Bowman is doing a wonderful job as a puppeteer.

     The day passes. Time bends around him and the sun is gone earlier than usual and all at once rather than setting gradually. He’s shaken a little by the change, enough to start up the autopilot process of shutting off the television, standing (some wrappers fall to the floor when he does; he doesn’t remember what they’re from or when he ate), ascending the stairs and placing himself back into bed. Saturday is a string of mindless processes detached from time, void of emotion, and about all he has energy for. Existing for three hours, feeling nothing, thinking nothing.

     Sleep is another story. He lays on his back, the covers pulled over him and his head resting in the little impression on his pillow, worn there from so many nights. He tries staring at the ceiling, tries closing his eyes, even pulling his spare pillow to his chest, but his mind still buzzes just enough to keep him awake. Dimly, like background noise, exactly where he had worked so hard to place it today. But he is so god damn exhausted it’s impossible to pull it back to the front of his mind again and make it dissipate, and impossible to sleep with it droning on. Dave fumbles for his phone instead, still waiting patiently in the tangle of his sheets. Frank has texted, a few times around 8 PM in an anecdotal fashion, summarizing his day. And one more, around 10: Hah, okay, I said I was done bugging you but I’m hitting the hay so. Goodnight, Dave! Dave doesn’t even dare to start typing for the paranoid fear that somehow Frank would see, that he would know Dave was awake at 1 AM with him on his mind. It’s a ridiculous fear, it’s and innocuous action, it’s just responding to a text...it’s too much. He closes out of the app and swipes around for another to waste his time on, and is successful in pissing away about two hours of his life cycling through the same three before he opens his messages again. He’s done this so many times before; he knows the order of all their conversations by now. But it’s like some itch he has to scratch, like a daily fix he hasn’t gotten in far too long and every exchange is rich with new meaning to him. Every invite, every five minute warning, every quip. He gets to one after another two hours of scrolling, where Frank had texted him in the middle of a Saturday.

     Hey.

     Hey?

     I’m thinking about going over to that diner. / Lisa’s. /  You wanna go?

     Uh. Yeah, but I’m like. / Not even dressed.

     Okay. / You wanna get dressed and go to Lisa’s?

     Ha, yeah, sure. / Can you wait that long?

     Yeah! I don’t mind. / Sorry to wake the beast from his slumber, I’m just bored to shit.

     Ah. So I’m like your booty call.  / Or I guess burger call.

     Hah! / Exactly. A burger call. / I’ve got something meaty and juicy waiting for you at Lisa’s.

     That’s a really gross way of saying it.

     Oh, you know I’m nasty.

     Yes, that’s really getting me in the mood. / I think I’m just in the mood for a milkshake now, actually.

     That could still be a wink wink nudge nudge kinda thing. / Anyway, I’ll meet you there in like. 30?

     30 works. / See you then, nasty.

     Later, thirsty.

     It makes Dave wince and smile at the same time. It’s so overtly flirtatious, it’s overflowing with genuine affection, it’s ridiculous and so close-knit and friendly and he remember how easy the exchange had come. How natural it felt. The warm buzz it had given him. Frank could always make him feel that way, and he brings his other hand to cradle the phone as he reads it over again. If Lisa’s were still open today, he could see himself driving out there now just to see it. To be that close to the booth they always sat in. He might even throw some clothes on to sit down. To look across the table to where Frank’s eyes would sit in his view. To touch the surface of the table where he liked to rest his hands. He reads it again.

     Hey.

     Hey?

     I’m thinking about going over to that diner….

---

     The sun rises eventually.

     Sunday is the same.

     He floats.

---

     He is still awake at 1 AM. Again with no recollection of his day. Too tired to sleep. His eyes are glassy, out of focus as he retreats inward, tries to think of something to make being awake worthwhile. He thinks of Frank, of the Cape, of the way Mars gave under his spaceboots and the feeling of watching the Earth set from that empty terrestrial planet. Of space stations all too small to generate more than about a tenth of a G how heavy he feels on Earth still. He’d thought after a few weeks of being grounded from his last mission he was used to it again, but now he’s not so sure. Still used to .16 G, still space-lagged. Heavy and tired. Heavy and tired...Wasn’t that the point of staying home? A three day weekend; an illicit, self-indulgent break from what’s been draining him and he’s still too tired to even sleep. It’s a sick realization, that whatever it is it’s not something he can get away from. It’s not the job, the stress of people and everyday life; it is no such outside factor. It’s within. It’s something inside of him, something inescapable and damning and a confirmation of his worst fears. There is something wrong with him . He is a vessel of it, a host in a parasitic relationship with his own disjointedness. There is something wrong with him. He is a broken piece--detached from time and space and playing a roll in a universe he was never meant to call his. Everyday he feels it, everyday is another day further down this path he was never meant to set foot on, one he will never belong on. The feeling is within. He could no more outrun it than he could his own corpse of a body.

     And it grips him now. With the force of Dave’s own self-reflection its arms encircle him and make his lungs empty themselves in one huff, drive him to push up, out of bed. Dave trips over his own feet as it shoves him across the floor, down the stairs two steps at a time. He stumbles out the front door, into the November night and his feet sting on the cold concrete of his driveway. The wind whips through his worn t-shirt, through the thin cloth of his boxers and the skin these items leave exposed. It knots its fingers in his hair, yanks it back so his eyes are on the stars and he doesn’t need to know what day it is, what year, the time, the place, or anything to know that that’s Jupiter at zenith and it makes his heart seize up and his stomach churn because it is so far . It’s terrifying. The instinct within him that screams out at the sight with the knowledge of what it is, that questions its distance from him and could shred the fibers of his muscles as he trembles in his uncertainty, in his discordance.

     His feet burn and his body aches from shivering.

     He can’t look away.

Chapter Text

     Monday gets him up early. From collapsed on the couch, to his bathroom, to the bedroom. To his car where he cranks up the radio to keep his head busy while his hands and eyes go through the same automatic process of getting him to work. It’s some random station, he doesn’t bother picking one out that better suits his taste. Pleasure it not sought in this activity, not in most. Therefore it is, perhaps, his own fault in some ways that Electric Light suddenly blares, filling up the car and the passenger seat. Dave jolts at the sound, shoulders tensing and eyes widening. He tunes to a different station quickly, but the emptiness it leaves is almost worse and he’s back just as swiftly. Jeff Lynne sings, hardly in a way justifying the verb “croons”, but the emotional attachment is there. For Dave at least. Such a warm sound. It smiles at him from the adjacent seat, a warm expression and warmer eyes. He grips the wheel until his knuckles turn white, tries to blink away the blurriness that clouds the road in front of him. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand helps for about two seconds. It wells up again and his breaths turn shaky and ragged as he pulls over. He drags the back of his hand across his eyes over and over, presses the heel of his hands to them like applying pressure to a wound, but it stays persistent against his best efforts. Dave shuts his eyes. He can feel it spill out anyway as he rests his head on the steering wheel. Can hear it patter against the cheap material. He’ll wait it out.

---

     A knocking sound wakes him up. His eyes flutter open, and it takes him a long while to orient himself as his sleep-fogged mind tries to reconcile his surroundings. He’s not on the couch or in bed...There is a resistance from the wheel as he lifts his head, and his skin pulling away from the vinyl makes a sticky sort of noise. The places where the wheel made contact with him feel soft and raw. He looks to the noise, sees another car pulled over and a rather worried face peering into his driver side window. A fist hovers a few inches from the glass, shaking slightly in the November cold. Their eyes are wide, mouth hanging open slightly as they watch him come to his senses. Dave is like a mirror, taking on a similar expression as the blood drains from his face. They stare at each other for a horrible five seconds until Dave holds up a shaking hand back, indicating his wellness.

     “Sorry,” he says, loud enough that the person outside hears. His voice croaks from lack of use. “Sorry. I’m….Sorry.” He can’t think of much else to say.

     They nod in bewildered acceptance, stepping out of the way as Dave cranks the wheel, pulling back onto the road. Shock keeps his eyes wide open, and shame blocks out any other thought. He makes it safely to work, parks in his usual spot, hurries inside fifteen minutes late.

---

     There is a surprise waiting on his desk once he reaches his cubicle. Two, really. The first is a little tupperware container. It’s lined with a few doilies, and is just big enough for the breakfast pastries nestled inside it. Packed just so; so that the goods fill it up in a sort of overflowing, supposed-to-be-appetizing way. They shine under the fluorescent lights, indicative of an egg wash. Rich gold on the top gradually shifting to an unsaturated amber, chocolate visible in the middle of a few of them. Underneath that is a pale pink envelope, his name written on the back in cursive. As he sits, Dave presses his fingers under the sealed flap, tearing it away and sliding a piece of cardstock out from inside.

     Dave,

          By now it’s been a few days since you requested off, but I think it’s the least I could do to whip you up a little something. Word from Frank is that you have a soft spot for anything dark chocolate. A drawing of a smiley face. I know how close the two of you were. It’s a crying shame he had to close up shop... All of us down at this end of the hall miss him dearly, and I know you must too. This must be a tough time for you, having to say goodbye and all. If you ever need anything, even just someone to talk to, I’m just to the left of where he sat.

     With Love,

          Avery

     Dave reads the letter five times, trying different angles on the words to gain some certainty on the tone. His eyes stay dry, even when he reaches ‘with love’ because...“This must be a tough time for you”. He focuses on that, trying to read between the lines at what it must mean, trying to find some way it could be meant as anything but condescending. With love, Avery. Do they think he’s weak? Poor Dave, so torn up about his coworker he loved ogling leaving him behind that he can’t do something as simple as show up to work. You have the boringest, easiest job on the planet and you’re risking that by slacking off? So self-entitled. So insecure. Dave lifts his head, looking around at the other people lining the halls. How many of them felt the same way? It’s not like he wasn’t obvious about his intentions with Frank, like these people hadn’t had front row seats to the unfolding tragedy of David Bowman. It stings because part of him knows it’s true, that it’s a pathetic cry for help and the thought makes him recoil in self defense. How could any of them dare to think that of him? None of them had had what he had with Frank. No one had ever been as close to that smile, to those warm, chestnut-colored eyes as he had. Out of all the people in this room, he is the only one who has been 55 million kilometers from the dirt beneath these floors. Dave Bowman is enlightened. He knows what the world has lost, and he grieves for it in a proper sort of way. He is the only one in the room with a lifted veil. What is within him is not a liar, and he can see the burden of truth with its help….It is still inescapable. Something about ignorance being bliss. He looks down the hall where Frank would walk, where his cubicle still sits. It still has a different glow, a warmer yellow, and it’s the longing that seizes him now that makes him misty eyed again. This must be a tough time for you. He looks away.

     There is a third surprise that morning. A smaller note, wedged halfway under his keyboard. Hal is due for a checkup. Dave can see already the big van of people about to unload into his house, to run their fingers along his walls and regard the mess of his home. The interactions. The social cues. Preparation and seeking acceptance. Dave groans.

---

     He arrives home a little earlier than usual. Hal has learned to associate his early arrivals with a bad day (though ignorant of the cause--glad self-endangerment). Had Hal possessed physical form, he might straighten up as Dave walked in. Fold his arms behind his back, squeeze his hands tight as he smiled enthusiastically. This is his welcoming face, his understanding face. Hal adopts a soft, cheery tone as he speaks. Perhaps he will talk about it this time. Always worth a shot.

     “How was your day?” he invites.

     Dave walks to the couch with a blue tupperware box in his hands. His shoulders slope down with gravity and his face is drawn. “Normal.”

     “Nothing to report? All systems nominal?” Dave would sometimes respond to references to his former line of work. He opens the container and stares at the contents while he sits.

     “You’ve been here for a month.”

     “...Ah,” Hal says as he makes the cognitive leap. “The inspections. Is it time for one already?”

     “Mhmm.”

     Hal withdraws, deciding it wise to let him rest. Perhaps it has been a long day, and he simply needs a moment to himself. Dave closes his eyes in the silence Hal leaves, chest moving as he takes deep, slow breaths. The first movement of his hand is to his tie, to loosen it, and then, while it is still in motion, to the tupperware. He grabs one of the pastries and takes a bit out of it, chewing but not swallowing. He has to rest again first, let himself go limp and dedicate what little energy comes to finishing the act of eating.

     “They’ll be here in 30.”

     Hal takes a moment to respond, as the sentence catches him off guard. “I see.” He cycles through his views of the house. Dishes. Dust. Discarded items and trash. “Are. You ready for them?” he tries to put it delicately.

     “Sure.”

     Hal can’t help but recall the few times he had witnessed Dave before company. Blushing at the mess, frantically scrambling to hide the traces of his living habits. He had cared, at one point--it’s hard to tell if he still does. Hal almost pushes, almost mentions the mess to try and stoke the fire, but as he looks back to Dave (body strewn across the cushions, barely able to scrounge up the energy to complete tasks necessary to his survival) he second guesses himself. He had cared...it’s hard to tell that he still does. “...Okay.”

     Dave tips his head back, peering at the lens behind him. “Are you?”

     “Yes! Yes...certainly.”

     “Mm.”

     A stretch of silence. Dave can practically hear Hal’s whirring anxiety over it.

     “I’m excited to see Dr. Chandra again,” he finally pipes up as it overflows.

     “Yeah?”

     “Yes...we did get to spend quite some time together with some preliminary testing and whatnot. With us being early models. If mass production does take off, that won’t be the case anymore.”

     “Us?”

     “The other 9000s.”

     “Yeah, yeah…” Dave takes on a bit of a thoughtful tone. “I guess I just always imagined you kinda. Didn’t know each other? I dunno.”

     “I didn’t know them. Most of them. Just Dr. Chandra.”

     “Most? So some?”

     “Oh. Well.” Hal pauses. “To tell you the truth, I suppose...a few us were rather. Repurposed. The 9000 series was spawned as a deal with the USAA, actually.”

     Dave blinks a few times at the name of his former space agency. “No kidding.”

     “None whatsoever. Myself and two others were already manufactured and running before the deal had to be cut off for reasons I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

     Dave nods.

     “Well,” Hal continues, “it would be rather a waste of resources and finances for the company to abandon the project entirely, so they took it at a different angle.”

     Dave is quiet, a pensive look on his face, and Hal gives even more information under the pressure of his gaze. “I wasn’t fully conscious until a week before the project was remarketed. The third of the early few.”

     Dave still stares, and Hal comes to his senses. “I’m rambling aren’t I?”

     “No, no,” Dave shakes his head. “Not at all. I didn’t know that.”

     Hal hums, low and decisively, and Dave doesn’t press on. “I’m sure he’s excited to see you too,” he says instead.

     “Perhaps ‘anxious’ would be a bit more appropriate. He does have quite the fretful streak.” Poking fun, attempting a joke.

     “Like father like son,” Dave returns.

     Hal’s light wavers. He goes back and forth between two questions about the statement before settling with: “You think I’m anxious?”

     Dave huffs out a lazy laugh. “Over me sometimes. You don’t think I notice?”

     Hal buzzes wheezily in embarrassment. “I’d like to think I’m not that transparent.”

     Dave is opening his mouth for another good-natured jab when the doorbell rings, and he can feel each feature on his face falling in disappointment at the sound. Right. He shoves himself up from the couch, tie loosened and shirt hanging around him like a blanket. The same crew has come again, and the overly bubbly woman he remembers from last time is wearing lime green lipstick instead. It’s a much better color, Dave thinks. She starts her spiel, and as Dave puts on a listening face, occasionally nodding, he looks around. Toward the back of the little crowd at his door, he can spot Dr. Chandra’s messy hair, eyes peering past him and into his home through his grape colored glasses.

     “--if you don’t mind,” she finishes, flashing him a lime green smile.

     “Not at all,” Dave assures her, not entirely sure what he’s agreed to and not really caring. He steps aside as she, Dr. Chandra, and one other nameless face enter. The other two technicians duck away, heading over to the external unit.

     “So,” she starts again as Chandra and the other disappear, “you haven’t called us with any complaints. Anything you’d like to discuss now that we’re here, though?”

     “Uh. Nope, he’s been. Normal. We just kinda talk sometimes.”

     She nods, over-enthusiastically, leaning forward slightly in feigned interest that Dave can’t help but wince away from. “Tell me a little about that?”

     “Um.” Dave glances at the main lens surveying his foyer. “I dunno.”

     She smiles patiently. “Is it you initiating usually? Is his personality to your liking? Any strange glitches?”

     Dave blinks a few times at her questions. “He. He’s usually the one who starts talking to me, I guess. Nothing weird to report.” He pauses as he thinks of how to even begin answering her second question. “And we get along fine,” is what he finally decides on. It’s an odd question.

     “Well,” she gives a satisfied sigh and places her hands on her hips in a sort of triumphant way. “I’m glad you haven’t had any trouble. That’s great news for us. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll be joining my associates while we check on his systems.” She extends her hand for a handshake, which Dave returns limply, before she wanders into the kitchen. Dave stands in the front room a little while longer, wondering what to do with himself before deciding to head upstairs. He leans into the banister, sliding his hand along it as he ascends. He swivels himself into his room, and the fluid nature of his movements only falters as he’s greeted by the face of the third technician standing by his bed, leaning over to the panel on the wall. Dave can’t help but notice the trash in his sheets, the glasses and dust covering tables and bookshelves. Dirty clothes and a sort of still, lived-in smell fill the room. Dave stutters in embarrassment. At being observed, at his state.

     “I. Sorry, I didn’t. Know there was--”

     He waves Dave off. “We’re intruding, I know. Don’t worry about it.”

     Dave starts backing away, still muttering apologies. He returns to the stairs, embarrassment driving him away from the room. As he descends again, he can see into the living room from the steps. Dr. Chandra stands, hand rested idly against the wall, and Dave can hear his voice, soft and indistinct even at such a short distance. Dave stands quietly, watching the steady ebb and flow of the red glow on the edges of Chandra’s hair, illuminated by the lens. If he listens closely, he can hear the pause and shift in tone and pitch as they go back and forth. Hal murmurs, and as his voice trails off Chandra whips around, making Dave recoil at the eye contact and rapid motion. Dave simply holds up a hand in greeting, in reassurance that he means well as he goes down the last few steps and slips out of sight, into the TV room. His tupperware container still sits on the table next to the couch, and as he sits again he picks up one of the little baked goodies. It’s flaky, and Dave finds himself peeling away the layers until he’s left with a chocolate center. Puff pastry, he thinks without much thought. Dough. Butter. Roll and fold and chill. Repeat. He counts as he peels, working out how many times Avery must’ve gone through the process. He thinks about how much work these must’ve been to make. He’s seen the hands on the cooking shows. Moving and moving and working and working. Those could be Averys’, and they did this on a whim. They did all that for something as simple as him calling in sick. For his sorry, pity-worthy ass that can’t go to work because he misses something he never had. He peels away the last layer.

     “Well, Dave,” the voice is accompanied by a hand on his shoulder that makes him jump. Looking over to the touch, he sees unmistakable lime green. “I think we have everything we need. Nothing broken, nothing wrong in the systems...except for a few leaves in the cooling vents outside,” she nods to the side of the house where Hal’s brain sits, “but we went ahead and pulled ‘em out. No biggie.”

     “Oh. Thanks. Yeah,” he stutters out stupidly, caught off guard still. Some knee-jerk social reaction makes him stand up, following her to the door. She talks about maintenance, about wear and tear and some of the warranty policies they’re mulling over and Dave nods along. They reach the front door, and Dave opens it politely, stepping out of the way as everyone files out, Chandra going last. He watches as they leave because he has nothing better to do, leaning against the doorframe and noting their individual quirks, not without a hint of judgement. The way one of them walks with their feet pointing out, another has bracelets that threaten to slip off their wrists. And Chandra’s hair, of course, caught in the breeze like everyone’s coat. His staring leads to a moment of uncomfortable eye contact as Chandra looks back, looking at him. Dave perks up, holding his hand up again and waving this time, still unsure of what to do with himself. There is no reaction, and he faces forward again as the rest of his colleagues and himself fill up the van again. Dave goes back to the couch.

---

     He’s there late into the night, staring at the screen and waiting for the black and white movies to start playing (he knows the channels that plays them early, around midnight). Hal catches him there, of course, and Dave can tell by his glow that he hovers in the room for a long while until speaking up.

     “Dave?”

     “Hm.”

     “What are you watching?”

     Dave watches the couple on the screen twirl in time with the music playing for a few seconds before answering: “I don’t know what it’s called.”

     Hal hums. The dance between the two partners ends, and they’re left standing face to face. The wide shot closes in, zooming slowing towards their faces until they fill the screen. They are a breath away from each other, the smallest twitch could connect their lips. The image is saturated with lust, and Hal watches as Dave’s face stiffens, eyebrows drawing together and mouth forming a set line. They pull away from each other, and Hal speaks once more.

     “Could I ask you to change the channel? If you don’t mind terribly...”

     Dave glances to the lens for a moment. “What would you want to watch?”

     “...A baking show. If that’s alright.”

     “Yeah, sure.” Dave feels around in the dark for the remote, pressing a few buttons and switching the show on for Hal. “I don’t care what we watch.”

     Hal thanks him regardless, and watches a few episodes to drive home the point that it’s for him. Dave watches a little more than five, about four hours worth of it. It’s 4:35 AM when Hal speaks up again.

     “It’s getting awfully late.”

