Archive of Our Own ^beta

The window wasn’t really looking out on space.

Yuuri Katsuki knew this, but the gentle illusion of a passing starscape on his interior screen was no less soothing for being false.

His quarters were—as befitted his status as dime-a-dozen Chief Communications Officer—tucked deep in the heart of the spacecraft. A fold-away bed (currently hidden), a chair, a desk, a cactus… Those, and the stars, were all he needed to feel at home.

Those, and…

No. He banished the image of silver hair, the irreverent heart-shaped grin that popped unbidden into his mind. Yuuri knew it was true, but he didn’t want to think about him right now.

The I.A.S.S. Victory was Yuuri’s home.

It shouldn’t have bothered him that he was returning to the planet where he’d been raised in a little more than two weeks. Temporary leave, that was all it would be. Dispatch a few personal duties, stand in line and bow to people who were all more important than he was…

Yuuri was an interstellar officer, twenty-five years old. He could manage a few receptions.

Nonetheless, his gaze fixed on distant galaxies. He’d programmed his screen to show the view from the left-most sensors on the Victory, and he found the changing image soothing. Somewhere out there, out beyond the candy-cotton-pink dust of a nearby nebula, reduced by distance and hyperspace drives into a pinprick of atomic proportions, stood New Nihon and his parents’ home.

He’d fled it all—pomp, circumstance, and official titles, retreating into the Interstellar Alliance’s exploratory forces with platitudes about serving his people and experiencing what a regular person would and… Blah, blah blah.

The Victory was headed homewards, and Yuuri, the scapegrace son, the one who had spent his first four official banquets after he’d turned seventeen hiding in the bathroom before enlisting in the armed forces out of desperation, wasn’t ready to return.

The only thing worse than the inevitable parades and receptions that awaited him would be if—

The starscape on his screen morphed into a green, pulsating light, accompanied by a gentle chime.

…Shit.

Yuuri ran his hands through his hair—it was hopelessly tangled—and faced the screen, gesturing to accept the incoming call.

“Yuuri!” His mother’s smiling face lit the screen. She waved happily at him, his father beaming over her shoulder. “You look so good!”

Yuuri loved his parents, and they loved him back. They pretended to be unreasonably proud of his prosaic accomplishments, even though he was skiving off from his official duties.

He bowed his head. “Your Imperial Majesties. I’m honored.”

“Cut the crap.” His father rolled his eyes. “‘Dad’ is fine.”

“I’m, um.” Yuuri gestured at himself. “In uniform? It would be a breach of protocol to use familiar—”

“Boo,” said Hiroko the Second, Sword of Truth, Deliverer of Freedom, Empress of New Nihon. Her Emperor-consort, Toshiya nodded along with this. “Since when have I ever demanded formalities?”

To be quite technical, “Empress” was something of a vestigial hereditary form. New Nihon had been fully democratic for five centuries. Hiroko was just a symbol (“But an important symbol,” she had stressed to Yuuri when he was a child. “Never forget the importance of a symbol!”), and the fact that she’d fallen in love with her Emperor-consort, a common man, was a tale for the ages.

There had, in fact, been three movies—the last of which had been rated not for children. Yuuri had refused to go to the official premiere, even though it was expected of him, on the theory that those were his parents, they had to be kidding him.

His mother had clucked her tongue and let him pretend to be sick.

Yuuri was not great at being a symbol.

“So. Um.” Yuuri bit his lip. “You wanted to go over the schedule for my leave?”

His mother looked at her consort, then back at Yuuri. He felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. “Actually, before we did that, we wanted to run something by you.”

No, he wanted to say, because she had a Serious Look on her face. Serious Looks rarely boded well for him.

“Of course, Your Imperial Majesties,” he said instead.

“You know,” his mother said, “that traditionally, the Imperial family of New Nihon used to make matches for their children?”

Yuuri shifted in his chair. “I thought Mari was seeing someone? Did they break up? Did she ask you to arrange her marriage?”

He tried to calculate the public spectacle that would be involved with Mari’s imperial engagement. It had been decades since his parents married. There would have to be…dinners and presentations and ceremonies and he was going to have to stand around and smile and make small talk.

Ugh.

Maybe, he thought hopefully, he could get sick.

Victor was the ship’s science officer. He had to know of some illness that would require Yuuri to be isolated for the precisely sixteen days of shore leave that Yuuri faced, before allowing him to return to his duties unencumbered.

“Actually,” his mother said, “we arranged yours.”

It took a moment for this to hit him. Yours? he thought at first, his head feeling light, who’s the you in yours? Then it hit him, sucking the breath from his lungs as if he’d been plunged into the vacuum of space that surrounded his ship. Oh. That’s… She means…

“Me.” The word came out on a croak. “You’re…arranging…my marriage?”

Sixteen days of feigned illness were not going to be enough.

“Of course you,” his mother said, speaking as if this were an entirely reasonable thing to do, in the year 3128. “We were going to leave you to your own devices, but…”

Yuuri grimaced. His own devices were… Not very effective devices.

“You always do underestimate your own appeal,” his mother said brightly. “You know we love you, right? I’m only suggesting this because we think it will make you happy. And you can say no. You can always say no.”

“Um.”

“We do have some idea what your type is.”

Yuuri thought of the holo-posters he’d had on his wall since the day he turned thirteen and had seen the valedictory speech of the man who had graduated with the highest score ever on the Fleet Entrance Exams. He found himself flushing a bright red. Yes, they probably did know. It’s not like he could have hid his type from them.

“We know the sort of person you’d get along with,” his mother said, burbling along as if she weren’t talking about upending Yuuri’s life in a giant orgy of public ceremony, “and we want you to be happy. We wouldn’t have chosen someone who would—”

“You’ve chosen someone?” Yuuri yelped. “Already?”

“We’ve talked to him,” his mother said, “and Yuuri, listen, he knows you, he loves you—”

Lies, all lies. Yuuri was a symbol, even though he’d tried not to be one. The media just liked playing him up. Tiny roles he’d played in insignificant rescues had been turned by the unrelenting news apparatus into headlines of “Prince Yuuri saves hundreds.”

Of course everyone thought they loved Yuuri. They barely even knew him.

“Well,” his mother said. “Aren’t you going to ask who we picked?”

It was probably someone like King JJ—always slyly reminding Yuuri at official functions that he was actually a real king and not just a hereditary symbol, because he could technically veto laws if he wanted.

JJ was, in point of fact, a hereditary symbol, entirely at the mercy of his planet’s Parliament.

“I can’t.” The words fell from his mouth before he could stop them. “I can’t, I can’t because I’m—” Reason, reason, he needed a reason, any reason, a reason like… “Because I’m already seeing someone!”

There. That was a good reason.

His mother looked at him suspiciously. “How strange. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Oh, um, right, it’s actually really new!” Smile, he told himself, stretching his lips upward in a vaguely nonthreatening grimace. “Totally new, just started, don’t know what to say about it, didn’t want to jinx it!”

“I…see.” The Empress of New Nihon fixed Yuuri with a look that he remembered from his childhood—as if she could see through his every lie.

She always could.

Yuuri flushed bright red. “I’ll introduce you when we get to New Nihon!” Shit shit shit.

“Okay, Yuuri,” she said after a long pause and a deep sigh.“Okay. You do that. Let’s talk when you arrive.”

For a moment, he stared his parents in the face, too panicked to admit the truth.

I’m bad at being a prince, but I’m good at this. Let me stay here. I love my job.

I can’t marry JJ; I’m in love with someone else.

“You’ll like him,” Yuuri said instead, his voice shaking. “I promise.”

“Okay, Yuuri,” his mother said more gently, as if she’d heard all his stupid reasons like a bedtime story, as if she were tucking him into bed with a kiss and promising to get him a puppy if he made it through his public presentation ceremony. “We’d love to meet anyone you care about.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll see you in a few weeks, then. Take care.”

Yuuri cut the comm and his parents dissolved back into the darkness of space.

Shit. Shit. Shit. He had sixteen standard days until the the Victory was scheduled to arrive in New Nihon. Yuuri had to find a boyfriend before then. Where was he supposed to find a boyfriend? Who would agree to—

His door chimed, and Yuuri’s heart gave a flutter.

“Come in?”

It slid open, to reveal…Victor.

Yuuri’s heart gave another flutter.

It wasn’t just that Yuuri was in love with Victor. (Yuuri was totally in love with Victor.) The heart flutters, though…

That was the effect that Victor had on everyone. He was Victor, Victor Nikiforov, science officer aboard the Victory, the most decorated non-captain in the entire Interstellar Alliance’s Fleet.

He was also—incidentally—the most reprimanded officer in the entire fleet, which was why he was not yet a captain.

He was confident, sexy, and outgoing—in every way impossibly the opposite of Yuuri, who had never really distinguished himself at anything. They’d met four years ago, when Yuuri was a mere ensign. How they had ended up best friends was still a mystery. Yuuri tried not to ask; he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear Victor’s answer.

“Hey, Yuuri.” Victor gave Yuuri a tentative smile, leaning against the doorway. “So? You…look kind of…” He trailed off, gesturing at Yuuri.

Victor. He couldn’t fake-date Victor. Nobody would believe it, for one. Victor was so…beautiful, and perfect, and…and…

Yuuri buried his face in his arms. “Oh, god,” Yuuri heard himself moan into his uniform fabric, “I just fucked everything up, what am I going to do?”

He heard the rustle of the fabric, the whir of the closing door. He felt the warmth of Victor’s thigh, pressing against his, as he sat next to him.

“Hey,” Victor said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be this upset.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Yuuri muttered into his sleeve. “What did you even do?”

Victor stilled beside him. Even his breath stopped. Yuuri could still feel the warmth of his leg against his. Even now, he felt drawn to him. He didn’t want to want his best friend; if Victor found out, it would ruin everything. Yuuri would stop, if only he knew how.

“Okay,” Victor whispered. “I’m obviously missing something here. Tell me what happened?”

“My parents. They said they’d arranged my marriage, and I… I freaked out? Before they could say anything, I told them I was seeing someone.”

There was a pause. Yuuri felt Victor’s fingers play against his hair, brushing his scalp. “Oh, Yuuri.”

There was no judgment in those words, just care. That lack of judgment was probably why Yuuri had let Victor in so close.

“They didn’t say who they’d picked?”

Yuuri sighed. “I panicked before they could tell me. Now I don’t know what to do. I have to find a boyfriend in the next two weeks.”

He didn’t want to ask. Victor had already put up with him for years. And Yuuri wanted it deep down too much; he didn’t dare put it in words—

“So,” Victor said on a sigh, “you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?”

Yuuri lifted his head. Looked over at Victor, to see if he was teasing or lying or…

No.

He was just being Victor, who was as sweet and kind and loyal as he was beautiful.

