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Minghao misses grass.
He’s dreaming of it again, spiky and soft underneath his body when he lays in the meadow behind his parent’s house. Its heavy, summery smell. How the shadows of each blade stretch sunwards at the end of a long, lazy afternoon.
In the dream he always hums. Some lullaby he can’t remember the words to anymore. The notes crescendo until they shake his whole chest with a shuddering vibration, like he’s screaming with his mouth closed.
The earth starts shaking, too. Humming along. He digs both hands into the dirt, ripping up inelegant tufts of grass. A crack emerges beside his head. It elongates with an awful creaking noise, disseminating a hot and sulfurous fog, robbing the air of its sweetness. Minghao rolls sideways, feeling his heartbeat rabbit away.
The ground beneath him crumbles anyway. Minghao’s shoes inexplicably fall off. His nails leave gouges in the dirt, but he loses purchase and falls—falls—
Wakes up. Cold, sweating, curled into the fetal position with the blanket splattered on the floor.
No matter how many times he nightmares, waking up is the worst part.
Minghao lies flat on his back and takes deep breaths. A silvery glow of light under his door means that it’s too early to rise. He feels his own forehead, wipes the sweat away with the back of his palm. Suddenly he can’t bear the dark.
He clears his throat. “Computer, main lights.”
Warm orange lines alight along the ceiling. Minghao sits up and pushes open his observation window, through which he has a tiny glimpse of the stars. Ursa Major II is known for its gas giants and spectacular frost line, where enormous, multifaceted crystals hang suspended in a row. Like a naturally-occurring art gallery.
Minghao can’t see any of that shit. Just darkness and faraway pinpricks of light.
He slams the window closed, shivering, feeling lonely in a horribly abstract way. A ship of twelve hundred people is nothing compared to the vastness of space. If something were to happen here, he’d never see Earth again. He’d never feel the sun on his face in the idyllic farmlands of his hometown, he’d never weave another grassy flower crown for his little neighbor, he’d never...
Numbers on the clock flip and catch his eye. 4:13am. Minghao is jittery with this homesickness, this late-blooming form of spacial anxiety which he thought he quashed during cadet training. Three weeks after his inaugural launch, why does he still feel like this?
There’s nothing to do but wait until Beta Shift, when his work begins. Minghao tugs on his shoes without changing out of his black sleeping suit. He’ll walk, familiarize himself better with the ship, and hopefully clear his head.
His mood lifts as he rounds the corner out of the dormitory wing. Here the lights are white but dim, sliding along silver molding like phosphorescent snakes. There’s no one else wandering around at this time—in the middle of Alpha Shift—and he enjoys a quiet so profound that he can hear the ship’s engine humming far below his feet.
Minghao means to veer into the cafeteria, but a shadow catches his eye. Hoping for one of the friendly lab cats, he follows it, only to emerge in front of a massive observatory window with a curved sill wide enough to seat several people. A man is lounging in the shadow of a passing planet. Its glittering green rings reflect bulbous shapes off of the man’s bare feet. He’s wearing the same standard black suit that Minghao has on and nothing else.
Curiosity compels Minghao a few steps closer—then bites him in the ass.
“Oh,” he says. “It’s you.”
Junhui turns with a comical expression of surprise. A box of rambutan sits on his thighs, and the shock of seeing such a bloodred, ordinary thing makes Minghao freeze.
“It’s me,” Junhui smiles.
His hands continue working over a rambutan like this is a perfectly normal mid-morning activity. Spiky clumps fall back into the box. He pops the pit into his mouth and sucks the meat clean, pursing his lips and hollowing his cheeks like he’s in a goddamn porno.
Minghao almost walks away from the sheer impropriety of it all. But he has to know— “Where did you get those?”
Junhui spits out the pit like he’s kissing it goodbye. “The cafeteria. Do you want any?”
“I was just headed to…” Minghao looks down at himself, still vaguely nightmare-sweaty. Looks back at the tropical fruit. “Actually. Yeah, I want some. Scoot over.”
If someone had told Minghao two years ago that he’d be splitting rambutan with Wen Junhui, he would’ve laughed in their face. Junhui? That air-headed idiot who somehow cheated his way into the top spot of every cadet class, beating Minghao by a fraction of a point? Yeah fucking right. Minghao was more likely to make a voodoo doll of Junhui and shave its head.
Being in deep space together has changed things. They aren’t friendly—at least, Minghao isn’t, and he’s never figured out if Junhui’s relentless flirting is mean-spirited or just a distraction tactic. But they can work on the same bridge without tasering each other. There are lots of group dinners with the captain and mutual nods of acknowledgement.
Junhui usually ruins it with a joke or a cheesy pick-up line.
Minghao rolls a rambutan between his palms, enjoying its spiky nonsensical body, before peeling it. He works quickly, juice dripping down his thumb. It feels like they’re breaking an unwritten rule. He can imagine Seungkwan making a severe face. Guys, I’m sorry, but eating in the middle of the night is discouraged by the Space Federation. You might upset your stomachs.