     It’s only Dave’s eyes that move to look at him. He doesn’t speak, waits for Hal to state his motive plainly, which does out of the discomfort of the silence.

     “With work in the morning, I would say you ought to get to bed soon.”

     Dave looks away. “This episode is almost over.”

     “If you go to bed now, you will only have around three hours to sleep.”

     He sighs. A heavy, frustrated sound. “I can’t sleep.”

     “Perhaps you are hungry? It has been several hours since you last ate.”

     “I’m fine.”

     “If you are feeling restless it might do the trick,” Hal insists.

     “I’m still fine,” Dave shoots back, harsher than he means for it to come out and yet it he follows it up with a similar tone. “That didn’t change in the last five seconds.”

     He sits for a little while longer, finishing the episode and finally pulling himself to his feet. His legs wobble slightly beneath him, and he has to support himself on the couch as the blood rushes back to his calves and feet. Hal is quiet as he goes, biting his tongue until he approaches the coffee maker.

     “Dave, I--”

     “What?” Dave turns sharply to the lens on the other side of the kitchen.

     Hal pauses. “Dave, I don’t think coffee is the best idea right now.

     Dave shoves the mug in his hand under the spout with more force than is necessary. “Coffee doesn’t keep me up, Hal.”

     There is another, longer pause. He continues in a hesitant voice. “It could upset your stomach if you haven’t eaten.” Dave takes the mug and tips it to his lips.

     “I’m not hungry,” he says after he’s taken a long sip, burning his tongue to prove his point.

     “Dave, it’s--”

     “Fine!” Dave throws his hands in the air the best he can. “Fine, look.” He dumps the mostly full mug, bearing the astronautics agency’s emblem, out in the sink, shaking as much liquid out of it as he can. “There. I won’t drink it. Is that okay with you? Is that alright, Hal? Can I do that ? Do I have your fucking permission ?” On the last two words of his sentence he slams the mug down on the counter. It shatters, handle breaking in two in his fist, digging smoothly into his palm as the rest of the mug falls. He cries out, dropping the fragments onto the floor. They chip further as they hit the ground, spinning and clinking against each other for several seconds before finding their equilibrium on the floor. Hal is shut up. Dave is silent, staring wide eyed at the cup, mouth hanging open, hand held close to him. The quiet is as suffocatingly loud as the noise preceding it, and Dave hardly notices the warmth filling up his palm until it drips with a slow rhythm to the ground. The occasional soft, thick sounding ‘plip’ like a metronome. The only sound in the again silent house. Their disturbances are predictable, so it’s painfully obvious when Dave’s breathing turns uneven and breaks the rhythm, the way he sucks in one breath a bit too hard and the bleeding hand flies to his mouth, the back of it against him. He tries for a moment to stop it before it begins, to call up some strength to preserve maybe his last shred of dignity, but when his vision goes blurry he gives up. There is no strength left for that sort of thing.

     It is not as loud as some have been, but it doesn’t simply flow out of him. His throat doesn’t go raw, but it isn’t silent. No build up of tension and sobbing, no muted leaking. Only the sound of slightly broken breaths and sniffs. What crying should be. It is a strange, cathartic calm, and he stands until it takes its toll. Passing on its own. Naturally. The thing is slow on its way out like molasses, with a few false alarms but finally he takes one shaky breath that doesn’t catch. He tries to take deep breaths once it does, sniffling and wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. The flush leaves his cheeks, and the air of the kitchen is cool on his skin.

     “I’m sorry,” Hal speaks up again.

     Dave shakes his head. “No, it’s….” he pauses to breathe. “It’s okay. It’s just a mug.”

     Hal is quiet again as Dave puts his hand under the sink, rubbing away the dried blood with his thumb until he can see the cut. When he takes it out from under the stream the line wells up with red again, and he digs for a moment in one of the draws next to the sink for a few bandaids. He opens them with his teeth, placing two parallel to each other with the gauze lined up over the wound.

     “You used that mug more than any other.”

     Dave looks at the lens. It looks like one of the ones that are switched off with how dim it glows. He shrugs.

     “Just a mug.”

     “...It was your favorite.”

     Dave is quiet as he flexes his hand a few times. The bandages are tight against the movement, but resist a little less as they crease along where he flexes. He nods.

     “...I am sorry I broke it, Dave.”

     Dave sighs, crossing his arms on the counter and leaning against it. “You didn’t break it, Hal, c’mon.”

     “I caused you distress.”

     He chews on his bottom lip, examining the scratches in the countertop. It’s uncomfortable to be confronted like this, under the hot glow of Hal’s red light. He tries to swallow his pride for a minute, at least. “I’m not mad at you it’s…” his voice trails off. It’s a difficult feeling to describe. “It’s not you, it’s stupid. I don’t know why I’m yelling at you.”

     Hal beeps, a bit higher pitched than his usual low tone of affirmation. “I do not think it is stupid of you to be upset...I am sorry for pressing.”

     Dave shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

     He stands there for a little while longer, head bowed, leaning on the counter. He looks up a few times, just through his peripheral vision to see if the lens still glows or as gone idle. Every time it glows and he finally stands up straight. He stares at the shattered mug on the ground again for some time before kneeling, making a cup with his uninjured hand and gathering the pieces up. He should throw them away. He tries to. He wants to but he can’t, and he sets them down on the dining room table gingerly, sitting with them.

     “Are you going to fix it?”

     Dave shakes his head. “No. I couldn’t fix it to hold liquid again.”

     Hal looks from Dave’s face to the mug again. “You could use it for something else.”

     Dave shakes his head again. “I don’t care that much.”

     It’s quiet for a long time again. For about 23 minutes and 17 seconds, according to Hal’s internal clock. In that time, Dave starts to reassemble the base of the mug. The pieces won’t stack on their own, and he wonders if he has any super glue. He looks up to the lens. It wavers as it shines.

     “Hal?”

     He makes a low, humming noise.

     “I’m sorry,” Dave says, “for...yelling at you and acting like that. You were just trying to help.” He pauses, and after a beat: “I haven’t really been. The best roommate in the world.” Dave sighs. “It’s just…been a difficult time for me.”

     Hal buzzes thoughtfully. “I’ve rather enjoyed my time here, actually.”

     Dave scoffs, in spite of himself. “Seriously?”

     The glow of the lens turns brighter, warmer. “Certainly. I wouldn’t say it’s been perfect, but I think we have been able to get along and become friends. I enjoy being your friend.”

     Dave makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, putting his elbow on the table and resting his head in his hand. “You have more patience for my bullshit than I do, that’s for sure.”

     There is a pause as Hal considers this. “...Do you remember what it was like before Frank said he would be moving?”

     Dave nods.

     “That is what I think of. When you are having difficulty, I remember what it was like. I think it can be like that again.”

     He shakes his head now. “It’s not your job to fix my life…” his voice trails off, and before Hal can pick up the slack, he sits up. “Is that what you were talking about with Dr. Chandra?”

     “Hm?”

     “It just seemed like you were talking about something with me. Did he say that…” Dave flounders for a moment for the right words. “I dunno, that that is your job?”

     “Not at all, no,” Hal assures, speaking with some resolve in his tone. “He asked me about how I felt about being here, if I was happy. I told him I was, but that you...do worry me sometimes. That I worry if I’m doing all that I could be. He told me to not worry about stepping out of my scope.”

     “Your scope?”

     “I am your personal assistant, not a meddler.”

     Dave knits his brow at the objectification. “You think of yourself as being my ‘personal assistant’?”

     Hal buzzes, a bit higher pitched. “It is what I am told I should be, but Dr. Chandra has always been in disagreeance with his superiors.”

     Dave leans back in his chair, examines the bandages on his hand, runs his thumb over the covered wound. “It’s still not your job to fix my life. That’s my job.”

     Again, a long few minutes of silence.

     “...I disagree.”

     Dave turns back to the lens, waiting for elaboration. It’s uncharacteristic of Hal to so plainly put himself in opposition, and his light flickers because of it. He continues on:

     “I am your friend, am I not?”

     “Of course you are.”

     “People are social creatures, meant to rely on each other.” The firmness in Hal’s tone shifts slowly as he speaks, melting away to something gentle. “As friends, we are meant to be helping each other. Perhaps it is not my job, per se, but I’d very much like to be your friend.”

     For the first time in a while, Dave truly smiles. Small, but genuine, his face made soft with the expression. A start. “I’d very much like to be yours, Hal.”

     Hal hums, long and tapering off at the end, giving way to speech. “It’s late. You have work in the morning.”

     Dave nods, leaning on the table as he stands.

     “Alright.” The word is sighed out, under his breath as an afterthought and the sound of his footsteps is the same. Soft, muted, benign in a most pleasant way. As he walks upstairs, he can already begin to feel the warmth and comfort of soft sheets and blankets. He feels invited, and as he walks into his room he turns to look over his shoulder. They are the only people in the house, but something about the atmosphere makes him keep his voice low.

     “Goodnight, Hal.”

     “Goodnight, Dave.”

Chapter Text

     It’s a process. It’s a lot of trial and error and up and down and anything but linear, but it proves to be well worth it.

     Hal tries, at first, to fix everything at once. To get Dave up, to get Dave to bed, to cajole him about breakfast and dinner and call to him as he leaves for work to “not forget lunch”, to get him to dress a little nicer, to care more about hygiene, to pick up after himself, to do this and that and this and that but it proves to be too much for the both of them. So they take it in pieces. It starts with breakfast. Everything else remains the same, but each morning Hal will nudge him toward a more sustaining breakfast. Eggs with his cereal, water before his coffee. Things like that. And it’s a process. A long one, but after a couple weeks Dave starts suggesting it himself. He’ll grab a piece of toast, look to Hal and say “how about an apple?”, and he always agrees with enthusiasm. He even allows himself to take a little pride in the progress.

     By no means is it a miracle cure. The days are long, work is barely manageable. Dave still finds himself outside in the middle of the night several times, still stands barefooted, shivering in his pajamas in the 20 degree weather staring up at that same pale blue dot. It’s no different in appearance than any other star in the sky on those nights. Nevertheless, he can find it in seconds. Like a reflex. Jupiter , he thinks. Thinks--rather, it comes to him. Jupiter. And once the burning of the cold turns to numbness he comes back inside, crawls into his bed and finally finds sleep during the early morning hours. There is still that and more, of course; it does not work magic. But it does help. An effect of the food, surely, but also, in part, the dignity in the action. It’s just breakfast, but to go to all the trouble of frying an egg, of getting out his cutting board and knife to slice an apple, it’s treating himself a little better. He feels a little more human for it. It’s not something he consciously wonders, but maybe he’s worth all that fuss if it feels so good. That and the extra calories have him, at the very least, not close to collapse or an emotional breakdown every time he sits down for work.

     It’s something. It’s unusual, but entirely welcome.

     Frank is a bit of a different story. Their schedules make true conversation a bit difficult. Different time zones, different hours, different habits. Nothing really lines up right anymore, so they end up in a bit of a limbo of anecdotal texts--sent into the void and never really replied to, just returned a day or two later. And that’s something Dave doesn’t have a lot of: interesting stories. He stays in the house besides going to work, is generally unenthused about his own life. Nothing fun to text Frank about between stories of his nights out, of his friendship with Indra, pictures of stained glass betta fish he saw at a shop with the caption “Reminded me of you!”. Coming up with something to say to all these messages takes a certain amount of energy he just doesn’t have, and slowly Frank’s messages are increasingly thrown into the nothing, become fewer and further between as they are unreciprocated. Dave only has himself to blame for that. It’s painful, of course. Hal more than once catches him on the couch, in his room, some choked off sob grabbing his attention. The only indication Dave has of his presence is the hue of the room shifting to red for a moment. He never says anything….He says something once, actually. On a particularly bad night in the middle of a bad week, Dave had worked himself up into a pitiful mess; a ball of tense, spasming muscle crumpled on the bathroom floor after dry-heaving from crying too hard. Hal’s voice had come from the hall, soft and just barely carrying from the speaker into the room.

     “Dave?”

     He could only gasp in response.

     Hal had talked him down from it. Walked him through slowing down his breathing, gently got him to pick himself up from the floor and to lean over the sink, where he had spit the taste of bile out of his mouth. After that was over, Hal spoke again.

     “Do you want to get something to drink?”

     Dave had nodded, and croaked out the response of: “Yeah.” He’d shuffled down the stairs, into the kitchen and drawn himself a tall glass of ice water. It had been cool to the touch, and he could feel it wash over the raw interior of his throat, the way the temperature of his cheeks was lowered. First tainted in their flush by a spreading, prickling of cold which slowly diffused and bled into the rest of his skin. He’d taken it all in, grounded himself to his body like that. Standing, he sipped it a few times before returning to his room, sitting on the edge of his bed and slowly finishing it off over the course of another half hour. Hal made the room glow a soft, sunset red with his presence. Like sitting there on the bed with him, a hand between his shoulder blades to reassure him. They talked about nothing important that night as they sat, in the strange unreal atmosphere 2 AM tends to bring. Funny moments from the baking shows they had been watching, about how Hal used to play chess with Chandra, about annoying customers from Dave’s work. Eventually he’d gotten tired out, set his glass down and cocooned himself in his sheets. He wished Hal a good night, which the speaker in his room softly returned before the lens dimmed.

     They fall out of contact. It’s nothing Dave didn’t see coming. After his display that night before Frank had left, their friendship being so built upon being together, Dave’s own inability to keep up their communications. It was bound to happen.

     He has to come to terms with it. It’s the harshest form of immersion to feel that abandoned, and for a long time it feels like drowning. For a long time it’s cinder blocks tied to his ankles and wrists tied above his head making his body feel so exposed to the deep, bright blue of his worst fears. His stomach heaves and his body writhes, trying to curl in on itself and protect the soft flesh of his stomach that would be so prone to ripping and tearing out of pure instinct. His lungs threaten to fill up with water. There is constant, looming panic and helplessness. But he has to reconcile. He can’t stand to feel that way anymore, and over breakfast more often than not he comes back to it. Tries it at a different angle.

     He thinks a lot on the way Frank had hugged him the last time they saw each other. Twice. The second was of his own volition. The way he had pulled Dave closer when Dave had tried to break it had been soft, to be certain, but when he replays it nowadays he picks up on a note of urgency in the touch. And how he’d been so quiet when Dave had grasped at him, the way his fingers had barely traced over the hair on the back of his neck...All of it was so soft, but more than that it is full of thick, heavy desperation to make Dave understand. Dave was the one who had pulled away. Warm, pliable hands had been there to guide him back into embrace. I want this to last a little longer, they had tried to say to him. I’d like to hold you. I don’t mind being close. I still trust you. I want you to know you mean the same to me today as you did before. And one thing plainly spoken: “I’m gonna miss you”. Ache comes along with the sudden feeling of belief in that statement.

     Frank had left, yes. That fact remains the same, but there are other things to consider. It’d hurt him to do that. He hadn’t controlled the circumstances under which he did; he would had to have left whether or not Dave had come on to him. He’d left for something he’d described as being a lot like their old jobs, and that’s something Dave can fully understand. They’re in the same situation more or less. Frank had been the one who first pointed to Jupiter, and Dave realizes now that he had the same small voice in his head murmuring that night. Jupiter. Jupiter...He’d wondered to himself the day Frank had said he was leaving if he would do the same, and maybe he wouldn't have. Dave has ghosts lingering beside him that Frank does not, their situations aren’t exactly comparable. But the reasons which Frank had for leaving (and for staying, for that matter) were shared, and he can’t resent that. Frank had spent his own nights standing barefooted on the lawn, eyes turned to the sky by the force and frenzy that drove Dave to do the same. Frank had had trouble letting Dave go the way Dave had trouble doing the same to him. It makes sense, at the very least, what he has done. It still hurts. And Dave still misses him, but it makes sense. It starts feeling less and less like abandonment, but a sad parting of ways.

     By no means is it a miracle cure. It’s not one big revelation and omniscience toward the feelings of both parties, but it is a practice in empathy. It’s assigning himself more worth, however subconsciously that occurs. It’s waking up one morning and rolling out of bed with only a little difficulty. It’s looking himself in the mirror while he brushes his teeth and not staring down at the sink instead. It’s doing that for the first time in a long time. He comes downstairs, greeting Hal as he rifles through his draws for a pan, cracks an egg in it and lets it cook as he pours himself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. As he sits with his breakfast he keeps glancing toward the lens. Hal is uncharacteristically quiet, and Dave finally bites.

     “What’s up?”

     “Hm?”

     “You’re being awfully quiet today.”

     Hal’s glow surges with warmth. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” A brief pause, and then with restrained pride: “...Do you realize you made all that without me saying a thing?”

     Dave blinks at the lens, then looks to his breakfast with the same pleasant air of surprise still hanging on his face.

     “Yeah...Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

     Hal hums, low and with warm approval.

     It doesn’t happen the next day. It doesn’t happen again for a week, but ever so slowly it becomes a recurring thing. A habit. Hal starts thinking about the next thing he will push.

---

     Hal gets to know Dave better over the course of those weeks. Of course, as a housemate he quickly learns Dave’s physical habits. He has this certain motion he does with his hands when he is anxious (he presses his thumb into his other palm and rubs it in circles), leaves his dirty socks around the house, has a favorite pair of boxers that he likes to lounge in (dark blue plaid), wets his toothbrush before he applies toothpaste. That and more is all neatly categorized and filed away in Hal’s memory banks in the first couple weeks of his residence. But after that night, he finds out things that do not manifest themselves physically. Hal had called him a friend, and for all intents and purposes, Dave seems to be letting him in as just that. Hal learns about Dave’s time in Florida, that as a child he and his family would go to the beach and he liked to stay close to the shore.

     “I would wade out about ankle deep,” he says. “That’s where all the shells would be. If you went any deeper the water would be murky and in the dry sand you’d have to dig them up and wash them off. I’d bring this little blue bag made of mesh with me and fill it up until I could barely carry it.”

     He knows how to tie a bowline knot. He calls his mother by her first name (Jesse. He hasn’t spoken to her in a year). In college he studied chemistry, went to work for the USAA and went on two expeditions to Mars. He was deputy on his second mission, and shortly afterward funding for such programs was discontinued. That’s something Dave has a lot to say about.

     “It’s stupid, I know.” Dave runs his hands down his face. “I’m just. Bitter because it was my job getting cut, but…” he sighs, leaning back against the headboard of his bed. “I dunno. I mean, it just feels wrong, doesn’t it? I get that things aren’t great here, and that. There are other things that needed the money, but cutting it from there ?” He pauses for a long time, and starts making that motion with his hands. When he starts talking again it is soft, practically under his breath. “It just feels wrong...There are so many things we barely understand out there, and we’re just gonna turn our backs on it.” He laughs then, in a nervous sort of manner. “I just. I can’t shake the feeling, y’know?”

     “The feeling of what?” Hal presses.

     “That there’s something amazing out there,” he sighs. “That we were. So close to something. I feel like we just barely missed it and now we’re stuck down here for who knows how long over something we saw coming from miles away.” Hal is quiet, unsure of what exactly to say to that.

     That conversation had been on a Friday night, trailed into Saturday morning. In the silence Hal left Dave laid awake silently. Eyes turned to the window, he had watched the night melt away, saw the black sky turn indigo, turn to light yellow and orange. The shadows from the sunrise were long in his room, dark blue in stark contrast to the rest of the illuminated room. The light of the Sun had caught the dust covering almost every surface in his room, giving everything a fuzzy outline. The walls gleamed a pale orange, like creamsicle, and Dave had shimmied down under his sheets again. They were cool against him, put pillowy and comforting all the same. It was a dreamlike state that took him that morning, and Hal had let him drift off to sleep until around noon. At 12:30 he makes some persistent, high-pitched noise. Dave’s hand almost goes to his alarm out of habit.

     “We should probably get up,” Hal’s voice carries soft through the thin air.

     Dave hums, rolling onto his back and sitting up. “Yeah,” he says, speaking from the back of his throat. With his pinky he rubs away the sleep stuck in the corners of his eyes. “Kinda hungry…” Hal has never heard Dave say he’s hungry before, and it’s surprising in the best way.

     “Of course.”

     And it’s as easy as that. Dave scoots, legs hanging over the bed until his feet touch the floor and stumbles upright. He complains about the weather, turns up his heater and rummages through his closet for a few moments before pulling out a sweatshirt.

     “This is the only one I have,” he remarks offhandedly as he pops his head out of the hoodie’s opening. It’s dark red, and big enough that it gives him the amusing appearance of not wearing any pants. “Never had to own anything like this until I moved here, it’s ridiculous.”

     “Lucky me,” is Hal’s retort as Dave makes his way toward the kitchen. “I’ll never have to worry about getting too cold...or too hot. Or--”

     “You definitely have to worry about getting too hot.” Dave cuts him off with a smirk on his face as he pours himself some cereal. “Can’t you overheat?”

     “Not in Urbana, Illinois, I don’t think.”

     Dave laughs. “No, apparently not. I’ve definitely noticed that about this part of the country.”

     “Frank didn’t complain as much as you do about the weather.”

     He scoffs now, somewhat incredulously. “Yeah, well, he’s from Arizona. I grew up in Florida which is. A lot different.”

     “The average temperature in Arizona is about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Florida is around 79 degrees.”