Yuuri swallowed. “I… I couldn’t possibly ask it of you.”

“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”

“I don’t want to impose.” Yuuri wanted to impose. At nights, he dreamed of Victor, and imposing on him over and over. He wanted it so, so much.

Victor just smiled at him. “Making you happy is never an imposition.”

“We…” Yuuri exhaled. “We wouldn’t have to be, um…affectionate.”

Victor’s hand stilled against Yuuri’s scalp.

“I mean,” Yuuri said, brushing against him, “no more than we usually are. That’s, um. I mean, I know you’re sort of naturally a touchy person. And! I like it. With you, I mean.” God, what was he saying? “So we can keep doing that, and you know, people always tease us about being together, so maybe some of them would actually believe it?”

“Weelllll,” Victor said slowly, “that’s true.”

“We could just…pretend we started dating recently?” Yuuri said. “And, um, I don’t know, then, afterward, we can just say we decided we’re better as friends?”

He looked up into Victor’s eyes. Victor’s intensely, perfectly blue eyes.

“You can dump me,” he offered.

Victor smiled. “Let’s keep it believable,” he said, “and let’s not think of that right now. Is this really what you want? You want us to pretend to date so that you don’t have an arranged marriage?”

Yuuri exhaled and thought of whoever his parents might have come up with.

Not JJ. Yuuri’s parents knew him better than that, which meant it was someone kind and honest and probably a little quiet. Someone a little bit romantic, enough that he imagined himself in love with whatever fake video-drama version of Yuuri that he’d conjured up from news reports.

This wasn’t fair to him, that nameless man his parents had approached. Some other soberly responsible prince in one of the other systems in the Alliance was hoping Yuuri would say yes.

It wasn’t fair to Victor, who was going to have to ditch the New Nihon prince in some ugly, public fashion.

Mostly, it felt unfair to himself. He was going to have a few beautiful weeks pretending to date the man he was already in love with, and then he was going to have to stop.

Yuuri was a prince. He was used to life being unfair.

He looked up into Victor’s eyes and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It’s what I want.”

Victor brushed Yuuri’s bangs back and pressed a kiss on his forehead. “It’s decided, then. You have to know I’ll do anything for you, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said, and he looked up into Victor’s eyes. That flutter went through his heart, then rippled out through his whole body. “So what do we do?”

Victor set his palm against Yuuri’s cheek. “Just leave it to me.”

The relief Yuuri felt when Victor agreed to fake-date him lasted approximately thirty minutes—while Victor was in his room, promising him that it would be okay, that they’d make it work the way they’d made so many other capers work over the years. It was easy to believe Victor and his heart-shaped smile when he was present.

But Yuuri’s certainty started fraying the moment Victor left, dissolving into threads of worry. Who would believe that Victor was dating him? Why did he think this would work? What were his parents going to say when he had to admit it was all a lie? How was Yuuri going to keep his heart in line, if he let go of the careful, emotional barriers he’d constructed?

He made his way up to the bridge for his shift a few hours later, frazzled and confused.

“Hello, darling,” Victor said, winking at him from his seat on the other side of on the bridge from him.

Yuuri felt himself flush a bright crimson. “Um.” He looked around; the crew present seemed to think nothing of this greeting. “Right?”

Victor tilted his head meaningfully and waited.

Right. Fake dating. If they were dating, Yuuri would say…

“Hi?” Yuuri managed, ducking his head so he didn’t have to meet Victor’s eyes. God. He was so bad at lying. He’d had years of instruction on the subject—technically, his parents had called it “media training,” but it amounted to the same thing—and here he was. Um. Right. Hi. Great job, Yuuri. Excellent work. Fakest fake-dating effort ever.

“That’s not how you greeted me earlier,” Victor purred.

Victor, by contrast, was good enough for both of them. He was looking at Yuuri as if he really liked looking at him, as if Yuuri, bright red and flustered, was worth looking at.

“How many times do I have to tell you two?” Captain Baranovskaya sighed from the captain’s chair. “Stop flirting on the bridge. Save it for when you’re off duty.”

This was going even worse than Yuuri had imagined.

“I calculate the odds of that happening as one in three hundred billion,” Seung Gil Lee said from across the bridge. “It hasn’t happened yet. It is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes.”

“By the way,” Victor said nonchalantly. “We’re not just flirting any more. We’re dating.”

Yuuri slid behind his station, face red, and typed an urgent message to Victor. Argh, nobody will believe you if you say it like that!

Victor glanced at his console just long enough to brush Yuuri’s message aside as if it were a stray speck of dust on his screen.

He turned to Yuuri, his eyes glittering. “Isn’t that right, Yuuri?”

“I—um—” Yuuri swallowed. “Yes? Definitely?”

Oh, so believable. He could almost hear the exasperation in his imperial tutor’s voice, correcting his response. Stand straight, Your Imperial Highness, and for goodness’ sake, stop making statements sound like they’re questions! How many times do we have to drill this?

Nobody on the bridge seemed to notice Yuuri’s complete lack of verisimilitude.

Instead, half the crew present groaned en masse.

“Why couldn’t you have gotten together a week ago?” First Officer Altin sighed. “I thought I had timed the pool perfectly.”

Ensign Crispino sighed and looked upward. “I can’t believe Sara was right. She is never going to shut up.”

Minami, Yuuri’s own second in communications, just punched his fist in the air. “It’s about time!”

“I continue to submit to you,” Seung Gil Lee said, straightening to an at-attention position, falling fully into his role as ship’s legal officer, “that I won the pool two years ago last November, as that was when they started quote-unquote ‘dating’ by any reasonable metric. I submit that this crew’s refusal to recognize my rightful win is shamefully bad sportsmanship.”

“Oh, stuff it,” replied Lieutenant Giacometti from his place in the pilot’s chair. “They start dating when they say they’re dating. It’s that simple.”

“A statement of a relationship is neither a necessary nor a sufficient indication of such.” Seung Gil bristled. “Those involved in illicit affairs rarely admit it publicly, and those involved in sham arrangements may claim what is not true. I grant you that publicizing one’s relationship is one factor to be considered, but it is hardly dispositive of the matter.”

Sham arrangements. Yuuri’s heart gave a thump. They were already considering the possibility that this was fake.

“One must,” Seung Gil continued, “adopt a multifactorial balancing test. In this case, they have been seen holding hands, embracing, dancing together, kissing in public while drunk…”

What? They’d never done that. Yuuri was sure of it.

Mostly sure of it.

“…repeatedly spending sleep shifts in each others’ quarters…”

To watch movies, and also, because Makkachin missed Yuuri. And then beds on board ship were small; the cuddling really didn’t mean that much. Did it?

“…finagling away missions and leave in each other’s company, staring at each other—”

“Seung Gil,” Captain Baranovskaya interrupted, “if you keep going, we’ll be here for a decade. Can we please all get back to work?”

“But, the principle—!”

“The principle can wait to be exonerated when you’re off duty.”

Yuuri heaved a covert sigh of relief. He suspected that she knew exactly what was happening. She probably knew the exact ins and outs of imperial New Nihon culture, knew that Yuuri was coming up on the time when he’d be expected to marry.

But even though her eyes landed on him, she didn’t call him out for his deception. She just gestured to him. “Katsuki, we’re passing through the Liete System on our way to New Nihon, where we’ll be stopping to discharge waste carbon. They’ve asked if you wish to meet with the governor while you’re present.”

“Um.” Yuuri hesitated. He had gotten better at these meetings since he started in the Fleet. It was one thing to represent himself; he’d always fallen apart, since he didn’t know what the point of meeting him was in the first place.

Representing the Fleet? He could do that. He had become good at doing that.

“I suggest you say yes.”

“Yes, then.”

“Pick an away team. Tell me who you’re bringing, in addition to Victor. Two more, I think, should be sufficient for protocol.”

Kind of her to play along with his deception. Yuuri found himself vaguely pinkening. “Minami,” he said. “He needs more experience, I think.”

“Yes!” Minami said behind him.

“And, um. Makkachin?” From what he’d seen in his research—and he always thoroughly researched any system they approached, lest they have to make emergency contact—the starport was not generally dog-friendly, but made accommodations.

Makkachin was entirely an accommodation.

Captain Baranovskaya huffed impatiently. “I should never have made that dog a crew member. ‘Able to sniff out black holes’ my eye. Makkachin may go with you, but you should bring someone else. Someone actually sentient. Someone who can handle a laser-pistol.”

“Well, technically, Makkachin—”

“If someone fitted the ship’s official Black Hole Detection Dog with laser headgear that used brain wave activity to trigger weapons fire, that would be in violation of Alliance Fleet Regulation Chapter 6, Section 23: ‘Munitions must only be issued to Fleet members who are deemed capable of assenting to all regulations regarding the appropriate use of force.’ Any person involved in such an outrage should remain silent unless he wants to be courtmartialed.”

“But I—” Victor called from ten feet away.

Silence, but only for a moment, as Captain Baranovskaya straightened in her seat and turned to the offender.

“I particularly suggest silence on the matter if it would be an individual’s second courtmartial.”

“I was going to say that I would, of course, never do such a thing,” Victor said smoothly.

“Good. Then Yuuri, who else were you planning to bring?”

“Um. Then… Corporal Babicheva, I guess?”

“That will do. Make sure you brief them on the relevant protocol, Yuuri. Especially Minami. That boy tends to shoot off at the mouth.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Well? What are you waiting for. You have protocol to review.”

“Yes, Captain. Of course, Captain.”

Work. Work was good. Work was a lot easier than fake dating. Yuuri went back to his console relieved. Yuuri was good at his job, all his years of training at New Nihon finally paying off. Here, he could help his crew communicate with others. All he wanted was to stay here, on this ship, with Victor. It was all he wanted. Really.

He pulled up his notes from the last time they’d been through the system, and cross-referenced his usual sources. A few notes on etiquette would need to be updated. For instance, after that event last winter, he should make a note not to mention crocodiles to the governor. Just before he buried himself in his work, he glanced up.

Victor was watching him.

Yuuri felt himself flush all over again.

Victor winked at him, and Yuuri burned an even deeper red. If only Victor would look at him like that in reality when he wasn’t faking. If he ever did…

No. He wouldn’t.

“This isn’t going to work.”

It was later—night, at least according to Yuuri’s body and the shift he was on. Yuuri’s screen was set to show one of his and Victor’s mutual interests—low-gravity ice skating, the interplanetary series leading up to the Alliance’s games. They’d both skated as children—Yuuri, with the best medics standing by and advisors admonishing him to be careful. A white-knuckled family servant had been standing by at all times with his hand on the gravity switch, ready to punch it to nothing if Yuuri took a fall.

Victor had learned brazenly, on his own, on a field he’d constructed in an abandoned mine. They’d neither of them had time to pursue it beyond a few basic quads. Child’s play, really.

