Work Text:
“Dys.”
Sol’s face is deathly serious, which means whatever this is about is going to be stupid as shit. He always looks delighted whenever he’s talking about the Gardeners or the Array – seriousness is reserved solely for bullshit colony drama. “Dys, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to not laugh at me, okay?”
“Fine,” says Dys. In his heart he’s out on the Ridges, sitting with Sym under the stars as they talk about anything and everything. In reality, unfortunately, he’s here. “What.”
Sol whips out his holopalm. “Okay, so you saw Nomi’s post, right?” He’s whispering, leaning his head in, and despite himself the crush Dys has been trying to bury for years wiggles a little from under the dirt. “Do you think…. Did the other person in it look like me?”
Dys very heroically does not roll his eyes as Sol dumps a shovelful of dirt on Dys’s feelings himself. It’s not so hard to get over someone who’s this obviously in love with someone else. Still, in the spirit of friendship and also getting Sol to leave faster, Dys dutifully opens his own holopalm up to squint at the picture again.
The photo Nomi took of the drawing isn’t great. The lightning’s off and the angle’s weird, which means Dys can only make out two figures: clearly-not-Sol and maybe-Sol-maybe-not. “I dunno,” he says, but at Sol’s pleading look gives it another closer squint. “If it’s not you, who else would it be?”
“Rex,” says Sol, instantly, face falling a little. “And I get it, y’know? He’s nice and cool and they’ve been friends forever, but… maybe I have a chance anyways, right? I mean, they, y’know, danced with me on my birthday and everything…?”
In the most embarrassing display Dys has ever seen in his life, yeah. Both Sol and Nomi had seemed happy, though, grinning at each other as they did their weird noodley wiggles. Another shovel of dirt, there: if Sol expected him to do that Dys would just die instead. He gives the picture another squint. “I’d say it’s more like you than him.”
“Really?” Ugh. Dys needs more dirt; the smile Sol gives him is small and unsure and brilliant despite that, red dusting his cheeks. “That’s… that’s good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah! Alright, I’ll, um… I’ll talk to them about it, I guess? Thanks, Dys.”
Sol reaches out and squeezes his hand. Dys really needs more dirt. “Okay,” says Sol, and then stands up, punching his hands in the air. “Okay! I’m gonna… I’m gonna do it! Okay!”
Stars above. This is kind of embarrassing to watch, which is good for burying his feelings and bad for his mental health. “Good luck,” says Dys, who means it mostly earnestly but also a little because he’d like this whole thing to be over as soon as possible.
“Thanks!” says Sol, without looking over, still red as he looks down towards where Nomi’s no doubt standing with Rex. “I’ll see you later, Dys, thank you for the help!”
With that he’s off, striding back down into the colony with a determined look on his face. Cute, Dys thinks, but not in the way that hurts. It’s just sort of… nice. To think that Sol and Nomi might date. That they might make each other smile like they did last Quiet, two idiots together who he does, despite himself, care about.
Well… maybe it’s a little lonely, too. Dys sighs, flips open his notebook again until he finds a blank page. Too bad he’s not on expedition for another few days: he wants to be out there again, walking with Sym through the wilderness. For now, though, he’ll have to content himself with memory.
He clicks his pen and presses it to the paper. Nomi’s kind of nuts but he can agree about one thing: there’s something sort of cathartic about drawing your feelings, and so alone on the hill, as below him Sol finds his happy ending, he contents himself with sketching Sym’s face.