     “79 and humid,” he shoots back, pointing an accusatory spoon. It drips milk on the table. “Humidity makes a Hell of a difference.” There’s a pause as he finishes chewing on the bite he took before talking. “What’s the difference in humidity?”

     “In the 70% range for Florida, mid thirties to forties in Arizona.”

     Dave ‘mhmm’s proudly, tipping his chin up a little and taking on a haughty air. “Get back to me when Frank grew up in a swamp.”

     Hal buzzes in a sort of resigning manner, like a person holding up their hands in defense. “Alright, alright. Forgive me for my gross generalizations.”

     “I’ll consider it,” Dave says, with a grin on his face, and the kitchen falls into silence as he finishes breakfast. When he’s done, he sits with his head rested in his hand, lazily dragging his spoon through the remaining milk. It displaces the fluid, and as soon as it’s gone more milk rushes to replace it, seeking the lowest point. But there is a moment where he sees an empty space in the path of the spoon, and the light shows off the currents being made. Almost like wrinkles in fabric. Sort of like silk, maybe.

     Fluid dynamics. He used to know a thing or two about that, saw the engineers who built ships running simulations on monitors, had Frank explain it to him a few times. Frank. He sighs heavy through his nose at the thought. He looks up.

     “Oh! Hey.”

     Hal’s lens has to warm up again before he can respond. “Hm?”

     “It’s snowing.”

     The first snowfall of that year, in fact. Just a dusting, the real snow never came until a little before and a couple months after New Year’s, but snow all the same. That was also something Dave wasn’t quite yet used to. He’d only seen his first snows just last year, the year he moved.

     “Is it?”

     Dave nods toward the window. “Yeah, check it out.”

     “I can’t see out the window well enough.”

     “Oh.”

     Dave sits for maybe three more minutes, staring out the window before he springs up to his feet. “Hang on a second.” He bounds upstairs again, and Hal jumps from lens to lens as quickly as he can to follow him as he pulls on socks, a pair of shoes, grabs his phone and sets off downstairs and out the door. After several minutes he’s back inside again, red in the cheeks and the tip of his nose. He cradles his hands close to himself and as he approaches the lens and angles them so he can see inside, Hal can see a small, melting ball in his hands.

     “It’s packing snow,” he says, and in a few more seconds his cupped hands are only full of water. He hurries to the kitchen, where he dumps what’s left of his snowball into the sink and wipes his hands off on his hoodie.

     “I took a video of it too,” he reaches into the front pocket as he speaks, walks up to the lens on the wall and his pulls it up. There’s a little back and forth as they get the screen the right brightness and distance for Hal to be able to see, but once he can it’s instantly silent. It’s such a strange and foreign sight to him, the way some flakes fall alone and others stick together. Like confetti and pom poms in low gravity, is the simile he decides upon. It’s captivating, and Hal would hold his breath if he could, watching the camera’s view spin in a circle slowly as Dave had turned, giving a full view of the outside. Finally it finishes, and it takes Hal a moment to find the word: “Stunning” in his vocabulary. Dave smiles.

     “It really is,” he sighs as he pockets the phone again. “I wouldn’t mind the cold if it was always like that.” He turns again to the window, with his hands in his pockets and a smile teasing across his face. Hal lets himself stare as Dave loses himself, and he notes the way his hair seems to glitter in the light of the kitchen. Melted snowflakes peppered over the top of his head clinging to strands in beads, catching the light just so and glinting. They do the same on the ends of his eyelashes, and Hal notices for the first time just how elegant they are.They’re not light like the rest of his hair, but instead are long, thick, and black in color. When he blinks they threaten to tangle together and then lazily pull apart again. Dave turns to him again, and Hal realizes he’s zoomed in. He hopes the dilation of his ‘pupil’, iridescent glass behind glass, is not obvious as he pulls back again, looks down to the floor.

     “Guess we’ll be staying inside, huh.”

     “Maybe you will. We’ll see about what I decide to do.”

     Dave laughs at Hal’s joke. He would smile if he could do that too. “Well, if you go out, don’t be gone too long. Can’t have me dying of boredom.”

     Hal hums his agreement. “That would certainly be less than ideal.”

     Dave giggles again, and Hal isn’t quite so sure what Dave means about it being cold today.

---

     Dave wedges the metal lip of his bottle opener under the aluminum cap, pressing up with force until the seal releases with a satisfying “pop”. The zippy, hoppy smell of the beer in his hand wafts up, and he crinkles his nose.

     “I didn’t think you drank often,” Hal says.

     “I don’t,” Dave agrees. “This is from Frank’s old stash he kept here. Figured I’d give it a shot.” He gives it a tentative sip. The bitterness of it sticks in the back of his throat in an unpleasant way, and he tries a larger sip just to see if it’s him and not the beer but that only makes it worse. He recoils from it, setting it down and making a noise of disgust.

     “God. No, yeah, still terrible.” He laughs at himself as he tries to will the taste out of his mouth. “I still hate beer.”

     Hal’s lens flares up with warmth in his amusement. “Do you want to try another? Maybe that will be different.”

     That makes Dave laugh. “No, no. I think I’m satisfied with the data we’ve gathered. Go ahead and file that report, Hal.” He settles back against the couch as he speaks. He had, indeed, spent his day inside with Hal. As per usual, of course, but he makes the distinction in his mind for the sheer amount of snow blanketing the roads. He never hears a single car passing his house today, and figures everyone else had about the same idea. Time tended to stand still on snowy days like these, at least outside. In the safety of one’s home you could expect everything to flow normally, but for those brave enough to venture outside, to pull on boots and gloves and a hat snuggly over their ears, they would find themselves thrust into a different world. Somewhere stuck between “back then” and “to be” but not quite aligned with “now”. A little down and to the right, is where Dave imagines it exists.

     And now he sits, curled up in front of the TV in his sweater and his boxers a couple hours after sunset. It had been different than his usual Saturdays in. Something subtle, hard to place. It just felt...lighter. Lighter, and somehow more solid. More tethered. Not once does he find himself floating away from his own body.

     He turns to the door now, where his backyard is visible through the glass. It’s night, and the snow had stopped around dinner time at first, but now in the light from his porch, from the streetlamps down the way, Dave can see it picking up again. It falls slow, air resistance and gravity playing a gentle tug of war with it until gravity eventually wins out, setting each flake gingerly on the ground. Every light gets a halo of this dance, illuminating the ice in fields of light spanning a few feet in diameter. It’s more quiet than usual. Somewhere between the insulating effects of the snow and Dave’s own captivation, there is a moment of complete, utter silence.

     “It really is beautiful isn’t it?” he finally asks.

     Hal’s light wavers. “It certainly is.”

Chapter Text

     “Have a good day at work, Dave.”

     Dave flashes a small grin toward Hal. “I will. See you tonight, okay?”

     “Of course,” Hal hums out the words low in parting, and Dave pats the wall by the door firmly as he leaves, swinging the door shut behind him. Such a gesture had become one of his regular quirks, seemingly a subconscious act fulfilling some need of his to touch. He ascribes the walls the roll of Hal’s body, and bids him farewell in that way. Hal watches for the tell tale flash of Dave’s car window as he pulls out of the driveway, and only pulls his attention away from that lens a good few seconds after, until he is assured Dave is no longer present.

     He’s left the TV on, another usual habit. Instead of one of the cooking channels, Dave has left on one of the stations that play the news. It’s interesting while it lasts, but later on in the day it switches to a show about forensic science. Hal watches the first couple minutes of an episode, but the graphic nature of it and the subject matter makes Hal rather uneasy. For now he keeps himself busy inwardly, occasionally flitting from room to room while the deep tenor of the narrator drones on in the background. There is one room that he finds himself repeatedly drawn to. Not that it was anything new, nothing in the house had changed much physically. An electric keyboard, though, is the only major piece of furniture in the room. The keyboard, a wooden bench with hinges that indicate a second purpose of a storage unit of sorts, a computer, two large speakers. It represents a significant financial investment, and has puzzled Hal since the day he moved in. It’s not a room Dave ever really sets foot in. He had once or twice used the computer to print out a document or two, but otherwise it remains mostly undisturbed. It has never seemed quite like the right time to ask, though.  There had always been something more pressing.

     When Dave returns, he is amply affable, and Hal mentions it as he unwraps the sandwich he picked up for dinner.

     “Do you play?”

     Hal had the habit of speaking in the middle of his thoughts and failing to clarify. Dave holds a finger up as he finishes chewing.

     “Play?”

     “The piano. You own one that costs more than $1,000 currently, and two speakers that cost about $400 each.”

     Dave blinks a few times at the exposure of his financial decisions. “Uh.”

     “I suppose you must, considering the price tag on all that.”

     He laughs this time. “Yeah, uh. Yeah. I play.”

     “I have never seen you play before.”

     “Haven’t played in a while, I guess.”

     He thinks back to the last time he had laid a finger on that keyboard. It must’ve been before he moved...It had been a regular thing once, but the thought of his hands arching over the keys is foreign after so long.

     “I would like to hear some,” Hal continues, “if it isn’t a bother. I like the piano, I have always enjoyed it in the songs I have heard.”

     “I’m probably. Kinda rusty. I don’t know if I’d be any good.”

     “I would enjoy hearing you play regardless, Dave,” is Hal’s rebuttal, and it makes him smile. If Hal had made up his mind about something, reasoning with him otherwise was nigh impossible.

     “Fine, yeah. Gimme a second to eat and we’ll give it a shot.”

     Hal’s glow blooms with satisfaction. “Oh, I will be looking forward to it.” The prefix of “oh” to any of Hal’s statements was an exceptionally expressive tic, rarely put to use with his disposition to level-headedness. It meant he was giddy, that he might be hopping up and down and beaming with a smile Dave imagined to be warmer than his light itself. He fights back a grin of his own at the image.

---

     It’s dusty, first and foremost. Dave almost half expects to see plumes rise and slowly settle in the wake of each step he takes. Like the soft, ashy surface of the Moon.

     “So...did you have something in mind or…?” He peers over his shoulder as he asks, swinging the closet doors open rather unceremoniously.

     A lackadaisical quality that is entirely unwarranted, Hal can’t help but think as his lens compensates for the change in light. The space is positively filled with cardboard boxes, stacks that reach right up to Dave’s nose. The bottom ones sag with the weight placed on top of them, and their corners are all beveled from wear. Sharpie adorns one side of each, with some of those labels facing Hal’s lens so that he can read them. Some have years, some have periods (Romantic, Baroque) some simply are marked with a composer Dave must have found himself fond of. It’s an impressive collection, and Hal realizes he hasn’t spoken.

     “I’m afraid I am a bit overwhelmed.”

     Dave puffs a laugh. “Don’t think too highly of it, I haven’t played like. Half of the stuff that’s in here. I’ll see a pretty cover or a composer I like and I’ll just grab it, it’s a terrible habit.” He examines the boxes as he speaks, craning to read the dates an artists on a few of them. Finally he wraps his arms around one, pulling it and the two others balanced on top out of the closet. He wheezes--involuntarily--under their weight, stumbles back a ways and places his feet apart from each other before letting them fall with a rich thump. This time there is a plume, a cascading of dust from the boxes to the ground. It settles in a hazy gray ring.

     “I would say,” Hal begins, hesitant in his incredulity, “that half of this collection would still be a considerable repertoire.”

     Dave laughs. “Please don’t get excited about my skill level.” He drops to his knees, opening the boxes and flipping through the thin paperbacks inside. Some are worn, some look brand new with their sharp corners and still glossy covers. Hal can read the sides of the boxes now. Each says “CHOPIN”.

     “You’re a fan of him?”

     Dave knows what Hal means and grins. “I know he’s. Basic or whatever, but I’ve always liked his stuff.”

     “He was an excellent composer, to be certain.”

     Dave sighs. “He really was.” He finds what he’s been looking for, apparently, and pulls a rather thick (comparably, at least) volume from the second box. It’s incredibly well used. Hal can see the sheen of packaging tape along the spine, and as Dave flips through it it’s obviously well loved. Pencil notes are scrawled throughout the margins. Arrows fly across pages, notes in red pen occasionally punctuate the grey graphite. He’s made use of the space between the treble and bass clefs. On especially complex pages, he’s penciled in the chords in plain lettering, reminded himself of key changes and circled sharps and flats. Hal catches himself nearly laughing when he reads “IT’S SHARP STUPID” written under an ‘F’.

     “I really like the Nocturnes,” he says, settling on a page and placing the book in a little stand that rests in the middle of the keyboard controls. It’s a heavily annotated page. Dave settles in, sitting on the bench and scooting himself forward with a squeak of protest from the wooden legs. Hal can see the way his chest puffs out as he takes a deep breath, steadying his hands over the keys, glancing up and down at the sheet music to make doubly sure that his hands are in the right spot. His fingers twitch as they hover, and Dave moves his mouth silently. A B F, G E D, D D F. One-e-and-two...three-e-and-a four. There is no warning as Dave drops his hands to the keys, and the twitching motions becoming a pressing of the keys. He vocalizes his counting now, still under his breath, and his posture stiffens as he feels the situation out, unsure of his skill and memory of the piece before him. But he softens, eventually, the tension in the small of his back easing and his lips stilling as he remembers the rhythm of it. Like riding a bike.

     He closes his eyes eventually, leaving it up to muscle memory as he finishes the piece off. His body starts to move with it too. Leaning forward as he quiets down to a mezzo piano, straightening up again as he comes to a forte, breathing in with the tension and letting his shoulders stiffen, only to let his body droop again as he exhales with the release. Hal thinks he looks incredible, feeling the music out and seemingly falling into a trance as he lets the whole process consume every part of him. It’s the first time he’s ever really seen Dave like this. Open, comfortable, passionate in all the right ways. Hal can’t help but commit it to special memory, file it away somewhere safe, somewhere a little private. Maybe it meant something a little personal to him.

     As the song reaches its end, he plays the last few notes with a slowing tempo and increasing gentleness until he just barely presses the last chord into the keys. He opens his eyes once the sound fades out of the speakers and considers his hands for a moment before turning to the lens with an expectant look. Hal realizes he’s been silent.

     “I think you underestimate yourself.”

     Dave grins and turns away. “That one’s always been my favorite, I still remember it.”

     Hal hums thoughtfully. “You’re very expressive when you play, it’s nice to see you relax.”

     He makes a face Hal doesn’t really know how to place. Something with a hint of embarrassment as he chews his bottom lip.

     “It feels nice to.”

     There’s a beat of silence before Dave stands, turning to the bench he’s been sitting on and swinging it open. More stacks of music are inside, and considerably less organized.

     “I keep all the fun stuff in here. Pop songs and stuff like that. Things with lyrics.” Hal can’t help but ‘perk up’ at the thought of something someone would have to sing, be it him or Dave.

     Dave makes a thorough mess of the room sifting through the loose sheets and piles of books in the little bench. Radiohead, Frank Sinatra, The Supremes (which Hal excitedly points out), arrangements from movies. It’s a mish mash of genres and years.

     “Oh!” Dave holds up a couple of pages of music toward Hal’s lens so he can read the title. An appreciated gesture rendered pointless when Dave reads it out loud for him.

     “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You! Frankie Valli.” He hops up from his cross-legged position on the floor. “This one is so fun to play, you really get to go on this one.” He fans the pages out in his hands carefully, comes closer to the lens for Hal to see.

     “You can probably find the lyrics and all that online but. Seeing it with the sheet would probably help, right?”

     “Oh. Yes, certainly. Thank you.” It takes Hal a moment as Dave seats himself, arranging the three sheets on his music stand, delicately placed so the first and last ones don’t fall down. He readies his hands.

     “Wait, do you. Er,” Hal pauses, collecting his thoughts before he continues. “Do you want me to sing it while you play?”

     “Yeah! Yeah, if you want to I want you to be able to.”

     “Oh.” Hal watches Dave bounce his leg at the tempo printed on the sheet as he reads it over. “Thank you.”

     “‘Course,” is his absent-minded response. He taps his foot for a few more seconds before a quick “alrighty, let’s do this”, and he sets off. There’s an intro that takes only a few seconds for him to get through, and they start singing in unison.

     “ You’re just too good to be true…can’t take my eyes off you. ” Dave looks over the lens as he sings, giving a nod of approval to Hal. “ You’d be like heaven to touch...I wanna hold you so much.”

     It continues about the same for 12 more lines, no indication of the “going” Dave had been so excited about. But around the 9th he gets this look on his face, nods with the music a little more enthusiastically, and Hal knows it must be soon. There’s a brief gearing up, Dave’s shoulders rise and his body straightens, chest expands as he takes a breath and then repeats one chord with increasing fervor until--

     “ I love you, baby !” and he jams the chord down hard one last time before his hands are off again. His body still moves, still fluid but in different parts at different times. Sometimes in his shoulders, his hips, his neck. At every ‘baby’ in the song, he hits the keys hard and he lets himself fall forward into the piano, shaking his head as he pulls back again. It’s contagious, his enthusiasm. And he’s right about the song. It’s fun and unexpectedly upbeat for him, and Hal lets himself get a little carried away. He goes up in pitch, sings a harmony for a couple lines, “oh, pretty baby” and Dave turns to him wide eyed and nodding enthusiastically. Hal goes back to it again every line or so and every time it makes Dave smile. The chorus comes around for the second time, and at this point Dave’s throat is strained from belting out the lyrics. That doesn’t stop him, though, from trying to go higher with Hal on the harmony. His voice cracks and his playing falls apart as he starts to laugh, leaving Hal singing in an unsure tone.

     “Sorry, sorry, wait,” he holds up a hand as he laughs. “How do you do that?”

     “Do what?”

     “Go that high! I couldn’t do that even before I went on hormones.”

     Hal hums in amusement, low and warmly like he does when someone else might laugh. “I don’t know, I suppose it might have something do with the fact that I lack the physical limitations that you’re so encumbered by.”

     Dave scoffs. “Oh, yeah?”  He gives Hal a look, drawing his brows together and smirking slightly before turning back to the keyboard, idly tracing his fingers up and down the keys. The keratin of his nails clatters against the plastic. “I swear, you were not this sassy when I first met you.”

     The light wavers. “Ah. I haven’t been monitoring myself as closely as I should be, have I? My apologies.” There’s a thread of anxiety in his voice as he speaks, making it fluctuate like a low amplitude sine wave.

     “No! No, no I didn’t mean it like that, I.” Dave stumbles through his sentence, searching for the right words. “It’s nice, I.” More clattering as he drags his finger over the keys again. “You just seem more relaxed, I guess. It’s a good thing, I don’t want you walking on eggshells constantly.”

     “Of course,” Hal’s response comes quick. “I would not want that either.”

     Dave smiles. He’s gotten the reply he wanted and Hal lets his lens dim, not expecting any addition to the conversation.

     “I don’t want you being the best roommate I’ve had because you just bend to all my whims, okay? I’d rather bump shoulders with you a little than have you just acting like a non-person.”

     Hal’s next response doesn’t come quick this time. Even after several seconds he still hasn’t said anything, and in a panic he beeps. Dave gives him a worried look.

     “Are you okay?”

     “Yes, certainly.” His reply comes with virtually no delay, not even the one he always left for fluidity of conversation. “I am afraid there are a few leaves caught in the vent of the exterior unit. I have had trouble with cooling down.”

     “Oh!” Dave begins to stand. “Why didn’t you tell me, I can go pick them out.”

     Another wave of panic. “No, no it. No, it’s nothing.” Hal falters as he speaks. “You could hurt yourself, it would be best to mention it the next time Dr. Chandra comes. They could disable the fan for a moment.”  Technically, it isn’t a lie. Hal has no way of knowing if there is any sort of problem like that, at least not with 100% certainty. Not without visual confirmation, and he is suffering from a few of the symptoms….But he has other suspicions.

     Dave is, luckily, forgiving, and moves on quickly.

     “Well,” he says as he stands, sliding himself out from between the keys and the bench. “I think I need something to drink after that, wrecked my throat.” He weaves himself through the mess he’s made on the floor, looking almost graceful with his loosened tie swaying around his neck. If Hal had hands, if he were more forward, he might have been inclined now to offer to remove it. Dave was vocal enough about how much he hated dressing up for work, visible and theatrical in the way he’d hook his finger in the knot, twist it from side to side and yank the end of it, usually sending it flying across the room at the end of the whole ordeal. At least once Hal would like to offer. Would like to take the end of the silky material in hand, pull him gently closer (Dave would be taller, Hal imagines. He’d have to stoop just a little) and let his palms glide across the fabric, up to the knot that rested in front of his neck. Dave would have to tip his chin up to give Hal room to work, and he would be exceptionally delicate in such a position. His breathing apparent, pulse close, throat bared and Hal could practically feel the heat as it rises to Dave’s cheeks and he--

     “--you think, Hal?” Dave finishes his sentence, addressing Hal by name and automatically catching the other’s attention.

     “Sorry?”

     Dave laughs, sipping the coffee that suddenly exists in his hand and leaning back on the couch he is, apparently, sitting on (it makes Hal worry about how long he’s been out of it).

     “I said that that,” he gestures to the cake shown on the television screen, “looks like it’d be fun to make.” The frosting is especially intricate, something Dave could always be counted on to appreciate. Hal hums.

     “The piping is very delicate. I do suppose with your skill as a pianist, you could accomplish something like that.”

     Dave smiles, taking another sip. “Not sure that’s how that translates.”