“Good, huh?” Junhui plucks shedded skins from the box and begins stacking them beside his hip. Anyone else would sound smug, but Junhui just sounds delighted.
Minghao makes a noise of agreement. “I don’t want to hear whatever nefarious crimes you committed to get these fresh, but yeah, they’re good.”
Junhui laughs. They fall into an unusually camaradic silence, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with green bokeh lights rolling slowly over their faces, shucking rambutans. A heavy peace falls over Minghao. Between the rhythmic motions and the soothing, sweet flesh, he forgets his dream altogether.
Until Junhui says, “Soooo, why are you up this early?”
Minghao accidentally scrapes his teeth against a pit. “No reason. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh, no!” Junhui lowers his fruit. “I have a few sleeping pills if you want one. Old school melatonin, nothing synthetic, but they really helped me before launch.”
It’s hard to tell if he’s being genuine—that’s always been the issue between them. Minghao doesn’t trust sweet words. In this dramatic lighting, though, with their voices pitched lower, things feel almost… intimate. He can start to see through Junhui, to an earnest childishness underneath.
“Sure,” Minghao says slowly. “That would be great.”
Junhui smiles. His lips are slick and shiny with juice, and something in Minghao’s stomach swoops when he notices.
Then Junhui’s smile falls away. The change in his expression is so sudden and jarring that Minghao blinks, stupidly, unprepared for Junhui to spit a pit at him.
It ricochets off his chest and skitters across the floor. Junhui throws his head back laughing, all caution tossed to the wind, and despite himself, Minghao stutters out a laugh, too.
From shock. Not amusement, of course.
“Gross.” Minghao wipes a hand over his shirt and bites back the smile threatening to conquer his face. He has to pretend to be unaffected or Junhui will win, somehow. “Are you gonna pick it up?”
“Of course.” Junhui bends backwards to snatch the pit. “I won’t litter, that’s rude.”
“But spitting on me isn’t rude.”
“Not when it made you laugh.” Junhui knocks their knees together and does a weird, macho voice. “Anything to make you laugh!”
Minghao rolls his eyes and braces himself for what he expects to follow: a compliment that will take things too far, Junhui’s rakish smile, the blush that will inevitably pinken Minghao’s ears and make him scurry back to his room. But it doesn’t come. Junhui simply begins peeling another rambutan. His hands are sticky-loud and his eyes, though sleepy, watch Minghao with a certain heaviness.
“Why do you always do that?” Minghao blurts out. “Make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you.”
“Yes, you are. When you say all these nice things.”
Junhui shrugs. “I say them because they’re true.”
“But—um. Not to be rude, we’re just, not exactly friends?” Minghao feels silly even as he says it, thinking of how many hours they’ve spent side-by-side in a classroom raising their hands at the exact same time. Thinking of their matching uniforms. “Well, we’re not close.”
“I don’t want things to be that way,” Junhui says, and his earnestness is like a phaser beam right through Minghao’s chest. “There’s no competition here. We’re not kids anymore.”
Oh, the irony of being told to grow up by Wen Junhui!
So Minghao nods. The least he can do is accept that. He doesn’t know what to say in response, and as he looks at Junhui, their eye contact takes on a life of its own, becoming charged and gravitational. It feels like Junhui is warming up his very soul with those dark, beckoning eyes. Like their rivalrous tension is fizzling into a new shape.
Minghao panics. He flicks a discarded peel into Junhui’s lap. It’s a declaration of war. Junhui’s eyes go wide as the sky. He grins, teeth glinting green as he turns and lobs the peel back into Minghao’s shoulder.
Thirty seconds later they’re pelting each other with damp handfuls of rambutan skin. A pit goes down Junhui’s shirt and Minghao bursts out laughing.
“Truce!” Junhui collapses across the windowsill, his legs curled like noodles, looking as disheveled as he did after combat classes. “I give up! Have mercy, Xiao Hao, these are my pajamas.”
The laughter falls out of Minghao’s mouth and dies. He stiffens up, one foot sliding to the tile floor instinctually, as if to run away. No one’s called him that since his first year of cadet training. To hear it now makes his chest tingle with nostalgia. He’s not sure if he likes the feeling.
Junhui cheerfully collects the remains of their weaponry and forms the spiky flesh into an amorphous blob. The nostalgia in Minghao simmers into something warmer, more affectionate.
If there were more nights like this, peeling themselves raw in the dark, he thinks he could grow to like the parts of Junhui he once envied: his wit, his easy purity, his independence. His honesty. Maybe Junhui has been truthful all along in his affections, and Minghao was too petty and prideful to notice. That’s a big, sobering thought to have before breakfast.
“I accept your defeat,” Minghao says after a belated pause. “And since you lost, you owe me more fruit.”
Innocently, Junhui nudges the half-empty box of rambutan closer with one foot.
Minghao shakes his head. “I want lychee. Same time next week.”