He’d stashed his desk and chair in their folded-up cabinets, and set up his bed. He and Victor had spent uncountable evenings on a bed together, watching low-grav skating or reruns of Asteroid Raiders, which Victor liked because he could make fun of the engineering, and which Yuuri loved because Victor could make fun of the engineering.

His desk and chair were folded away, and they sat almost next to each other on his bed. They’d sat on a bed together countless times in the years that they’d been friends; it didn’t mean anything.

Tonight, though, he could almost hear Seung Gil’s list of proof they’d been dating already.

Kissing while drunk.

Spending sleep-shifts in each others’ quarters.

No, it was ridiculous. They weren’t…like that. Or at least, Victor wasn’t like that. Hell, they even had Makkachin between them, Victor retooling her laser-firing collar to avoid courtmartial.

“Got it,” Victor muttered. “That’s how we’ll fix this. Who’s my good girl?”

If Seung Gil knew they were maintaining a dog’s breadth between them, surely his multifactorial balancing test would fall on its side and he’d argue as vehemently for fake dating.

Yuuri sighed. “Think it’ll work?”

Victor set his nano-solderer down and looked up. “I already said. Of course it’s going to work,” he said. “I looked up the regulation myself. Lilia’s right—if Makkachin has physical control of a weapon, it’s a violation. But if Makkachin controls my laser-pistol at a distance… It turns out that Fleet Legal never contemplated that possibility. As long as I’m holding it, I’m technically not violating the letter of the law. Just bruising the spirit a little.”

“Um.” Victor looked over at his fake boyfriend. “Does that mean Makkachin can control any laser pistol she encounters? Because that sounds dangerous.”

“Of course not. Every piece of Fleet equipment has a quantum beacon hardwired into its control chip that enables it to be found, and send status messages. If her collar can’t detect the beacon, she won’t even know where a pistol is. And without the quantum cryptographic control key, she wouldn’t be able to do anything, even if she could control it.”

“It still seems kind of dangerous, letting her fire…even one laser?”

“Why? Her aim is better than yours, her reflexes are better than mine, and the laser has excellent multidirectional fire features that won’t require precise pointing on my part.”

“But… She’s a dog?”

Victor gasped and put his hands over Makkachin’s ears. “Hush! Not around the children, love!”

Yuuri found himself blushing.

“Hmph.” Victor tossed his hair airily. “Asking me if it’s a good idea. If it will even work. You’re as bad as Lilia.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Yuuri said, “and oh, God, do not let her hear you call her Lilia.”

“You know she secretly loves it.”

“Yes, but…” Yuuri sighed. There was no point trying to get Victor to avoid demerits. He never seemed to mind. “That wasn’t what I meant when I asked if it would work? I have utmost faith in your engineering. I meant… nobody is going to believe that we’re dating.”

Victor blinked. “Um.”

Yuuri understood why he was hesitating.

“Okay, technically,” Yuuri explained, “apparently the entire crew believed it immediately? But that’s just because they’ve incredibly gullible.”

“Is that right?”

“I mean, Plisetsky literally believed you when you said Makkachin was the ship’s newest ensign and we were going to leave him at the nearest port because we were over enrolled.”

Victor smiled happily. “That was so…good.”

“And that time we convinced Mila that the stalactites in the cave were sentient beings? That was amazing.”

“That was all you,” Victor purred.

“So like I said.” Yuuri sighed and leaned back. “Gullible, the lot of them. My parents will be harder to fool.”

Victor reached across Makkachin and took Yuuri’s hand. Not that that meant anything; they’d held hands before, and Yuuri was pretty sure it didn’t mean anything. It was just Victor being Victor.

“I see what you’re saying.” Victor glanced at the screen in time to see the skater from Besena complete an almost-perfect hex axle. “You are kind of out of my league—”

“What?” Yuuri turned to him. “No!”

Victor blinked. “You’re a prince.” He held up a finger.

“It’s a vestigial aristocracy, I don’t have any actual power, it doesn’t mean anything—”

“Your people love you.” Another finger.

“My approval ratings are only high because I haven’t been on planet for the last five years!”

“You have a personal fortune rumored to be seventeen million credits.”

“What? I mean, yes, technically…but, but, I didn’t earn it! It doesn’t really mean anything. I keep trying to give more of it away, but the stupid interest just continues to pile up!”

“And you’re beautiful and kind and the best science officer the Interstellar Fleet has seen in decades.” Victor smiled sadly at Yuuri. “And I’m…me.”

“The most decorated non-captain in the entire fleet!” Yuuri jumped to his feet, low-grav skating forgotten. “The literal face of Fleet recruitment! They’ve been making video reenactments of your missions since you were fifteen!”

Yuuri had watched all of them.

“My parents were miners, not even from a planetary system with an incorporated government.”

“Exactly!” Yuuri pointed at Victor. “You’ve made something of yourself from humble beginnings. Unlike me, who has managed to make nothing of myself despite imperial birth.”

Victor sighed.

“Also,” Yuuri added, “I love your parents. Your parents are great.”

Victor looked over at Yuuri.

“Besides,” Yuuri added, turning to the furry bundle that shared the bed with them, “you have the very first dog who was inducted in the Fleet.”

“Lilia only did that to keep me from getting courtmartialed a second time.”

“I’m just saying.” Yuuri buried his fingers in Makkachin’s fur. “I don’t have an official dog. That makes you miles cooler than I am. Everyone is going to know it the moment we land on the planet.”

He felt Victor’s fingers touch his shoulder. Heard him shift so he was closer to Yuuri.

Makkachin lifted her head at this encroachment into her space. She gave Victor a dirty look which suggested it was a good thing that her laser was temporarily disabled, before standing up and jumping off the bed in a huff.

That left the two of them…close. With nothing between them.

Yuuri swallowed. His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t help but think of what it would mean if this were real. If he and Victor were really dating, and Victor were to touch him…

“Really, Yuuri,” Victor said. “Do you think we can’t convince people? Don’t you want to at least…try to see if we can be convincing?”

He shouldn’t turn. If he did, Victor would see the naked longing on his face. The want. The desire he’d been trying to run from all the years of their acquaintance. Yuuri knew it; he shouldn’t turn.

He turned.

He looked into Victor’s face, and oh, god, he knew it was a lie, but he could almost detect the same longing he felt in the deep blue of Victor’s eyes, in the set of his mouth, in the way his tongue darted out, touching his lips…

“Don’t you want to try?” Victor asked, and Yuuri did. He did.

“We shouldn’t,” Yuuri said. “We’re pretending.”

If they kissed with nobody around, it would be like not pretending, a thought so scary Yuuri didn’t know what to do about it.

“I’m a method actor,” Victor replied. “If I were dating you, I would want to kiss you for the first time sober when we were in private. I would want your kiss to belong to me, only me. Not anyone else.” His finger drew a line down Yuuri’s arm, and Yuuri felt his hairs stand on end as it passed by. “Don’t you think?”

Yuuri wasn’t thinking at all anymore. There was probably a flaw in Victor’s logic. But his rationality was drowning in the blue of Victor’s eyes, the heat wafting off him, the feel of his hands. He was as gullible as the rest of the Victory’s crew, and somehow, it made a weird, perfect sense.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes.”

He pushed up on his elbows, his lips touching Victor’s.

For a second, Victor froze—stupid, stupid, they hadn’t even been pretending to date for a day and Yuuri had already ruined everything—

Then Victor exhaled against Yuuri’s lips, melting against him, kissing him back, and, oh, God, God, this was why they couldn’t do this.

Victor tasted like the peppermint of his toothpaste. His skin was warm against Yuuri’s hands, and he folded himself up against Yuuri (on his bed, his bed) like he had been made to snuggle against him. His arm slid around Yuuri, angling his chin up, and they kissed harder. Deeper.

It was the kind of dream that would normally have had Yuuri waking up in a swirl of desire, the kind that would have him taking cold showers and counting backwards from ten thousand.

Except it wasn’t a dream.

He shifted, sliding against Victor, wrapping his arms around him, kissing him, losing himself…

“There.” Victor pulled away. There was a breathlessness to him, and he rested his forehead against Yuuri’s. He was close enough that Yuuri could see a faint blush painting his cheeks. “Was that believable enough?”

Right. Reality returned like a shock of cold water. It hadn’t been real. It had been just like his dreams, except worse, because now he knew the taste of Victor, the feel of him. He had that much more to remember when he woke at night, yearning for his best friend.

“Yes.” Yuuri’s heart hurt. “Yes, it was…believable.”

Maybe the problem wasn’t that nobody would believe it. Maybe the problem was that everyone would. They were all going to realize that Yuuri loved Victor. They’d figure it out the instant Victor touched him in public.

Victor just smiled at Yuuri like nothing was wrong. “Then you can do this, Yuuri. You can do it.”

Yuuri shut his eyes. “I can do it,” he said.

It was going to hurt, but he could do it.

“Get some sleep.” Victor set his hand on Yuuri’s head. “We have an away mission, and I want to buy you a present.”

The station had an actual park, planted with the lush blue grasses native to the Archolean system that so often tended to dominate space installations. Yuuri walked down the gravel path, wondering how it was that every station, no matter how far away it was, from Old Earth, managed to try to imitate it nonetheless. There was a pond—part of the station’s water reclamation and recycling system—teeming with catfish and lilies.

Makkachin barked and rolled on the grass, basking in the golden light reflecting off the solar mirror array.

The meeting with the governor had been baffling. For one, he’d greeted Yuuri with a bow, when Victor was the ranking officer on the away mission. Then he’d spent the whole time talking about trade with New Nihon.

Yuuri had found that even more baffling. Yuuri’s home certainly was the home of biological innovation, but he had no governmental role at all. He had tried to explain that New Nihon was a democracy, and Yuuri had no elected role at all.

“Of course, of course,” the governor had replied. “Just put in a good word on our behalf, eh?”

Yuuri had had to refuse the offered gifts—accepting them would have been a violation of Fleet Regulations, which prohibited gifts from authorities to Fleet personnel.

“Honestly,” he complained to Victor as they were walking through the park, hands twined together as if they were an actual couple, “you’d think an elected governor of all people would understand democracy! Why does everyone make a big deal about the whole ‘Prince Yuuri’ thing?”

Victor’s hand tightened around his. “Um. New Nihon is one of the most powerful empires? And it only has one prince.”

“I’m not even the crown prince! I’m the political equivalent of a spare appendix or something!”

“My money’s on or something.”

Somewhere behind them, Minami and Babicheva wandered, supposedly giving them space to do “couple things.” Couple things. Ha! If only they knew.

“Gah.” Yuuri shook his head. “Am I an officer of the Fleet, or am I an officer of the Fleet?”

“You’re my officer of the Fleet.”