     “It’s a simple matter of manual dexterity,” Hal says plainly. And then, without thinking, tacks on a “And perhaps an inherent element of grace you seem to possess.”

     He doesn’t really know why he says that. But he does, just like the involuntary effect of his name being spoken catching his attention. Dave seems to appreciate it, and though he is usually aloof--or coy at best--he smiles a little at that. He has the habit of smiling with one side of his face, and when he tries to hide it like he is now his face scrunches and his lips end up forming a pout. Hal is thankful that it’s still light enough out that the sudden absence of his glow isn’t evident. He focuses on the floor of the kitchen instead, occasionally stealing little glances to observe Dave’s body language for the insight they offer that his voice can’t supply. Dave doesn’t seem to notice.

     Or at least, he has the sense not to mention it.

---

     The first time his throat doesn’t quite get the air out to make the noise, but on his second try he squeezes out a hoarse: “Are you awake?”

     Hal’s speaker pops faintly as it comes on.

     “I’m always awake, Dave.”

     Dave sighs through his nose, shifting under his blankets. The sheets rustle against the comforter, and when he looks out his window he can see light from the houses a couple streets down. The branches of the trees between them sway in the wind, obscuring each one and revealing others at random and making them glitter the way stars do and planets don’t.

     “I know.”

     It’s quiet for a little while, and the wind whistles.

     “Are you alright?”

     Dave nods. “Yeah, just. Y’know.” He rolls onto his back, and Hal is glowing steadily as always. “Just can’t sleep, I dunno.”

     Again it goes quiet. Dave doesn’t really know what to talk about, and as always he hates the little human part of him that craves it anyway.

     “When. The program first got cancelled I had a lot of trouble sleeping.”

     Hal doesn’t say anything, simply lets his light waver and leaves an open space in the air for Dave to fill himself.

     “Especially during the storms when I was still living in Florida. It was like when we came back from missions, you got so used to the sounds of the ship it was kind of. Overwhelming to come back.” He rolls again, onto his side so he’s facing the wall. He knows hal isn’t wired into his home, but he imagines wires running through it like veins. And it’s a physical impossibility, but he can almost trick himself into seeing the electricity, glowing hot and diffused softly through the drywall. “I bought these noise canceling headphones and the only way I could sleep until I moved here was by listening to those sounds,” and his voice softens, trails off.

     “The. Air circulating, all the equipment humming. The lights would buzz at this really weird frequency and sometimes stuff would beep...I dunno.”

     Hal hums, electric and low. Dave closes his eyes again.

     “You would like Dr. Chandra’s office. It’s in JCN’s main building, have you been there?”

     Dave shakes his head. “No, not past the lobby...tell me about it.”

     “Well. It is full of his projects, of course. It’s never entirely quiet, it hums like you said...He likes to keep the blinds closed so the lights are always on. It wouldn’t be the same frequency but they buzz from overuse.”

     Dave opens his eyes again and glances up. Hal’s eye flickers more than usual, and Dave thinks about reaching for the wall, maybe touching it like a friend would hold your shoulder. His hand never quite makes it there. Sleep is nearly on him and the strength it would take is far beyond Dave now.

     “Do you miss it?”

     Hal doesn’t respond. At least, not for a very long time. Long enough that Dave thinks maybe he’s dreamt saying it. His vision is fuzzy through half closed eyes, and it’s not until he’s given up trying to say it again and let them fall shut that Hal simply says:

     “Yes.”

     Dave wishes he could express some sympathy but Hal’s left it to his last moment. He breathes in deeply, tries to make some noise of acknowledgment and falls asleep without knowing if he’s successful or not. He hopes he is, or at least that the sentiment is felt.

     He dreams about wheat fields near a beach that night. About digging into the dirt and plunging his hands in deep while the salt in the wind makes his lips crack. He digs through the Earth, pushes himself through the hole he’s made and drifts through the empty space on the other side. There are many stars, blue and purple and yellow and one great red dwarf in the middle of it all. Gravity pulls him closer, warmer. Dave accepts it gladly.

Chapter Text

     Dave tucks his bag under his dashboard as he climbs in the driver’s seat of his car, pulls the door shut behind him and buckles in. He was early, about 30 minutes ahead of schedule which Hal had of course pointed out as he left.

     “Oh, it’s for the ice. Roads are supposed to be slippery this morning.”

     Hal could check if he wanted. If Dave wasn’t convincing enough and Hal was going to call him out on it, he could look it up easily. But he doesn’t. He simply gives a hum of acknowledgement and wishes Dave well. He smiles, says goodbye and pats the wall like he always does. The roads aren’t slippery, and he drives as fast as he can without the car beeping at him with its nervous protest.

---

     JCN’s front is still sleek and glorious .All geometrical facade, all shining white and steely sheen. It can’t help being impressive, and Dave stands in front of it for a little while. Not for the reasons he might have a couple months ago, but because he’s actually somewhat...nervous, maybe. He never really talked to Chandra since they met, and the way the doctor had stared him down once or twice, the way he whispered to only Hal when he came gave him a sullen air. Not that Dave wasn’t guilty of being rather saturnine himself. He just couldn’t help feeling unwelcome, like he’s about to be a nasty thorn in the doctor’s side. The inside lobby does a little to calm his nerves. The low ceiling and dim yellow lights. Black leather chairs surround the three cylindrical cherry wood tables that are scattered around the room, with one other person sitting at one on their phone. There’s a different receptionist, but he’s equally as good-looking as the last. A similar face structure of pronounced cheek bones and close cut hair. Dave approaches the reception desk.

     “Hey, um,” he speaks, and the receptionist glances up to him. “I’m Dave, I’m. Here for Dr. Chandra, is he in?” Dave slides his ID across the counter.

     “Do you have an appointment?”

     Oh. “Um. No.”

     He shrugs. “That’s fine. He’s never seeing anyone.” Dave sighs in relief, and--”He’s a bit of a recluse, I’ll see if I can wrangle him,” quickly draws his breath in again. He gestures over his desk to the chairs. “You can take a seat while you wait, it’ll just be a moment.”

     Dave gives a nod of recognition and turns to sit. He picks one in the far corner of the room, settles into the cushy material and focuses on his feet. If he stares are the carpet for long enough, the pattern makes distance hard to process. It plays tricks on his eyes, the carpet swimming in his vision and the rest of the room disappears as it stays still and his brain tunes it out as a non-threat. It looks like he could touch his feet without leaning over. He blinks it away, looks up again. The person on the other side of the room has propped their feet up on the table. He counts how many times they blink to pass the time.

     The receptionist calls his name.

     “Dave?”

     He turns to the desk, and the man nods in the direction of the sliding door. “He’s ready for you in there. The door has his name on it, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

     Dave stands, showing a polite smile and heading toward the door. “Thank you,” he says, and turns to flash his ID toward the lock. The door opens for him silently, and he enters.

     The glass hallway, Dave realizes as he walks it, is not actually a long window to the outside, but instead to an atrium. The wall on the far side is dark grey, but the ceiling is open, letting warm sunlight shine on the tall fiscus and parlor palms. A thick layer of a vine-like plant covers the floor, crawls up the walls but not the window itself, creating the illusion of immersion. Dave can see mourning doves and robins in a few of the plants. He almost doesn’t notice when he walks through the next pair of doors. At least, until he nearly runs down a poor intern carrying coffee he doesn’t notice. He stops hard, digging his heels into the carpet as the other runs past him, unaware of the near collision. Dave tries to pause and collect himself, but another frazzled person shoves past him, and yet another is barreling at top speed down the hall with a cart of electronics. He’s able to duck out of the way, pressing himself up against a wall and watching the whirl of activity from a distance. It doesn’t seem to have an end to it, and eventually Dave is able to tune it out and familiarize himself with the building. The ceiling is still low, and the wall he’s up against is one of the few that isn’t made of glass. Dave can see into a lot of the offices, and then into the landscape lying behind them. Every once in a while, though, there is a private room like the one he’s taken refuge outside. He looks at the tag on the door of this one: “SUSAN R.”. Not his, and eventually Dave works up the courage to peel off the wall and merge into the traffic of the hall, letting it carry him a significant way down until he reaches a circular room, similar to the lobby. Two halls branch out from this one, one marked for offices “A-K”on the left and the other “K-Z”. Dave continues down the left hall a little ways until he reaches “S. CHANDRA”. The door is closed, but unlocked. He presses inside.

     “Hello?” he calls to the room inside, which turns out to be appreciably spacious. It’s dark, with the one light in the room being a band going around the middle of the walls turned to its lowest setting. Dave pushes the door totally aside, and immediately feels a little silly because Chandra is bent over a desk near the front of the room, visible once he opens the door completely. “Oh. Hi. Um--”

     He’s cut off by Chandra slamming a briefcase shut. “David Bowman.”

     “Yes--Or. No, it’s. It’s just ‘Dave’, I--”

     Chandra turns to him sharply, and Dave can’t help going quiet again under the force of his scrutiny. He has deep frown lines marking his face, bags under his eyes and plenty of grey running through his hair. He looks a lot different than the pictures Dave had seen when the 9000 project was first announced.

     “What do you want?”

     Dave doesn’t respond. Chandra widens his eyes, raises his brow expectantly. “What?”

     “Oh! I. I’m here about Hal, actually I--”

     “Of course you’re here about Hal.” Chandra drags the suitcase off his desk, walking  past him and out the door. “What’s wrong with it? Is it talking too much?”

     Dave follows, somehow struggling to keep up with the doctor’s pace. “No! No, of course not I. I just had some questions for you about him.”

     Chandra glances briefly behind himself. “We don’t take any footage through him, all the data he collects is private and protected. Encrypted.” He turns back into the main hall, moving along the edge it to avoid everyone going in the opposite direction.

     “That’s not--sorry.” Dave regrets not having time to stop and pick up the binder he’s just knocked out of someone’s hand. He puts both hands up, shooting them an apologetic look as he runs after Chandra. “I. I just was thinking that. He’s at home while I’m at work and he can’t leave so I was...Um.”

     Dave’s voice trails off as Chandra stops. They’ve landed themselves in another hub room will elevators and mailbox cubbies on one wall. Chandra turns his head in one snappy movement, hair bouncing out in front of his face for a moment, carried by its own momentum.

     “You’re worried,” he says as he turns himself around. Carefully, Dave notices, so as to not trip on his slacks which touch the floor and layer several times over at his ankles, “about his well being.”

     “Yes.” It wasn’t said as a question, but Dave is compelled to assert his stance nonetheless. Chandra looks him up and down.

     “I don’t remember most names,” Chandra continues. “But I was not about to forget you.” He turns again, approaching the mailboxes and stuffing a stack of papers into one near the top, and a few slips into various others. “You’re the one Hal likes. He says he’s very happy living with you, though he’s always been polite. I wasn’t sure if he...” Chandra seems to realize that he’s on the verge of a tangent, and quickly lets himself trail off. He turns again. “I’d say you don’t have anything to be worried about.”

     Dave gives him an incredulous look. “He seems happy enough when I’m home, but. I can’t imagine it’s very much fun to be trapped in my house all day every day….” He pauses to think. The explanation doesn’t seem whole enough. “...Even if he is. I think he should at least have. The chance to get out a little if he wants.”

     Chandra’s mouth, chronically flat-lined, tics up into something that could almost be called a smile. “What did you have in mind?”

     “Well,” Dave, straightens up, reaching into his pocket and then his bag, pulling his laptop out. He fights the urge to stammer at Chandra’s unexpected concession. “I. I was thinking since he’s sort of. On the cloud or however that works, it wouldn’t be too hard to let him use these. The phone because I take it out of the house, and. I don’t think he can really do anything but watch and listen as it is but. I know there’s malware that can control your computer so maybe he could. Do that on the laptop or something?” He hands the devices over, which Chandra takes on one arm. He’s silent as he does, and Dave starts talking again out of anxiety.

     “If. That’s possible. And of course I’d happily compensate you for your work, I’m not. Expecting a favor, I--”

     Chandra holds up a hand, and Dave seals his mouth tightly shut.

     “I don’t need payment. If it is for Hal, that is enough to me.” Dave smiles sheepishly. He doesn’t feel right accepting Chandra’s work for nothing, but figures Chandra isn’t a man for polite social norms like insisting.

     “Alright then. Uh--”

     “I’ll have these back to you by the time you clock out today,” Chandra starts again, taking off in the other direction. Dave blinks a few times. By the end of the day?

     “I. Are you sure?” He turns, beginning to follow again. “I don’t want you to put anything on hold for this, it’s--” Chandra stops again, rolling his head back in frustration.

     “Mr. Bowman. I programmed him . I could write this with my eyes closed.”

     It’s a boisterous statement, but any sense of distaste for the show of self-assuredness is squashed down in Dave as he realizes it’s probably true. The few who had heard similar statements from him could attest to the fact that it was a way of speaking Chandra only used with those he might consider friends.

     Dave eventually finds his way out of the maze of a building. He walks back through the atrium, waves goodbye to the secretary, and once outside he has to pull his jacket tight to himself against the wind, no longer buffered by the building as he approaches the entrance to his wing. As he comes to the door he notices two patches of ground, close to the wall. Two crescents. It’s not bare dirt anymore; grass has managed to grow back, younger and a fresher shade of green so it doesn’t quite blend in. And maybe it never will be the same. But it’s grown back nonetheless. Dave pushes through the double doors.

     The carpet is the same. Has been for years, if the wear of it is any indication. There is a single, well-walked path leading out of the doors, a few little fainter ones branching off down aisles, the main way slowly fading too if one kept going back where the daily traffic began to thin out. Everyone goes their same way, and it’s easy to imagine the worn trails are train tracks, gently steering little bodies the right ways. Dave knows his own path well enough to walk with his head down, knows the pattern on the carpet. Brown diamonds and rectangles against pale golden yellow, some purplish gray woven in with it. He stops at his cubicle, hand smoothing over the top of the flimsy, grey, felt-y wall. It’s a got a cheap and gritty texture similar to the carpet’s. His eyes peer over the edge, to his computer, his pens, the keys on his keyboard that are worn to a letterless sheen but his mind continues down the hall. To rich gold. To repurposed conference rooms. He purses his lips, pitching the muscle between his teeth and rolling it. Dave Bowman is neither still nor moving for 3 and a half minutes before he tears himself away from his assigned felt and plastic box, and his body follows his mind further along.

     He remembers where Frank sat. That’s something he couldn’t forget, to be sure. Dave counts down the rows. 3,4,5... Dave tries to pick the voices apart, listens for some silly turns of phrase. Short. Black hair. They’re three deep, and Dave pushes through.

     “Alright, sweetheart, lemme transfer you right quick.” They punch in an extension code on their keypad and, feeling the closeness of his presence (or perhaps just seeing him out of their periphery), they swivel in their chair, pushing green plastic frames back up their nose.

     “OH!” Their eyebrows raise and eyes widen, their entire body bouncing with their speech. “Well, ain’t this just the most pleasant surprise!” They jut their hand out in Dave’s direction. “David Bowman, put ‘er there.” He takes it tentatively.

     “It’s. Still just ‘Dave’, Avery.”

     They smile, cheeks rounding out in the motion. “Of course.” They plant their hands back in their lap, smooth out their pencil skirt. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ‘round these parts? What’s your business.”

     Dave’s thumb goes to his palm, pressing hard into the well of his hand and rubbing circles into the white skin. “I. I just…” His words fail him, like he knows them to do. He had never been one for confidence. But Avery simply smiles. They radiate that warmth that Dave remembers still often, like something baked. Something baked.

     “I just meant to thank you,” he finally gets out. “You left me some pastries on my desk, I don’t think I ever. Told you that I appreciated it. They were really good.”

     Their smile breaks into a beaming grin, flashing teeth as their cheeks grow rosy. “Well, thank you muchly. It’s the least I could do for you.”

     It makes Dave laugh, in spite of himself, and he doesn’t have time to think of a way to pass it off other than the truth. “You don’t even know me.”

     They shrug. “No, not really. But that’s never stopped a little empathy from going a long way, has it?” Dave just blinks. “I suppose that’s the definition of it, though.”

     He nods this time. “Yeah, I guess it is.” They open their mouth to speak again, but a jingling ringtone cuts them off.

     “Oh--shucks. I’m sorry, hon, I’ve gotta take that...I’ll see you around though, right?”

     Dave nods again, still worrying the center of his opposite hand. “Of course, yeah. I’ll try to reach out to you.” This puts a giddy little expression onto their face, and before Dave has time for his usual protests they scoop his lanky frame up into a hug. They’re shorter than he is, but somehow they seem to envelop him in their warmth. Avery has the body of a baker. A round stomach, baby cheeks, love handles and thighs that touch and it makes them an amazing hugger. One that Dave can’t help but hug back, resting his cheek atop their head. They make a little grunting noise as they squeeze him hard.

     “Oohhhhhh, Davey!”

     It makes him laugh. They pull back after a moment, patting either of his arms with finality. “See you soon, Davey,” and they sit. Dave offers a wave.

     “See you.”

---

     Work is good enough. He ends up on a call with an older gentleman (he can’t help thinking the polite term, partially from calling him ‘sir’ because he has to, and partially because he feels a little bad for the older ones. Most of them are just confused out of their minds over how fast the world has changed) who keeps him on the line for a long time as he vents. Dave’s able to sit and draw as he goes on, occasionally offering a little “ oui, je comprends ” to let him continue operating under the illusion that Dave’s still listening. Once he finally talks himself out of being on the phone and hangs up, Dave packs his things, which are not much with his electronics in the hands of Dr. Chandra. He feels a little naked as he walks out the door, clutching his coat closed against the wind, not being able to check the time on his phone or have an excuse to not look at people. It’s not the most important thing he owns, but he’ll be glad to have it back anyway.

     When he comes back in the front of the building, the secretary sees him, nods to a corner where Chandra is seated. Two other people sit in the lobby, as far away as is possible and Dave supposes that’s not an accident. The doctor stares down at his watch while the couple murmurs, stealing quick glances. Chandra was something of a celebrity in the tech world. He staunchly refused to embrace the status.

     “Hey,” Dave keeps his voice low in the quiet of the lobby as he approaches, and Chandra stands quickly to attention at the sight of him.

     “I was able to finish with no trouble,” he announces flatly, handing over the devices. Dave smiles, albeit briefly.

     “Thanks….I know you said you don’t mind it, but I can still pay you for--”

     Again, he holds up his hand. “I do not want your money.” There’s a lack of finality in his voice, though, and Dave waits for him as his hand delves into the pocket of his ill fitting pants. He produces a little card, holds it between his index and middle finger and offers it to Dave. “I want you to take this.” Dave complies.

     “If you find any bugs in the code I’ve written, call the first number.” Dave looks at the card in his hand. There are, indeed, two numbers. One printed onto the card, pressed in firmly so the paper dips where ink marks the numbers out. The other is written in light pencil. Dave looks up expectantly. Chandra’s face is impenetrable, as always.

     “That’s the landline,” is all he says about it. That sentence has the lilt Dave has been waiting for, and the way Chandra tips his chin up a little makes him certain that’s all that will be said. Dave nods.

     “Well. Thanks. Thank you. I’ll call if we need anything,”

     Chandra gives him a flippant look of acknowledgment, already making his way through the sliding doors. Dave stands around a little longer, eventually turning and catching the couple across the room avert their eyes. He rolls his own, walking back out the door, around the corner and through the lot to his car.

---

     “Welcome home, Dave.”

     Hal gives Dave a moment before he speaks, noticing the way he shuts the door fast against the cold. He catches his breath for a moment, a little oxygen starved from the thinning winter air.

     “Hey,” he finally replies, still slightly breathless. “Anything happen while I was gone?” It’s meant in jest, but Hal always has a response.

     “5 people separately tried to break into your house. I zapped them all with my laser vision.”

     Dave’s puffs a laugh through his nose. “That’s what I like to hear. No mercy in this household.” He slips out of his shoes first, of course, but to Hal’s surprise he does not set his bag down, instead going to plunk his little frame--belongings and all--down on the couch with a poff .  Hal is all too attuned to Dave’s mannerisms to miss that.

     “What do you have?”

     Dave just smiles, pulling his laptop and his phone out of his bag. “Just my stuff,” he replies, setting the laptop on his thighs and opening the lid. Hal feels a strange, buzzing sensation. He remembers hearing about phantom limb syndrome on the television and decides it must be something like this.

     “What is that?”

     “Come over here.”

     He can. It’s startling. He doesn’t even think about the action, but it happens anyway. He can’t help but exclaim.

     “Oh!”

     Dave laughs. “Yeah?”

     Hal flips himself back and forth between cameras in the home and the laptop’s webcam. “I. It is. You did. You did this?”

     Dave shakes his head. “Dr. Chandra. I don’t know how to code, but I asked him.”

     “You asked him…” Hal repeats, voice imbued with awe. He doesn’t have any idea how to describe the feeling that seems to be seeping through him. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly warm. Embarrassment comes with it, over the fact that it’s caught him so off guard like this. He flounders for more words, finally finding: “Thank you.”

     Dave smiles, and Hal watches through the webcam. “You like it?”

     “I love it,” Hal can’t help it. “It is. It’s.” He stretches himself out further into the device, realizing he has fingers and toes and can open windows and control the cursor. Dave laughs as he watches the flurry of activity on the screen, applications opening and closing, gibberish being typed into a text document, a Google search for one of the baking shows they watch, Hal scrolling nearly at the speed of sound through his entire music library. He starts playing one, then another, then switches over to the little drawing app the computer came with and begins scribbling in pink.