As Minghao speaks, the ship finally slides fully beyond the green, ringed planet. A dark frontier commandeers the window. Endless faraway stars and silver clouds of dust swirl together into a gorgeous background. Minghao's heart leaps.
Junhui smiles. He leans back into the curved sill, gilded by the dim light of a thousand galaxies. “Deal! Maybe you can fix your sleep schedule by then. I’ll bring you a melatonin during Gamma Shift tonight.”
“What about your sleep schedule?”
“Oh,” Junhui says very seriously. “I don’t sleep.”
Minghao sighs, but it's not without affection. Junhui laughs and laughs.
They settle into a comfortable silence, punctuated by the metallic groans from the engine room far below their feet.
Minghao gazes at the open heart of the Andromeda and wishes he had an easel to capture this view. Their first opportunity to dock doesn’t come for another five weeks, but he’s already made a list of what he wants to look for, and art supplies are at the very top.
As if Junhui is thinking similar thoughts, he says, “It’s beautiful tonight.”
Light outlines his perfect nose in silver.
“Yeah.” Minghao brings his knees to his chest.
“Do you miss home?”
The question is almost too personal. Minghao purses his lips and quells his initial instinct to brush off Junhui’s sincerity. No one is looking for a chink in his armor, he tells himself.
Minghao sighs. “All the time. It’s worse not knowing when we'll be back.”
“Mm-hmm.” Junhui cards his bangs away from his face. “My little brother keeps asking me how long, how long! I just say it’s up to the Federation. However long they chart our course.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother.”
Junhui beams. “He’s ten years younger and he wants to do cadet training just like me.”
Minghao’s heart lurches. That must be difficult. How selfish of him, feeling abstractly lonely while Junhui is missing the foundational years of his brother’s life. Minghao discovers a clinging shred of rambutan skin on his arm and flicks it into the box.
“If he’s anything like you, he’ll do well,” Minghao grumbles, recalling the number of times Junhui beat him out for first rank.
“Of course, he’s very handsome!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s not?” Junhui teases. “Well. He’s very smart, too. But I hope he develops a style like yours, actually.”
Minghao studies his open face, the regal lines of his cheekbones. He has a bad feeling about where this is going. “What do you mean?”
“You were the best in our class and cool. How do I explain it... by the time we got older, everyone liked you and trusted your intuitions. You grew up well. I would want that experience for Yangyang.”
Funny. That’s not how Minghao remembers things. He can only recall the ugly bits: the struggle of endless all-nighters, the chalky taste of synthetic caffeine pills, the stray morning greetings between ultra-stressed classmates. Sure, he had friends in Mingyu and Seokmin. But he never had Junhui’s relentlessly good attitude or humble disposition.
Junhui made life look like a breeze; back then Minghao would’ve switched places with him in a heartbeat.
“I wasn’t,” Minghao says belatedly. “The best in our class, I mean. That was always you.”
I was just trying to keep up, he almost admits. But if he starts complimenting Wen Junhui they’ll become entrenched in a cycle of never-ending positive affirmations until Minghao blushes so hard he passes out.
“You don’t need to say that.” Junhui squirms and does a cute duck of his head. “The final rankings were so close, anyway.”
“You beat me by .07 points.”
“Exactly.”
A reluctant smile claws across Minghao’s face. “So, you won.”
“That’s in the past, though!” Junhui extends his legs, knocking his feet gently against Minghao’s. “I mean it. I really want us to move on.”
“Fine,” Minghao says easily.
He can imagine it now—a tentative bond between them. Not antagonistic. If Junhui can hold a conversation this long without making a cheesy joke, then Minghao can hold back his derisive snorts and judgemental stares. He can admit he's been impatient and stuck-up in the past. This will be their compromise, forged over a box of rambutan.
Speaking of. Minghao licks the residual sweet taste off his lips and narrowly misses the way Junhui tracks his movements.
“Then, lychee next week? For real?” Minghao checks, a little too eagerly.
Junhui pats Minghao’s knee. “Same place, same time.”
“I can bring pu er.”
“Okay! It’s a date.”
Minghao sputters. Instantly his face is hotter than the surface of the sun. “It’s not a date.”
Junhui laughs. A faraway comet streaks by the window, sending a flash of yellow light over their faces and sparking off Junhui’s teeth. A weird feeling takes root in Minghao’s stomach. He stands up and brushes invisible dust off his suit.
“I need to get ready for Beta Shift.”
Junhui stretches both arms above his head, long and liquidy like a cat. “Me too. Xiao Hao, will you throw these in the compost for me? Please? ” He nudges his elbow against the box of rambutan pits and skins.
“Fine.” Minghao heaves the box onto his hip. “But hurry up, don’t be late to the bridge. I won’t cover for you if Captain Choi asks.”
“I’ll see you there,” Junhui calls at his retreating back, a smile thick in his sing-song voice.
Minghao carries the cool, sweet taste of rambutan around in his heart the whole day. He thinks warmly of home.