Yuuri felt his throat go dry. “I.” He glanced up once at Victor, thought about how far away Mila must be. Then he looked swiftly away, dropping his voice so as not to be overheard. “Um, don’t you think that’s overdoing it? We’re trying to be believable as a couple here.”

“Oh, I’ve been thinking about what I’d do if I were dating you for ages,” Victor replied airily. “And sweetheart, if you think I wouldn’t overdo it…”

Yuuri flushed. “Right.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine. Or maybe, it was impossible to imagine. Victor overdid everything, as if he’d been dialed up to full volume and couldn’t bring himself to turn it down. A Victor that fell for Yuuri? He would be…unstoppable. In the best, most loving way.

That was why it seemed so impossible. Sometimes, Yuuri thought that maybe, maybe there was something there, something in the way Victor looked at him, something in the way Victor glomped onto him when they were watching movies together at night.

He’d always rejected the idea. If Victor actually liked Yuuri, he’d never have spent five years staring into his eyes without making a move. He’d have gone after him, full throttle.

“If we were dating,” Victor said, “I would want everyone to know you were mine.”

“But—”

“Oooh.” Victor dropped Yuuri’s hand. “Stay there. I just saw something I need.” He darted across the lawn to a vendor’s stall at the edge of the park, Makkachin barking and running after him.

Yuuri couldn’t take his eyes away from him. His silver hair flashed in the sun, gesturing as he pointed to the android’s wares, arguing over the price.

He really was beautiful, so pretty that Yuuri felt it in his lungs, in the tingling nerves of his lips. Or maybe that was the sunlight, concentrated by the mirrored array into real full-spectrum warmth after months on board ship.

Of course Victor felt like sunlight.

Victor nodded, shaking the vendor’s hand, and darted back across the field toward Yuuri.

This wasn’t real, that brilliant smile, the way Yuuri couldn’t look away. Makkachin barked alongside him, tail wagging in delight at being out, and Yuuri felt his heart melt.

Oh, damn.

“Sir!” Two children interrupted him five feet from Yuuri. “Is that a dog? I thought dogs weren’t allowed on the station!”

“This dog,” Victor said proudly, “is an official Alliance Fleet member.”

“Whoa!”

“Amazing, isn’t it!” Victor produced a ball from his pocket. “She likes chasing this. Give it a go!”

Victor was good with children, too. Yuuri was terrible. All he could do, when he was forced to interact with them, was hope they liked the same games he did.

The thought of having kids with Victor made his heart hurt. He could imagine Victor’s enthusiasm for every step along the way—picking a gene-splicing clinic, arguing over what room in the New Nihon palace they should pick as a nursery, reading reviews of portable ectogenic wombs, making a chart to convince Yuuri of his choice. Victor would probably sing one of his beautiful sounding lullabies, and Yuuri would have to make him stop because he understood Russian and those sweet-sounding songs were actually the stuff of nightmares.

“Here,” Victor said, bounding back to Yuuri’s side, and Yuuri’s little family daydream popped into nothing.

“Ah! What are you doing? My hair!”

Victor batted Yuuri’s hands away, settling something on the top of Yuuri’s head.

“There!” He took a step back. “Voila!”

Yuuri could see light out of the corner of his eye. He reached up, tentatively testing with his fingers. A string of little glowing, twinkling lights dangled in front of him, as if he were wearing a halo of stars.

“There,” Victor said in a tone of satisfaction. “Finally, a crown fit for my prince.”

Yuuri didn’t know what to say to that. New Nihon princes didn’t wear crowns.

“Where’s Makkachin?” he asked instead, and then answered his own question by finding her. The children were tossing her ball high in the air, laughing as she leapt for it. “Oh.”

“Yuuri.” Victor took a step closer. He touched the tip of his finger to Yuuri’s ear, adjusting the coronet of stars. The touch was both intimate and casual at once, and Yuuri felt himself yearning, yearning…

“Those stars against your hair… They make you look like the vastness of space,” Victor said in a low voice.

Yuuri knew it was stupid and cheesy and meaningless. But Victor was such a good actor. It seemed inconceivable to look up into the bright blue of Victor’s eyes and not want to believe him.

“Funny,” Yuuri said. “I was thinking earlier that you were the sun. So… It would make sense…”

He caught his thought before it slipped out. If you were everything, and I was the nothing that surrounded you.

But Victor didn’t need to hear that. His eyes just fixed on Yuuri. He touched a finger to Yuuri’s chin, tilting it up, until their lips were close—so close he could taste Victor’s breath, so close—

Victor’s laser-pistol fired; Victor jumped, smacking his forehead into Yuuri’s. He made a sound, then whirled around—

“What the hell was that?” Yuuri asked.

Victor just pumped his fist. “Good dog!” he shouted. He turned back to grab Yuuri’s arm. “Did you see that? That was amazing!”

Yuuri saw nothing but Makkachin, sitting under a tree, chewing her ball with a self-satisfied grin on her face, surrounded by—

Oh. Surrounded by leaves from a singed branch. Shit.

“You didn’t see?” Victor said. “The kids accidentally threw her ball in a tree. It got stuck between two branches. Makkachin used my laser to shoot it down. Who’s a good dog?”

“Uh, Victor.” Yuuri tugged his sleeve, glancing at the edge of the park.

“Yes!” Victor took three steps forward, holding out his arms, and Makkachin dashed to him. “It’s you! You’re the best Makkachin ever, you did such a good job, do not worry at all about the fact that you burned a hole in my holster—”

“Uh, Victor.” Yuuri tapped Victor’s shoulder. “Shooting lasers on board this space station is illegal? It was in my briefing, did you not pay attention?”

“The best dog ever!”

“Can you please listen to me when we’re about to get arrested?”

Victor blinked, the smile freezing on his face. He glanced behind them, at the uniformed men gathering at the edge of the park. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “Whoops,” he said, “Lilia is going to be pissed.”

“Diplomatic immunity.” Captain Lilia Baranovskaya paced down one side of her office, and Yuuri found himself cringing in his dress boots. “Commander Nikiforov, you do not have diplomatic immunity.”

“I mean, if I’m dating Yuuri—”

She turned, pointing a slender finger at Yuuri. “Commander Katsuki does not have diplomatic immunity. Your dog does not have diplomatic immunity. Nobody on your away mission had diplomatic immunity! Can you give me one reason that you brought it up to the local authorities.”

Victor gave her an irreverent wink. “It…worked?”

A corner of her mouth twitched, but she quickly got it under control. “That is irrelevant. The only reason I’m not correcting their mistake and demanding that they hold you for trial is because I know they’ll let you off too easily.” She paused in her pacing right in front of Victor.

“Aw, Lilia.”

“Do not call me that. You keep walking up to the edge of disciplinary infractions and deliberately stomping on the line. Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

Victor swallowed. His eyes twitched toward Yuuri, then back to the Captain. “Captain Baranovskaya. Please.”

“This is the end of your game,” she said. “I’m going to make your worst nightmare come true.”

“Please.”

“I’m not going to report you,” she said. “I’m not even going to write you up.”

“Huh?” Yuuri frowned in puzzlement.

“I am going to punish you,” she continued. “We’ve just received word that the Yarmouth has been sending the same stationary beacon for a week, and it hasn’t been responding to subspace communications. Normally, I’d want you on the bridge figuring out what’s going on.”

Victor nodded.

“This time, I’m putting you on the grungiest shift on the away mission,” Lilia said. “It’s going to be so boring. And I’m putting Ensign Plisetsky in command. It’ll be good practice for him, eh?”

Victor practically whined. “Captain. Please. That’s too cruel.”

Lilia rolled her eyes. “Yuuri, go with him, and make sure he follows orders.”

#

The I.A.S.S. Yarmouth was a small, dark hulk of a science ship, engines powered down, generators cold even on the enhanced sensors of the approaching shuttle craft.

Yuuri watched Victor flicking his hands over the shuttle’s display like a virtuoso playing piano as he accessed scans.

“No signs of life.” Victor frowned. “No signs of organic aftermath, either, if I’m reading the scans right. Secondary electronic life support systems appear to be active. The fish in the biosphere circulation tanks are still alive, and apparently there are some…” He paused. “My guess is chickens? Anyone want chicken piccata tonight?”

“Commander Nikiforov,” Plisetsky said, clearly relishing his job. “This is no time for humor. There are seven souls aboard the Yarmouth. We need to know what happened to them.”

“Victor,” Yuuri muttered, “behave.”

Victor just winked at Yuuri; Plisetsky made an annoyed noise and angrily docked the shuttle.

And maybe Victor had decided to be good, because his next words were exactly what Yuuri would have expected from the most-decorated science officer in the Fleet.

“Life support appears to be operational. Pressure at 0.9 atmospheres; temperature a little cold at ten Celsius, but at least it’s not absolute zero.”

Plisetsky looked suspiciously at Victor.

“Fine,” he said after a long pause. “Um. Good work? You Commander and Katsudon do a quick visual inspection of the ship to make sure the scans haven’t missed anyone. Minami, you’re with me. We’re getting the ship’s manifest and black box.”

The shuttle door slid open, and the four of them separated.

The Yarmouth’s life support systems made a constant, reassuring hum. At least Yuuri tried to tell himself it was reassuring that as they crept around the ship, but it was empty—too empty—and it made him feel weird.

“Hello?” Yuuri called, and then, because half of the ship’s tiny crew was Baqhean, “Druvxuina?”

No response.

The captain’s quarters were empty, too. They looked as if the officer had simply left one morning, expecting to return in an hour. A cold, half-empty cup of something that might have been tea rested on the desk; a transparent report printed on bioflimsy sat next to it, half-marked up.

“Druvxuina?” Yuuri called again. “Siuqana, kalewa.”

“What does that mean?” Victor asked.

“We’re here to help,” Yuuri translated. “My Baqhean isn’t that good, but I can manage basic conversation.”

“You’re so smart.”

Yuuri ignored this. If he started letting Victor fake-flirt with him now, he’d dissolve in a puddle of want, and he’d never be able to concentrate on the mission at hand.

The four scientist berths were empty, as was the engineering lab.

It wasn’t until they were making their way to the galley that Yuuri noticed something. “Victor. Four of the five escape pods are gone.”

“That’s weird.” Victor frowned. “Usually when the escape pods fire, the ship’s coded beacon changes. But there wasn’t anything there about this…” He bit his lip, frowning. “Something weird is going on. In fact—”

As he spoke, the single remaining escape pod door slid open. A blue light lit the interior cabin.

Yuuri fumbled his laser-pistol out, pointing—

“There’s nobody here,” Victor said with a laugh, swatting Yuuri’s shaking hand down. “Remember the scans? And if there were, it’s not like your aim would—”

“Shut up about my aim, Victor.” Yuuri’s heart was pounding. “If there’s nobody here, then what’s going on? Why did that door just open?” His voice shook.