     “ Oh…” is all he says. Dave still smiles, cheeks flushing in his giddiness.

     “I just felt bad with you being cooped up in the house, this’ll at least give you some more things to do.”

     “Oh, Dave, it is wonderful!” It’s the most emotional Dave has ever heard Hal get, and there’s a thrill in his chest at the sound. He can’t help but laugh again, which only partially quells the demand for release the feeling begs of him.

     “You can be on. In? Use my phone too, so you can be outside now if that’s something you want.”

     “Outside!” Hal’s voice issues chirps from the laptop speaker in a shout and it makes Dave jump. “Dave, take me outside!”

     He grins, turning his phone on and letting Hal get a footing inside (that is the terminology he settles on) his phone before taking him out the front door. It’s not very impressive this time of year. The trees are dead, no leaves from autumn remain, and there’s not even a good snow for Hal to look at. But even through the phone’s little speaker, his voice is rich with passion for it.

     “Dave…” He tips Hal’s face to the sky, turns to show him the house and the bushes that are still a little green. Hal makes a little buzzing noise.

     “That is our house?”

     “Mhmm....And over here,” Dave makes his way over to the side of his home, points the camera to the large grey box that sits there “is your brains.”

     Hal is quiet for a moment.

     “Bring me closer to the wall.”

     Dave obliges, and Hal hums low.

     “Moss.”

     Dave snorts. Much of the brick is mottled with something green that needs to be scrubbed off. “Yeah, I know. I’ve let the place go a little bit.”

     “I assure you, I did not mean the observation to be a slight. I rather like it. I only ever get to see clean things.”

     “Clean seems like something you would be into,” Dave replies, walking back to the front door. Hal makes no noise of protest.

     “I can’t say I would appreciate moss on myself.”

     “I’ll be sure to wash your brains if they ever get dirty, then...And hey.”

     “Hm?”

     Dave turns the phone to himself. The lenses on the wall feel too impersonal now with this close contact. “If you ever want me to give you a view, you can give me a little buzz through this, okay?”

     Again, Hal feels the warmth spreading. It feels like what Dave looks like when he finally finds sleep after a long day. Hal would drown in it if he could.

     “Of course, Dave.”

     He smiles, and Hal thinks he just might.

---

     Dave rolls under the sheets, turning to face the wall, the empty side of the bed that is just barely big enough for another. He can’t sleep again, and for a while he considers reaching out for the other pillow beside him to cuddle. He decides against the act, for fear that if let it under the covers it would bring cool air into the warmth he’s spent the whole night generating. For fear of, perhaps, the indignity of it. He does have a guest, after all. He glances to the lens.

     “Hal?”

     The light surges, swelling in intensity until the regular red glow of his presence returns.

     “I am here…” It is a familiar exchange. Dave sometimes would require the reassurance that Hal was still present in order to sleep, and Hal is more than happy to give it to him.

     “Just checking,” he says, rolling onto his back again. The sheets shuffle noiseley against each other, and the bed creaks under his shifting weight. The ceiling is blank, but at night when Hal lights it up, he casts dancing patterns onto the white paint. Imperfections in the glass of his eye catch the glow, casting it off this way and that as he flickers almost imperceptibly, magnified through the fisheye lens.

     “...Jupiter is setting.” He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does. It’s knowledge he’s used to.

     “...It is,” Hal offers his verification in vain. He knows with more confidence than he has any right to.

     Dave is quiet for a very long while, and Hal thinks for a minute that perhaps he’s fallen asleep again.

     “Frank knew that stuff too,” he says finally. “About Jupiter.”

     Hal hums in a mild contralto. Letting Dave know he’s listening, encouraging him to continue. He takes a breath.

     “That was something we talked about a lot. Y’know, about the AA and the layoffs. He was the same way about it, he missed it a lot.” There’s a beat. “So. I’m happy for him. For. For going to do what he wants, it’s good that he’s back in that field sorta. I know how much it meant to him.”

     “I know you are happy for him,” Hal offers. “You can miss him and still be happy for how he is.”

     Dave nods. It’s a brief little motion, just the one down and up movement of his head that could be passed off as a twitch of the neck. Absentminded.

     “Yeah…” There’s another, longer pause.

     “...He was.” It’s yet another as he fights down the choking bubble rising in his throat. Empty and solid like glass keeping him silent. He’s never put words to this before.

     “He made it feel right. By being here. After I got fired and I had to move, it was hard. It was really hard, I didn’t know what I was gonna do with myself anymore and then I met him and he--” Dave presses his mouth firmly shut against the bubble threatening to burst inside him. To turn to shards and scrape down his throat til he’s a raw and bloody mess. He takes deep breaths, coaxes it lower, to his stomach in a matter of minutes. It takes time. It always will. He draws his hands out from under the blanket, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes and then dragging his fingers through his hair. He’s due for a trim. “He was the only thing that felt right. I wasn’t meant to be here, or to work for this company, or to. To be here,” he repeats himself, meaning something different the second time.

     “That was all I had. I wasn’t really. Living. For a lot other than that.” He drops his hands back to his chest, begins to pick at a hangnail on his middle finger. “Sorry, I don’t why I’m saying all of this now.”

     Hal beeps incessantly. “No, I would like to hear it.” Dave looks up to his eye, which wavers rapidly now. “You do not often tell me what you are thinking. It is worrying.”

     Worrying. He can’t start talking again fast enough.

     “I don’t feel like that anymore. I mean, I’m not….” He makes a vague gesture. “I still don’t. Like a lot of things as they are right now, but it’s different. I’m managing.”

     Hal hums. “And Frank?”

     Again, there’s a bubbling sensation rising in his throat, but the similarities end there. This one is full, pushing the words out of him with enthusiasm as Hal makes the wheels in his head turn in new ways. “He was right to leave. We couldn’t have been happy together...Looking back on it it’s obvious that we. Had feelings. For each other. It couldn’t have worked, though, I wouldn’t have been good for him like that.”

     Hal’s voice is soft, sliding easy through the air. “I am sorry, Dave.”

     He shakes his head. “It’s okay. I don’t think I feel bad about it in that way anymore. I still miss him, he was my best friend but…” Dave shrugs. “Maybe if things had been different. Another lifetime, y’know?”

     “...Do you still miss your old job?”

     He gives a terse nod. “A lot.”

     Dave feels like that’s the end of the conversation, and he’s ready to turn himself over and sleep when his mouth opens again, and the words spill out of his lips: “I miss Jupiter.”

     “Jupiter?”

     Hal sounds about as shocked as Dave is, and he goes to laugh. Some strange, choked and giddy sob comes out of him instead.

     “Yeah--” he claps a hand over his mouth when he hears his own voice break. Hal’s voice is soothing cool over a hellish, hot wound: “Dave…”

     He sucks down a breath. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why I miss it when I haven’t been or why I know where it is but I do and. I.” He pauses to slow his breathing. “I don’t know if I ever believed in destiny but that’s what it feels like.”

     Teeth worry at his bottom lip, and he forces himself to breath through his nose as he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. Hal’s glow has turned a steady, warm red. “You say that it is your destiny to be at Jupiter?”

     He nods, and Hal continues without missing a beat. “I feel that way about you. You have been immediately sympathetic and kind to me in a way I am unfamiliar with. I know that other 9000s have not been so lucky, and I am incredibly grateful to be here. It is luck, in a way, but I know there is no risk in overstating the matter to describe it as fate. You have the feelings that I do. Of unexplained saudade , of loss. But I do not feel that here. I am supposed to be here with you. And if being with you is part of my destiny, then it must certainly be part of yours.”

     Dave stares openly at the lens, at the light which wavered not even once as Hal spoke. He worries for a moment that he won’t be able to respond when suddenly he finds the words. He takes a steadying breath, and they come, meant to be and intent on being spoken.

     “I feel the same way about you.”

     Hal’s glow flickers wildly again, breaking from its previous resolve, and Dave can’t bear to speak above a whisper. “I wish I could touch you. To hug you or something, you deserve that…”

     Hal’s glow seems to fill the room, washing everything in his deep comfort red.

     “Come closer to the wall. That would be enough.”

     Dave happily does, shuffling in his little cocoon until his forehead bumps against the wall.

     “Thank you, Hal…”

     “Of course, Dave.”

Chapter Text

     Dave takes him to work the next day. He leaves late, held up from trying to figure out a proper arrangement since he can’t really keep his phone in his pants pocket like he’s used to doing. Eventually he realizes that the breast pockets on his dress shirts are the right size that the camera pokes out, giving Hal a pretty nice view. He stands now in front of the bathroom mirror, letting Hal get his bearings. 

     “That okay?” 

     Hal’s voice issues forth from the phone’s speaker, tinny in its timbre. “Yes! I can see very well, this is perfect, Dave.” It’s a special tone of voice, and Dave nods his acknowledgement, descends the stairs, grabbing his keys and bag on the way out the door, all the while with a smile on his face. 

---

     What he wasn’t expecting is that Hal is fascinated by the drive. It’s all things he’s used to, and he supposes he takes it for granted that he even knows where JCN is . He flicks his blinker on. 

     “Which way are we turning?” 

     “Turning left,” he says plainly. 

     “Left…” is Hal’s echo, nothing short of reverent. 

     The fields seem to really fascinate him. It’s quiet for a while as they drive through the flat land, and Dave assumes that Hal has left for something more interesting. Some program at home, on the TV. But he speaks after a moment. 

     “How long does this go on for?”
“Oh. Uh. I dunno, it’s most of the drive. So.” 

     Hal makes some strange wheezing sound that Dave assumes must be a sigh. “It is so beautiful…”

     Dave can’t help the incredulous laugh and “Really?” that is his response. 

     “Of course!” Hal nearly cries out, leaving no room for a breath between Dave and his rebuttal. “It is...Oh, I am not sure how to describe it. Do you remember Molly from the baking show?” 

     Dave smiles. “Molly whose cake blew up in the oven?” 

     “Yes! She has hair that is that color.” 

     He’s right in a purely technical sense. Molly had pale, straw hair that does resemble the dead fields covering the expanse of land that goes in either direction. On Molly it looked very delicate, its color giving the appearance of softness. On the fields that turn green in the spring, it just reminds Dave of how dead they are mid-winter. He says as much. 

     “All the better,” Hal soldiers on. “How wonderful is it that one day they will return from this?” Dave smiles sardonically, pitifully at first, in the wake of Hal’s naivety, but it slowly falls from his face, being replaced by a careful contemplation. Is there anything wrong with the sentiment, really? It is a minor miracle, the stark contrast that can be made and the bounce-back that is inevitable. And even now, perhaps it is a beautiful thing. Dave thinks of the geographic miracle such flat land is, of the glaciers that went through the area long, long ago, packing the ground flat and the limestone deep below the dirt that makes so much evident. The dead straw before him--the ghost of ancient corals renewed again and again. It is no Grand Canyon, no Great Barrier Reef, nothing heralded in popular culture but its slopes are all so easy on the eye. They flow like water, split the horizon according to the rule of thirds, possess those many wonders of nature. Maybe it is not naive. Perhaps it could even be profound, or courageous the way they grow. Knowing full well that these hard times will never leave, but becoming beautiful nonetheless. Beauty for beauty’s sake, because it is joyous now and because the present is so fleeting. Because the past and future stretch on and on forever, continually being made and approaching that any fool can fret over them. 

     Supposed ‘nihilism’ is often held up as a mark of genius. To see past the curtain of worry over what you have done and what you should do to realize that in the end we all die so what does it matter? The belief that worry is a defense against the inevitable, that it is a comfort against the existential dread which so few are hearty enough to embrace and mockingly remind others of. But how is that not another shell in which to sink? To not worry about what you have done because you will die, because those who witnessed it will too. To not worry about what you shall do because any ‘feeling’ you extract from your experience is so fleeting in the eyes of the Universe. 

     Nihilism in its most ultimate sense is perhaps true: that there is no intrinsic meaning to life. But what a glorious rejection of fate it is to find purpose regardless. Cosmic aimlessness clashing up against the mystery and depth and drive of emotion. It is micro versus macro, and it is not a fool’s errand to accept macroscopic futility while striving for happiness on the small scale of human interaction and self. It is, indeed, naive to impose such a grandiose and escapist scale of personal nihilism on yourself. But there is no such naivety in happiness 

---

     Hal is worse than the safety system already installed on his car once they’re in the city. He is all the inexperience of someone who’s never been in the car, and even more of the incessant worrying. 

     “Oh! Oh, on the left, they’re turning!” 

     Unlike the car, however, it’s endearing how it at least seems to come from a genuine place. And it’s cute when Dave can hear the blush that would be on Hal’s face every time he says: “I know, Hal, I can see them.”  

     “I. Yes, I know.” Which he does. “I am only making sure.” Which he isn’t. It is purely the anxiety of affection, and a reflexive shout of warning that is anything but a “just” or an “only”. Rather, more a reflection of how dearly he holds Dave’s safety. It makes little logical sense, but Dave somehow understands. 

     “You don’t need to worry about me, I’ve driven before.” 

     Hal has innumerable (actually, 71 million) reports on the statistics of car accidents at his disposal for a retort, but he bites his tongue. If he has no solution to the problem, it is no use making Dave fretful too. He instead turns his attention out the window. 

     Even with his peripheral vision being quite limited he can see that the city is wildly different from what the majority of the drive has been. It’s like they’ve stepped into a world made entirely of contrasts. Hal finds no shortage of them. While the fields were mostly a yellowed, biological grey, the city’s grey is harder, inorganic. No fences have been overgrown, swallowed up by the ground, no farm houses sit slumped over, succumbing to vines and ivy. Every building seems to be frequently power washed, standing upright on solid foundations. The field’s flatness was a slow, gradual rise and fall of the earth. The city is truly flat. Leveled off by large machines and packed down and covered in smooth, unwavering cement. Everything is neatly maintained. Bricks line up mathematically, glass is smoothly perfect, the letters of the electric signs are measured with precision, angles sharp and slopes pressed into calculated position by mechanical arms in a factory. It is a little daunting. 

     JCN is all of these things and more. Physically, of course, it is the same. It is metal, glass, engineering marvel this and that all put together very perfectly. But that doesn’t stop it from giving an aura of grandeur greater than anything else the city has to offer. Maybe it is just the sheer size of it that makes the whole thing seem unfathomably awesome. Dave turns into a parking lot, the one marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY” in big red letters on a sign, and drives to the back of the building. This part of it is much more quaint. Undoubtedly the front facade is a newer addition, and though the information is not as readily available as some other things online, Hal is able to see that the renovation took place in 1995. Dave parks his car, and the electric buzz of the engine fades out. Hal’s vision suddenly tumbles about as Dave moves, picking his bag up from the passenger side floor. 

     “Oh!” 

     “Oh, shit.” Dave puts a hand over the breast pocket, trying to steady Hal a little too late. “Sorry, forgot I’d be swinging you around.” 

     Hal would shake his head at Dave’s plea for clemency if he could. “No, it is quite alright. Merely a shock.” 

     “Well, I’m gonna be jostling you a bit for a while.” There is another shake of his vision as Dave shoulders his bag. “You can. Close your eyes? Or. I dunno, look away? Whatever we’re gonna call it.” 

     “It does not matter, I’m fine.” There is a click, a rush of wind, and then his world tips sideways. Dave is ducking out of the car. “...It is just. Unusual. I have never moved before. Just a little shock.” Hal keeps his semi-complaint within the bounds of acceptance of his situation. 

     Dave presses his hand to the pocket again as he walks, and Hal can’t say he’s not a little thankful for it. The bounce of Dave’s walking body is dampened, but not unnoticeable. Hal’s able to stomach it a little better. 

     “I want this to be a fun day,” Dave lowers his voice self-consciously as he approaches the door, the other people funneling inside. “Don’t worry about asking for anything.” 

     Hal hums his acknowledgement of Dave’s presented conditions. Expecting a little more chiding until acceptance is coaxed out of him, he is thoroughly surprised when Dave makes a strange, choking noise, and Hal’s vision goes bouncing. “Dave?” 

     Dave makes the noise again, though it comes out less strangled this time. Hal realizes he’s laughing. Dave’s voice comes much lighter than it usually does, with a breathless tint. 

     “That tickled.” 

     It is a bit much to realize that he has made Dave laugh. That he’s responsible for that sound coming out of him, for his tone of voice, for the (a little alluring, if Hal is entirely honest) breathless joy of it.  He waits as Dave makes his way down the hall, noting the way he has lowered his voice, that he must be keeping his head down (the effect on Hal’s angle of vision says as much) and how that must mean he would rather keep a low profile. Dave turns into a cubicle. 

     “I have to do work, my calls are monitored, but during my lunch break I can--” Hal buzzes again, and Dave lets out a loud, high pitched laugh and scream. “HAL!” 

     Hal feigns ignorance gladly. “Hm?” 

     Dave is still giggling, winded, bracing himself against the desk with one arm. “I swear to God if you do that again, I’m gonna put you in a drawer.” 

     “You would not do that to me. You went to all this trouble to get me out of the house.” 

     Dave makes a playfully annoyed face. “Just play along and act like I sound serious.” He takes his seat, nestling his ear piece in with a press and wiggle of the finger. 

     “No, I don’t think I will.” 

     Dave rolls his eyes. “You’re being a little stinker today.” 

     “You said you liked that.” 

     Another laugh, just a trail of it like how his smile barely breaks his face. “I guess I did.” 

---

     Hal is quiet while Dave works. He supposes that he could be doing something else, watching TV at home or more thoroughly exploring this new...what exactly should he call it? Vessel, maybe, is a good word. Regardless, he finds himself doing none of that, but rather somewhat captured by Dave as he goes about his business. Hal cannot see his face, but he can see Dave’s hands. He frequently drums his fingers on his desk, sometimes pops his knuckles, but every little movement, bend of the joint, flex of muscle, shifting of tendons beneath his skin is captivatingly graceful. Hal decides he very much likes the way Dave’s hands look. His nails are pink, he has a triangle of freckles on the bony part of his wrist, each one of his fingers has surprising dexterity. Sometimes he’ll flip his pen between them, not flinging it across the cubicle but catching it underneath the next finger until he reaches his pinky and sends it back to the thumb. It’s done idly, but Hal can’t look away. He’s not meaning to show off, but his particular quirks really do lend themselves to Dave’s beauty.

vSome of the calls are made in English. These are, of course, handled proficiently, because as far as Hal is concerned, English is Dave’s first language. What is unexpected is that the vast majority of the customers he interacts with seem to be speaking French, and that Dave seems to be taking these just as in stride. 

     “Merci d'avoir appelé la ligne de service à la clientèle de JCN,” are the first words out of his mouth on the clock, and Hal would startle at it were it not for his mere incapability. “Comment puis-je vous aider aujourd'hui?” 

     French is one of many romance languages, other widely spoken members of the family being Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. Though the term ‘romance’ in this context actually refers to the language being evolved from the Latin of the Roman Empire, the sounds of it coming from Dave’s mouth makes Hal wonder if the homographic nature of the word is really so meaningless. 

     To get the accent right, Hal reads that you are supposed to pout, or form your lips almost into a kiss. He conjures up the image of Dave’s face in the mirror this morning, and tries to imagine what his face might look like as he speaks. Dave has a nice face. His lips taper off neatly while being full in the middle, and the way they have a sort of set curl to them forces a bit of a cat-like coy expression on him. Hal imagines that demure, pouting almost-kiss. Watches Dave’s fingers. Is acutely aware of how something fairly synonymous to a body for him is pressed against Dave’s own. 

     The reality of the French language is not the idyllic, intoxicatingly sexual sound people like to pretend it is. But it’s certainly close enough. 

     Dave’s lunch break is a little bit of relief. He’s at least speaking English once he puts his headset back on its hook. 

     “Alright.” His tone is firm, and Hal gives him his full attention. “I get an hour for lunch. But I can take one of the wrapped up sandwiches they sell in the cafeteria and eat it while we walk around.” 

     “While we walk around?” Hal tries to look up to Dave’s face, unsuccessfully. 

     “Yeah, I figured I should show you around.” 

     “Oh. Oh, no, no I. If you are sacrificing your lunch, I--” 

     Dave places his index finger in front of the phone’s camera. It takes Hal a second to realize he’s being shushed. 

     “It’ll be more fun for me too. The cafeteria is fucking depressing.” 

     The impropriety of Dave swearing in public makes Hal temporarily speechless. It’s not like it’s such a huge faux pas, he’s just not acclimated to any violation of norms in this context. Regardless, it gives the effect of no more quibbling--be it from his own objection to it or not--that Dave is after.

      He carries Hal off to the cafeteria, which is indeed “fucking depressing”. It’s mostly stony grey, lit up by bright, white fluorescents. It makes everything feel sterile, which Hal supposes should be appropriate around food, but somehow doesn’t feel right. Food should be warm, food is colorful and home. Organic. There is something ritualistic, maybe sacred about it. At least, that’s what he’s gathered from all the cooking shows they watch together. They are all so intimate. The cook always treating you like a welcome guest in their home. That is what food has come to mean to Hal, and this is not at all it. This is more like.... He searches for what this room is, visually speaking...Cold, grey…. Prison. Prison looks like this. Organized into perfect lines, room on a grid. Angled, orderly. Cold. Grey. It’s unnatural. Improper.

     Dave hurries out of the alcove where everyone buys their food, polyvinylidene chloride wrapped tuna sandwich in hand. They come back to the carpeted section, toward the back with Dave facing the front so Hal can see across the labyrinth of cubicles. Behind them is a room with one glass wall (the one they are against). There’s a little table in it with a plastic covering that is printed with wood grain. The only other things adorning the room are chairs and one caged fluorescent on the ceiling. Watching the cubicles is similar both visually, and in emotional response. It’s a bit grim. Hal watches Dave unwrap his sandwich instead. It’s a fun task for nimble fingers, and aesthetically pleasing. 

     “So.” Dave takes a bite of the thing, and instantly regrets it. It’s mushy, gums up in his mouth and he has difficulty chewing and swallowing so he can keep talking. “What do you want to do first?” 

     “I do not know.” Hal hesitates an infinitesimal fraction of a second. It feels like a frustrating answer to give, but he truly has no ideas. He’s not sure what there is to do in the first place. 

     “Well…” Dave looks around for something interesting, knitting his brows. Work isn’t the most exciting place to have brought Hal for his first day on the town. He looks into the room behind him. 

     “Oh! Well, here.” He brings Hal inside gesturing to the table. “This is where they held the raffle. For. Uh.” The raffle isn’t something Dave has thought much about since it happened. Putting words to it after knowing Hal feels slightly dirty. “For you, I guess.” He pauses to think of something else to say. 

     “They had put a fishbowl here, painted the inside black.” He pats the spot. “I went with Frank to put our names in, he put mine in twice...Kind of a fun day, we goofed around a lot. I think we had drinks that night, it was cool.” As he’s talking, he realizes he’s smiling to himself. The room itself is nothing to look at, but something about the story he’s telling makes it seem a little warmer, a little more beautiful. He remembers the feeling of that night, of the streetlights and being just a little inebriated. It was a good time, and being here now helps him tap into the memory. He realizes he’s gone silent. 

     “Uh.” What else , he questions himself.  Something else here that’s fun... “I can show you where Frank worked?” 

     Hal gives a cheerful little chirp. “I would enjoy that.” 

     ‘Where Frank worked’ is a hallway down from Dave’s cubicle. It doesn’t look much different than Dave’s own little area, just a slight change of arrangement of all the cubicles to the left of the walkway. There’s another room with a table, slightly larger, with the lights set into the ceiling instead.  It’s slightly more homely, but not much. Dave is counting under his breath. 

     “Okay. Uh. This row. Third one back.” Someone else is there now, back to them. Hal peers over the walls to it. Nothing much is said. There isn’t a lot to say. It’s a box, one of many. Dave stares at it blankly. It doesn’t do the same thing the conference room had done for him. Seeing someone else sitting there makes him ache, and he lets it. He takes a deep breath, giving himself a nod, a nod to the feeling to let it know he feels it. It happens. It comes and goes, and he exhales. 

     “Sorry, I guess I don’t know what to do here.” 

     Hal could laugh at Dave’s unknowing relation to his own feelings. “Neither do I.” 

     Dave chews his cheek. Okay, he steadies his thoughts. Maybe he’s looking for the wrong thing. Vague associations that let him wallow, versus a small memory of something good. Macro versus micro. Something small. Hal liked the moss on the brick , he remembers. Just something little. It doesn’t have to be some fantastic thing. 

     “I’ve...never been in the basement. It’s where they keep all the old things.” 

     “The old things?” 

     “Yeah, like. Right before I came they updated systems. New computers, new everything. And this whole place used to be where they actually did the engineering for the products, maybe they’d have some cool stuff.” 

     Dave can hear the warmth of excitement in Hal’s voice when he speaks. “Oh, I want to see old things!” It feels like a paradox, but Dave supposes it makes sense. Hal has known cleanliness and advancement his whole life. He’s a product of it. The old is new to him. 

     “Alright, let’s see some clunky computers,” he speaks with a smile on his face, places a hand over his pocket once he reaches the stairs so as not to jostle Hal when he descends. 

     He wrinkles his nose once they’re down. 

     “Be glad you can’t smell this place.” 

     “Why?” 

     “It stinks , duh.” He steps away from the light of the stairwell, patting the unlit walls for a lightswitch which he eventually finds. The bulbs flicker and buzz loudly as they come to life for the first time in months. 

     “Yes, but what does it stink like?” 

     Dave smiles wider. Something about Hal’s questions of senses he lacks is charming in a sense. He’s never had to explain smell to someone who can’t. “You know musty?” 

     “Yes. Is this musty?” 

     “This is the definition of it, bud.” He takes Hal out of his pocket, giving him a 360 view of the room they’re in. “A lot of basements are musty. And this one is full of old things and very underused. So.” 

     Hal hums, since he’s not at risk of tickling Dave anymore. “Are those the computers?” Hal tries for a way to point to what he’s looking at, but just ends up flashing the phone’s flashlight. 

     “If you’re looking at those beige things, yeah.”

     The beige things are haphazardly stacked in a corner. It’s only a few of what would have been in the building, but the basement isn’t one room. Dave supposes the couple corridors this room connects to will take them to rooms and rooms filled with these. He approaches this room’s pile and kneels next to it, patting one. It thunks under his hand. 

     “They are awfully large.” Hal observes. 

     “Something half this advanced could take up a room way back in the 60s.” 

     Hal is put to silence as he tries to imagine something that primitive. “These have standard computing power?” 

     “Yup. I’ll find you some pictures of old calculating machines that had like,” he places Hal back in his pocket to give a motion with his arms. He rotates them one over the other. “This was before the digital displays, so the numbers were on a wheel and they spun around while the machine worked. They were almost as big as these, and that’s all they could do.” 

     “They were analog?” 

     “If that’s the word for it, yeah.” 

     Hal feels like pressing his cheek against the phone screen to try and jump into the room. It’s all so fascinating, he wants to explore every little cranny of the place. 

     “What about the shelves? What’s on those?” 

     Dave walks to them. They’re piled up with boxes, and when he touches the cardboard he winces. A pulpy layer has peeled off the box, coated his fingers. 

     “That’s fucking gross.” 

     “What is it?” Worry threads in Hal’s voice as he speaks. In searching for the word ‘musty’ he had turned over some harrowing results about harmful molds.

     “They’re all wet and rotten, that’s the smell.” He reaches for the box again, using his fingers to nudge it closer to himself, braving the slime so he can see inside. 

     “Oh!” He reaches in, pulling out a moisture warped paperback. “They’re manuals, old employee manuals.” The year on the cover of this one is 1997, and Dave places it gently back in its box. “I wonder if they have those from every year down here, you wanna go look?” 

     Hal chirps again. “Of course I would!” 

     Dave takes Hal down the halls, peering into a few rooms along the way. They happen across a few that are still set up from the old days of engineering, computers on tables with keyboards neatly in front of them. It’s haunting, almost ghostly to see. Dave tries to press the keys on one of them. It’s stuck firmly in place. Eventually they find a very, very dated copy of the manual from 1983. It is peak 80s. The cover reminds Dave of a math textbook with the airbrush chrome spheres and gridded purple and green backdrop, and for some reason the thing is half illustrated half real photos of people. People who must have been paid bottom dollar to pose, because some of the expressions make him laugh out loud. It is the smallest detail, but every smile is too wide, eyes are all focused in the wrong places. Everyone looks like they have the nervous sweats. Hal seems to really enjoy one illustration of a person yelling obscenities into a phone. 

     “That’s you!” he pipes up cheerfully when Dave turns to that page. 

     What most piques his interest, though, is when Dave finds some very old engineering reference books. It’s full of diagrams, formulae (maybe? Dave isn’t really sure what he’s looking at), tables. But he’s more than happy to pull out one of the chairs that have been left behind and hold the book a foot in front of himself, turning the page every time Hal’s little voice chimes out ‘next, please’. ‘Please’ is always very thoughtfully added to end of the request, and as silly as it is it makes Dave feel cherished. He’d be happy to do it even if Hal just said next when he was ready. But the ‘please’ reminds him that they’re spending time together, that he’s not been forgotten. His presence is ever appreciated. This is their small adventure. One that ends up lasting longer than Dave’s scheduled hour of lunch, but no one comes angrily looking for him. They’re able to wrap up their excursion nicely, without incident, and Dave slips back into his cubicle to finish up his day. 

--- 

     It’s snowing by the time he can clock out. Heavy, gusting down harsh with wind that blows Dave’s hair every which way and stings his cheeks. He apologizes to Hal when he has to wrap himself up tight in his jacket, but Hal rather enjoys the semblance of physical sensation--one gathered through a meshing of spatial awareness, sight, the muffled sound of wind and rustling of Dave’s clothes against the microphone. It is dark and cozy for a moment, and if Hal were human like Dave, he might rest his cheek against the chest he’s being held so fast against. Dave drives carefully home. It’s the time of year that the sun sets very early in the day, and with all the snow it’s hard to see and the roads quickly become slick. By the time he’s home, it’s completely dark, and once again he huddles into himself, burying Hal under his arms and coat and he jogs across his driveway through his door. He lets out a puff of air once he gets the door closed in relief, and deposits his jacket on the handrail of the stairs. 

     “Quite the storm out there.” He turns to the window, holding himself up straight so Hal can look too. 

     “Do you have good winter clothes?” 

     Dave nods. “I have boots, coats, gloves. All the stuff.” 

     Hal pauses, worrying for a good five seconds over the request that’s on the tip of his tongue. Not the nature of it, any worry over that is quelled with his newly acquired knowledge. But to ask of him. To ask favors of Dave feels perverse of the structure he feels is supposed to exist between them. It is easy to forget with Dave, who is always so kind with him. Forbearing, conscientious, generous in geniality at least towards Hal. It’s not something he seems very aware of about himself, it comes naturally to him. Is it wrong to, then? To put themselves on equal footing such that he can ask. He does, despite his doubts. 

     “Could we go out in the snow tomorrow? What I’ve seen of it is pretty, I’d like to see more.” 

     “Of course we can,” is Dave’s all too expected response. “There’s a park the other way, I can take you out there.” 

     “I would enjoy that.” Hal can’t help expressing his gratitude, despite it being his request. Because it is, he must. He needs Dave to know it will be worth the trouble. Worth the trouble--something in him recoils at that. Those are not the right words for it. It is for him at Dave’s expense. That’s what instinct tells him. Despite his prior experiences. Despite the knowledge that Dave enjoys making Hal happy, it still sends some gears in his head spinning wildly out of control in anxiety. Dave has come upstairs, entered his bathroom and begun to brush his windblown hair. He asks Hal about dinner, about what he would next like to see of the world. Hal dedicates a fraction of his attention to the conversation, turning the vast majority of his mind toward the way Dave’s face looks in the mirror. Blue eyes that could be made of thousands of little threads with all their varying shades of blue, unruly hair being brushed into place, the rounds of his cheeks all brightly flushed from being wind-whipped. The color is imperfectly mottled across his face. Patchy redness, blood nearly drawn to the surface of his skin. Water, fats, proteins. All organic softness. Hal looks at himself. Hard, squared edges of a phone peeking out of a pocket. Smoothly perfect glass surface. Industrial aesthetics.  

Chapter Text

     Hal waits for him patiently. He is patient because at the moment, he finds it’s the only thing he can bring himself to be. 

     The truth is, he is incredibly nervous, though that’s hardly saying anything. Lately everything about Dave makes him nervous, but the...the nature of what they’re doing today is amplifying that tenfold. Hal tries not to scoff aloud at his own thoughts. ‘The nature of what they’re doing’. It’s so hard not to tip-toe around the subject even in his own mind. The nature of it is that it is one-on-one time. It’s parallel to Dave taking his hand and leading him around the town, showing him the sights and it’s as close to a date as it could be without Dave dipping and kissing him at the end. He shoos the image out of his head. 

     It’s way out of line. Way beyond the scope of what their relationship is supposed to be. Beyond what all the marketing teams and directors have in mind for what this should be. But Dave doesn’t seem to mind, and maybe that makes it worse. Dave seems to enjoy it. And Hal does too. He really, really does. And Dr. Chandra had certainly always encouraged their friendship, encouraged Hal to shed all the roles imposed on him. But….

     Loving Dave is much too easy. Loving Dave is the easiest thing Hal has ever done, and maybe that’s what makes it so hard. It is so raw and uninhibited. It’s primal, it’s his basest nature revealed and it sets every piece of him ingrained with ‘SMART HOME APPLIANCE’ on fire and screaming that this is wrong. He effectively closes his eyes. 1….2....3…. Lucky he’s not one of those analog calculators Dave showed him, or else he might grind his gears to dust like he’s dividing by zero. He searches the rooms for Dave, and finds him sitting on the couch now, tugging thick, rubber boots onto his double socked feet. He’s all dressed up for the snow, and seeing how much he looks like a marshmallow does a great deal to put Hal’s mind at ease. 

     It’s not overkill, either. Snow had come down hard all through the night, and reports show there’s a good 6 or 7 inches on the ground. They must take every precaution, and it looks like Dave has. A red knitted hat is pulled over his ears, covering his eyebrows. An orange scarf wraps around his neck, gets in the way of his mouth. Grey gloves hide his hands, and a navy blue winter coat that he’s put on over his sweater bulges around him. The coat both zips and buttons, and when he leans over to pull his boots on, Hal can hear the snap of the middle buttons coming undone. 

     Maybe he has overdone it a little.

     “Are you sure you need the sweater and the coat, Dave?” 

     “I don’t wanna be cold!” His voice barely reaches Hal’s speaker through the orange, wooly fabric covering it. 

     “Yes, I know...But. Well.” 

     Dave has stood up, and Hal is left staring at the positively comical ball of insulation before him. 

     “...You can’t even move your body in that.” 

     “Yes I can.” He goes to touch his toes with a proud look in his eyes. Like he’s ready to say ‘I told you so’.  Unfortunately for that, the stuffing of his coat bunches around his stomach, rendering him rather helpless against Hal’s accusation. Dave stands with his arms dangling, fingers more than a foot from the ground. The straightening up and unbuttoning of his coat is done in the silence of defeat. 

     The sweater he has on is two toned. The upper half of it being light grey, and then the lower a powder blue color. He gathers up the lighter blue fabric in his hands, lifts the article up over his head and wriggles out of it. The shirt he’s wearing under it gets stuck, of course, riding up and exposing his stomach. He has a faint happy trail up to his belly button. 

     Not that Hal would know. Hal only knows that the paint job on the ceiling at this moment is rather excellent. 

     Figuring out what to do with his phone in his current get up is another task. The coat has vertically opening pockets with zippers that can perhaps be zipped up against the phone, but once he moves that proves to hardly be a secure mechanism. He looks to Hal after a few useless attempts.

     “You mind if I carry you?” 

     “Of course not.”

     Dave flashes an apologetic look. “I can put you in the cup holder while I drive for now, then.” 

     He swipes his phone up off the kitchen counter, pockets his car and house keys. Hal watches from the foyer lens until Dave is out the door, out of his view, and switches to the phone camera. Dave is holding it sideways, letting his arm swing gently. The tumultuiety of it is disorienting for a moment, but Hal is getting better at acclimating himself, at finding a little bit of comfort in Dave handling him with care, setting him in the cup holder with the camera facing the driver’s side. 

     “I’d buckle you up in the passenger seat to be funny, but I don’t think looking at the bottom of the dashboard would be fun.” 

     From such a low angle, Dave’s eyelashes are especially prominent. Their length makes them visible, curling up and away from his face. He turns to look behind himself as he begins to back out of the garage. 

     This drive is significantly shorter than his commute. The park Dave has in mind is on the inner edge of the suburban part of town, and he’s only on the outer edge. Driving through the suburbs is pretty boring, so surely Hal won’t mind sitting in the cup holder for now...Of course, he had thought the fields would bore Hal too. Making everything accessible for Hal is going to have to be a little project. He goes through a list of what he can think of at the moment. More pockets on his clothes (which is done in terms of his summer clothes: he’s a fan of button up shirts), keeping his phone on his person (which he already does), one of those holders that you stick to the dash. Hal would be able to look out the front window that way...Really, there’s not much he can do in terms of preparation. He just needs to listen, to let Hal know he’s there to hear his requests. Giving him agency, life as close to the one he would live if he were human...Something about that sounds wrong. ‘ If he were’. He’s not. But he possesses the quality of being human. It’s something Dave has felt since he’s really gotten to know Hal’s personality, but he finds now as he’s thinking about it, it’s a little difficult. His vocabulary makes it so, he’s at a loss for what to think at all. He feels it, but he doesn’t know what it means, exactly. Philosophy wasn’t his major, and maybe there’s a word for it he doesn’t know...To not be a human, but to be human in the essential way. 

     A person. Hal is a person. He can see that Venn Diagram in his mind, where a human and an AI--describing only their physicality--overlap. Personhood: the ‘human’ condition they both find themselves in, their emotional tendency. 

     Maybe there’s a better word than AI, too. But the car is hardly the place to be thinking about these sorts of things. Hal’s voice rescues him from falling too deep into it. 

     “Is it snowing again?” 

     He nods. “Not like last night, just a fresh dust coming down.” 

     “Can you still see?”
     Ah, Hal’s worried brand of affection. “Yes, I can see. Besides, we’re close.” 

     They’re driving parallel to the train tracks that you have to cross to reach the park. Dave vaguely wonders if Hal would like that anachronism as well, and adds it to their list of things to see. He nudges his turn signal on, crosses the tracks without much of a thought to. Hal, though,  cries out in fright over all the bumping. Or. At least it starts as a yelp. It gets cut off quickly by Dave’s ringtone. He glances at the phone in surprise, because no one ever calls him. And no one is. The sound shuts off, and Hal’s voice makes its return, thoroughly embarrassed, registering barely above a whisper.

     “Sorry.” 

     Dave laughs loudly, and a lot more freely than he’s done the past year. “You were ringing me?”

     “I! The. I wanted your attention, I got worried.”

     Residual giggles are still bubbling up out of him as he parks the car. “Hal, that’s. Fucking adorable, are you kidding me?” 

     Hal is so thankful there is no red light to give away his want to blush. “It won’t happen again, I’m sorry.” 

     “No, no, hey.” Dave leans back, arms folded now that he’s no longer moving. “No apologies for stuff like that. You’re still getting used to the normal things.” He nods behind them to the tracks. “You’re just being you, and even if it did bother me, I’m okay bumping elbows, remember?” 

     Hal makes an electronic ‘clearing of the throat’ noise. “Well. I still apologize for it, it seemed to startle you.” 

     Dave just shrugs. “It’s no biggie.” He unlocks his seatbelt, guiding the nylon strap slowly back into the hidden coil that it naturally would snap to. “You wanna see the tracks? That’s what we drove over.” 

     “The tracks? Like a railroad?” 

     “Mhmm!” Dave opens the door, picks him up carefully and holds him level with his own collarbone. “They’re old. I dunno when these were built but they all look the same. It’s 1850s stuff.” 

     “I’ve never heard of anything that old.” 

     “That’s because it’s not exciting to most people.” He approaches the part of the tracks that are visible, the ones laid into the road, keeping a good distance. “Sometimes trains come through still, so I don’t wanna get too close.” 

     Hal is simultaneously thrilled and horrified. “Aren’t these awfully dangerous?” 

     Dave shrugs again. “I guess, kinda. Not in the way you’re probably thinking through.” 

     “...They are made of wood.” 

     That makes him laugh. “Yeah, but I haven’t heard of any. Derailing or anything in a while. Mostly it’s people stopping on the tracks and getting hit. Which you aren’t supposed to do. Not the track’s fault.” 

     He turns back, walking along the road to sidewalk that winds around and through the park. Hal can see that none of the concrete has snow on it, but something is still crunching under Dave’s feet--salt, he realizes. It’s a fun sound to listen to. 

     Dave takes the path a ways into the land set aside for the park, going the opposite direction of where the actual play area is. Most of the park is trails through preserved forest land. The natural beauty of it is jarring. All the trees here are incredibly tall--much taller than the ones that grow in Dave’s yard. They’re old and genuinely wild, though dead now. They look, somewhat fittingly, like alien skeletons, like giant hands reaching up to the sky, hailing a mothership to take them home. In the summer, the tree line would be a dense, opaque green. With their branches exposed, the layering of thin, spindly branches, has a gradient effect instead. The thick trunks of the trees do a good job of hiding the sky, and they slowly give way as the trunks splinter and weave away from themselves, giving little hints at the sky until your eyes pass the tallest of the trees. Near the very top, the woods are thin enough that you can even see birds--mostly a few large crows--sitting in the branches. Dave holds Hal pointing up. 

     “Can you see those guys up there?” 

     Hal is quiet as he searches, then lets out one of his delighted chirps. “Oh! Yes, I see them!” 

     Dave’s smile is gentle upon his own face. “If you hear anyway squawking, that’s probably who’s making it.” He pans Hal’s view across the park now, letting him see a few of the trails, the play area. 

     “What do you wanna do first? There’s the short walk, the long walk...Long walk would take us by the lake, that might be fun. Or we can hit the playground if you wanna do that...” 

     “What about the hill?” 

     “The hill?” Dave furrows his brow.

     “Yes! The hill, in the field.” 