“It’s probably not a big deal,” Victor said. “Just some kind of malfunction. On these smaller ships, machinery often indicates that it’s in need of service when someone walks by. Let’s take a look; maybe it’ll shed some light on what happened here. Come on.”

He took hold of Yuuri’s hand, hauling him through the door of the escape pod.

The interior was soulless metal and glass. The pod had a window—a real window, not just a screen. There were the usual indentations in the wall, indicating fold-down berths. Handles, the edges smooth, lined the walls, just in case the artificial gravity were to fail.

The tiny pod computer was dark and silent on the wall. Behind a panel, Yuuri could see the coils of the cloaking device, pulsing and well-charged.

It was a depressing box made for survival, yes, but it was entirely harmless. Yuuri took a deep breath, willing his pulse to slow.

“See?” Victor stepped inside, brushing his thumb along the computer screen. “Nothing to worry about. Bet you the pod is overdue for maintenance; this is probably just an automated response to a passing person, to alert us to the issue.”

There was nothing to worry about. Yuuri took another deep breath and came to stand beside Victor. There they were, the maintenance records, listing the last time this pod was serviced—

Two weeks ago?

But pods of this size only needed to be serviced on a monthly basis. Why did Victor think that the schedule was off? Oh. The maintenance record was in Baqhean. He wouldn’t know until Yuuri told him.

“Um, Victor,” Yuuri began. “I don’t think—”

The escape pod door slid shut.

Victor turned, swearing.

The engines hummed to life; Yuuri heard the clack of docking clamps disengaging.

“What?” Victor hammered on the computer screen, but it had gone blank once more. “What’s going on? What, what?”

The pod detached itself from the ship and hurled itself into space. Yuuri pushed his face against the glass window, but he was facing the wrong direction; he couldn’t see either the Yarmouth or the Victory.

“Wait, wait.” Victor hammered on the computer. “Wait, why isn’t Lilia coming after us?”

“We’re cloaked,” Yuuri said dully. “They can’t detect us.”

“What’s happening?”

“Um.” Yuuri sat down. He thought about the fact that the ship’s beacon hadn’t broadcast the missing escape pods. He thought about the way the pod had practically invited them in, before shutting the door and self-ejecting.

On a ship the size of the Victory, such a strategy would never have worked. Aboard a small science ship, with a complement of seven souls? Viral piracy was cheap, compared to the real thing. Program a few shuttle pods to mimic disrepair; when people stepped inside to see what was going on, eject them. Come by and pick up the ship.

Yuuri could even see how it happened. The Yarmouth had stopped to collect data from one of its stations. If the pirates had managed to infect the station itself to deliver the viral payload to the ship’s computers…

Yuuri exhaled. “I, um. I’m going to guess that the escape pods are malfunctioning more than we thought?”

Victor rubbed his eyes. “Fuck. Yuuri, I’m so sorry. I’m going to guess you’re right.”

By the time Victor managed to disassemble the pod enough to reach the computer, Yuuri had gone through a thousand scenarios in his head.

They would get lost in space.

They were cloaked; unless they could turn that off and get some kind of a signal out, they would never be found.

On the plus side, Yuuri would never have to go home, never have to stand in front of crowds and have to pretend to be Prince Yuuri again.

He had heard of people surviving in escape pods for years. Maybe, maybe, he could tell Victor how he really felt.

Maybe, if Victor was trapped and felt like Yuuri was the best option…

Ugh, that made him feel sick, imagining taking advantage like that.

“Yuuri,” Victor said, interrupting this terrible reverie, “I need your okay on a course of action.”

“Why? You’re the ranking officer.”

Victor sighed patiently. “Because we might die,” he said, “and you’re my best friend and only shitty boyfriends do things that might kill you both without asking for your opinion?”

“We’re…” Yuuri felt his heart float for a second, as if the artificial gravity had just faltered. “I thought…we were only fake dating?” He could hear the naked want in his own voice, which was stupid because Victor was talking about death.

“I may only get to be your fake boyfriend,” Victor said solemnly, “but if that’s all I get to be, I’m not going to be a shitty fake boyfriend. I’m going to be the best fake boyfriend you’ve ever had.”

There was something there, something that made Yuuri almost wonder.

Not now, he told his stupid pining mind. Deal with dying first.

“Okay. Tell me about the death part.”

“The pod’s chip is well and truly fucked,” Victor said. “I could fix it if I had the tools onboard the Victory, but from here? There is no way to override it or reprogram it, not without disrupting life-critical systems.”

“That sounds bad.”

“What I can do is shut if off. Physically remove the borked computational chip, and replace it. I used to do that kind of thing all the time at home, when I was trying to… Never mind that.” Victor shut his eyes.

“So, um… You didn’t get to the death part?”

“Problem is, if I take away the chip, nothing’s running the computer. I can replace it, but the only thing I have that is remotely on the same computational level is the chip from my laser-pistol, which is not set up to run a ship. I can reprogram that, but… I’m going to have to copy some of the life-critical routines over, and since I don’t dare connect the two without risking infecting my pistol, I have to copy things by hand.”

“Uh,” Yuuri said, because that only vaguely made sense. “Okay?”

“And there’s not quite enough memory on my blaster chip to reboot all the features. I’ll lose almost everything—communications, engines, artificial gravity.”

Yuuri made a face.

“We won’t be cloaked,” Victor said, “and so anyone who knows our ship’s beacon can find us, but… um, when I replace the chip, it’ll replace our beacon, which means unless we get really lucky, they will only find us by a random sweep.”

“A random sweep is better than not being able to find us because we’re cloaked, right?”

“Yeah. But we’ll also lose water reclamation functionality.” Victor looked in Yuuri’s eyes. “That’s the worst one. We’ll run out of drinkable water in around a week. The good news is, if nobody finds us in four days or so, the chances of them finding us via a random search becomes…mathematically unlikely, and at that point, it becomes a matter of how we go, not if.”

“So it’s a zero chance of being picked up, versus a non-zero one?”

Victor nodded.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Victor stared at him. “If I fuck up the system, then we’ll lose everything,” he said. “Oxygen recycling, but more crucially, heat.”

“Well,” Yuuri said, “if I have to freeze to death with somebody, I’m glad it’s potentially you.”

Victor smiled faintly. “Thanks. Just give me a little time.”

It took Victor hours—checking, muttering to himself, then asking Yuuri to check his work—”You don’t need to know what it does,” Victor said, “just that I copied it over correctly.”

Finally, the fix was ready. Victor opened the access panel, checked his tools—headlamp, micro solderer. He set one hand on the power breaker and paused.

“Yuuri. Are you sure you want to take this risk?”

“You’re taking the same risk.”

“I’m not His Imperial Highness, New Nihon’s own Prince Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri shut his eyes. “Shut up. It’s a stupid vestigial aristocracy.”

“I mean, I’m just a nobody. The universe won’t care if anything happens to me. I’m not His Imperial Highness of House Katsuki, Yuuri Katsuki, Prince of Hasetsu, Empress’s Sword of Justice, Knight of the Order of the Rising Suns, Counselor of Inamari, Baron of New Fukuoka.”

“They’re just stupid titles,” Yuuri muttered. “They don’t mean anything. Everyone gets a title on their sixteenth birthday.”

Victor leaned forward and brushed Yuuri’s hair back. “Literally not everyone. I don’t mind taking a twenty percent gamble with my own life. Yours, on the other hand… You’re precious.”

“You.” Yuuri’s voice shrank, and he pressed back against the wall. But there was nowhere to hide, not in this entire pod. “You don’t have to pretend we’re dating now, you know. Nobody can see us.”

“Oh, Yuuri.” Victor didn’t move his hand away. “I’m not pretending.”

“Just… do it.” Yuuri choked. “It’s—I’m not worth all that, honestly. Nobody would miss me if I was gone.”

Victor bit his lip and flipped the power breaker.

The pod went dark. The whir of recirculating air stopped; the engines came to a standstill. The artificial gravity vanished, and Yuuri felt himself slowly start to float off the floor. Space seemed to surround them, darker and more impossible than ever. It was impossible for the insulated craft to lose heat in an instant, but it still felt suddenly colder, cold enough that Yuuri felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“We’re still moving,” Yuuri whispered. “I thought you said the engines would stop?”

“They did.” Victor sighed. “But we were already moving. An object in motion tends to remain in motion.”

Yuuri swallowed, thinking of their little pod receding from the Victory and all hope of detection. “Oh. I knew that. I had just forgotten. Aren’t there, like, solar winds to create friction?”

Victor huffed. “Not…like that.”

Victor bent; the microsolderer sparked. He worked quickly; still, by the time he pushed back, wiping his forehead, it was noticeably colder in their little pod.

“Let’s do it,” he muttered. He flipped the breaker.

For a moment there was nothing. Then the lights came back, dimmer than before. The floor warmed subtly under Yuuri’s hand. Victor ran his hand over the computer, checking systems.

“Are we…”

“Yeah.” Victor broke out in a smile. “Yeah, it worked! Now… We just have to wait for Lilia to find us.”

“She’ll do that, right?”

Victor pressed his lips together. “If she searches the right part of space first, yeah. She’ll find us in the first day or two.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Victor looked at him for a second.

“Don’t lie to me, Victor.”

“Space is big, and we’ve been moving cloaked at half-light speed for four hours. If she doesn’t find us in the first four days, the volume of space they’ll have to search is so astronomical that nobody would devote the time to finding us. We’ll be…essentially unfindable, unless…”

“They’ll find us,” Yuuri said. “And if they don’t, there’s nobody I’d rather die of thirst with than you.”

Six hours passed, then twelve. They folded the beds down, but discovered that without gravity, beds were nothing except padded slabs to stub your toe against.

They set up sleep sacks instead, lashed to what had once been a floor, and napped next to each other. When they woke, they watched the stars go by, cuddled next to each other. Sometime during that first day, Victor took Yuuri’s hand.

Yuuri didn’t let go.

“You know,” Yuuri said, two days into their unexpected space vacation/potential upcoming funeral, “I’ve spent a lot of time hiding from myself.”

Victor took a moment to consider this. “I know.”

“I guess…this whole prince thing.” He didn’t let go of Victor’s hand. “It’s just an accident of birth. And, like, I really believe in democracy, okay? It’s weird that people think that it matters that I’m part of this stupid vestigial aristocracy? It’s weird that people still pay attention to it, that they care who I marry, and that there’s like a stupid amount of money and land that I get just because of who my parents are. It shouldn’t matter. I feel like I’ve lived my whole life thinking that the person I am shouldn’t matter. It’s just weird.”

“It’s why people love you,” Victor said. “Because you don’t act like it matters.” He turned on his side, and set a hand on Yuuri’s cheek. “Because you join the fleet and work your way up, like the rest of us nobodies. You act like you’re just a regular person, and that’s what makes you special.”

“That doesn’t make any logical sense. I shouldn’t get credit for acting like a regular person. Regular people act like regular people all the time, and nobody ever thinks it’s amazing.”

Victor shook his head. “Most regular people who get told they’re more important than everyone else tend to believe it.”

“Well.” Yuuri looked up at the metal studs of the ceiling. “I mean, yes, people tell me that I’m important. But it was so obvious to me that everyone who said it was lying.”

Victor took his hand and kissed it softly. “You see?”

Yuuri did not see, so he just held Victor’s hand and waited.

Three days in, Yuuri found himself wishing that the cramped bathroom facilities allowed for more than a sonic shower. As soon as he’d hit a rank where he was allowed to have private bathroom facilities, he’d splurged on a small tub made of hinoki cypress. But even if he’d had a tub, the water reclamation systems hadn’t rebooted, and they couldn’t waste an ounce. Besides, null-grav and baths didn’t mix.

“You know,” he said to Victor, as they played their ninety-seventh game of tic-tac-toe, drawn with imaginary lines on the floor, as they drifted in place, “when we first became friends, I used to imagine that we’d get stranded like this together.”

“Daydream or nightmare?”

Yuuri felt his ears heat. “Um. Well.”

Victor didn’t say anything, and Yuuri thought about one of his favorite little dreams. They’d crash-land on a planet with a perfect beach and no news media. It would have inexplicably clean water and plenty of fruit that had nutrients that were bioavailable to humans. There would be fish and no large predators.

In his more elaborate dreams, he’d pretend that their craft had been—for some ridiculous reason—carrying hundreds of pounds of rice and things like soy sauce and miso and mirin and panko, just so Yuuri would be able to impress Victor with his heretofore unknown ability to improvise katsudon.

“Even then, I was dreaming of running away,” Yuuri said solemnly. “I knew I was running away, but I wanted it anyway. Nobody would be able to get at me. No interviews. No expectations.”

“But you wanted me there?”

Yuuri looked up at Victor and felt his throat go dry. Of course he wanted Victor. He had always wanted Victor. He looked down at the floor, at the non-existent lines of the tic-tac-toe board, and poked his toe, turning into what would have been a handstand.

“I have never wanted to get away from you,” he admitted. “The Fleet was one of the ways I could get away from home.” It was easier if he just looked at the board. “But I was already following your career when I left. At least, knowing you were there… At least I was running toward someone as much as I was running away.”

He could feel his heart pound in his chest. He felt so exposed, admitting even this much. Victor knew he’d looked up to him, though. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. Maybe he somehow hadn’t figured out…

Victor placed an O on the board. “You know, this game is going to be a tie.”

“The only way to not tie at tic-tac-toe is if someone messes up.” Yuuri placed his X. “There is no winning at tic-tac-toe between us. We’re too smart, and too competitive. We’ve played this game almost a hundred times and we’re still zero to zero.”

On the fourth day, with no sign of rescue in sight and Victor’s claim of mathematical impossibility staring them down, they started playing poker.

The game was hampered somewhat by the fact that they did not have playing cards. But Victor gestured broadly, shuffling air, dealing imaginary cards.

Yuuri picked his up off the floor, organizing them with exaggerated movements, glaring at the nothing in his hand.

“The first thing that comes to mind is what you have,” Victor explained.

That didn’t seem very fair. Two of clubs, Jack of diamonds, eight of spades, three of spades, nine of hearts.

In other words, Yuuri had absolute bupkis. This was literally true—he was holding nothing in his hands—and also figuratively true, since apparently his mind couldn’t even deal him good cards.

“What are you going to bet?” Victor asked.

“Um.” Yuuri looked around the pod. “Do we really want to play strip poker?”

“There’s no alcohol.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Victor was silent for a long time. “Fine,” he said. “I bet my nose.”

“Your…nose?”

Victor nodded. “Sure. Why not.”

“Why not?” Yuuri sighed. “I’ll bet mine, too.”

He traded in four slices of nothing for for more slices of nothing; Victor said nothing when they won. They traded body parts back and forth, until after an hour, Victor had Yuuri’s big toe, his nose, his hips, and his left hand. Yuuri, by contrast, only had Victor’s duodenum, which seemed awfully unfair.

They were playing for heels now—Victor’s right heel, Yuuri’s left—and for once, Yuuri had a good hand.

Victor was smiling at his own imaginary cards, though, so…

“I raise you,” Victor said, setting his hand down with a flourish. “I raise you my heart.”

“Your heart?” Yuuri exhaled. “That’s high stakes.”

“You can always fold.”

Yuuri clutched his non-existent cards to his chest. “Never, Nikiforov. Hearts it is.”

“Well, then. What have you got, Katsuki?”

Yuuri turned his cards over. “Full house, kings high.”

Victor looked at Yuuri’s palm. “Ah. Damn.” He slowly turned over his own empty hand. “Pair of jacks, pair of aces. It’s yours.”

“Ha! Take that!” Yuuri punched the air.

“That’ll show me. I probably shouldn’t have bet my heart anyway,” Victor shrugged. “It’s kind of on the nose, don’t you think?”

“How would I know?” Yuuri asked indignantly. “You have my nose!”

Victor sighed and looked away.

On the sixth day, Yuuri woke up with Victor in his arms. Space was dark around them, and the Victory hadn’t found them yet. Tomorrow, they would run out of water. The chances of being found were…nonexistent.

Yuuri would never get the chance to impress Victor with his ability to make katsudon.

“If I get the chance,” he whispered to Victor, “if we make it back somehow, I’m going to stop running away.”

Victor slept on.

“No,” Victor said, when Yuuri claimed he wasn’t thirsty on the seventh day. “That’s not how this works. We’re going to split the water we have. And I think I figured out how to rig the system to access the condensing water in the air recirculating ducts. There’s a five percent chance that doing it will end up breaching the hull, so I didn’t want to say anything.”

Yuuri shut his eyes. “You’re so perfect. You would have made the katsudon. How are you not captain of your own ship yet?”

Victor smiled and leaned into Yuuri. “You forget. I’ve also earned more demerits than any commander in history.”

“If you could just stop flouting the rules for two months!”

“Then they’d make me captain,” Victor said with a smile.

“Exactly. They’d make you captain.”

“They’d make me captain,” Victor said, “and…”

And it clicked, all of a sudden, in Yuuri’s head. Lilia saying that she’d make Victor’s worst nightmare come true by not reporting him.

“And you don’t want to be captain,” Yuuri said, stunned. “Why don’t you want your own ship?”

“Well. Lilia would never give you up, so…” Victor shrugged and looked away. “Why would I want to be captain? I always figured you’d make captain first, and I could beg you to take me on.”

Yuuri pulled Victor close; without gravity, they started to spin on an awkward axis. He shut his eyes and inhaled, and God, Victor was here, finally, here.

“Victor,” Yuuri said. “You…you idiot.”

Yuuri wrapped his arms around him. Victor scrunched smaller in his arms, then made himself smaller still.

“Hey, Vitya,” Yuuri said, “you’re making us spin faster.”

Victor snickered in Yuuri’s arms.

“Oh,” Yuuri said. “You’re doing it on purpose. That’s okay, then.”

They danced around it for a few more hours, hugging tight, then letting themselves drift apart, connected only by their interwoven fingers.

“I always figured,” Yuuri said, “that if you liked me you would say something.”

Victor’s hand clenched around Yuuri’s a little more tightly. Yuuri felt him turn his head; he swiveled at the same time, instinctually counteracting the change to keep them stable.

“Yuuri.” Victor’s voice was hoarse. “You’re so far out of my league. I thought—maybe—sometimes you seemed like you were attracted to me a little bit? But it’s not the same as being seen with me in public or introducing me to your parents. I thought you’d decided I wasn’t worth dating.”

“No,” Yuuri said, both horrified and confused. “How could you think that? You know me. I would punch anyone who thought that about you, and I don’t believe in violence!”

Victor looked at him with wide eyes.

“I—it’s just—dating.” Yuuri put all his contempt for the institution in that word. “I don’t know how to date? I mean, I’m so bad at flirting and everything. I’ve never even asked anyone out.” Yuuri’s gaze traveled down his arm to the knot their hands made. Victor was watching him as if expecting more.

“I’m so bad at dating that my parents had to set me up with someone?” Yuuri pointed out. “Remember? And I was so bad at that, that I panicked and made up a boyfriend.”

“But you’re so good at everything,” Victor breathed.

Yuuri felt helpless laughter bubble up. “No, you’re confused. That’s you, that’s definitely you.”

“Me?”

“It’s you. You’re my sun, and—you’re right—I’m just the stupid vastness of nothing that surrounds you, wishing to be more.”

Victor’s eyes widened, and he flicked his wrist, pulling Yuuri in. The change in position sent them drifting towards the window; Victor took hold of a handle, bracing them in place, his arms wrapped around Yuuri.

“There,” he said gesturing. “What do you see?”

“Stars?” An arm of whatever unknown galaxy they were in painted a river of light across their view.

“Between the stars?”

“Nothing.”

“Look closer.”

“Still nothing.”

Yuuri felt Victor’s breath warm against his temple. “Let me tell you what I see as the Fleet’s most decorated science officer. That ‘nothing’ that you see? If you could tune your eyes to nonvisible light, you’d see cosmic microwave background radiation, the evidence of the universe’s creation, spread uniformly across the sky.”

Yuuri swallowed, unsure what to do with the pounding of his pulse, the warmth of Victor’s body against his. “Sounds carcinogenic.”

“You’d see radiation-absorbing planets. Clouds of dust and weakly interacting massive particles. You’d see the intrinsic energy of space, accelerating the expansion of the universe.”

Yuuri exhaled and set a hand against the window. All he saw was nothing.

“The nothing you see,” Victor whispered in his ear, “is the beginning of life, and the cradle of human existence. It’s a billion forms of life adapting and growing on as many planets. When I said you were the vastness of space, I didn’t mean you were nothing. I meant you are everything.”

Yuuri exhaled and shut his eyes. The river of stars had imprinted itself on his vision in a series of pinpricks. He turned to face Victor and opened his eyes. He didn’t know what to say. Victor knew him so well—better than anyone—and he thought that about him? How could Yuuri ever possibly live up to that?

He didn’t know, but he didn’t have time left. They were adrift in space, and even if Victor managed to get them another few days of water, there still wasn’t time for them to be what Yuuri wanted.

He wanted everything, forever. With only a handful of days, maybe they could still be something.

He kissed Victor.

Maybe Victor was expecting it, because he braced them against the wall with one hand and kissed Yuuri back, opening up to him so perfectly, so sweetly, that Yuuri didn’t know why they hadn’t been kissing for years. Victor’s hands came up to bracket Yuuri’s face, and his tongue touched Yuuri’s lips, and oh, god, yes.