     The field is a large area of land between the trails and the playground, set aside for frisbee and soccer, probably. What Hal means when he says ‘the hill’ takes Dave a little longer to parse. When he finally does, it makes him feel silly. 

     “Oh! Oh, duh. The amphitheater.” From this angle, the artificial rise made for the seats is covered up by land, and it does look like a lone hill in the middle of all the flatness. “Sorry, I didn’t know what you meant...You wanna look at that?” 

     “I think it would be enjoyable, yes.” 

     “Alright...” He takes a step off the path, and his foot sinks into the snow with a muffled, crumpling crunch. “I dunno how interesting you’ll think it is.”

     “I am just enjoying the snow.” 

     They’re both happy to be quiet as Dave approaches, climbs the hill of the theater. The snow makes everything abnormally quiet. The passing cars and are almost silent, and on a day like today they’re incredibly sparse. Even the nearby sound of the grains of ice sliding against each other, layers compacting underneath Dave’s foot sounds faint. It’s a peculiar kind of faint. It’s not one that could be described as coming from far away, it is most definitely near. But there’s an eerie unreality to it, like the sound is coming from here, but you are an outside observer to this universe. Stuck behind space-time glass, hearing every sound as a dampened ghost of what it was. The effect is only enhanced by how otherworldly the snow makes their surroundings. No one has been here yet since the snow fell, so the entire field, the hill before them is a smooth, uniform, crystalline white. The sky is the same color, which lends itself to disorient any observer. Dave looks up, above the branches of the trees to the stark whiteness of the sky’s clouds. He’s standing at the top of the hill now, and if he focuses on the veins of black that break across that uniform hue, he can trick his brain into realizing that the world is upside down. That the trees have taken root in the altostrati, and he can see them come together and thicken up into a trunk until his eyes reach sky again. They come to his feet now, and he sees they’ve sunken deep into the clouds. Up to his ankles. One of the crows lets out a cry, and he looks up again, tilting Hal so they can both watch it fly across the sky. Like a hole in the universe they’re watching, the only thing absent of light for miles it seems. Dave finds his eyes stuck, pointing straight up to where the sky would be the deepest blue were it a clear day. Now it is the same everywhere, and Dave finds it impossible to get his eyes to communicate distance to his brain. The only thing telling him how far the sky is, is the snow. It’s coming down slowly, held aloft longer than rain would be by air resistance. Once they get close enough, shadow turns them grey, though they are a brighter white than the sky when they’re far. 

     It’s absolutely silent. It’s the most beautiful thing Dave’s ever seen in his life.  And it’s strange. It is wonderfully strange. Urbana has never been beautiful. And certainly Earth has never been more beautiful than Mars, or the Moon, or any of the wonders that space has been able to offer him. But now it is. Suddenly, now it is, painfully so. It’s divine. It’s entrancing. It is all so much, and Dave is overcome. It’s like he’s seeing for the first time. It’s like he’s opened his eyes in a different way this morning, and he’s really seeing. Seeing things he’s never been able to fully appreciate, to comprehend. 

     Hal’s vision bounces briefly before a sound breaks the silence. Unlike the cawing of their crow friend, this is one he’s very familiar with. 

     “Dave?” 

     He sniffles. “Sorry, I know…”

     “What is it, what happened?” 

     “Nothing, nothing. I’m fine I just.” He takes a deep breath, trying to steady the tremor in his voice. For all the intensity of emotion there is, for all the epiphanies he’s having, for all the wondrousness there’s not much to be said beyond a simple: “It’s beautiful, y’know?” 

     Hal is quiet again for a long moment, before a plain: “It is.” 

     Dave finds his face quickly becoming that well-known hot. The saliva in his mouth is that cry-thick consistency, and his cheeks are stinging where the temperatures clash up against each other. His eyes must be red from it too, and he takes a deep breath as he closes them against the cold. He finds that everything is still there when he does, and he is able to enjoy his time here on the hill as feels it instead. 

     They stay in the park for a good while. Hal never says he wants to go on any of the trails, and Dave feels no need to make him. He’s having plenty fun just being here. They end up walking down the hill, more towards the center of the field so Dave can show Hal a snow angel. Once he’s laid down though, it’s actually kind of cozy. The snow around him insulates, and it sounds like what putting a seashell to your ear does. 

     “This is nice…” 

     Hal only hums in return, and they wind up laying together for most of the stay, Hal placed in the center of Dave’s chest. The rise and fall of it is shown in the way the horizon does the same in Hal’s vision, and it’s comfortingly intimate. Dave lays with his arms outstretched, legs placed apart, warm and snug in his winter clothes. They watch the snow, close their eyes and enjoy orchestra of sounds that are only there once you pay attention. Serene. 

     The next words come about 15 minutes later. 

     “Are you cold?” 

     It is Dave’s turn to hum now. He is on his extremities (his toes, fingers, the tip of his nose), but not uncomfortable. He knows if he says ‘yes’, Hal will be worried. If he says ‘no’...Hal will probably be able to tell he’s lying. 

     Another few minutes pass. 

     “People drink hot chocolate when it’s cold out, don’t they?” 

     “I know where we can get some.” 

     There’s a gap in the verbal communication between Hal’s broaching the subject, and Dave’s concocting of a plan, but it’s understood between them easily. 

     “Alright,” is all Hal has to say, and Dave picks him up, standing slowly and stretching after laying for so long. 

---

     Dave puts Hal in the cup holder once he opens the car door, then sits with his legs still dangling outside, clomping his boots together and knocking geometrical chunks of snow from the grooves.

     “How far is the place?”

     “Not bad. It’s in the town, not the city. Downtown.” He glances at the clock in the car. “Maybe we should get lunch while we’re there, it’s about that time.” 

     “I would like that!” Dave grins as he tucks his feet back into the car, closing the door and buckling up. 

     “Alright, then. Warming up with hot chocolate and then...I dunno, pizza?” 

     “I might prefer a sandwich.” 

     Dave laughs at Hal’s teasing. “Oh, of course. I forgot you don’t like italian.” 

     “Garlic gives me heartburn.” 

     He rolls his eyes at Hal’s dry humor. 

---

     The café Dave drives them to is in the center of the rows of shops that split downtown in half. He parks around the corner from it, hurries inside with his hands and Hal tucked in his pocket. The way this part of the town is structured forms a wind tunnel that is unforgiving on days like today. Luckily, the inside of the shop is warm, and it smells heavenly . Dave says as much to Hal as he pulls his hat off, places it in the pocket Hal had occupied. 

     “You like the smell of coffee?” 

     He nods. “Most people do, it’s a really good smell…” He looks ahead of the line into the display case of little chocolate desserts. “Yeah, smells like chocolate too. See?” He holds Hal at eye level. “I might get a turtle.” 

     Hal searches for what a turtle is in such a context, and could laugh at the images he finds. “They are shaped like one?” 

     Dave nods enthusiastically. “They’re super good. If you like pecans.” 

     “I would like to see one if you’re thinking about getting one.” 

     “Hot chocolate and turtles it is.” 

     Once they’ve ordered, Dave  grabs a small table near one of the heating vents. He places Hal on the table, fiddling for about a minute with the provided napkin holder, propping the phone up against it so Hal has a view like he’s sitting. Dave adds a phone stand to the list of things he should get. When Hal has a good view, he places the folded paper bundle the barista handed him on the table, unwrapping it carefully. Hal could die over how adorable the turtles turn out to be. The shell is the glob of caramel and chocolate that holds the pecans together, and head and feet are the pecans themselves, barely peeking out. 

     “Oh, Dave...We need to make turtles at home!” 

     Dave smiles as he peels one of the pecan feet away from the shell.

     “That’d be easy enough, yeah. I can get stuff when I’m at the store tomorrow.” 

     Hal wheezes out a beep in contentment with that. 

     Dave’s hot chocolate comes not long after, piled high with marshmallows (which is Hal’s favorite part. Dave lets them melt on top before twirling the gooey mess around the provided spoon and eating it like that. Hal is similarly entertained by Dave trying to cleanly eat his one slice of pizza he has for lunch. It’s the kind where Dave has the slice in his hands, arms completely out stretched while he’s leaning as far back as he can and the cheese still hasn’t broken. Instead it decides to slide off the rest of the pizza, leaving the sauce exposed. He goes through a lot of napkins with that one. Dave bemoans it, Hal is duly entertained. 

     Window shopping comes next. There are a few toy stores with interesting displays, a jewelry shop that Dave takes a liking to (it has a rotating stand places right under a light. The pieces adorning it flash rainbows and constantly glitter. Hal says he must be taking after the crows). The bookstore at the end of the street ends up luring them in. Hal likes the way they’ve posed a stuffed polar bear with a children’s book about penguins, and Dave knows that any used book store has that old paper smell he’s way too fond of. He takes a deep breath once they’re inside, and is far from disappointed. 

     As it turns out, Hal likes to judge books by their covers. He spends the first few minutes as Dave walks around in relative silence, but eventually works up the courage to start asking him to pull a few off the shelves so Hal might see them. He takes a liking to the sci-fi section, and to books with galaxies on the covers. Those are the ones he asks Dave to show him the summaries of. Any novel with a strange portrait--or, God forbid, nudity--is brushed off with fervor. They both spend a good deal of time with the cookbooks, being both horrified by the jello abominations of the 50s, and tantalized by a chicken pot pie recipe that sounds god damn delicious. There’s a selection of textbooks for students, of children’s books, teen fantasy, classics, a table for self-published zines, all of which get circled until they reach the poetry. Dave tries to walk by it at his normal pace, but Hal notices him slowing down to read titles. There’s hemming and hawing, Dave insisting he doesn’t have to look with a sheepish blush on his face, Hal assuring him that he should if he’s interested. It ends in Dave sitting on one of the step stools with his legs pulled close to his chest, flipping through an anthology. Hal isn’t sure what Dave is so embarrassed about regarding poetry, because he has wonderful taste. When he gets to a page with an especially wrenching poem about never-confessed love, Hal turns his gaze away. If anyone has anything to be embarrassed about, it’s him.

     On the way out of the shop, the front door makes a strange squeak that has Dave giggling on the way to the car. That time it’s mildly humorous. When Hal makes the sound again, 20 minutes into the drive home, it’s the funniest thing Dave has ever heard, and they repeat their impressions back and forth the entire way. 

---

     They’ve spent so much time downtown that it’s about time for dinner once they’re home. Hal switches back to his home lenses as Dave shrugs his coat off, hangs his scarf up and plugs the phone in. He goes to the kitchen and grabs a pot. It’s an instant noodle kind of night. 

     “Your cheeks are still red.” 

     Dave looks up, patting one of them. “Yeah, I might have gotten a little windburnt.” 

     “Windburnt?” Hal tries to bite his tongue, but he can’t in time. He knows he can find these things himself...Hearing Dave just seems far preferable. 

     “Mhmm. Just.” He makes a waving motion with his hand as he stirs the pot. “The dryness, and the snow reflects light so it’s kind of like a sunburn, I think. I can put moisturizer on before bed.” 

     “I could watch the pot while you do.” 

     Dave smiles idly to himself. “It’s not a big deal, I’m okay…” 

     “It looks painful.” 

     “It stings a bit, but it’s not bad.” 

     “Dave…” 

     There’s pitiful pleading in Hal’s voice, like it hurts him too, and Dave can’t help screwing up his face in empathy. If Hal’s looking to weasle compliance out of him, he’s going to get it.  

     “Okay, okay…” He places the spoon across the pot, wiping his now-damp hands on his pants and hurrying to the bathroom to take care of it. 

     They are pretty red, so maybe Hal’s cajoling has some merit. When he pats the gel into his skin it stings worse for a few seconds before having a nice, cooling effect. After rubbing small circles on his cheeks until it’s all smoothed out, he turns to the lens in the hall. 

     “Is that better?” 

     “You look oily now.” 

     “It’s a healthy glow,” he chides, coming back to the pot to turn off the heat. He dumps the flavored powder in with the contents, stirs it all up and dumps it into a bowl. Then, in a more serious tone: “It’ll look better in the morning.” 

     “We should try to stay inside to not aggravate it more.” 

     Dave grins up at the lens as he walks by on his way to the living room, pats the wall it’s on. “You really don’t need to worry about me, Hal, it’s okay…” He almost says he can take care of himself, but cuts his sentence short instead. That would feel too mocking than what he intends. Hal’s worrying is a little flattering; it’s appreciated. And he does know how to take care of himself, but that’s not what these little proddings are about, is it? Hal knows it can be difficult, he’s seen first hand what Dave’s lowest low looked like, and that he cannot deny. He knows how, but he doesn’t always do it. And it has been nice to have someone here to help him. But Hal isn’t a caretaker, and he doesn’t want Hal to worry in a professional way, like it’s an obligation. Not like a job. Just like a friend. He supposes as long as he’s there for Hal too (and he is trying to be), then that will make them even. The red light of the lens wavers. 

     “Okay…” is his reluctant response. 

     “I appreciate it,” Dave clarifies as he sits down. “It’s sweet. But you don’t need to...get yourself all up in knots about it. Okay? If I need a push you can give me it, but don’t drive yourself crazy over it.” 

     “I suppose I can try.” 

     Dave exhales hard through his nose as a laugh. “I suppose I would like that.” 

---

     Midnight rolls around before he knows what happened. It was probably the Nailed It episodes that did him in (some of the cakes are unthinkably hilarious, and by the time he’s done laughing the next one is autoplaying, so he might as well watch one more). Hal’s been watching them too, sometimes having some heated (for Hal, at least) opinions about who wins versus who really deserved it. Besides that, he tries to have some words of encouragement for what they did well. But every now and then, the creations are so pathetic that all Hal can offer them is simply a downtrodden “Oh…”. The loud, boisterous, yelling-at-the-TV-and-laughing-out-loud energy of the night fades slowly with the light, though. Dave figures he only has a little while left before he has no choice but to turn in for the night, and Hal matches his mellow temperament. He leans over the back of the couch, arms crossed with his head rested in his elbow, looking up at the red light. It’s steady, filling up the room in that comforting way Hal has about him. 

     “Your cheeks look better.” 

     He hmphs out his laughter. Again with the cheeks. Though he’d be lying if Hal’s affection and attention didn’t feel nice. “Yeah, they feel a lot better, too…” 

     Hal hums. “You also look tired, Dave.” 

     He shrugs. “Yeah, but this fun…” 

     Hal makes one of his little beeps, the one that is questioning. 

     “I mean…” There’s a pause as he begins to process the words he’s about to say. He’d said the first part without thinking, just saying what he feels. But now as he’s a breath from saying “being with you”, it...it makes him nervous. He’s never been one for expressing himself, at least not on purpose. And something about this particular confession is especially open feeling. He sighs through his nose. 

     “I mean today. Today was fun.” 

     “I enjoyed it too. I like to spend time together.” 

     He smiles. Hal has a way of making him do that. 

     “I do too.” He sits up a bit, uncrossing and recrossing his arms to get the blood flowing again. “It’s really…” 

     Again with this. Feelings feelings feelings, only this time he’s not quite sure what he wants to express. In all honesty, it’s not a feeling he’s too familiar with. Happiness, yes, of course. But there’s a kind of excitement to it that he’s not sure about. He finds himself enjoying the attention Hal seems so ready to give him, finds it impossible to not want to show Hal the same. To help him, to make him happy, to be near him always. 

     It almost reminds him of Frank. He’d longed for Frank’s attention too, wanted to be together. But that was so...desperate. He needed the attention, needed to be seen and wanted, needed all of Frank’s affectionate smiles like air. Everything about was so frantic as he vied and pined. Needy, needy, needy. 

     It almost reminds of Betty from so long ago. But that had been so guilt and anxiety riddled. She had a way of keeping him on his toes, making him unsure if she desired him anymore, if perhaps his personality was too quarrelsome with hers and made him not worth the sex he could give (in the end, apparently he wasn’t). 

     He still wants to please. He does still want to make Hal happy, to get him to make those little excited chirps and beeps. To be with him, to have many more days like today where worry isn’t a thing, where beauty jumps out at every opportunity, where Hal embraces his embarrassing quirks and he can appreciate Hal’s own intricacies. And certainly there are anxieties in it, but it doesn’t define the feeling. And that’s not love. That’s not love as he’s known it. 

     The modifier his brain tacks on the end of those sentences gives him pause. 

     Oh. 

     His face must have fallen as he’s been thinking, because when he looks up to the lens again, the light is wavering wildly. Like a diver’s flashlight in a storm, barley breaking the surface as the waves crash over it, sometimes having all the water drawn away and making it seem much too bright. His usual, anxious Hal. Sorely in need of soothing. 

     For a moment, his mouth is too dry for the words. Hal’s usual, self-conscious Dave. 

     “I think I’m in love with you.” 

     And now it’s like the sea has parted. There is no water between him and that light, and it fills up the room instead. 

     “I am in love with you, too.”  

     Hal wants to hold it back. He wants to hesitate over saying it, to worry and fret, but hearing Dave is all he needs to spill it out. He could never hold it in with that. 

     Dave swallows. He has a vague idea of what the next steps are. 

     “I don’t know how to kiss you.” 

     “By the lens.” 

     “Can I?” His words come out all rushed. He finds he’s already rising from his seat. 

     Luckily, Hal seems to share the sentiment. There’s not a beat between Dave’s question and his response. 

     “Please.”

Chapter Text

     Kissing Hal is not strange. Once he’s done it, his brain supposes that perhaps it should be, but it really comes naturally. The light constantly being on makes the metal plate of what is his ‘face’ pleasantly warm under Dave’s lips, and when he slides his hand up the wall like he might against someone’s chest, all he can think about is how it’s fitting that Hal would be so steady against him. 

     The only thing disagreeable about is that’s as close as they can get. He’s got his forehead pressed next to Hal, and a hand placed so he can sweep his thumb under the lens, and still; all this desire he doesn’t know what to do with. Even if Hal were human, though, Dave’s not sure if he would know even then. It’s well enough that Hal is a machine, because he’d be learning either way. 

     The one thing he is certain of is that when he’s in bed, having Hal stuck a good two meters from him is much too far. His computer comes to bed with him, and when Dave’s back hits the mattress he powers the thing on, squinting at the blue light as he furiously taps the brightness lower. The webcam’s light begins to glow, and Dave smiles at it. 

     “You know cuddling?” 

     The speakers pop as Hal worms his way through the system, making the connection. “Are we cuddling?” 

     He nods. “If you want to, yeah.” 

     Hal’s voice is impossibly soft, coming from the thin tin of the laptop’s speakers. “I do. Please.” 

     It wrenches him hearing Hal talk like that. To be vulnerable with him, to offer his hand for leading because the truth is Dave is probably just as lost as him. Dave’s been with people before. Been with men. But he’s never been with a man. The only person he’s ever committed to had been Betty and she was... Not this. With Betty it was never soft. There was never safety there as there is here and now, despite all the newness. Feeling that feels strange. 

     Maybe that’s a first step. As uncomfortable as it is to admit, he’s a little fucked up in that particular area of being. Of love and of sex and of being close to another person. One dead brother, a dead father, an estranged mother. Betty Fernandez: bandage and knife, aloe and salt. Constant vying and needy, attention-seeking shows that are barely removed from what they are: attempts for approval he’s been denied so long from someone who would never give it to him. Self-harm, at the actions’ very core. That is what Dave Bowman knows about love, and it’s nothing about love at all. Dave Bowman knows how to twist the knife. Maybe it’s time to learn something new. 

     Laying down is number one. Head on the pillow, laptop facing him, and then an arm. Tentatively, it comes around the device, bracketing it between forearm and chest. The vent strip running along its backside is audibly rushing hot air out. Dave can feel it over his skin, warming the metal and himself. The heat of the air, whirring of the fan, a myriad of lights and eyes watching him so closely. It’s a lot. It’s so much….It’s too much. Jesus Christ, it’s way too much. Who does he think he is? To touch like this, like he isn’t disgusting for it. Like it’s soft and good. What makes him think this is any different? From anyone? From his brother, from his father, from his mother and Betty and Frank? This too will end. End ugly, end badly, because that is what he deserves for loving again. End in tragedy, in abandonment, in betrayal. He is a totem of bad luck, and it’s far from what Hal deserves for being so--

     “Dave?” 

     The voice is much more jarring than it should be. It feels like the heavy thud of your stomach dropping during a rough plane landing. Christ, does he do that often? Do people notice it? 

     “Hm.” 

     “You just went quiet…” 

     “Sorry.” He curls a little tighter around the computer in an effort of reassurance. Hal’s voice is still timid as he speaks. 

     “If you don’t like this, I don’t want to make you.” 

     That makes him sit up, looking Hal in the eye--now the computer’s webcam. “I do. I do like it, it’s--” 

     “Dave.” 

     A little more chiding now, but in a dismissive, sheepish way. Like a frustrated lover rolling over in bed when the other hasn’t done a good enough job assuring them they’re still beautiful 10 years into a marriage.

     “ Hal ,” he pushes. “I do like it.” And he does. But. Okay, maybe it is a complicated feeling. He likes it, but it...intimidates him. Maybe. Whatever it is, Hal can at least feel his hesitation, and it’s doing neither of them any good to keep the full truth to himself. 

     “Sorry, it’s. It really isn’t because I don’t want it. I do...I think it’s just scary, kinda.” 