Yuuri opened up to him, to his touch. To the feel of Victor’s hand sliding down his body as if it were an instrument, to the thrill of pleasure and sheer want that pulsed through him at Victor’s touch.

Victor’s hand slid to the velcro tabs of Yuuri’s jumpsuit. “Can I?”

“Yes,” Yuuri breathed.

Sex was harder than Yuuri remembered it being. Not that he had so much experience in the matter—but all his training, such as it was, had been planetside, with gravity to anchor him in place, where a mistimed thrust wouldn’t send him off on a slow spin, out of sync with his partner.

Victor finally hooked his feet in a strap; Yuuri braced his upper body, latching onto one of the handles in the wall.

“Can I suck you off?” Victor asked, and Yuuri wasn’t sure how this was happening, but he nodded, eager. Victor edged Yuuri’s jumpsuit down, kissing his way down his abdomen.

“God,” Victor whispered. “You’re so beautiful, Yuuri. Let me, please—”

In no universe would Yuuri have stopped him. He let out a whimpering moan as Victor’s breath warmed his cock, and then made a sound something like a growl when Victor swallowed him down.

It was so much, so warm, his tongue there, fingers on Yuuri’s balls. Yuuri couldn’t move, not without disturbing their delicate equilibrium, and his body screamed with the effort of standing still, not thrusting, not moving—

“Victor, I’m going to come.”

Victor didn’t stop.

“Victor—god.” His world was nothing and it was everything. It felt good, so good, pleasure roaring through his veins as he came, shuddering.

“You didn’t, um.” He felt faintly embarrassed by how fast he’d come. “You didn’t have to swallow?”

Victor looked up at him, his eyes bright with amusement. “I actually did, unless you wanted little come droplets floating around everywhere.”

“Oh.” Yuuri shut his eyes. “That would be…so awkward, if we…”

If they got rescued, he had been going to say.

“We aren’t going to get rescued, are we.”

“Mathematically, it’s unlikely. Unmathematically… There’s always a chance.”

Yuuri surprised himself by setting his hand over Victor’s mouth. “None of that talk now. Let me take care of you.”

Victor’s eyes shivered shut, closing out all thought of the future. “Take care of me, Yuuri. yes.”

It was impossible to believe that Victor—beautiful, perfect Victor—could respond like that to Yuuri’s touch. That he could moan so sweetly when Yuuri ran his tongue down his nipple, that he would forget himself, thrusting into Yuuri’s fist. It was impossible that he could taste so good, when Yuuri made his way down his body, licking his cock and then sucking him in.

His hands clenched in Yuuri’s hair, thighs clamping around Yuuri’s ears.

“Yuuri,” he gasped, “Yuuri, Yuuri, like that, please, please.” He came, breathing heavily, and Yuuri swallowed every drop of his come down.

Victor smiled at him wearily.

Mathematically, it wasn’t likely they would survive. Luckily, Yuuri wasn’t the math guy. He bundled them back into their jumpsuits, loaded them into their sleep sacks, and lashed them together so they could cuddle.

“Yuuri,” Victor muttered into his collarbone. “I should have asked. You said you were bad at dating. Were you a virgin?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

Victor tensed subtly in his arms. “I mean, it’s fine either way. I just thought…”

“I hired a licensed sex practitioner when I came of age, of course,” Yuuri said. “Didn’t you?”

Silence. Victor peeled his arm out from between them. “That’s…a thing?”

“Sure,” Yuuri said confused. “I mean, it really is such an important subject. I mean, you hire people to teach kids how to drive a car. Why wouldn’t you hire someone to teach sexuality?”

It was the first time he’d seen Victor utterly baffled. “How? What did they do?”

“Well, first, there’s the learning. They talk to you about how to recognize what you want, and there are exercises and homework and all that stuff. They have an exam so you know how to get consent and navigate kinks and recognize emotionally or physically abusive behavior and what to do about it.”

“There’s an exam?”

“True, it’s only one of the methodologies for measuring learning.”

“So that’s all a sex practitioner teaches?”

“I mean, there’s also the practical part, because people should know how their own bodies work and how not to get hurt? But that part is pretty much all about individual preferences, and it’s not like you can give a test on it.”

“That’s so different from how we run it.”

Yuuri frowned. “If you don’t do that, what do you do?”

“I mean…” Victor spread his hands. “Nothing?”

“You have sex without any instruction at all?” Yuuri felt scandalized. “That sounds incredibly dangerous! What if you get hurt? And some people aren’t into sex at all, so what if the first person they’re with is and hasn’t learned about it, and they end up getting pressured improperly? People could get hurt like that!”

Victor just threaded his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. “I mean… Yeah, I guess. It happens. I…never really thought about it.”

“That sounds barbaric.” Another thought occurred to Yuuri. “Did you get hurt? Oh, Victor—”

“Shh,” Victor said, folding an arm around him. “I’ve never been more okay than in this moment.”

They were going to have to risk breaching the hull for water tomorrow. Yuuri wanted to laugh.

“Just do me a favor. Give me the number of whoever taught you to give a blowjob?”

“Okay. It’s never to late too make an appointment,” Yuuri said, and then cursed himself because it literally was too late to make an appointment.

“No, not that. I want to send him a present as a thank you.” Yuuri found himself grinning goofily.

“All the things I told you about my childhood.” Victor yawned and pulled Yuuri closer. “And the thing that made you break down and gibber about how dangerous it was for me to grow up the way I did was my not having a sex therapist? Ha.”

“I just didn’t know there was another way.”

“You can teach me.”

“I’m not licensed.”

Victor kissed his nose. “I license you. Right now. By the authority vested in me as ranking officer onboard this escape pod.”

“That’s…not how licensing works, Victor.”

“Mmm. You’re the protocol guy. I just know science.” Victor shut his eyes. He was so beautiful that Yuuri could have watched him forever.

Tomorrow, they would…

Hell. Tomorrow could come tomorrow. Tonight, Yuuri wrapped his arms around Victor and fell asleep.

Yuuri woke thinking that something was different. He couldn’t say what it was—their speed hadn’t changed, but something…

Something was different, something, something. He pushed his hand out of the covers and watched them fall back in place. Noticed the sudden weight of his body in his sleep sack, pressed against the floor of the pod after days of weightlessness.

They were in an artificially constructed gravitational field again.

And if they were, then—

Metal clanged against metal. Victor jumped, sitting up, then reached for Yuuri’s blaster.

Yuuri let him take it. Yuuri’s aim was shit.

The pod door slid open to reveal Captain Baranovskaya.

“Oh, thank god,” she said, “you idiots, you’re okay, you’re okay!” She burst into tears and hugged them. “If you two wanted a vacation together to celebrate getting together, you should have just asked. I thought I lost you.”

Victor looked over at Yuuri, and Yuuri felt his stomach drop. Somehow, over the last week alone together, he had forgotten. He’d forgotten that he’d asked Victor to pretend. He didn’t know what they were anymore, if their time together last night had been a function of being about to die, or if it had meant something more.

The entire ship thought they were dating. In a matter of days, if they weren’t too far off course, he was going to land on New Nihon and introduce Victor to his parents.

They’d gone from fake to something real, and now they’d landed back in the face again. Somehow, during the course of their weightless voyage, Yuuri had lost the desire to pretend.

Victor pulled away from Lilia. “Was it Makkachin?”

Makkachin?

“Yes.” Lilia exhaled. “I will never make fun of that stupid collar again. She just kept racing to one end of the ship and barking, and barking, and after about four days of it it finally occurred to me that you must have set that stupid laser pistol as your beacon. We hooked up her collar and…” She shrugged.

“I was hoping,” Victor said. “I was hoping I would get Yuuri home. I didn’t want to say there was a possibility…”

“You did.” She hugged Victor. “You may not be able to escape being captain now.”

Victor glanced at Yuuri, and then looked away. “If this is how I have to go… It was worth it.” Then he straightened. “Have you found the other pods?”

“No. I assume they’re still cloaked? If that’s the case, I don’t know what we could do to retrieve them.”

Victor held up his hand. In it was the deactivated chip he’d removed from the pod. “I think I know how to find them,” he said. “We know their starting point, and on here is the escape algorithm employed by the pods. I may need a few days to run a proper simulation, but I can get trajectories and coordinates by the time we drop Yuuri off on New Nihon. If I…don’t sleep.”

Lilia looked at Victor and sighed.

“I think we can arrange for an hour or two of leave for you. Delegate a little, Victor. You have science officers under you. You’re dating someone you care about, and you’ve been through a traumatic experience. Take it from someone who has learned this the hard way. Don’t disappear into your work..”

Victor looked over at Yuuri, and Yuuri could feel his question.

Am I? Am I dating you?

The return of gravity heralded a heavier burden than Yuuri had anticipated. He exhaled. “We’re.” It was impossible to say the words. It was impossible not to. “We’re not dating.”

Victor exhaled sharply.

“We’re not dating,” Yuuri said. “We were never dating. I was just freaking out about something my parents said to me, and I asked Victor—” He cut himself off. “It was selfish and cowardly, okay? We’re not dating.”

“Yuuri,” Victor said.

Yuuri stood and looked at Victor. Oh, it hurt to look at him. He thought of everything Victor had said. A little on the nose, don’t you think? They’d make me captain, and Lilia would never give you up. I didn’t mean you were nothing. I meant you are everything.

“Victor,” Yuuri said, his voice shaking, “I’m not running away.” He choked on his own feelings. “I don’t ever want to run from you again.”

“But—”

He took a step close to his best friend, the love of his life, and he looked up into his eyes.

“But I’ve been running away from a lot of things for a long time, and I need to take care of them. I’ve made a mess of things with my parents. They found someone to marry me, and…whoever he is, he deserves to hear me tell him ‘no, thank you.’”

“Yuuri. I really should—”

Yuuri straightened. “You have a lot to do right now. I promise. When I’m…done running away, I’m coming back to you. I promise.”

Victor closed his mouth. Slowly, he nodded.

Still, he didn’t look away from Yuuri, not even when Lilia gently took him by the arm and pushed him in the direction of the science bay.

#

It’s not that Yuuri didn’t see Victor in the days that followed.

He did. He brought him meals in the science lab and forced him to eat and take very short breaks. Yuuri didn’t know enough about the problem to provide actual help.

“The problem,” Victor told him as he stared bleary-eyed at his soup, “is that the initial trajectory has random components, and while the random number generator isn’t perfectly random, I don’t know the initial seed. They could have used time or temperature or anything. I’ve been trying to reverse engineer it.”

“That does sound hard,” Yuuri said.

“I have to fix this,” Victor said, his gaze blurring as he stared into his spoon. “You and I—we’re the only ones who know what it’s like, being on an escape pod with no control, no hope of being found, wondering if you should risk your life or keep going… I just, I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what we did.”