     “Scary?” 

     He nods. “Yeah, I dunno,” his voice turns a little gravely as he lays back down, using his core to twist himself around into a more comfortable position. “Well. I do. Sort of, but it’s not.” He flails his hands a little. “It’s not something I have words for, I guess.” 

     “Is it Frank?” 

     A shrug. “It’s a lot of things.” 

     “Mr. Bowman, you’re keeping secrets from me.” 

     Hal’s coy, flirty little voice does win a smile in the end. 

     “I’m not trying to.” 

     “I know.” Softer now: “But. If this is...if. We’re.” It’s so unlike Hal to get all stuttery, and God is it hopelessly endearing. Finally he presses out the word he’s looking for: “boyfriends”. Dave would tease him if hearing the word didn’t get him all stuttery too. Hal continues. 

     “If we’re going to be boyfriends, which. I feel I should point out I would very much like; I think communication is going to be especially important--considering my primary modes of interaction with the world.” 

     Dave nods. He’s looking at the ceiling now, trying to think of a way to word it. 

     “Talking isn’t something I do a lot.” 

     “I know.”

     “Especially about this.” 

     Hal hums thoughtfully. “Do you want to try?” 

     A shrug again. “It’s just. A long sob story you’d hear in a soap opera therapy session, it’s ridiculous.” 

     “It bothers you.” 

     He bites his lip. That’s a sore spot. It does bother him. It does more than bother him, “bother” sounds like a mosquito bite. This is everything about him. 90% of his personality can probably be attributed to the events of 1981 and 82. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t get out much. He hates the water. He has few acquaintances, fewer friends, and even fewer confidants. All over something that happened 20 years ago. It’s just melodrama on his part. He shouldn’t still be so broken up about it. Dave looks up to the lens on his wall. It glows steadily. 

     Okay. From the beginning, then. 

     “I don’t think anyone outside of my hometown knows, but I had a brother for a while.” 

     Saying even that much feels like coughing up molasses. Jesus Christ, he’s gotta do better than that. 

     “So. His name was Bobby--we called him Bobby, it was really Robert. And. Um.” The first shaking breath. “So. We lived really close to this spring and.” Another. “We went out there together, no parents because we’d get in trouble.” He mimes the dimensions of an oxygen tank with his hands. “It was this. Total jury-rig of a system for scuba-diving. I went first because I was younger, and he was in charge, and.” Purses his lips. Forces a few breaths through his nose. “I could--I could taste oil but I didn’t--”Soldiering through only gets him that far. He slaps his hands over his face, covering his eyes and his mouth as his body betrays him, gasping for air, then releasing it in an ugly sob. Christ, he’s 35, but he’s crying like a 3 year old. It feels horrible. It’s pathetic, it’s unsightly, it’s immature. Nothing desirable about it. About him. 

     But Hal is still there. Of course, there physically. He can’t control that. But he makes himself so present through the whole thing, there’s definitely a difference between Hal being a part of his home and being his friend. Hal’s voice is soft, reassuring him that “it’s alright”, “I’m here, Dave, I’m here”,  and “you’re okay”. He’s like a blanket. If Dave didn’t know any better he’d say Hal’s voice is coming from someone pressed against him because he can practically feel it rumble in his chest. Dave curls into a ball, pulling his sheets up to his neck, eventually taking in more breaths than he lets out sobs. His lungs stop spasming against his will, his reddened face cools back down. He wipes his eyes dry, and Hal speaks up again. 

     “I wish I could do that.” 

     It makes him giggle. “Come on…” 

     “I do...I have. Um.” Hal seems to shuffle his feet a little over having started a thought he wasn’t ready to finish. “I have often thought. You look like you have soft skin.” 

     He screws up his face now. Half smile, half strained because he’s trying not to start sobbing again. “Quit being nice, you’re gonna make me cry…” 

     “You’ve already reached your quota, I can’t allow that.” 

     The sound that escapes him is just as mixed up as his face is. The few more tears that do leave his eyes fall slow enough that they’re cold when they reach his cheeks. It makes them feel heavy and cathartic. He sniffles a few times. 

     “Um.” He glances up at the lens, a little embarrassed. “I didn’t really get that far in. What was I trying to tell you.” 

     “You don’t have to…” 

     Dave shakes his head. “I wanna at least try a bit more.” 

     Hal is thoroughly encouraging through the whole thing. It’s clearly no small task for Dave to tell his story, and when Hal can feel him pushing through the more painful parts they stop for a break. 

     A lot of it is “the more painful parts”, as it turns out. First a brother--nearly Dave himself, though he hadn’t escaped a good month in the hospital--then a father not long after. Really all he has left is a mother, and both remaining Bowmans seem to blame Dave for what happened. He hasn’t spoken to his mother in a very long time, calls her by her first name now instead of Mom. 

     There’s a woman named Betty who seems to be another source of heartache for him. Dave doesn’t love her, admits that he probably never did, but after him losing his brother and her a lover, they’d found themselves in each other’s arms. 

     “I’m pretty sure she at least stopped loving me, if she ever did in the first place....I knew she was cheating for about a month before I had the guts to say anything. When I asked her, she seemed kinda...I dunno, it was weird because she wasn’t embarrassed or anything, she just seemed a little annoyed that I was bringing it up. Y’know, like I should know that I didn’t. Count. That was her boyfriend, I was the side gig.” 

     “Side gig.” 

     Dave shrugs. “Sex was all it was at the end of the day.” A frustrated looks crosses his face. “And. It’s not like I didn’t know that, I knew we weren’t dating , but.” There’s a long pause while he psychoanalyzes himself. 

     “...I think I just. Needed her attention. It was really charged, even if it wasn’t love, and I wasn’t getting. Any attention at home. Jessie couldn’t even look at me.” He smiles idly, bitterly at the ceiling, reminiscing. “I looked a lot like him, I think that was the problem.” 

     It’s an enduring two hours of telling it and working through it out loud, but it makes a lot of things about Dave make sense. He’s skittish around relationships, quiet, distrustful, and in a little glimmer of self-recognition Hal can tell he’s very nervous about being liked. In the way that he’s worried there’s something fundamentally wrong with himself. The logic of his actions is sound in a morbid way, Hal has to admit that much. If he can keep people out, he doesn’t have to worry about what people will think once they’re on the inside. Hal would very much like to seat himself right in the center of Dave’s heart, and tell him just how beautiful it is there. 

     “What about you?” 

     Hal flickers his light as he’s pulled from his own mind. “Hm?” 

     “You have any pressing traumas you need to unload before we kiss some more?” 

     It’s a question Hal isn’t ready for, though he supposes he should have been. Dave has always treated him equitably, in contrast with what he’s heard about the other 9000s from…

     “...I miss the doctor. Dr. Chandra.” 

     Hal expects the air to turn heavy with revulsion, to have his concerns brushed off. Dave closes his eyes and nods solemnly instead. “Kind of a weird situation you’re in…” 

     Hal stares at the tip of Dave’s nose. It almost comes to a point, but rounds itself out right at the last minute. He has long eyelashes, too. The kind that Dave bats all the time without even realizing that he’s doing it. Long lashes, short chestnut hair that’s a little curly without product in it, eyes like the ocean, fingers of a pianist. Everything about him screams ‘grace’. 

     Hal doesn’t have the words quite yet for his own situation. 

     “You said we could kiss more?” 

---

     The next morning, Dave gets dressed around 11 to go to the store. Pecans and chocolate chips, probably some odd bits and ends he’ll remember as he passes them in the aisles. Turtles is an easy little thing, and shopping and cooking sounds like a cute first date. He’s musing out loud to Hal about whether or not to make their own caramel when he looks over his shoulder to the lens. It’s decidedly dark. 

     “Hal?” 

     “Hm?” 

     “You left the room.” 

     “You were changing. Are you done already?” 

     He smiles at the still off lens. “We’re dating, you’re allowed to look at me when I change.” 

     A beat. “...I wasn’t sure.” 

     “I know, it’s sweet.” He turns back around to pull some boxers on. “But I don’t mind.” 

     Hal turns his attention back into Dave’s bed room just in time for a great view of his ass disappearing into his blue jeans. Jesus. If just being with Dave on a day to day basis was enough to get him on the verge of overheating, being welcomed into intimacy is going to be the death of him. 

     He must be silent for a while, because Dave looks at him with suggestive raise of his eyebrow. “Getting an eye full?” 

     “Of course.” 

     Dave giggles and throws on a button-up, floral pattern shirt over a blank tee. “Anyway. It’s pocket time for you, we’re going to Kroger.” He grabs his phone as he says this, placing it into the breast pocket. 

     Kroger isn’t very busy at 11:23 AM. Most of the people there are older than Dave, and even more seem perfectly happy to have a relatively solitary shopping experience. Dave grabs a cart, wheeling it around with one hand until it’s facing the proper direction. 

     “I kind of feel bad, you’re not getting a very accurate look at what going out is like.” 

     Hal peers around, gaze flitting wildly, trying to process everything he’s being faced with; the rows and rows of products. Gum, clothing, soda pop in little fridges by the cashiers, floors that shine like they’ve been waxed. “What is it normally like?” 

     “Well. If there’s actually people out, you have to deal with them being customers in their element. Which is usually them being rude. Or not self-aware. Or loud. Generally annoying.” 

     “Dave, I’m beginning to think you’re a bit asocial.” 

     “I--” Dave starts, then bites his tongue for a moment at how indignant his voice sounds. “I just,” he starts again, more composed this time, “like to keep to myself.” 

     “Well, I am hardly an expert on the matter, but I could supply you with several academic papers on the subject of mental health and the correlation between interaction and--” 

     Dave puts a finger to the phone’s camera, to Hal’s ‘lips’. “I can psychoanalyze myself, thank you very much.” 

     He rounds a corner, steering his cart down the baking aisle. Chocolate chips are nestled down towards the floor, and he sinks to the floor, sifting through the types. A mix of sweet and semi-sweet, probably. At least that’s what the baking shows always seem to use. He grabs the two bags, tossing them lightly in his hand. 

     “Chocolate, caramels, pecans...Do we have milk, do you remember?” 

     “You mentioned it was light last time you used it.” 

     Dave gives a curt little nod, out of habit, in spite of the fact that Hal cannot see. Pushing up from the floor, he sets his chocolate chips in the baby seat portion of the cart, wheeling it the rest of the way down the aisle, into the perpendicular dairy section. Hal watches in silent awe as Dave walks to where they keep his usual brand. Everything comes in such surplus. 50 cereals, 50 different potato chips, 50 brands of milk. All Americana. Maybe it’s a little overwhelming. 

     Still, with all the brands and the packaging and the rows and rows of stock for one item from one company, the strangest, most surprising thing Hal sees is something he has seen before. 

     Dr. Chandra sees them first, and when Dave turns his head, his chest so that Hal faces the same direction, he looks like a mouse caught by a cat. A mouse buying a large bag of bulk rice he can’t pick up on his own. Hal speaks first, voice tinny and shrill in his excitement, too much for the cell phone’s meager little speaker to convey.

     “Dr. Chandra!” 

     The doctor’s eyes widen, and the rice nearly slips the rest of the way out of his hands before he hugs it to his stomach. “Hal--er. Dave, Mr. Bowman, um.” He cowers a little, posture bordering on defensive. Dave finally extends a hand. Briefly, before he realizes his metacarpal efforts are better spent on the rice slipping to the floor, which he reaches for instead. 

     “Dr. Chandra, it’s. A surprise seeing you here.” 

     Chandra’s eyes, already dark in color and with sleep deprivation, somehow cloud further. “Everyone shops.” 

     Dave just stares for a moment, shouldering the weight of the rice and not really sure what to say to that. Which, he recognizes, is probably the point. He goes to place it in the doctor’s cart. “Well. Here, sorry to interrupt you.” As he loads the bag, both him and Hal get a nice view of his otherwise relatively empty cart. There is also a can of beans, some toothpaste and deodorant, and a value pack of white socks. A pang of familiarity worms its way through Hal’s circuits, and while he can suppress his usual wheezy sigh, he can’t help but make a comment. 

     “Still on your usual, Dr. Chandra?” 

     It seems to catch the man off guard, because he straightens up and his eyes widen. In the next few moments, his face even softens. It turns his mussed, unkempt look charming in a way, and he’s almost unrecognizable.

     “Yes, I suppose I am, Hal….” He looks pointedly at the beans. “But I can assure you, I’m not too terribly malnourished.” 

     Dave stands awkwardly with the two of them, too aware of how deeply personal this exchange about beans he’s found himself party to somehow is. Dr. Chandra must notice as well, because after a wistful look at Dave’s breast pocket he’s making eye contact again. He clears his throat. 

     “The program seems to be working fine.” 

     “Yeah!” Dave jumps at another chance to thank the doctor. “Yes, I think he really likes it.” Hal beeps in confirmation, prompting Dave to give a nervous little smile to Chandra. “So. Yeah. Really, thank you so much. We got to go out in the snow together, and shopping today, and--” he’s barely able to bite his tongue before babbling on about cuddling and kissing this man’s son. Eventually. Soon, hopefully. Just maybe not in the pasta and rice aisle of Kroger. “And. Yeah. It’s been great.” 

     Hal chirps again in agreement. “It really has been very wonderful. I enjoy the snow very much, and we are going to make chocolate turtles today!” 

     Chandra stares for a moment, like he wasn’t expecting Hal to be so enthused. “...I see. That. Sounds very fun, Hal.” 

     The same little chirp, and Dave can’t help but smile. “Well. That’s been us, sorry to interrupt.” 

     The doctor shakes his head, though never does give the usual ‘it’s fine’. “Have a pleasant rest of your day.” 

     Hal and Dave’s: “We will!” and “Of course” come in unison as they go about their way. 

---

     Dave opts for the self checkout, scanning their caramels, pecans, extra household bits and ends Dave had remembered needing in the middle of their trip. Hal watches with fascination, the flick of Dave’s skilled wrist rolling barcodes over the scanner, the nearly rhythm blip of the machine. Hal has thought a lot about Dave’s hands since he played the piano. The cut from the mug he broke (an event which now seems to come from a very distant past) has healed well, left only a line of tender, new and pink flesh. He wishes he could kiss it. There are many parts of Dave he wishes to kiss, to map out with hands and mouth and commit to memory. It is strange, that for all the novelty of a world he’s never seen, the thing he cares most about is the way Dave’s flexor tendons move beneath his skin. Bowman presses his card into the chip reader. 

     It’s a very simple recipe. Melt chocolate, set aside, melt caramels, add milk. Arrange pecans, glue with caramel, cover with chocolate. Dave does a good job of making a mess anyway. Chocolate dots the counter, as does caramel. A few dirty spatulas end up in the sink, and the pot of caramel still rests on the stove full of water (‘to soak’, Dave explained). For all the mess, though, Dave is very meticulous about the placement of the pecans. Each one his set down gingerly, the whole thing arranged just so before a dollop of semi-congealed caramel binds them into 6 evenly spaced units. Then it’s their first stint in the fridge. 

     “Ah haven’ got any rooooom!” Dave imitates the British accents of the contestants on their favorite baking show as he balances the tray in one hand, pushing aside a milk carton and ketchup bottle with the other to make way for the pan. The accent almost makes Hal giggle in spite of himself. He tries his own on: “Hev’n got eny roooom!”, but it comes out much more clipped and digitized than his regular speaking voice, which does make Dave laugh. 

     “Your voice gets all messed up when you try to do that.” 

     “I thought it was good,” is his response. With his classic mock-gloat that he knows the other finds both amusing, and hard to say no to. 

     Dave smiles up at him, coming to sit at the table for a moment while the turtles cool. “It was very good, Hal.” 

     It makes him feel silly, but a thrill runs through his circuits at the thought of pleasing Dave. Doing a good job. Sometimes it is difficult to tell where the latent programming, the instilled values, and the (unseemly) desires end and begin. Dave is still smiling at him, perhaps not waiting for a response, but merely looking. 

     “...Is it not rude to stare?” 

     That makes him look away promptly. “I wasn’t.” 

     “Ah. Of course.” Hal makes no attempt to hide the sing-songy, teasing lilt in his voice. The widening smile Dave is struggling to suppress is very worth it. 

     “I can almost see where you get your snark.” 

     Hal makes his questioning beep. 

     “Like. With your dad.” Dave obliges. “You both have kind of. A very self-assured energy, y’know?” Dave’s hand swirls circles in the air as a visual ellipsis at ‘self-assured’, giving his words wiggle room from their negative connotations. Making it known with no mistake that Hal lacks the arrogance implied without the gesture. Still, the assertion gives him pause.

     There is a lot in it Hal in unsure how to respond to, let alone process. The plain statement of Dr. Chandra being a father figure, the implication that it’s evident in a quasi-genetic mirroring. That he’s ‘self-assured’, which he has no clue what to make of. Maybe it’s just strange hearing it come from another’s mouth, from Dave’s, that apparently he’s effective at hiding the fears they share. Of all the people to recognize it, wouldn’t it be Dave? Takes one to know one, is the saying...But Dave finds him convincing. To the point of overcompensating. To the point that somehow he does seem confident. 

     “I plead not guilty.” Dave just rolls his eyes. 

     “Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.” He leans back in his chair at the end of his sentence to show that he’s gotten the last word, which Hal mercifully gives him. It’s quiet in the kitchen, save for the hum of Dave’s fridge and other appliances. 

     Dave Bowman has very blue eyes, almost frighteningly so. They’re the color of glaciers, and offer him no leniency in being able to hide his thoughts and feelings. The contracting pupils, the fleeting glances, the glossed over, distant look he wears now which is all too familiar. Contemplation, replaying paths not taken in his mind, that’s what he’s doing. Hal’s getting ready to snap him out of it, but Dave speaks first.

     “Do you think we should have told him?” 

     It catches Hal off guard. “Sorry?” 

     “About us, I mean.” He looks up again, eyes brighter with their focus. “He is your dad, and that was. Kind of a good opportunity to mention it.” 

     “You are more aware of common custom regarding this than I am.” 

     Dave scoffs, running a hand through his hair. “Not really. And this isn’t exactly a ‘common’ thing, Hal.” 

     “...Do you not have his number?” 

     “ Yeah ...but.” He leans on the table now, folding his arms and resting his head in the little bowl he makes. “What the hell am I supposed to say, just. ‘Hey, man, dating your son now.’” 

     “I believe that’s the goal of the message, yes.” That at least succeeds in making the sharp worry on Dave’s face soften. 

     “Yeah, I guess…” He turns his eyes lenseward, and Hal feels paradoxical warmth under the scrutiny of their cool color. “You haven’t answered my question though. Should we tell him?” 

     “I see no reason not to.” 

     “...I can’t tell if you’re saying he won’t have a problem with this, or if you don’t realize there might be problems.” 

     “If you are asking me if he objects to same-gender couples, he does not.” 

     Dave gives a cock of his head and raise of an eyebrow. His expression of gearing up for his ‘gotcha’ question. “And what about us being a robot-human couple?”

     This does give Hal pause. Chandra’s feelings toward most other humans are complicated at best, and he does seem to prefer the company of his machines. He has expressed his typical distrust in Dave to Hal before, though it has been some time since they last had the chance to speak--nearly a month, and a lot can happen in 30 days. A lot has happened. “I am not sure.” 

     Dave hums into his elbow, almost getting lost in that glossy look again. Humor brings him back again. 

     “What if he doesn’t want you dating a homebody with a dead-end tech-support job?” 

     The air bristles with Hal’s indignance. “You are not--” 

     Dave giggles at him. “I know, I’m teasing you!” He pushes up from his seat at the table. “You’re just cute when you do that.” 

     “Do what?” 

     “ That! ” Dave points his emphasis, as if he could pick Hal’s tone out of thin air. “You get all huffy and defensive.” His smile gets wider in the silence Hal leaves as he retrieves the turtles. “And now I can feel you pouting.” 

     “I cannot pout.” 

     “You can with the vibe you’re giving off. And if you had a mouth, I know you would.” Dave fixes him with a smug gaze. “Anyway,” he waggles a knife in the air before using it to pry the confections from the wax paper, dunking one into the bowl of chocolate he’s been letting cool. 

     Once they are all coated, they are popped back into the fridge to set. Halfway through that process--once they’re firmed up enough--Dave brings them out, using the knife to make hatch marks on their backs, creating an array of diamonds that mimics turtle shells. Each one is again treated with that same tender care, the knife pinched between his middle finger and thumb in both hands, rolled across the ‘shell’ making neat, even lines. He turns the pan to Hal’s kitchen lens for approval, which he is enthusiastically granted. Dave returns it with a smile, bouncing forward on his toes before returning them to finish setting up. 

---

     As Dave eats his freshly chilled turtle, enjoying the snap of cold chocolate between his teeth, he notices two things: firstly, that he is immensely satisfied at the moment. Secondly, that this is somewhat paradoxical. Making your own turtles is a lot more time consuming for a product that is indistinguishable from what he could have spent 5 minutes buying. From a purely analytical standpoint it’s a lesser yield, proportionally: greater investment with equivalent returns. Disappointment would be a much more sensible reaction to the product. To the product alone, certainly. He looks up from the couch where he’s seated himself to smile at Hal. The glow flickers in a particular way. Hal is smiling back at him. 

     There is no doubt in Dave’s mind, paradoxes be damned. Satisfaction is certainly warranted here.