“I mean,” Yuuri said, “I know we almost died, but was it really that bad?”

Victor’s eyes met his. For a moment, the weariness in them was replaced with a blaze of want.

“Oh,” Yuuri said in understanding. “It would be, for them. They didn’t have a Victor.”

“Yuuri, that’s…” Victor swallowed. “Wait! That’s it! I have it. We just have to—”

What followed was incomprehensible. Victor set aside his uneaten soup and turned back to his sandwich, and after that, all hope of intelligent conversation was gone.

Victor cracked the trajectory twelve hours before they were set to land on New Nihon. They sent the coordinates off to the fleet immediately.

He came to Yuuri’s room, haggard and in desperate need of a shave.

“Yuuri,” he said. “We need to talk, please. Can we? I have to tell you.”

Yuuri made him coffee. But by the time he’d brought it over to him, Victor had fallen asleep. There was nothing to do but manhandle him into the bed and tuck him under the covers.

He didn’t wake up, not even when Yuuri told him that another ship had finally picked up the full crew of the Yarmouth, jettisoned in the missing escape pods.

He didn’t wake whenYuuri bathed and dressed in civilian clothing, donning a formal black haori lined with the red-and-gold colors of House Katsuki.

He paused by the bed, where Victor was still passed out, and smoothed his hair. Even in sleep, Victor shifted subtly, seeking his touch. How had Yuuri not noticed?

“I’m coming back,” Yuuri said. “Promise. Just…wait for me, okay?”

Victor slept on.

A formal procession met him at the shuttle launch pad. His parents greeted him enthusiastically; the retinue that accompanied them was a little more subdued.

“So,” Mari said, once they’d settled into the grav-barge that would bring them back to the palace, “have you thought about what you’re doing next?”

The Victory was refueling at the space station. She’d be here for another three hours; Yuuri would have to make his way back to meet up with them in two weeks on public carrier.

“Same thing I’ve been doing for the last five years,” Yuuri said. “Exploring the vastness of space.” With Victor, he didn’t say.

They arrived at dinner, and there was no time for him to mention it.

“Well,” his mother said that night, after the last of the important guests had left. “You’ve gotten better at formal events since you were last on planet.”

In their own quarters, with nobody around but them, Yuuri could revert to his own true self. In this case, it meant curling up into a ball on the sofa opposite his parents. “It could hardly have gotten worse.”

“You did well, Yuuri.”

“Sure.” He’d been too distracted thinking about Victor. Remembering the arm of the galaxy spread out in front of them, a spill of brilliant light. Seeing the darkness between the light. And that feeling, that moment when Victor had told him he was everything.

His father made a noise. “I notice you didn’t bring your boyfriend as promised.”

Yuuri shut his eyes and curled into a tighter ball. “I’m sorry. About that…”

His mother the Empress just nodded thoughtfully. “You made him up.”

Yuuri felt his face heat. “Was it that obvious?”

She leaned forward and brushed Yuuri’s cheek. “I’ve known you since you were a baby, Yuuri. I know when you’re lying.”

“That’s…really embarrassing.”

“Also, you should probably know that I get copies of Lilia’s staff reports.”

“That’s even more embarrassing.”

“They’re very complimentary, you know. She thinks very highly of you.”

“Gah, that’s the most embarrassing of all.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you about it until now.”

There was a long pause, and Yuuri realized that his mother had let him steer the topic away from the fact that he’d bold-face lied to his parents. He was running again, and he wasn’t going to do it. He made himself sit up straight. He put his feet on the ground, just as he’d been taught. He set his hands on his knees, and he looked his parents in the eyes.

“I’m so sorry. I should have just said no.” His fingers tapped nervously against the side of his leg. “I’m sure whoever you found is perfectly nice, and I’m sure they think that I’m a good person from whatever they’ve seen publicly about me, but… They don’t know me.” He felt himself blush. “And I’m in love with someone else. So.”

His mother just nodded. “I think you should tell him that yourself.”

“He’s here?”

She nodded. “Yuuri, I told you. I knew you were lying. Of course he’s here. I wanted you to meet.”

A quick backwards calculation. “Was he at dinner?”

“No. Yuuri, he’s… He’s waiting in the blue study. And, look, I know you’re nervous. But don’t be. You should understand that when we first approached him, he told us that he expected you wouldn’t go through with it. It’s okay if you say no. But I think it would be nice if you said hello. He’s come a long way.”

Yuuri let out a sigh. The least he could do was apologize for this whole mess. He was sure his parents had found a reasonably nice man; it wouldn’t hurt to say he was sorry.

He’d run away long enough.

He stood. “Right.” He swallowed. “I’ll tell him.”

There was a light on in the blue study. Yuuri stopped before the door; he could hear the light rustle of someone turning pages.

Whoever it was, he was reading actual paper books—just like Victor had done that one time Yuuri had brought him to his home. It was familiar enough that Yuuri gathered up his courage.

How hard was it to say, sorry, I’m sure you’re perfectly nice, but I can’t marry you?

Not that hard after all.

He opened the door and took a step forward. “Hi?”

The man stood from his high-backed chair, and Yuuri felt his heart skip a beat.

“Hi,” the man said, sounding almost as shy as Yuuri felt.

Silver hair. Those perfect blue eyes. Victor.

There should have been at least a moment of shock, he reflected, looking into Victor’s eyes. He should have felt his pulse race. He should have wondered how it was possible.

Instead, what he thought was… Oh, of course it’s Victor. Mom has always known me better than I thought.

Then: I should have known it was him the day I told him my parents had arranged my marriage, and he didn’t sound outraged.

And finally: Of course it’s Victor. It’s always been Victor.

He should say something. Talk about the fact that Victor was here. Ask him how he felt about the whole marriage thing…

“Did they tell you they rescued the Yarmouth crew?” Yuuri asked instead,

“Yeah?” Victor’s voice sounded unsteady.

“You were dead on,” Yuuri said. “You were so exact that they were able to jump to their exact positions in space and engage the tractor beam even though they couldn’t detect their escape craft.”

“Yeah?” Victor echoed. “That’s…good.”

“That’s you. You’re the best.”

Victor smiled at him, just a little sadly. “Yuuri, I…” He trailed off, turning away from Yuuri.

Yuuri didn’t know anything, but he did know that nothing hurt like the sight of Victor turning from him.

No running away.

“Hey.” Yuuri took a step toward him. “I love you, you know.”

Victor stopped in place, letting out a shuddering breath. He didn’t turn back. Yuuri didn’t know what he was thinking, why he wasn’t coming to him, putting his arms around him.

But he didn’t. He stood with his back to Yuuri, and Yuuri felt his heart sink just a little. After a moment—maybe a minute, maybe ten seconds—had passed, Yuuri spoke again.

“Victor?” The study wasn’t as large as one of the receiving rooms, but still, his voice seemed small and echoey.

Victor’s shoulders slumped. “I’m waiting.” His hand clenched briefly at his side. “I keep waiting, because I know how this goes. ‘I love you, but…’ There’s a but coming. Please. Please tell me. Don’t drag this out. I can’t bear the hope of waiting.”

Yuuri took another step forward. “What do you mean, there’s a but? There is no but. It’s just I love you.”

Victor finally turned toward him. His eyes were wide. “What do you mean, there’s no but? Of course there’s a but. ‘I love you, but I’m a prince.’ ‘I love you, but you haven’t even received basic training in sexual etiquette.’”

Yuuri made a surprised noise.

“‘I love you, but I’d have to take you to state dinners and you don’t even know when you have diplomatic immunity.’”

“Victor.”

“‘I love you, but—’”

“Victor,” Yuuri said, “I love you, but I love you. That’s all there is. There is no but.”

“For the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but wonder. I just kept thinking that maybe your mom did tell you that she’d talked to me, and…and you were looking for some way out of it?”

Oh. No.

“Victor,” Yuuri said in horror, “you think that my mom would tell me that you were basically in love with me, that I would panic, and ask you to help me not marry you by fake-dating me?”

Victor swallowed, looking over into Yuuri’s eyes. “No?” He must have found his answer, because he nodded, more sure of himself. “No. I know you. You wouldn’t.”

“And what the hell.” Yuuri suddenly made another connection. “You agreed to fake-date me to help me get out of marrying you? Victor, that must have…” Hurt, he didn’t say. He was trying to imagine how it would feel if something similar had happened on his end—if he had to give up all hope of having Victor forever in exchange for a few weeks where he had to pretend that he was only pretending to be in love. Hurt seemed too tame a word for the flash of pain that seared through him.

Victor shrugged. “Well. You didn’t seem to want to get married, and you know I’d do anything for you.”

“Oh.” Yuuri sighed. He took another step forward. “Victor, you know that I love you, right? But please…”

Victor was looking at him, misty-eyed. He broke into a half-smile at this. “I knew it was coming. I love you, but. There it is.”

“I love you but, please,” Yuuri finished, “please never break your own heart just because you think it will make me happy. I promise you, it will not. Not when I find out.”

Victor shut his eyes. “Does this mean… Are you going to let your parents arrange our marriage, then?”

“No.”

Victor was so close, close enough that Yuuri could reach out and take hold of his hands. Victor opened his eyes as Yuuri did. His thumb slid down Yuuri’s palm; he met his eyes in entreaty. “No?”

“Not in a million years.” Yuuri leaned in and kissed Victor on the cheek. “Nobody is ever going to say that I didn’t choose you myself. Not when I’ve chosen you a thousand times, every time I had the opportunity.”

“Oh.” Victor’s smile turned almost painfully bright. “Um, does that…mean…? Are we…dating, then? For real?”

“Victor.” Yuuri rested his forehead against Victor’s. “I have it on legal authority that we’ve been dating since November two years ago.”

Victor searched Yuuri’s eyes. “Then…I can do this?” He set his hand against Yuuri’s face, his palm wonderfully warm. He leaned in; Yuuri found himself tilting towards him. He didn’t know anymore if Victor was the sun and he was the planet, or if they were like sunlight together.

He just knew that they were kissing, and it was right, and he didn’t know why they’d waited so long.

Victor broke for breath some time later. “Yuuri, I just realized I didn’t say it. I love you, too.”

Yuuri had known it. He’d known it the way he knew there was sunlight on his face even if his eyes were closed. He’d just needed to let himself believe it.

He grinned at Victor. “You have no idea what you’re getting into. There are going to be dinners and parades and everything. Everyone is going to love you.”

“Sounds like…fun?”

“They’re going to make a holo-vid about us, you know. More than one.”

Victor considered this. “Can Makkachin be in it?”

“They couldn’t make it without her.”

“Fine. Then I’m in.” Victor pulled Yuuri into his embrace. “I’m in forever.”